This is why I love my 80 series Land Cruiser (carb, not EFI), it's really simple that a lot of maintenance can be done with just wrenches. And the charm of having almost no electronics[1] on the car control is that if something is wrong, you will know it by the sounds it makes, and you will have a lot of times to fix it before it's completely toast. I have heard of horror stories about newer cars with electric ABS accumulator that stopped working on the high way, not with my FZJ80[2].
[1] The so called 'emission computer' unit on the car is a simple pulse counter/comparator that activates a VSV on the carb to reduce backfire while descending downhill with the foot off the throttle.
[2] My brake booster is leaking a little bit, but at least it won't suddenly gives up on me while I'm riding, still looking for a replacement.
Those are excellent vehicles indeed. Unfortunately they're also very expensive to maintain. As for a brake booster, I once swapped a booster from a 1990's Toyota pickup into a FJ55. Would you believe it bolted to the firewall? Might be a worthy swap in your FJZ80.
OEM parts can be really expensive, but there are also choices of buying aftermarket ones (mostly made in China) or salvaging from another ones. Near where I live there is a guy who salvages Land Cruisers for a living, he has more than hundreds frames lying around in his yard. Since most of the Land cruisers here have 3rd world spec (carb-ed and detuned engine, part time 4WD, mechanical gas pump etc...), the used parts are often in very good condition. Take the dreaded blown head gasket for example, I rarely see that here because 1FZ-F doesn't run as hot as 1FZ-FE. Or the Birfield, most people just run on RWD mode so they are often pristine.
(of course for something critical such as brake booster I would only use OEM).
So that's like what, 82 in Town and Country years?
Point being, 200k and 25yr on an SUV isn't that impressive on something expensive enough in its day to mostly avoid being rode hard and put away wet from day one. There are a lot of pretty pristine 90s Jags kicking around too and they weren't exactly the pinnacle of reliability. Minivans, commuter compacts, station wagons, they got chewed up and spit out.
What kind of fuel consumption do you get on that? I've been considering getting an older vehicles exactly for that reason (and you can easily tinker with it), but I'd imagine the fuel consumption is a lot higher than a modern vehicle, to the point where you are not saving anything by being able to fix it yourself.
My 1997 LX450 (4.5L I6) with armor (front/rear bumpers, sliders), a roof rack, other random accessories with a 2.5" lift and 33" tires gets about 11 MPG highway, and maybe 7-9 city. I take it off-road often, and on trails I get maybe...4-6?
It does come with the territory though, and anyone owning an 80 (and probably a 100 series) at this point isn't doing it really to "save money" imo.
That being said, the recently outgoing 200 series LC didn't really do all that much better[1], and neither does the new 300 series.[2]
Do people ever give you grief about the climate impact of owning a vehicle like that?
I don't mean to judge and am genuinely curious -- I have a fairly fuel inefficient vehicle as well and it weighs on me sometimes that I maybe should try different, more climate friendly hobbies (like, stopping overlanding and pick up knitting or something...)
Yes, but the service life of a Land Cruiser 200 series is 25 years. There’s a profound amount of environmental impact beyond the gas pump, and most of it comes from building and shipping all the parts to assemble the automobile over and over again. The manufacturing process is profoundly environmentally destructive, so vehicles that have a longer service life (Land Cruiser is 2-2.5 times the average) have a role to play.
They are also one of the few petrol vehicles that are still built to this kind of standard, so they do demonstrate as the “smoking gun” that the industry itself engineers obsolescence into their vehicles and could do much better.
Somehow we’ve all been reduced to yakking on and on about fuel economy. There are 30,000 parts in the average car, and almost all of them are manufactured and shipped. What’s the impact of tens of thousands of components and built onsite for JIT manufacturing?
If we wanted to change this, we could do very easily. We would just need to put a sticker in the window of the car that says: “Designed to Last: 12 years” or whatever. That way people could make an informed decision and game theory would come in to effect. Auto makers know this information: every car has a design life of you wouldn’t have anything like the “25 year design life” of a Land Cruiser in the first place.
I consider it the impact of car and oil company propaganda, as they’ve narrowed the discussion to “miles per gallon” rather than the overall impact of design life and the constant need to remanufacture the same vehicle over and over again for the same customer throughout their lifetime.
The hidden danger is in the subtle propaganda of suggested talking points from industry that subtly moves the conversation over decades. Propaganda isn’t to tell us what to think, it’s to frame and influence the things we talk about and give us a industry favorable set of opinion talking points to frame a conversation that benefits the status quo.
The Land Cruiser is one of the last petrol vehicles that demonstrates without a doubt that we could be building to a much higher standard for viritually the same money. It was 84k when it went off the market in 2020, and Toyotas next most expensive vehicle with half the service life was about 75k. The Land Cruiser has a 10,000 usd tax because it isn’t assembled in North America, so double the service life vehicle can be delivered at the same price as the top end vehicle in a lineup. Its simply a choice by car companies not to do it.
But all we as a society can talk about is gas mileage, because that’s something the “industry can get behind.”
> There’s a profound amount of environmental impact beyond the gas pump, and most of it comes from building and shipping all the parts to assemble the automobile over and over again. The manufacturing process is profoundly environmentally destructive, so vehicles that have a longer service life (Land Cruiser is 2-2.5 times the average) have a role to play.
This isn't really true. The manufacturing is intensive but not nearly as intensive as setting fire to 1/4 gallon of gas every mile.
This impact is also significantly lower for gas cars than electric, which achieve parity around 15,000 driven miles.
There is an obvious inherent trade-off of a longer service life: you don't get efficiency improvements for 25 years.
[edit] Studies show an average gas car produces about 5.6t of CO2e in manufacture, an electric car about 8.8t of CO2e. For the gasoline car that's equivalent to burning ~600 gallons of gasoline and for the electric, ~1000 gallons.
An average car is driven 12500mi per year, and look if you're getting 10mpg, that's 6 months. How about the other 24 years 6 months? Buying a car that's 10% more efficient breaks even after what, a couple of years? [1]
If you care about the environment, take a train. Caltrain gets 100 passenger-miles per gallon average on their diesel engines and those train cars are older than I am. Once they move to electric, it should be 250-ish pax-mi/gal-equivalent based on Bart. Although I suspect probably a lot more due to the longer runs between stations.
Regarding trains, I don't think that's really accurate. Yes, a train that's completely full gets excellent effective mileage per passenger for that trip. But how often are they anywhere near full? In reality, trains and buses have to make a huge number of runs either completely or virtually empty in order to have a regular enough schedule for anybody to be willing to depend on them. We need to know the effective fuel consumption of all runs actually made per total actual passenger-miles transported over the course of at least a week, maybe more like a month.
And that's before we account for any additional trips needed for personnel movements, car and track servicing, and other such things.
Those numbers are from Bart and Caltrain's operating reports.
The Bart number may have been during peak only so fair point there, I can certainly look for the systemwide average. [1]
The Caltrain number is average over FY2016-2018, from their sustainability report page 5. [2] They completed roughly 436M passenger-miles per year, and consumed roughly 4.4M gallons of diesel. Clocks in around 100 passenger-miles per gallon. I'm sure its worse now with the COVID numbers. I think it's a fair ballpark point of comparison though, and you can consider the Bart number an upper limit.
You're of course right its a function of ridership. An average freight train gets over 400 miles per gallon per ton of cargo.
Presumably that car goes to someone else who will use it rather than being scrapped (a la Cash-for-Clunkers), right?
I've argued* that, because we drive our second car so little per year, that it makes more sense for us to buy an inexpensive, relatively gas-guzzling used car rather than a more economical hybrid. Reasoning being that someone is going to drive the gas guzzler and someone is going to drive that hybrid and better the hybrid go to someone driving a typical amount and we drive the worse one only 2-3K miles/year.
* - so far unsuccessfully, but the crazy used car market has made that moot for now.
Reasonable logic, but I feel that a moderately priced small/medium electric car would be ideal for the day-to-day short trips around town that is most of our driving these days. Unfortunately such cars don't exist yet in my market and there is not yet a significant used market for electric cars.
I completely agree!
Because I only use my car for long trips (1h or more) a couple times a month. I got a 25 years old executive sedan... Sure 21 MPG is bad, but no new cars was made for my needs. And I stay under 3 metric tons of CO2 per year.
This could be true, but isn't the whole story. Cars tend to be sold more and more as they age, for lower and lower prices. In fact, where I live (Honduras), many of the vehicles were "totaled" in the US, sold as salvage in the US, then imported to Honduras and fixed. My daily driver is an SUV that was a salvage title from Wisconsin. It has a little over 150,000 miles on it and I'm pretty sure my mechanic can keep it running over 200,000.
Would depend on the size of the engine I'd think. Old SUVs are going to have big engines and eat gas. My '78 Scout II had a 345 (5.6L?) v8 and did 12 mpg when it was running well. But if you get a smaller car with a smaller engine, you can get better mileage. My wife's '86 Civic doesn't fit the no engine electronics ideal (and it did have electronics problems that required replacing the engine control module (module sourced from a junkyard worked fine though)), but it did around 40 mpg in normal driving, 60 for cross country highway driving with A/C off. No modern safety equipment isn't great if you get in an accident, but curb weight is a lot less.
If you get an early Civic or VW Bug, you're going to get pretty good mileage as long as the engine is well adjusted.
The issue with smaller vehicles, if you do actually go off-road or tow things, is they get destroyed in short order with very few exceptions.
I ended up having to get a proper truck because I kept breaking suspension components in my Forester shrug.
And for all the climate sin folks, it’s to manage 90 acres of previously overgrown timberland which was a huge fire danger and would have gone up in smoke in short order otherwise.
It’s now happily sitting there sequestering far more carbon than the truck will ever release.
This is the achilles heel of the FJ80 we get in the US with a gas engine.
The official EPA rating on my 1995 is 12MPG city, and 14MPG highway. Real world, I'm more often in the 10-12 MPG range. If you add heavy offroad accessories, expect that to drop further.
The Diesel engine you can get in other parts of the world can get 20+ MPG in the same vehicle.
