is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Questions on how we spend our money and our time - consumer goods and services, home and vehicle, leisure and recreational activities
westie
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by westie »

buy a 3 year old Cadillac?
bluebolt
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by bluebolt »

I just sold a 10 year old luxury (or near-luxury depending on how you define it) car for 28K less than I bought it for. Average of 2.8K/yr of depreciation and very little repair beyond basic maintenance. I'd rather drive a nicer car for an extra few hundred to a thousand dollars a year in depreciation.
jharkin
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by jharkin »

pepperz wrote:
DaftInvestor wrote:Do you have a link to the article you read?
Here is the e-book which gave me this idea:

http://resources.palmbeachgroup.com/spe ... g-Rich.pdf

Please see pages 3-4, 8 ("cost of use"), and 43.

The author thinks a BMW 760Li will "run like a top for 20 years" ;) I want some of what he is smoking....

That statement alone should make you suspect of the entire book.
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yatesd
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by yatesd »

duplicate post
Last edited by yatesd on Wed Jun 21, 2017 5:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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yatesd
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by yatesd »

yatesd wrote:
happy77 wrote:Today, buying any car other than a self-driving car(Tesla?) is not a smart purchase.

There is a revolution coming in the automobile world. Few more years, and all current car ownerships and insurance models will be history.

We are living in the last years of manual driving.

So, just wait for fully automated mobility services with different levels of ETA and comfort; and pay a monthly fixed or variable service fees just like any other utility. And the best part is – you don’t have to drive.

And yes, if you love driving, just buy a performance car now without giving any thoughts to money. In few years, all manual driving would be banned and the only resort for car lovers would be to shell out money at specialized private tracks to manually drive a car .
We will eventually get there...
Image

The Jetsons was first shown on TV in 1962/63. The Wall Street Journal had an article today that indicated none of us would be driving soon. I'm more skeptical. Things will change, just not as dramatically or as quickly as implied.
NHRATA01
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by NHRATA01 »

BruDude wrote:
rgs92 wrote:Read the Lexus forums and read about the money-pit stories with BMWs, Audis, and Mercedes. There are tons of refugees from these brands.

And actually, you can pick up a used high-end Euro car for a low price because everyone knows about the high cost of maintaining these, along with their fragile mechanical character.

Don't believe me, spend some time on the car forums and you'll get the idea.
Basically, the reverse of what you are asking is true. If you want a luxury car, try Lexus or maybe Genesis or Infiniti.

Lexus offers about an 8 year bumper-to-bumper warranty that you can buy on their CPO cars. Mercedes offers 3 years on theirs. That's not a good sign and reflects on the company's faith in its own cars.
The feel of a Lexus and the feel of a BMW/Audi/Merc/Porsche are apples and oranges. To me, a Lexus feels like an overpriced Toyota, which is basically what it is. I wouldn't be caught dead in a Lexus personally...
Feel tends to correlate proportionally to badge worshiping though. BMW has become soft as it chases volume markets, the M2 is about the last great driver's car they sell. A Caddy ATS feels better than a 3 series. Most of the auto rag journalists will tell you my SS Sedan feels more like an M5 should then the current M5 does. Just missing the propeller badge (I suppose I could put on the Holden lion and confuse people). The Lexus IS, GS and RC feel like better driver's cars then most of what the first 3 offered, Porsche a willing exception as they still build them in line with their pedigree. Yes, the ES350 isn't exactly going to stir the pulse being a warmed over Avalon, but to me neither does the VW Golf rebadged as an Audi A3.
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SmileyFace
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by SmileyFace »

jharkin wrote:
pepperz wrote:
DaftInvestor wrote:Do you have a link to the article you read?
Here is the e-book which gave me this idea:

http://resources.palmbeachgroup.com/spe ... g-Rich.pdf

Please see pages 3-4, 8 ("cost of use"), and 43.

The author thinks a BMW 760Li will "run like a top for 20 years" ;) I want some of what he is smoking....

