Ping!..............
She nailed it. Mechanical items can be fixed, and even remade. No one has the capacity to recreate even those elementary logic ICs without bucks and bucks worth of fab facilities. Don’t even get me started about software in aircraft.
I had all the remote start, charge management online features and emergency call but it was only free for 2 years. Then I was supposed to subscribe to an online service that I would have to pay for monthly. Now I don’t have any of those services and I don’t need them anyway. Why should I pay for the ability to see my car’s level of charge or to see if the doors are locked when I can just walk out to the garage?
LOL yup, i love my 1997 ford.
I rejoiced when I found out the dormant onstar system in my old GMs were obsolete!
This is another reason (that I had not previously considered) to lease cars. While it can seem a bit expensive to put $$ down to secure a lease, the monthly payments can be significantly less than monthly loan payments. Sure, you lose money in the long run, but you lose money the instant you drive off the lot when you purchase too. Plus with, say a 3 year lease, you never run out of warranty before you turn the car in for a new one.
The only way you make money on a new car “purchase” is to buy a new exotic, keep it for 10 years, and sell it on the auction circuit. Or, never buy a new car...
Deliberately increasing cost of vehicles, an idea of Obama.
Now using these things to make sure classic cars never run.
The quality of cars has declined steadily over the past 2 decades. There are very few cars that are reliable over 100,000 miles, which means the average lifespan of a $50,000 car is about 8 years. So you pay about $550 a month and in 8 years your car is valued quite low. If you are unlucky and drive a BMW, you probably put at least $10,000 in repairs over the 8 years or so.
Cars are a money pit, dealers are incentivized to find repairs, The old days of reliability and cost effectiveness in cars is over.
This is why I love my 2004 Chevy Avalanche. Zero mechanical or electical isses, ever. Just regular milage mainenance. The thing is probably going to outlive me.
1976 1 ton Chevy truck: ZERO CHIPS
1979 Buick wagon: ZERO CHIPS
I’m not a computer savy, techy by nature person at all, but I used to enjoy listening to Kim Komandos radio show several years ago. Back then, she called herself “America’s Digital Goddess”. Kim made it a fun computer advice program to listen to.
I understand that there are guys purchasing older vehicles and basically building their own out of after market parts or salvage parts.
No bullshit computer crap. Cars just like they used to make before all this stuff.
I know my 09 pickup is gonna get rebuilt. I aint ever gonna purchase any new vehicle.
Kim has a way with words. I love her. She brings out some sobering details I didn’t know about. Just wow!
The average car on U.S. roads is 12.6 years old. Many connected-car systems only last seven to 10 years. That’s bad news for used car buyers. A mechanically perfect car could have worthless tech. Millions of used cars out there have ticking tech clocks.(that's me!) Recently I started getting a lot of scratchy sound and drop-outs on the Expedition sound system when I play Spotify streaming music. It happens randomly. It started after the last IOS update on my iPhone 16. Full factory reset of the entertainment unit and the phone made it better for a couple days, but the problem returned.
I researched the problem and most sites said to get the firmware in the entertainment system updated. I called Ford and they said they would 1) need to do a $100 "diagnostic" test and 2) update firmware if that's what the diagnostic showed. That's ANOTHER $200 on top of the $100.
This is small potatoes compared to the car being completely dead, but it's annoying as hell to me. As a work-around, I can plug the iPhone into the 3.5 mm jack in the car, but I lose a whole bunch of features (steering wheel controls, voice control, and others).
It had never occurred to me before that these aging car electronics issues wold arise, but here we are.
Also, these “high tech” cars have REALLY bad re-sale value.