I get around 12.5 l/100 km (19 mpg?) if I got easy on the throttle, and around 18L/100 km (13 mpg) on a rough road. There is no feedback loop since it uses on carb, so as long as I keep the throttle steady it isn't that bad. Of course it can't compare with modern SUVs but not too terrible either.
Economically wise, a 2 years old mid sized SUV here costs around 40000 USD, meanwhile I bought my FZJ80 with 6000 USD (with 200000 km on the ODO). Even if I drive 1000 km a month it will take me more than 30 years of driving to start losing money compare to buying a modern one.
Having one of those, from England and not Japan, they are less bad for the environment than one might think. You just don't drive them as much, gas milleage takes care of that. Being classics, you don't drive in winter with salt on the road. And you keep them on the road far longer than they were intended, no new car is a net positive.
Well obviously the less you use a car the less environmental damage it does, but if you're not driving it half the year then it's probably not displacing a new car purchase.
What I love about the “movement” (just like in CAlifornian Politics!) is that everyone is terrible if they try to actually do anything useful, but everyone is great if they do random stuff that wastes time and effort without accomplishing it’s stated goals - as long as it seems futurist and green.
It’s basically the now is unacceptable, and the future is impossible.
I have an 80 as well (1997 LX450) and another positive aspect of owning it is that when maintenance items become due, a lot of them can be fun[1] and enjoyable to tackle, and very very rarely will you run into an issue that doesn't have threads and discussions talking about the best ways to fix it. One downside to that is that you normally have to do a little bit of legwork to filter out the noise caused by other owners also looking for how to solve that particular issue.
Starter replacement on my strait-six LX450 took ~1 hr. Pull the wheel and you're practically looking at the unit. OTOH the Birfield Joints are kind of like prehistoric CV joints and have to be rebuilt in-situ. I love mine, 400k+ miles, still going strong and slurping fuel at 14 mpg.
mine had a leaky rear main seal. That was not a fun job. Fortunatly, my brother is an experienced auto mechanic (with ~$50k of SnapOn tools). So we were able to get it done, but there is no way I could have done it myself. The vehicle had 300k on the odometer and ran perfectly when I sold it last year for more than I paid. The reason I sold it was that the plastics had got brittle from the UV in the new mexico sun, so much of the interiod was falling apart.
I wouldn't be sure about that brake booster. They can fail spectacularly, feeding a pile of brake fluid into your intake and leaving you with a huge cloud of smoke / clogged exhaust valves and ports and no brakes.
I'm not sure how can it spill brake fluid in my vacuum line since they aren't really connected together (the booster has a push rod that connects to the master cylinder). But yes, I will get it replaced soon for my safety.
Can you give an example of this mode of failure? I've never heard of this. Ever. The worst I saw on a YT channel recently (JustRolledIn) was a booster that exploded from a backfire. But never have I heard of one failing in such a way that it sucked the fluid right out of the (sealed) master cylinder.
Now, could a master cylinder and a brake booster fail this way? I suppose if the brake booster was already failed and leaked vacuum at the booster/cylinder interface, and then the master cylinder seal at the main plunger also failed, that this could happen. But I don't see one causing the other.
1975 RHD alfa spider veloce failed on me this way. True the booster setup was stupid, placed after the master cylinder and exposed to the fluid internally.
Since then, any sign of a leak == park it and take the bus.
Ah, so it was a specific failure along with a specifically bad design. THAT I get. I'm thinking of the Toyota's, Fords, Chevy's, Nissans, Mitsubishi, Internationals, Chryslers that I've owned. You know, mostly non-terrible cars :D
Oh, the spider was not a terrible car. Some interesting engineering choices for the RHD Alfas to cope with the dual carbs getting in the way of the brake booster should go meant they either had the crazy remote dual boosters, or a hideous metal bracket that ran the width of the firewall (Alfetta, 75 etc).
Other than that, the first spider I had was a wonderful thing. Plenty of performance, dynamic handling, looked gorgeous. The 2nd one was a complete sh*tbox because it was allowed to rust and never fixed properly or drove properly.
Chryslers have a bad reputation in Australia. Poor quality control, bad reliability (compared to Toyota), hard to get parts, interiors that eat themselves etc. I should know having owned a few (and rebuilding a 300C at the moment). Once they bought AMC all the terrible Chrysler problems seemed to be like a virus on Jeeps.
These are all genuine and critical problems, but the solution can really only come from governments and industry, with more emphasis on public transport, better city design and industry getting greener.
We can praise those who organise their lives in such ways as to not be too much of a burden on the planet but I don’t believe it’s effective to shame those that don’t, or do it in different ways than you expect.
It is effective to put pressure on governments and industry though.
I wish we could get these in the US. We lack basic cars anymore. This is why I still drive a 1988 Suburban. Yes, it requires a lot of maintenance (It's almost 35 years old!) but it's simple, and tough as nails and, in general, simple to repair.
I think part of the problem is that safety and fuel economy regulations have made it unprofitable to manufacture basic cars.
But my slightly-conspiratorial view is also that companies want to engage in a kind of "customer indoctrination", where they want to train customers to expect and demand high-margin low-value features, so they can freely cut lower-margin sections of their product line. Sort of like the "starve the beast" approach, but for consumer preferences.
The problem is entirely that the vast majority of new car buyers don't want "basic cars."
Even car enthusiasts, who talk endlessly about how simple cars are better, will point out how poor of a deal a new "basic" car is compared to a used luxury car. Jalopnik and the like used to constantly run articles like, "Why buy a new Honda Civic when you can get this 2012 Infiniti G35 for the same price?!!?" Sometimes they were tongue-in-cheek, featuring something like an Maserati, but most of the time, it was genuine advice.
It's totally possible to sell cheap, basic cars in the USA and make a profit, but the key is that those cars need to sell. Companies have tried for years to make the formula work. The Versa, Mirage, Fiesta, and Fit were all basic, no frills transportation, but the only one left is the Versa.
I think it's hypocritical of people who don't own one of those (preferably that they bought new) to complain about lack of basic cars in the USA. If you weren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary to drive a basic car, why should you complain about other people not making the same sacrifice?
> But my slightly-conspiratorial view is also that companies want to engage in a kind of "customer indoctrination",
Or...Vehicles exist at a high enough price point that price/performance is a key driver of value. Spending more on a larger, more capable vehicle makes sense if you plan to use it for the next 15 years. Transaction costs on cars are insane. So if one buy small, then trade up as one needs, then it's going to be much more expensive in the long run than just going big the first time.
Barring pickup trucks, the best selling vehicles in the USA are all pretty much mid-level, family-focused transportation: Rav4, CRV, Rogue, Camry. These are big enough to haul a family, but not loaded to the gills with luxury appointments.
> The problem is entirely that the vast majority of new car buyers don't want "basic cars."
Mostly, I'd like to buy a basic car, but in the US, you've mostly got to buy off the lot, and basic cars aren't well stocked; maybe they don't sell as fast so dealers don't stock them, maybe they don't make as much margin so dealers don't stock them, either way, they're not there so you can't buy them. You might be able to convince a dealer to order it, but then you're usually not going to get any of the promotions, and it's not worth waiting 2-3 months and paying more so you don't have to get the features you don't want.
It's probably both - there isn't a lot of margin in something like a base model vehicle compared to its upmarket family and not a lot of people come in looking for a vehicle with manual crank windows and a stick shift (I WOULD) so they aren't flying off the lot.
I wonder if there is a feedback loop between this phenomenon and income inequality. People in the "lower middle" income tier can't afford anything but the cheapest basics (or are forced to switch to used cars), so demand becomes skewed towards higher quality stuff, so the product mix gets adjusted towards higher quality stuff, further increasing prices, etc.
I don't own any of the cars you mention and don't care to. I also, however, don't care to own a luxury brand, or even some mid-level with fully loaded options, or even what you would probably consider to be a reasonably priced modest choice, e.g. Toyota Corolla, for that matter. Why? Because when I think of "great, small, cheap cars", I don't think any of those fit the bill. All the aforementioned cars (including your recommendations) all share one or more qualities with luxury buys that disqualify them from being considered by my rubric as "basic cars". Bezos famously drove a beater. At some point he upgraded to a newer (but still old) Honda Accord that I would probably classify similarly—not basic enough.
I own (and for years drove) a mid-90s Mustang. (Still owned, but no longer driven.) It is/was a great economy car, which crucially by my rubric includes low-cost maintenance, given that it lends itself to easy repair. Still it came with some things outside the bare essentials, including AC, power locks, power windows, a nice stereo, and zero smart features (another pro in my book, not a con). Having never bought and owned one of the cars you recommend, where do I stand, in your book, on being able to complain about the state of access to basic and affordable cars in the US car market?
> Or...Vehicles exist at a high enough price point that price/performance is a key driver of value. Spending more on a larger, more capable vehicle makes sense if you plan to use it for the next 15 years.
Alternatively: we know that people are not rational actors, and car ownership is just one of the many things that people can be observed to be incredibly irrational about (to the point of acting counter to their best interests and/or their own stated interests).
>All the aforementioned cars (including your recommendations) all share one or more qualities with luxury buys that disqualify them from being considered by my rubric as "basic cars". Bezos famously drove a beater.
Ah, I'm curious what new car you consider to be "basic". I'm guessing none of them are. Whatever "beater" Bezos drove, probably has a modern analog, and that modern analog is probably the same price or cheaper, adjusted for inflation; safer; and more reliable.
Simple does not mean reliable, and reliability does not require simplicity. First-gen Lexus LS400s are still rolling around after 30 years, despite being a flagship vehicle that was loaded with enough technology to compete with top end Mercedes. Meanwhile, a Trabant is as simple as cars get, but keeping one going is quite the challenge, even though pretty much every part on one can be built by a local specialist, or adapted from another vehicle.
You'll get 250k miles and 20 years out of a new Corolla. And if the car has a fundamental defect that prevents that from happening, they'll make it right with an out of warranty repair. See: Taco drivers who received new chassis or cars with the 2AZ-FE who received complete engine rebuilds under warranty, even on vehicles with well over 100k miles. After that, because Toyota sold millions of them each generation (and shared parts with millions of other cars), you can easily find a lifetime supply of replacement parts. And that's what you like about your Mustang, right?