That statement alone should make you suspect of the entire book.
pepperz - thanks for sharing the link.
I took a glance through it - seems like a variety of observations and opinions from the author's own experiences - some of which I agree with (Price of Wine doesn't measure its quality) and some of which I certainly don't agree with (never drink more than two beers). Some of the travel suggestions on how to save money are sound - some of his statements are kind of silly ("Don’t overpack. Put the clothes you think you will need in a
neat pile––then remove 50 percent of them" - I personally pack with the correct number of clothes for the days of travel - plus one extra set in case of cancellation on return - if I remove 50% I'll run out of clean clothes half-way through my trip).
alfaspider
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by alfaspider »

jharkin wrote:
Spirit Rider wrote:
happy77 wrote:Today, buying any car other than a self-driving car(Tesla?) is not a smart purchase.

There is a revolution coming in the automobile world. Few more years, and all current car ownerships and insurance models will be history.
Balderdash. Maybe in a few decades, but in a few years they will still be in single digits percentages at most.

Agreed. Ive heard these prognostications myself, usually made by somebody sitting in a silicon valley office.

Drive through Iowa farm country, and try to tell me this will happen in less than a couple decades. :oops:

I dont want to have to call a self driving uber to take me on a camping trip to the mountains... or to haul my yard waste to the town dump... or any one of a hundred other tasks that are not so easy to automate/centralize in the USA which is far to spread out to make these centralized public transit options work as well as they do in densely populated continental Europe.
Agreed. The average car on the road is over 10 years old. Even if fully autonomous cars were available TODAY, it would be over a decade before they became the norm. I think we are AT LEAST a decade from full autonomy being available. It would likely be several decades after that before anybody considered banning user-driven cars (And such bans would probably only apply to certain roads, and there'd be exceptions for vintage cars). There's an enormous gulf between Tesla autopilot functions and a car that can completely drive itself in all weather. Nobody has yet made an autonomous car that is safe to drive in an area that has not been extensively pre-mapped, or one that can handle a snow-packed road- even heavy rain still poses problems. Uber's autonomy program has been a mixed success, and even they concede that full autonomous vehicles (i.e. nobody monitoring the car) are quite a ways out.

Also worth noting that Ubers rides are already being provided at below cost (that's why they are hemorrhaging money). Eventually that has to stop. If they (or a similar ride sharing company) get to full autonomy, it's somewhat doubtful there will be a material difference from the end-user's standpoint. The only difference is that ride sharing will be profitable at current pricing. So, if ride sharing doesn't meet your needs now, it probably won't when full autonomy is available.

Fractional ownership models aren't a panacea either. Sure, an autonomous car could theoretically be shared between multiple people, but it does little good if they have to commute at the same time to different places.

Insurance will probably be a good bit cheaper on fully autonomous vehicles, but it won't be free. There will still be road hazards the car can't avoid, vehicle theft will still exist, and so will vandalism.

Long story short, autonomous technology should be the least of your concerns in 2017. Perhaps in 2030 it will be a real decision point. To me the biggest boon wouldn't be for regular drivers, but for people who currently can't drive but need to go places- older children still under driving age, disabled folks, or elderly drivers who are no longer able to safely drive.
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by jharkin »

alfaspider wrote:
Agreed. The average car on the road is over 10 years old. Even if fully autonomous cars were available TODAY, it would be over a decade before they became the norm. I think we are AT LEAST a decade from full autonomy being available. It would likely be several decades after that before anybody considered banning user-driven cars (And such bans would probably only apply to certain roads, and there'd be exceptions for vintage cars). There's an enormous gulf between Tesla autopilot functions and a car that can completely drive itself in all weather. Nobody has yet made an autonomous car that is safe to drive in an area that has not been extensively pre-mapped, or one that can handle a snow-packed road- even heavy rain still poses problems. Uber's autonomy program has been a mixed success, and even they concede that full autonomous vehicles (i.e. nobody monitoring the car) are quite a ways out.
I was thinking of that, but I was also thinking about the farmer in rural Kansas who drives 50 miles in an old beat up pickup to go to the Fleet Farm in the nearest metro and get parts/feed/fertilizer/etc. Are you gonna use an autonomous car for that?


Will an autonomous car take me down an unpaved forest service road in the white mountain national forest to get to a trailhead for a backpacking expedition?