> Alternatively: we know that people are not rational actors, and car ownership is just one of the many things that people can be observed to be incredibly irrational about (to the point of acting counter to their best interests and/or their own stated interests).
Two of my siblings bought the basic transportation people are espousing here: one an older Civic, the other a Mazda2. Neither owned those cars for more than 18 months because, like many 20-somethings, "oopsies" happened and they find out things like, car seats don't fit if the person in the front seat is over 5'6, or strollers are gigantic. Both ended up trading their cars in for a minivan and a crossover. Both took a bath on the trades too.
This was irrational behavior. They were buying the car they could live with now with the expectation of keeping it for 15 years. A rational person would consider what life looks like in 15 years if they were planning on keeping a car that long.
The aforementioned used Mustang is/was good for 250k more miles after purchase and 20 more years, too, but it didn't cost as much as a new Corolla does, even adjusted for inflation.
I've driven both. I'll take the Mustang on that alone, even though gas mileage is better in the Corolla.
Naturally, I've done maintenance and repairs on a Mustang from the mid-90s. I'm guessing you haven't. I've only done minimal repairs on a new Corolla. The Corolla loses there, too.
Strike 3 really is the price. Given all this, you'd think the one with these downsides would be cheaper or something. Otherwise, you're putting one car up against a less desirable one, except it also costs more money? Would you pay extra for the privilege of having a bird shit on you while you walk down the street—where not paying means trudging through your day shitless? The choice is simple.
With lots of things in life, you expect there to be some sort of tradeoff involved. With food, for example, maybe something tastes great but it's bad for you, or vice versa. It doesn't always work like that, though.
New cars are like chicken-fried steak in a competition with salad: no pros, all cons. I hate chicken fried steak, and if you hate chicken-fried steak, too, but your view of the world is one where tradeoffs are axiomatic and inescapable, then the natural outcome is to find yourself probably on the cusp of thinking that you should, like, eat more chicken-fried steak, even though you don't like it—or more precisely: because you don't like it. But that's crazy, and you shouldn't! Something can both taste bad and be bad for you while other things (like a salad) can be better for you and be delicious. It turns out there's actually lots of stuff like this, and the car market in 2022 is one of them.
Barring any changes (like Bezos taking a personal interest in fixing this problem and making the hypothetical Costco car a real thing), fuck the whole industry.
> I'm curious what new car you consider to be "basic". I'm guessing none
That doesn't sound conspiratorial at all. All sorts of features drift from being 'luxury items' to 'no one will buy a car without it.' In my life time time this has happened with air conditioning, power windows, heated seats. To say nothing of mandated safety features.
I think the way auto makers have 'trained' their customers is by removing the granularity of customization. Back in the day, every possible option could be tweaked when you ordered a new car. I knew a family that ordered their van with (standard) upholstery seats in the front, but cheaper vinyl seats in the back (because small kids with drinks).
You can't cherry pick features now, you just get 3 or 4 trim packages: base / standard / luxury / luxury + sport. And base is so punishingly sparse it only exists to lower the 'starting at' price in ads.
And that level of indoctrination is nothing compared to the 60 years long campaign to keep most urban development zoned as car-centric sprawl.
It’s kind of crazy how many things are mandated now that weren’t 20 years ago. Abs, traction control, airbags for both driver and passenger, rear camera (which means a screen to view it is also mandated), more and more emissions controls, etc. Not saying all or most of these are bad things but the number of expensive electronic and mechanical add-ons legislated into every vehicle makes it basically impossible to make a “basic” car.
There is a definite bump in the last couple years (likely covid-related) but we are still at about 1/2 the rate of the 60s/70s/80s, and roughly 1/3 the rate per-mile driven. Even by total deaths, fewer people died last year than in most every year of the 1960s. The increasing safety standards of the modern road system (cars and infrastructure) should be applauded as an engineered success story.
Roughly two or times as many people die each year of alcohol abuse. If we are going after dangerous evils there are better areas to attack.
the argument in the NYT piece[0] is that the US is not doing enough to protect pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists[1] compared to other rich nations. (obviously because they have less cars than the US, so the article just points out that "cars first" costs a lot of lives)
> If we are going after dangerous evils there are better areas to attack.
Absolutely, but ... I'm not saying "it's all connected" and all of it is due to suburban sprawl, but ... it's a common factor.
If people were not driving, drinking, vaping, fentanyling in their little isolation cubes (ah, I mean cars, or houses with perfectly useless backyards, or tents), they might die less. Low population density does nasty things to communities. NIMBYs keep density low, commute times high, etc.
Meh. US culture was always a bit too simplistic, from homesteading the manifest destiny to "USSR has fallen, democracy won" and finally with "first black president elected, racism officially over guys", and now it seems society entered a post-modernist phase.
I mean the obvious fallacies[0] of these oversimplifications are getting the spotlight culturally. And it's mighty polarizing. One one hand it's too much for some people and on the other hand it's still nothing substantial for others.
[0] Yes, the USSR has fallen, but Putin built a cleptocracy, also here comes China. Oh, yes Obama got elected and the ACA is nice, but it hardly moved the needle for millions of people. The benefits of half a century of global and domestic changes concentrated in the top ~30%, and the drawbacks hit the bottom ~30%, and weaponized selfishness, shortsightedness, and radical demagoguery (ie. ingroup vs outgroup populism, both the eat-the-rich and the republiklan variety) are on the rise again, because social media maximizes engagement.
I am going to be very sad when I find I can no longer buy a car without bullshit like parking sensors, auto braking, digital screens, tracking/logging and so on.
It's not really a conspiracy. Even setting aside all the ads/product placement for SUVs and trucks, you can't really go to a dealership and expect them to have any make/model, like types of jeans at a levi's store. You can only buy what they have for sale, which is big autos with high profit margins. The big 3 automakers in the US simply aren't making smaller cars like they used to.
"“You know, carmakers always say they build what people want. But they never mention the fact that they spend billions to tell them what they want. It wasn’t just that consumers spontaneously desired a truck that was as big as a house. No, that was a gradual process. And it has been pushed by the automakers primarily because bigger equals more profit.”"
I think case in point with this is the engine bay cover that a lot of cars have these days. To me these sorts of design elements are useless costs unless they exist for these two reasons: either to scare off the curious from ever seeing the full beast, or to make it annoying enough to repair for the handy person who after seeing the amount of labor required for what used to be a trivial repair in older cars, simply opts for taking it to the service center because they lack time or an engine lift or any proprietary tooling.
I can't imagine they reduce a significant amount. I've driven some more recent cars that did not have these covers and they weren't any louder or anything. Most noise comes from your exhaust, if you don't believe it just take off your muffler and see what happens.
It doesn’t require any conspiratorial thinking. If the math says that the company will lose sales to higher-margin products by offering low-margin ones, it’s a simple calculation to make the most profitable choice.
Of course, potential consumers could switch to a cheaper product from another manufacturer — in a sufficiently free market the unfulfilled demand for the low-margin option should be enough warrant a new entrant if the market is big enough.
TLDR if enough people wanted a simple car, someone would make it even if the existing companies don’t want to.
I'm not sure where I read it, but Toyota apparently saves money in the USA by making optional features included in the base model. In the 90's and early 00's, US companies would churn out base models with crank windows, manual transmissions, etc. Toyota found it was cheaper to engineer/build cars with fewer options, especially one's that everyone chose anyway. And customers didn't feel nickle and dimed.
That makes sense to me. That's part of why the Model T was so cheap.
>Toyota found it was cheaper to engineer/build cars with fewer options, especially one's that everyone chose anyway
It's easy when you're Toyota and the overwhelming majority of your customers are middle class on up consumers.
When you're Nissan or Chrysler and you NEED to offer low MSRP stuff so your customers can just barely qualify for the loan or you're Ford and you NEED to offer base spec stuff for the fleet customers it's not so easy.
Sounds like that underlines the OP's point. Toyota makes more profit in the US on a Tacoma designed for US tastes and price points. The US demand for Hiluxes isn't enough to either persuade Toyota to add it to their US line or importers to pay the import tariff.
That's why I'll be really sad when my Fit goes. Honda cheaped out in a few places (the seats could be a _lot_ more comfortable) but overall it's a fairly simple, easy to drive, practical car.
I don't think mine was ever quite that high. Around 35-37mpg when I got it and probably around 30 now. Its a MT though and I think they get slightly worse mpg than AT.
>I wish we could get these in the US. We lack basic cars anymore.
In the EU, if you want a basic no thrills car, there's the Dacia (Oh no! ... anyway) brand which is basically older, tried and tested, Renault-Nissan group parts put in a budget yet attractive shell, built in Romania.
IIRC they're now the second best selling brand in the EU.
The exact same cars are being sold under either Renault or Nissan badges in different parts of the world.
There was also the Russian Lada Niva Taiga which was very popular here for those living in the mountainous countryside. Very basic and sturdy with almost no electronics at all. Not sure how the situation is now with the war and the sanctions.
I did the Amsterdam-Dakar banger challenge a few years ago. The story was that a Lada Niva has never made it to the finish line :-). Oh and Landrovers you could track by the oil they were leaking.
The Lada Niva was popular because it was one of the very few socialist block cars that could officially go proper off-road, in other words, people had no choice (welcome to the wonderful world of socialism!).
But it was - and still is, can't believe they still make it - a _terrible_ car by any standard, and I can't really understand anyone buying one today. They are not cheap, have terrible design, terrible build quality, terrible fuel consumption, they are loud, and break easily - and they are not THAT good off-road ironically. If you want to put them somewhere on a map, they are about as bad as 70s British cars were.
The problem is that squeezing out more fuel economy + power and reducing emissions has also made the engine design more complex. Not too big a leap to say this also makes them less reliable and more difficult to service.
There's a video going over the new and old designs (pinned to where the 4cyl part starts): https://youtu.be/ei5yC4IdDhs
Wouldn't be too surprised if they retire it next year.
I think the engine offered in new 4Runners and tacomas is a 10 year old model. I like the “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it” mentality Toyota has managed to keep over the years. Emissions are catching up with them and they’re probably going to make a mess of transition to the new platform in upcoming model years though
I've stuck with my early model FJ Cruiser. It has such a unique, rugged aesthetic and I'm still upset that they discontinued it. I dread the day that I have to replace it and probably deal with a lack of an all-tactile interface. It seems like every car nowadays has some form of touch interface and/or endless menus for basic functionality. Every time I use my partner's car, I'm reminded of how good it feels not have to take my eyes off the road just to play some music or adjust the AC in my vehicle. I think what I'd miss the most, surprisingly, is the little glovebox-like compartment on the top of the dashboard right above the steering wheel that I use to hold my phone for GPS.
My only complaints are the horrendous fuel efficiency and the windshield, which is prone to nicks due to its almost straight vertical position and is comparatively expensive to replace due to its abnormal size and the steps to remove/install it being rather involved. Beyond getting that windshield replaced twice, I haven't had to do anything besides general oil, tire, and light changes. It's seen better days with some paint chipping, but with more than 200,000 miles over 15 years, it's still going strong. I'm hopeful that I'll get to stick with it for the foreseeable future.
Fun fact! They still sell new FJ cruisers in Dubai. Same look as the discontinued model. The locals love them. Probably the greatest testament to how good these things are if people want to keep buying the slightly older design over a Land Rover https://www.toyota.ae/en/new-cars/fj-cruiser/
>I dread the day that I have to replace it and probably deal with a lack of an all-tactile interface.
If this is a big thing for you, then know that you can still find great vehicles today that balance it well, even brand new ones.
Vote with your wallet, everyone! Car manufacturers are doing these things because they think/(know?) that it will sell better. But they still make cars with dials and knobs. My 2020 Subaru has them, and even the newer ones with the huge screens still have volume and temperature buttons.
I have seen a non-US spec Land Cruiser like the one in the article driving around Quantico with Virginia plates so it seems that it is possible to register them. When I look where to buy one it seems there is one company in Arlington that builds them for the defense market, but after the modifications I'm sure it costs an arm and a leg.
As someone who have learned a lot from ih8mud, thank you for helping such a great community! I live in a 3rd world country where it's very hard to get proper maintenance services like in America, ih8mud is the reason why I picked the FZJ80.
(now, if only I can find the emission manual for the 1fz-f...)
A "a non-US spec Land Cruiser like the one in the article" isn't close to a new 4RUNNER. New 4RUNNER's are loaded with computers and not easy to fix on the fly. They are also expensive, even for the base model. They also aren't Landcruisers. My understanding is if you want a Landcruiser in the states you should get a Lexus GX460/470 as they are the Landcruiser Prado's badged as a lexus (with only cosmetic differences such as higher quality touch materials (think seats and dash)).
You must be in a relatively mild winter area, or avoid winter driving. Around upstate NY, you rarely see winter cars older than about 20 years. I got 18 years and 250,000 miles out of a Toyota Highlander and that felt absolutely ancient. The underframe was really starting to rust out. It was getting too expensive to maintain at that point.
Everything old is either summer show cars that never see salt, or rust buckets barely holding together. I definitely see the appeal of simple cars though.
Different segment, but I've considered getting a Mitsubishi Mirage as they are quite simple and about the cheapest new car you can get in the US. My wife already drives a subcompact (Honda Fit) that we have been quite happy with.
I wish I lived in a world where the words "4Runner" and "reasonably priced" actually belonged in the same sentence. $39k for the bare bones base model is not reasonably priced. Signed a Nissan Frontier owner who still wishes Nissan hadn't killed the XTerra.
I get 12-14mpg, which is the same as a modern SUV. Is it safe? It met the safety standards in place when it was new. And that's good enough for me. Emissions? I haven't had to do an emissions test in over a decade. It has a working catalytic converter, so there you go.
Death trap? Ha. Nice labeling there. And I didn't say that driving my rig was a virtue. I said I drive it because the US lacks vehicles that match the simplicity of the 70 series Land Cruisers in TFA, and this is as about as close as one can get these days.
> I get 12-14mpg, which is the same as a modern SUV
A comparable modern SUV (2022 Suburban) gets 21 city/27 highway, pretty close to double the mileage you get.
> It met the safety standards in place when it was new
The class was made and marketed to evade passenger auto safety and CAFE standards, and the government hadn’t closed the gaps it exploited yet in 1988, so that means nothing.
Unless you drive a manual, then its a good 5mpg higher at least in my experience. I don't know how the epa tests manual cars but they are clearly not engine braking.
I drive a Subaru Forester and I get higher mileage than the EPA. Last night I drove from LA to SF and got 31 mpg on the freeway going (according to the on-board mileage monitor), in two sections, 140 mi in 2 h 8 min and then 190 mi in 3 h 1 min once I was outside LA, inclusive of a 15 min circling the SFO arrivals to pick up a friend.
Interesting, though, is how hard this drops off. I once did a 280 drive at 3 AM that I ran at between 90 mph and 100 mph almost throughout. And the dash readout was 19 mpg (oof!).
Is there an OBD tool with GPS I can use to track this stuff? I really like it.
My personal empty tank to empty tank mileage is 21.5 km/l (50 mpg) in the city streets of Madras, India in an ancient Maruti 800! The top speed that thing could hit was 68 mpg (which I only ever approached once and never in the city).
>>A comparable modern SUV (2022 Suburban) gets 21 city/27 highway, pretty close to double the mileage you get.
Now find a real life 2022 Suburban owner that actually gets anywhere near that lab tested mileage. So while I am sure it get better than 12-14, probably closer to 18 in reality but they do that with smaller engines and tubro's which anyone that has any knowledge of mechanical wear will tell you a turbo (or any boosted) engine will wear out ALOT faster than a naturally aspirated engine.
It is unlikely a 2022 Suburban;s engine will be running at all in 30 years. hell I would bet it will implode before 15 years
> Now find a real life 2022 Suburban owner that actually gets anywhere near that lab tested mileage. So while I am sure it get better than 12-14, probably closer to 18 in reality
Sure, EPA ratings are inflated but you probably get close to 1 mpg over the combined EPA mileage rating of the most efficient version of the 1988 Suburban (and 50% more than your claim before you inflated it once conparative numbers were introduced) in yours. Right...
> they do that with smaller engines and tubro's
A naturally aspirated 5.3L, no turbos. Its true that one of the 1988s had a 6.2L, but...
First I think you have confused me with the Grand Parent Commentor.
That said I did go look up the Specs for a 2022, and I have no idea where you got 21/27mpg anyway, the best Chevy lists is 20 Highway with the 6.2L which drops to 14mpg in city because the Active Fuel Management does nothing for city driving
Then their is a 5.3L which most suburbans will be outfitted with, which is 15/19 MPG, which as you already conceded is inflated so a real person will likely see 13-14 City and 17-18 Highway in real world, and after 10 years I of ownership I would expect that to drop of to around where the Grand parent claims their 30 year old suburban is at anyway
Gas Suburban small v8 is 15/20, which is better than the 88, but still abysmal in general. Previous year Toyota Sequoia (more comparable than a cruiser), got a combined 15mpg, which is what I generally get in a decade old Tundra. The 23 models from Toyota have a hybrid with a turbo and are rated 21/24, which is still pretty bad. I'd personally love an electric truck, but I don't have 80k sitting around for one at the moment.
While the wrenching crowd still has some time, I do wonder how long gas vehicles will be a viable option. A gas station near me just got razed, my wife has an EV, and at some point it won't be profitable to maintain all the gas stations we have.
Where I grew up my parents had their own 300 gallon gas tank, because you couldn't buy gas for many miles around. Nowadays not even sure how possible that is in some areas, as I am sure there is more regulation. Several of the filling stations around at the time also went out of business as they had to mitigate the leaks from underground tanks. There will be a point where it starts to become quite onerous to own a gas vehicle, just not sure when that point is.
Well I can replace your anecdote with mine as there are new gas stations being built all around me because I am in a Growing population zone, with suburban sprawl and lots of economic activity where using a car is required.
In metro's, or states / cities with net population loss I can see where service businesses of all type including gas stations would start ceasing operations as profitability drops
In my area not only are new stations being built many of them are putting in Fast Chargers for BEV's so the idea that the filling station model will just go under is premature as well, they will adapt. Fuel is the least profitable item they sell anyway, they make money on the convince store and or food. In many ways the longer charging times for DC Fast charging could be a boom for the convenience stores that adapt to having something for people to look at and buy while their car is charging. I.e Good Clean Bathroom, Well stocked food / snacks, maybe a game room, etc
Even then most stations are multi fuel, so the have Gas, Diesel, Kerosene, some even have propane or natgas. I think we will see more stations expand on that model as well.
even if the everyday car goes BEV, Diesel Trucks are not going away anytime soon so they will still need stations.
So lets do some math, The largest and most popular US Manufacture of Vehicles, Ford as a target of 40% of sales to be BEV by 2030, some EU manufacturers want to go all BEV by 2030 which I thing is aggressive and likely will not happen.
But lets say Ford target is correct and 40-50% of Vehicle sold in 2030 will be BEV's. Modern gas cars due to their complexity have a shorter economic / serviceable life to around 15 years. So cars sold in 2030 are going to be on the road still in 2045. So that is 2 decades and we are only at 50% reduction in Gas cars. Given the other factors above I dont that that would translate to a 50% reduction in Filling station, probably more like 10-15% as they adapt to BEV and expand into other offerings
>The size of the Suburban is considerably larger than the Land Cruiser.
Ok, and? The comment i was responding to was comparing a 1988 Suburban to a 2022 Suburban,
The fact that chevy makes smaller SUV's that are more inline with a Land Cruiser that also get batter mileage has no relevance to the comments I was replying to
> It met the safety standards in place when it was new. And that's good enough for me.
That would never be good enough for me these days. I got rid of a ~20 year old car a couple years ago, and the primary reason was that it was so out of date safety-wise. Cars really have made leaps and bounds in safety over the past couple decades, and it shows up in the stats. I wouldn't call my old car a "death trap", but it just couldn't compare with modern cars when it comes to safety features.
As someone who likes the RAV4, I'd point out that it's considerably smaller than a full size body-on-frame SUV like a Suburban. It's more like a lifted Corolla, or maybe Camry. Oddly enough, they now actually make a lifted Corolla. The dimensions are quite similar.
Not the same thing. the Suburban is a Full Frame massive vehicle capable of towing medium sized loads, haul alot of cargo, or alot of people
The RAV4 is a compact unibody vehicle capable of really no towing (though people will try), seats only 4 (uncomfortably if they are average American Adult size, only 2 Adults can fit comfortably in a Rav4)
While they both may be technically "SUV's" it is laughable to think they service the same need
> While they both may be technically "SUV's" it is laughable to think they service the same need
They service the same need a lot more often than you'd think: transportation for a segment of the public who'd be better off with station wagons but decided in the mid eighties those were not cool.
> seats only 4 (uncomfortably if they are average American Adult size, only 2 Adults can fit comfortably in a Rav4)
Interestingly a RAV4 Hybrid with about 2500 lb total cargo including trailer gets around 28-30 mpg. The newer hybrid transaxles (P710 etc) are mechanically surprisingly simple and I could see a future where they become the preferred replacement for an all-mechanical system.
Well certainly not the same as a tiny hybrid, obviously. But, to your point, a 2023 Suburban gets 20+mpg. So there's that. It also costs $57,000 and <hyperbole> has more computers in it than a small data center </hyperbole>
I checked a few local car retailers in Ireland. First, there are very few SUVs being sold that aren't at least hybrid, and full electrics dominate the 2022 lineups. Secondly, the absolute worst I saw was a BMW X5 M. This is a large car by Irish standards, and is marketed for performance, not efficiency. It costs €213,000 as a result. It gets 18mpg. Most are in the 50mpg area
That's the bad thing about safety. It is a margin item. You can pretty much look at a Suburban and, let's say a modern Yukon. Per 100,000 cars produced the death rate is probably 1/5th of that of the classic Suburban. That still maths out to hundreds of people a year. Now, one would say "I should choose my Safety", a perfectly valid opinion as long as your passengers agree with your choice. The modern problem is that with Lane keep, automatic emergency braking, and blind spot monitoring, that topic is WAY fuzzy. Now you are not just choosing your own safety but others' as well. That is where this gets realllly complex and I think a lot of people don't realize that their choices actually impact others even if it isn't obvious.
It's worse than that. I chose "my" safety has led to vehicles with size/weight/visibility that is making other people less safe, especially pedestrians. I don't know how you reverse or mitigate this without some sort a regulation.
Have you considered that most people really do not give a shit? I would much rather drive a "deathtrap" that doesn't break in 5 years than a "safe eco friendly :)" car that charges me 12 grand a year to accelerate.
My family has owned a 2013 Prius (50-60 MPG) and driven it over 100k miles in 9 years. It's needed a single 12V battery replacement a couple years ago, and nothing else besides regular oil changes/brakes/etc. (excluding body work, of course).
I own a 2020 Subaru Crosstrek (30-40 MPG, auto braking, blind spot monitoring, etc.) that has been driven ~50k miles in 3 years, and nothing else besides regular oil changes so far. Hasn't even needed new brakes yet.
Just because old cars are reliable doesn't make new cars unreliable.
For most (not all!) of that complexity, if it fails you're left with an inoperable part of the car, not an inoperable car.
I've got a 2011 Hyundai that's...well, it's got all sorts of problems, most likely caused by the chipmunks that call it home . The backup camera doesn't work and stereo system is silent.
But the car still drives just fine, those systems don't cause a full failure of the vehicle. The screen goes black when backing up of course, but I can still back up.
This is all find and dandy until your local predatory BHPH car lots and safety sallies join forces and lobby to have your backup camera make it onto the list of stuff that gets checked as part of annual safety inspection in your state.
It is highly unlikely that equipment not originally mandated fleet-wide will be force-checked upon anyone. I have a car without backup lights in a fairly strict state and it passes just fine as it was not originally equipped with backup lights. (I could, at least in theory, pass without seatbelts as well, but that would be idiotic.)
My State shows up as Yellow... There is only 1 city that most of us in the state believe actually should be a part of the neighboring blue state that requires testing for 99% of people in my state no testing is required, I have a feeling many of the red states on that map are the same.
Note that a lot of those states with "emissions inspections required" amount to "if the car is OBD2 [Model Year 1996+], it must be READY and have no emissions-related faults set; all non-OBD2 cars are exempted, absent visible exhaust smoke".
new cars are in many ways more reliable for the first say 100,000 miles or 6 years (that is why most new cars come with a 5 year / 100,000 mile warranty where they used to be much shorter)
However after that point, when they become unreliable due to age they become economically unfeasible to maintain due to their complexity. This problem is increased as car technicians become more in demand and as such increase demand higher wages (which they should get)
For example, changing the head gasket on a old chevy 350 one could do easily in a weekend with no special tools, on a more modern engine? Good luck. You probably have to take 1/2 the car apart just to start disassembly of the engine, and will cost several times more than the older engines to have done in a shop, often "totaling" the car
Long gone are the days for a car to have 4 or 5 owners over a 30 year serviceable life, Now they are going in to the junk yard to be parted out after their 2nd owner and maybe 10-15 years of serviceable life
And very rarely do we see or talk about the environmental impact of that. I shutter to think what is going to happen to all the BEV that will end up in the junk yard where ever component on the car is serviceable except the battery which costs $25000 to replace on a car worth $15,000
You're not wrong on those first parts, but I do want to quickly address that last part...
Manufacturing of electric and non-electric vehicles makes up a tiny portion of total CO2 emissions, so we're looking just at the car itself.
The first EVs are starting to get old enough that we're seeing what happens: as the cars lose range (especially the old Nissan Leafs with air cooled batteries that degraded fast), they go to owners that need less and less range from those cars. They don't get scrapped, they just get sold to someone who needs less range. The Leafs are an accelerated timeline example because of the poor cooling on those batteries.
Yes, it's 100% true that a car with a proper battery failure (not just age) will need expensive battery replacement to restore the car, but if the car truly is fully operable then that cost to install a new battery will still be cheaper than buying a new car off the road. When cars get totaled for other reasons, their batteries go on the used market and can be tested/verified for safety.
Looking online, batteries for EVs are selling for 5-15k (depending on the capacity, mostly) in the scrap market, which means that an old car can be restored to full range for that price. If the car is in good shape, that's cheaper than buying a new car...
>>Looking online, batteries for EVs are selling for 5-15k (depending on the capacity, mostly) in the scrap market, which means that an old car can be restored to full range for that price. If the car is in good shape, that's cheaper than buying a new car...
Can it though? Tesla only recently started allowing rebuilt cars on their network, and there are tons of stories of software limited features and functionality because people replaced components outside the dealer network
Cars today with the ability to Software enable and disable parts or the entire car are a whole new trend and how many manufacturers are going to allow 3rd party battery replacements? Even if they do today when BEV's are a small fraction of their sales the recent actions of many manufacturers tell you they want nothing more then to lock you down to their network, their parts, their techs, and their subscription models (Looking at Benz with their Subscription for acceleration) .
So the idea "well just replace it with a scrap battery" sounds good, i doubt that will be the reality
>Manufacturing of electric and non-electric vehicles makes up a tiny portion of total CO2 emissions
I want to address this, why do we believe the only environmental impact of concern is CO2 emissions, have we go so far over the bend that no other environmental impacts are of concern now except CO2, even with that said I am not sure I buy the numbers or the research methodology that goes into to creating that statement. Seems to be alot of cherry picking of data to fit a narrative to me
That's why I said that we're looking just at the physical components, not the emissions component. There are of course environmental concerns from not recycling or reusing the other components in the car.
> Looking online, batteries for EVs are selling for 5-15k (depending on the capacity, mostly) in the scrap market, which means that an old car can be restored to full range for that price.
Very few of those batteries are new; they're coming out of scrapped cars for the most part, which means you would be restoring your old car to a partial range condition for that price (plus shipping of the part and some installation labor, which is relatively low for a like-for-like full battery swap, minus the scrap value of your own battery pack).
Correct, but remember that in most properly cooled batteries, degradation is not substantial.
Based on some quick searching, a Tesla with 100,000 miles (many of which done DC fast charging, worse on the battery) retained 90% of its battery capacity and still goes over 200 miles on a single charge. (https://insideevs.com/reviews/573397/tesla-model-3-100k-batt...)
Most people do not need long range cars so this would still be worth it to buy and resell. Furthermore, as the price of new EVs drops, the battery price will also drop. The battery cannot be more expensive than the car's MSRP.
BLS CPI numbers for 'new cars' have an average annual inflation of 1.03% over the past 20 years, for a total increase of 22% - almost all of which was since 2021 (2000-2020 the average inflation was 0.39%). Up until 2010, prices were mainly falling.
Over the same 20 years, potatoes have on the other hand undergone an average inflation of 2.83% a year, for a total price increase of 74%. And much less of this in the current inflation spike - prior to 2020 the average inflation of potatoes in the preceding 20 years was over 3%.
Admittedly, BLS 'new cars' is not just 'entry level cars' - it's based on surveyed prices actually paid for whatever cars people are actually buying, so it's possible that changes in who is buying new (vs used) or what kind of cars they're buying new are keeping that number more steady than it should be.
But spot-checking a few original MRSPs for 2002 and 2022 model year Hondas and Toyotas and the like, it does look like the entry price has gone up from 'around $16K' to 'around $20K'... which is about in line with the CPI (25% vs the index's 22%) and considerably less than the increase in the cost of potatoes.
So... 'taking into account inflation,' new cars are cheaper today than 20 years ago (if you are paying for them with potatoes). On the other hand if you are paying for them with T-shirts (which have enjoyed basically 0% inflation over the past 20 years), new cars are indeed more expensive.
But since the BLS adjusts and takes into account things like how much of people's income they spend on average on cars and t-shirts and potatoes when they weight the goods in the CPI basket, all those things get rolled into the overall inflation number. And that means that 'taking into account inflation' when comparing the price you pay as an individual who chooses to buy a car in year X with the price you paid as an individual choosing to buy a car in year X - N doesn't really make much sense. It's confusing an input with an output.
Until you get in an accident, and then you’ll care (or be dead so you won’t). Safety has come an awful long way in 35 years. And I actually think “most people” do give a shit about their families not dying preventably
Sure, a lot of advances in safety were made in the 28 years between 1959 and 1987, so your car won't fare as badly as the Bel Air, but there were plenty of other advances in the 22 years between then and when that Malibu was made in 2009, and likely quite a few in the 13 years since.
It's a free country, so you can take your chances if you want. I wouldn't rate them that highly though, FWIW. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That only works if most other vehicles weigh substantially less, which they don't.
Suburban vs Smart Car, sure, you "just" kill all the occupants of the smart car, and get some whiplash since you don't have headrest and possibly head injuries, since you might not have a shoulder belt.
Suburban vs modern sedan, truck, SUV, semi -- you're dead.
The weight of the 1988 Suburban ensures that in a collision, the risk of being killed is transferred to the people in the vehicle struck by the Suburban, rather than the occupants of the Suburban.
This. I too have an old suburban. I stuck a 5 speed manual transmission in it. Whenever someone is surprised it's a stick I ask "You want to take it for a spin?"
Everyone says yes. Nobody asks about safety features.
The level of acceptable risk for a one-off bit of fun on your own is a lot higher than what you'd want to accept for an everyday commute, or put your kids in.
Mine has the 700R4 in it, and I have to say, I'm spoiled. I do hope to get another squarebody with a stick in it, but I'm going to turn it into a tractor: 292 I6 with a SM465/205. Very reminiscent of a Toyota LC actually, especially since their original I6 was derived from the Chevy I6.
That 700r4/4l60 and the nv1500 ought to have the same length and bellhousing pattern. Should bolt right up as long as it has the same spline count on the output shaft.
I highly doubt this bullshit is going to stop at one brand. Tesla paved the way for car companies to be more interested in screwing you over and trying to milk money out of everything while dazzling with "technology" instead of creating a good vehicle that just works.
Personally, I just want to take my dog safely to parks, hike, and drive long distances. Much rather have a newish car every X years with a full warranty and not worry instead of something that requires 'basic maintenance' I have to deal with, like my brake booster leaking.
Our family had a 2004 camry(kinda) that went 160k miles on ZERO maintenance. Of course, once I took over it, it took about $3500 but it would have gone another 50k miles (and still is under a new owner) no problem.
Your average mid market car doesn't cost that much to maintain, unless you buy a CVT vehicle out of warranty, or are truly terrible on your vehicle somehow.
I had a friend in high school who literally drove his (used) Civic every day for five years and never once changed the oil. You'd be amazed how well synthetic oil holds up in an engine designed for long term reliability.
Does that car even have airbags? Crumple zones? The fact that someone didn't get into a serious accident in 35 years says very little about their chances if they are ever involved in one.
I've seen plenty of crash test videos of older cars just completely fold up the cabin (crushing the people inside) in a collision with a modern car. I imagine a 70's or 80s suburban crashing into a modern-day Camry, the people in the Camry would probably have a better survivability and lower rate of injury than the Suburban despite the size differences. Old cars just weren't built very well.
No, in cars built before we started paying attention to passenger safety, YOUR BODY is the crumple zone. If a tough steel body doesn't deform to absorb energy, that energy has to go somewhere, and will find the squishiest thing to dump into, which is you.
Distraction (phones mainly), drunkenes, drugs, speeding, running lights, reckless driving, fatigue are the most common reason for accidents. It's the drivers, not the cars.
Jesus. It’s the people not the guns also. These are really unsolvable problems if you are from the US.
That you are less likely to die in a new vehicle if someone else hits you and your passengers should just be ignored? Also if you hit someone you are safer. Everyone is more safe in new vehicles it’s crazy. But yes lets focus on these other things that have always existed and wont go away until all cars are self driving.
It’s such a stupid argument and I’m sick of seeing it.
It's not just about safety and fuel economy. There's making your own repairs, simplicity, refusing to take out an auto loan, and pride in keeping something running for decades.
Not to mention there's more to life than taking the absolute safest option all the time. Driving is inherently dangerous, many of us just shrug and leave it all to chance.
Sometimes I drive my beater instead of my Honda. Sometimes I'll ride a bike without a helmet. Sometimes I'll have a smoke if someone offers.
Do I generally try to avoid hazardous things? Absolutely. I'm not going to worry about it all the time or structure life around safety though. Life is too short to worry about what ifs all the time.
I agree with the majority of this. I don't take unnecessary risks, but I also drive old cars because they're fun. There's a reward in doing your own mechanic work, driving a vehicle that you get compliments on because it's just that good. Mine isn't even NICE and it gets stares because it's not beat to heck and just looks decent. Sure, new cars are shiny, but in 35 years they won't be. Will they still have enough style and classic looks to get stared at in 35 years? Probably not.
The best saftey equipment is the one between the ears.
It is shocking how many people have no idea how the 1-2 ton piece of metal and plastic chugging along at 100km/h powered by tiny explosions from the burning petrol - actually works.
The market decided that emissions and safety were particularly important. But it never decided that simplicity and repairability weren't important. Turns out there was just more money to be made by slowly eroding those qualities.
Theoretically EVs should be the solution. They're remarkably simple compared to their gas counterparts. But manufacturers aren't just going to give up the golden goose. They market EVs as complex, technological marvels when the only real marvel is our ability to produce efficient, low weight, high capacity batteries at scale. They do everything they can to stifle independent repair behind the scenes, and we just accept it because at this point the frog has been well and truly boiled.
>>The market decided that emissions and safety were particularly important
WRONG... Governments decided that emissions and safety were important, not the market.
>>But it never decided that simplicity and repairability weren't important. Turns out there was just more money to be made by slowly eroding those qualities.
then that is the market decided they are not important, consumers do not ask "how much does this cost to repair" because the new car buyer most likely will trade in that for a newer model before the 100,000 mile warranty is even up so they do not care.
It is the 2nd and 3rd owners problem that deals with repairability, that is also a factor in why (in normal economic years) Toyota's maintain their resale value every well and other manufacturers drop like a stone, Toyota as a reputation to be reliable and inexpensive to maintain on the used market, where say a Chevy or Ford has the exact opposite reputation
> WRONG... Governments decided that emissions and safety were important, not the market.
Lots of people buy vehicles based on safety reputation, fuel economy, and environmental impact. The fact that democratic governments are using their power to enforce a baseline quality for those things speaks volumes to the interests of the citizens - which in this case is almost indistinguishable from the market.
> then that is the market decided they are not important, consumers do not ask "how much does this cost to repair" because the new car buyer most likely will trade in that for a newer model before the 100,000 mile warranty is even up so they do not care.
This is only sort of true. First owners are incentivized to trade early because of the lack of reparability. That in turn enables manufacturers to make less repairable products - which aligns with their interests because it allows them to capture more of the repair market and further incentivizes customers to buy new cars more often. It's a vicious cycle that benefits only the manufacturers.
Eh, everyone on HN being ultra-contrarian just because we like to hear ourselves speak and feel better than other people by making "better choices" doesn't exactly mean we are a healthy community or not in a bubble.
I have a Toyota Land Cruiser here in South Africa with the petrol/gasoline engine. Amazing car. It's built to last though, so its on-road handling is not as great as modern cars.
It didn't happen often but for security reasons in some conflict areas MSF decided to paint their white Land Cruisers in pink to make sure everyone knew who was driving the car. It also made their cars less attractive for thieves.
Eh, I'd say it is quite a stretch to call that color "pink".
But I guess in comparison to other traditional martial colors? But show that photo to a person on the street and ask what color it is... you're unlikely to get "pink" in response.
And I believe you can't order one at that price as the waiting list had reached several years so they closed the book. You're looking at over 100kAUD to buy a low km used one.
I had one of these (well, I had a 2010), and sold it in 2016 (it could not accommodate 3 across car seats). While everything you say is true, I suggest those attributes only carry overweight value for people who are inclined to 1) do their own wrenching, or 2) spend a lot of time off road. For normal city use, 4Runners are a really poor option, given how "truck-like" they are, how inefficient their use of interior space is, and how poor their gas mileage is. I would much rather have something like a Forester or even CR-V, or Explorer or Highlander or any of the other unibody AWD car-like options. Even my actual truck (2017 F150, which I bought to replace the 4R) is FAR more pleasant to drive, more useful, and gets better mileage.
At least in my region (Southern California), the 4x2 4Runners are going for $3-4k below MSRP. IMO, the biggest drawback is that all of your savings from maintenance will go towards paying for gas.
A 4x2 4Runner is an absolute waste of parts. If you aren't going to take it somewhere that you at least sometimes need 4x4, why on Earth are you buying a 4Runner at all? (I know, because it's a status symbol, but that's not what this thread is about.)
When I lived in Africa, everyone drove a Land Rover (don't remember the model name, though). Damn uncomfortable ride, but you could go anywhere. I think it was also possible to completely dismantle the car, by hand, so it could be portaged around.
What I heard from my South African friends who experienced the 1960s there, was a Land Rover Series I or II could be disassembled by hand, with hand tools, and nearly completely rebuilt not to speak of repaired in the bush. And it was claimed yes, they could be portaged across any terrain once fully-disassembled with sufficient manpower, beast power, time, and logistical train.
Portaging was not done lightly, as the effort was considerable, and the vast logistical tail to accomplish it had to hoof it back on their own with the exception of the handful or fewer who could ride onwards on the re-assembled and fueled up Land Rover. Carrying the fuel and bare minimum consumables for the round-trip logistical train (assuming foraging on the go was even an option) I imagine was almost as much of a burden as the vehicle itself.
Toyota does seem to have taken over this niche though, as Land Rover doesn't seem too interested any longer in the market these days.
I had no idea, amazing. Old school, long-lasting, reliable. Is there a car for us "normies" that is like this? Being a swede, I would say the Volvo 240.
If you're living in the "normal" world, I'd say just go buy the Landcruiser that's sold in your area. Landcruisers are designed for a 25 year service life, so you'll probably be fine.
Alternately, you could look around for an old Unimog -- I'm still dreaming of one. If you're in the US, you can often find an LMTV for sale: a fair amount of people refit them for overlanding or vanlife. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_of_Medium_Tactical_Vehi.... I don't think those are very computerized.
I love land cruisers, in particular I'm attracted to the design ethos. Every series and every style. I have a land cruiser sticker on my laptop for that reason. In a society of throw away automobiles, here's something built to withstand. Miss my 250k+ mile 80 series we got rid of because we needed to go down to one car. As soon as I need another 2nd vehicle it'll be a land cruiser (or Lexus LX) or Land Cruiser Prado (Lexus GX here in the states).
There is no reason to believe they wouldn't. The 2 models in appreciable production, the 70 series highlighted here has proven itself with a long track record. The 200 series, soon to be replaced has generally been the most expensive Toyota one can buy. The LX generally the most expensive Lexus (apart from super special models like LFA or Century in Japan), and engineers are generally given "a blank check" to build what they want to build that meets that ethos. Even though the next version will go more complicated with smaller engines and turbo chargers, they are still properly built. It's not just classic land cruisers with longevity, easy to find examples of 100 series land cruisers and Lexus GS (120 series) from the early to late 00s with half a million miles and going strong. 200s will when they've been around long enough.
Bollinger Motors had a utilitarian EV offering for a while, but kept bumping up the price for whatever reason. Looks like they've pivoted into electric semis now?
EVs require quite a lot of electronics just to function, are hard to fix, and also finding extra electricity in places where those kind of vehicles are used wouldn't be as easy a getting a jerrycan.
Why do EV's need lots of electronics? the only required controls I can think of are:
- Charge control,
- Power control - accelerator and regen breaking
- Whatever driver assist is legally required
You don't need phone home telemetry, glass dashboard controls, dodgy auto pilot or many other luxury "needs"
I would think that an EV could be even simpler than a ICE vehicle as there is no need for all the complex engine management required to keep fuel consumption down.
When I was young, we did a unit in Japan in school. I remember specifically that white cars were a thing. Like virtually every privately owned auto in Tokyo was white.
As the owner of a white car I can attest that they show the most dirt easily.
Matt white is the most popular color for governments and businesses because it's the cheapest to buy and the cheapest/easiest to fix by yourself when scuffed (I fixed mine with a 2 Euro tippex like marker from Amazon).
Metallic/perlescent paints are far pricier for buying and are a nightmare to maintain and fix when scuffed.
In Europe, the white van is the workhorse of every business.
I had a couple black cars and currently a white one. Imho, black is much more susceptible to dirt, even the lightest dust is visible immediately. White is quite a bit better but still needs a wash every now and then. And then there's "silver" aka light grey, that never needs a wash at all pretty much.
White paint also doesn't fade. It can still look worse as it ages, of course, but it's still white. Red cars don't stay red, and neither do black cars, but white cars are still white (or white with road grime)
I visited Nepal a few years back and it was amusing seeing the UN drive these massive shiny land cruisers while everybody else was drying cars a bit smaller than a 90s civic. Optics matter, and maybe a Hilux or RAV4 would have suited the environment better
I've seen the same in many other humanitarian responses. The UN also has Toyota Corollas (or similar sedans) in their fleets and they're often used for short distances. The problem (or the advantage depending on the security situation) is Corollas don't stand out as much as Land Cruisers. In some countries, white Toyota Corollas are the most common car.
those are also a key tool in "modern warfare". because it could be supplied very early on before any weapon, since technically they are not a weapon. when war started in libya, qatar sent hundreds of those to the terrorists to fuel the war.
The context before that quote is very interesting.
> “We don’t really think of them as cars,” TGS co-chief executive Jonathan Gourlay tells me. “We’re just giving our customers a tool that does a job, whether that’s feeding children or delivering medicines.” You might think, like me, that the 70 Series Land Cruiser is utterly cool and want one very badly, but cool plays no role here – this is transport at its most fundamental. Simplicity, capability and reliability overrule everything. “If you look back 25 years, there were a few players in this market,” Gourlay continues. “There was Land Rover, there was Nissan and Mitsubishi, but gradually they’ve focused on building what I’d call ‘first world’ vehicles for Europe and North America.
The world needs affordable solutions to people’s problems. Good luck telling a third-world farmer the world doesn’t need their truck when that same truck enables the farmer’s livelihood. Such a sentiment is especially funny coming from someone in the first world, whose lifestyle emits way more CO2 than someone in the third world.
This is exactly the quote that I came to post. It's still in my clipboard.
This vehicle is built not for I-can-get-to-a-mechanic Europe. This vehicle is build for no-mechanic-for-1000-km Africa, to deliver food and medicines. And I'm sure that armies love them too. Even though they state:
> But a firm line is drawn at anything that could be construed as military use.
Yes. Having been in these across the Sahara they are the only model that people trust in the literal middle of nowhere. It's more than just the lack of electronics. The bearings and suspension hold up to brutal conditions such as driving across badlands for hours and sand everywhere.
In 2006 I visited Timbuctoo. These things are ubiquitous there. All cars waiting for the ferry across the Niger were Toyota Landcruisers, with one exception: a Toyota Hilux. Leaving the city (by Landcruiser of course) across the desert, we came across other Landcruisers, as well as a single Mitsubishi 4WD that had broken down.
Rumour had it that if your Landcruiser broke down in the middle of the desert, a guy on a camel would come along and he'd be able to get you parts for your Landcruiser.
The rest of Mali had lots of aging Peugeots and the occasional Mercedes van, but the desert was clearly the domain of the Landcruiser.
You almost stumbled across the reason Toyotas are so prevalent in the third world but you missed it because it doesn't fit your biases.
A running vehicle is a hot commodity in that part of the world and with cheap labor they can fix just about anything.
So why was that Mitsubishi not fixed and running? Why is every other car in Brazil a Ford? Why do you pretty much never see a Hilux in Russia (much to the consternation of the fanboys who think it would fit well in a rural country like that)?
Supply chain.
Toyota does not make seals. They do not make bearings. They do not forge and roll their own steel. They buy the same parts everyone else in the business does. Toyota was the only major brand to pay the poor equatorial nations any attention for a long time. They were the only ones who did the hard work to establish the business relationships needed to get their service parts into the poor parts of the world. As a result of this their vehicles are the preference of the poor parts of the world, because they are the ones you can actually get the parts for.
Toyota are more reliable AND they have a great supply chain with cheap parts.
You are suggesting a cause-and-effect that is nonsense. Make an unreliable 4WD with great supply chain, and they won’t sell. Your implied assumption is that drivers in harsh environments (say outback Australia) care more about supply chain for parts than reliability - ummmm no - they have experience in what is reliable and they intelligently buy accordingly, even though Toyota is not the cheapest to buy.
Toyota is one of the few brands that actually mean something about quality of reliability: https://www.yourmechanic.com/article/the-most-and-least-expe... is a 2016 article about older cars that shows reliability (Toyota doesn’t appear on the no-start list) and “Toyota’s Tacoma and Highlander are also on the low-cost leaderboard, even though the list is dominated by compact and mid-sized sedans. Toyota completely avoids the the most expensive models list.”.
>You are suggesting a cause-and-effect that is nonsense. Make an unreliable 4WD with great supply chain, and they won’t sell.
So you're calling Jeep reliable?
That's surprising coming from someone who's clearly drank the Toyota koolaid.
>“Toyota’s Tacoma and Highlander are also on the low-cost leaderboard
These are not low cost vehicles. That's just farcical.
Furthermore, Toyota specifically avoids running good financing deals in the NA market for brand image reasons and to manipulate the secondary (used) market (basically to keep low class people from getting their hands on them and over time dumping a bunch of trashed examples on the used market dragging down the brand image e.g. Nissan Altima). Per your commentary this has clearly been very effective.
To me those appear to be more non-sequitur arguments. And I am not from the USA, so your comments are parochially myopic.
> So you're calling Jeep reliable?
Jesus no. I remember an acquaintance taking his 4WD Jeep out mud-plugging: clutch stopped working because the slave cylinder cracked — cylinder cracked because the clutch slave cylinder was poorly made and it was made out of plastic. More importantly, 4WD vehicles that sell to urban purchasers in the USA mean nothing to the context of relying on a 4WD in remote areas. Down under, Toyota is popular in outback Australia, where an unreliable vehicle is a big problem and potentially could kill you. Toyota is also popular for their reliability on farms in New Zealand (even though farms in New Zealand are mostly not so remote that reliability is a safety issue).
> low cost vehicles
Admittedly unclear, but the quotes from the linked article are talking about low cost maintenance; nothing to do purchase price. The article is obviously predominantly urban USA, because that was the only factual source I could find that wasn’t just opinion. Maintenance costs are a proxy measurement for reliability. Often maintenance costs are dominated by hours worked in my experience, so “cheap” parts cannot explain why older Toyota vehicles remain cheaper to maintain.
From what I understood, different models of Landcruiser, which can sometimes look completely different, still tend to use mostly the same components. All specifically to make it easy to maintain the things.
Honestly, that story about the guy on the camel is probably true. A Landcruiser that has finally broken down is still a source of parts for other Landcruisers.
I'd love to peer inside how Toyota made this happen at the nuts and bolts operational level. How do they deal with all the currency conversion between all the nations? What language do they transact in? How do they deal with shipping? That would be so fascinating to understand.
i'm not 100% on this car in particular as it doesn't mention in the article, but you can run a mechanical diesel engine with absolutely nothing electrical attached to it as long as it doesn't stall (in which case, you could probably bump-start it if it's hot enough and it'd start anyway). At a guess the engine in question is a 1HZ which has mechanical fuel injection.. so yes you would be OK without the above
Agreed. Furthermore, EMP events are unrealistic and on the same level as a global nuclear winter. Supply chain logistics problems, failures, and disruptions are much more real of a threat, and this is where privately owned Toyota vehicles shine.
As I understand it, the dividing line between EMP survivable and not is the starter solenoid. For example, old motorcycles with carburetors, no ECU, and (crucially) a kickstarter should still run after an EMP. If your moto fits the bill except for lacking a kickstarter, you should be able to stash a spare starter solenoid in an hardened/shielded container.
my mid 80's FJ60 had a hand crank for the gasoline engine, so, given that this article is about the 70 series that debuted in 1984--I wouldn't be surprised if it had a hand crank as well.
These are Technicals.
They are mobile, fast, cheap and reliable, and you can put all kinds of things on them. If the other side doesn’t have heavy weapons you can do a lot with that and even if they are maybe then too. The Brits showed this really well starting with Land Rovers in North Africa and plenty of folks have borrowed, improvised and improved on the idea over time but the basic idea remains.
Lovely. This world needs fewer diesels, not more :-(
What a strange response. Did you read why? The conditions? It isn't for fun, or to go get groceries. You can't get one in the EU, it is for use in war zones, disaster areas, or extreme locations!
There are few of these sold a year. Transport rigs must number in the billions, yet you complain about this, a "must use" scenario?
Your response is the "bad face" of extreme environmentalisnlm.
I suppose you think it better, to not even attempt aid??
This is amazing. I wish more car companies had this focus. I would bet all in, it’s more green than other cars. Emission standards tend to be poorly thought out.
I doubt it. Modern cars are very efficient in burning fuel, and this kind of old-fashioned engine, while necessary for infrastructure-poor areas, is going to have comparatively poor mileage and tailpipe emissions.
Considered -all in- - if you count the emissions required to keep a modern car operational (which includes accounting for much of society itself, I'd guess) this may be lower.
But that gets obscured because we already HAVE the high-emissions society with all the parts and pieces and knowhow.
After all, a vehicle that fails in the middle of nowhere may never be towed back and fixed unless it's like this one - fixable with very little.
I agree. One has to ask: what is worse for the environment, a car that pollutes more but lasts 400k miles or a car that pollutes less but only lasts 200k. The cost and environmental affects of manufacturing aren't zero.
It also varies based on what you have for recycling and other things, too - if we're talking the only vehicle in an entire town that is otherwise from the 1800s, the long-running simple one will almost certainly win.
But in Los Angeles? That's an entire different issue, especially as there will be so many that economies of scale come into play.
I’d just chime in that emissions controls are about particulates NOx, SOx and other pollutants, but not CO2. Combustion of a gallon of diesel will create the same volume of CO2. That’s not to say that those other pollutants aren’t important, they’re damaging to human health, but when I hear “green” I think CO2.
The emissions weren't the issue; they just kept replacing the engine with newer ones - the Ford one they were using at the end had a Euro VI version so they could have kept using that.
The issues were more around safety (both passenger and pedestrian) and not being able to sell it in many countries because it can't have an airbag fitted (I think there was an ergonomics reason it wasn't possible).
Emission and mileage are not correlated positively. Healthy exhaust comes at a cost. An engine purely optimized for efficieny would be more efficient than those that comply with emission regulations.
But in practice, of course the old ones are worse at efficieny, too.
The important thing is also that you do not have to breath the fumes in the city. This applies well to EVs -- they might more polluting (all in) in the first years then ICEs, but the pollution does not happen where you live.
Are we talking about the same Land Cruiser? In my home country, Indonesia, Land Cruiser is a luxury car. It sounds like in US or other countries it's like Honda Civic level.
No, it's not really the same vehicle. The name is the same, but the 70 Series mentioned in the article is built since 1984, what you are thinking of are the 200 and 300 series, which are decidely luxury SUVs.
Probably not. These are 70 series land cruisers which are essentially the same as those manufactures in the mid 80s and are designed to be mechanically robust and simple to repair. Latest model land cruisers are pretty much luxury cars that you can take off road but most people probably don't, same as a range rover etc.
Diesel engines in particular, do not like being run under no load - it is far far better to have them switched off rather than running. Boat owners struggle with this when moored, as they can't charge their leisure batteries by just running the the engine without engaging the prop.
I don't know anyone with a stop/start engine that has ever complained to me about having to replace their battery sooner. Personally, I drive clunkers, and have never had to replace a battery on one of those, despite me turning off the engine whenever I can. I think modern batteries are pretty damn hardy.
Yeah. While the instantaneous power draw is absolutely colossal, the actual energy drained from a battery starting a (healthy!) engine is fairly minimal, and its replaced very quickly by the alternator once it's up and running. Stop/start engines also use the ECU to stop the engine at the right point in the compression cycle for it to fire immediately, without cranking, so there's even less drain. (Even pre-stop/start engines in cars with modern ECUs tend to leave them in a position where they fire almost immediately.)
What kills batteries is deep discharge cycles. Sipping a bit of juice to start an engine and replacing it quickly does almost nothing to reduce its lifespan.
> My car, for instance, turns off the engine when stopped, that can't be good for the engine and battery.
It's largely irrelevant.
More than half of the wear and tear in an engine happens during cold starts. Unless you're in utter gridlock, you won't experience them more often than when at the start of the trip.
Toyota's hybrids turn the engine off and on on a regular basis, even during cruising, and have a proven track record of reliability.
>>My car, for instance, turns off the engine when stopped, that can't be good for the engine and battery.
A friendly reminder to everyone on the internet that your instinct and "gut feeling" isn't worth all that much. It's trivial to find out stats on this, and they prove that the inclusion of Start&Stop systems in cars had zero impact on reliability since their introduction over 10 years ago. But I still see people on forums saying "this can't be good for the engine!".
> My car, for instance, turns off the engine when stopped, that can't be good for the engine and battery.
I understand the intuition behind this, but one could also see a place where starting the engine while it's still hot is better than idling (less wear, fewer opportunities for deposits to build up from wasted combustion), and where the impact to the battery is minimal as the hot engine makes it easier to turn over for the very few cycles it takes to get it going again.
It isn't about heat, it is about the main crank bearing which is a fluid bearing that needs oil pressure to work. When your engine isn't running there isn't sufficient oil pressure so the first few revolutions are pretty tough on the engine. Hot is actually worse because the oil that is there is thinner and more likely to result in metal on metal. Engineering an ICE for an order of magnitude more starts is probably mostly upgrading the battery, starter motor, and main crank bearing.
Why would it not be good to turn your engine off? I sometimes come across stationary cars with a running engine, and I honestly wonder why anyone does that.
> I sometimes come across stationary cars with a running engine, and I honestly wonder why anyone does that.
As someone who frequents very warm countries, I think most people do it because of the AC. If the engine is not on, the AC won't adjust the temperature that you've selected.
I have a Volvo hybrid where the AC continues running even when the main ICE is off(as long as you have charge in the main battery pack). It's honestly fantastic.
Hybrid (or PEV/BEV) car's electric A/C is heavily underrated feature compared to pure ICE cars. Idling engine only for A/C seems to really inefficient. I think every police cars should be at least hybrid, but still not here.
Toyota Hybrids do this too and it’s an incredible experience to sit in a parking lot blasting full efficiency AC with the engine off. I’ve heard of people camping overnight in their Priuses this way with minimal engine use.
As a general rule, most machines break during state changes like start/stop. Keeping an engine running means no piece is subjected to the extra acceleration of restarting and your starter isn't used.
Summary - if you simply turned an old 1988 car on and off all the time, it definitely would damage the engine and the battery and produce more emissions. But modern cars with auto stop-start are designed for this from scratch. Emissions are lower for the same reason.
If you're right - that this is bad for reliability and emissions - that would suggest some conspiracy from governments and manufacturers who are pushing for this.
If you grew up poor a few decades ago, you probably saw your parents begin every journey praying the car would start. Because loads of vehicle faults manifest as failing to start - flat battery, spark plug problems, cold weather, no fuel.
Starting the engine is a stressful experience if you're used to vehicles where sometimes the engine won't start. Especially if you're at the front of a queue of traffic.
I was with you until "turns off the engine when stopped, that can't be good for the engine". That was a concern in the mid 2000s when start-stop hybrids were just starting to become mainstream. Today nobody notices or cares because the concerns never materialized.
Regenerative breaking is an amazing piece of tech. I really like electric cars that have it baked-in the "gas" pedal so that releasing it slows down the car without using the brakes. You can achieve "optimal" driving by always recouping the kinetic energy as electricity instead.of heat in your break pads.
Most of my EV driving is in single pedal mode. I absolutely love driving in this mode. I feel like I just have far more control over the vehicle by having a single pedal to directly control the speed instead of the vehicle just rolling when I get off the accelerator. Also, the fact the car just stays put when stopped instead of constantly rolling forward in drive is really nice.
Sometimes my car loads my wife's profile when I drive which changes it back to standard driving. It is jarring having the car just always want to roll forward. It just feels so much worse than single pedal driving.
I'm assuming the standard driving profile imitates an automatic transmission with a torque converter, which continually creeps forward if the brake isn't held down. As opposed to a manual or dual-clutch automatic transmission, which does not creep (except by gravity).
Is disabling this "creep" independently of braking with the gas pedal an option in any electric vehicles? I seem to remember that some cars with continuously variable transmissions had this as an option.
There is still often an "Auto Hold" feature that will engage the brake when the vehicle comes to a complete stop. My EV can have auto hold engaged while not being in the single pedal drive. I have this in my ICE as well, but it doesn't seem as smooth overall, so I don't end up using it much.
It is still not quite the same experience though, as the ICE will just keep rolling at low speeds forever without actually ever coming to a stop until you press the brake. Auto hold will only engage when the vehicle actually stops. For my EV, when I get off the accelerator pedal it'll come to a complete stop on its own and then hold itself there.
Other than turning on my EV, most trips don't involve me touching the brake pedal at all.
Sometimes the autostart can be an annoyance but newer cars have got it down to almost imperceptible. The restarting shouldn’t be rough like a cold start.
[1] The so called 'emission computer' unit on the car is a simple pulse counter/comparator that activates a VSV on the carb to reduce backfire while descending downhill with the foot off the throttle.
[2] My brake booster is leaking a little bit, but at least it won't suddenly gives up on me while I'm riding, still looking for a replacement.