Will an autonomous car bring me to pickup a load of firewood? or supplies from Home Depot for a remodeling project?

and so on.... Life in much of suburburban and especially rural America is not as conductive to this model as it is in silicon valley or midtown Manhattan.
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TomatoTomahto
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by TomatoTomahto »

^ may be all true, but let's not forget that the iphone is having its 10th anniversary. Smart phones were once a "I'll believe it when I see it" kind of phenomena. Not just in my lifetime, but in my kids' lifetimes... I've got kids 3.5 times as old as the oldest iPhone. You can point to flying cars as a long discarded promise, but it wasn't a funded promise and existed mostly on the cover of Popular Science. How much is being spent, today, on autonomous vehicles? A lot.

http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/201 ... phone.html
I get the FI part but not the RE part of FIRE.
alfaspider
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by alfaspider »

jharkin wrote:
alfaspider wrote:
Agreed. The average car on the road is over 10 years old. Even if fully autonomous cars were available TODAY, it would be over a decade before they became the norm. I think we are AT LEAST a decade from full autonomy being available. It would likely be several decades after that before anybody considered banning user-driven cars (And such bans would probably only apply to certain roads, and there'd be exceptions for vintage cars). There's an enormous gulf between Tesla autopilot functions and a car that can completely drive itself in all weather. Nobody has yet made an autonomous car that is safe to drive in an area that has not been extensively pre-mapped, or one that can handle a snow-packed road- even heavy rain still poses problems. Uber's autonomy program has been a mixed success, and even they concede that full autonomous vehicles (i.e. nobody monitoring the car) are quite a ways out.
I was thinking of that, but I was also thinking about the farmer in rural Kansas who drives 50 miles in an old beat up pickup to go to the Fleet Farm in the nearest metro and get parts/feed/fertilizer/etc. Are you gonna use an autonomous car for that?


Will an autonomous car take me down an unpaved forest service road in the white mountain national forest to get to a trailhead for a backpacking expedition?

Will an autonomous car bring me to pickup a load of firewood? or supplies from Home Depot for a remodeling project?

and so on.... Life in much of suburburban and especially rural America is not as conductive to this model as it is in silicon valley or midtown Manhattan.
It seems to me that a fully autonomous car could be a real boon in rural areas. You could send it into town to pick up supplies without having to spend hours driving there yourself. Most likely, they would still have manual driving ability for situations like fire roads.
alfaspider
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by alfaspider »

TomatoTomahto wrote:^ may be all true, but let's not forget that the iphone is having its 10th anniversary. Smart phones were once a "I'll believe it when I see it" kind of phenomena. Not just in my lifetime, but in my kids' lifetimes... I've got kids 3.5 times as old as the oldest iPhone. You can point to flying cars as a long discarded promise, but it wasn't a funded promise and existed mostly on the cover of Popular Science. How much is being spent, today, on autonomous vehicles? A lot.

http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/201 ... phone.html
The iphone was hardly the first smartphone, it was simply the first successful one in the mass market (*blackberry should get some credit for business adoption). Remember these?

Image

That was a fully functional smartphone in 1999. But, it was clunky, hard to use, and expensive for what it did. Technology often works like that. Early precursors come out that can't quite make it in the mass market many years before they are ready for prime time. In many ways, autonomous cars are a much more difficult nut to crack because there are significant legal and regulatory barriers to surmount that simply don't exist for handheld electronics. You can't release a self-driving car for full driverless use that is 90% of the way there- it has to be 100% or no government will allow it on the road.
VGisforme
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by VGisforme »

jebmke wrote:
grettman wrote:When I was growing up, the promised us hovercrafts and flying cars. I will believe this when I see it.
and paperless society.
That's a good one, my dad was a paper salesman for 40+ years from the 1950s into the 1990s and he was told that computer would ruin him...
lazydavid
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by lazydavid »

alfaspider wrote:The iphone was hardly the first smartphone, it was simply the first successful one in the mass market (*blackberry should get some credit for business adoption). Remember these?

Image

That was a fully functional smartphone in 1999. But, it was clunky, hard to use, and expensive for what it did.
The Palm VII was NOT a fully functional smartphone. In order to meet that description, a device must be capable of placing phone calls, and the Palm had a data-only radio. 50KB of data (total, not per second) was $10/month.

The first device marketed as a smartphone was the Ericsson R380 in 2000:
Image

The first one that looked vaguely like what we think of as a smartphone was indeed palm-based, the Kyocera 6035, released the following year:
Image

But I'd argue that the first successful smartphone was the Danger Fliptop, sold in the US as the T-Mobile Sidekick, starting in 2002:
Image
DomDangelina
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by DomDangelina »

As more and more people understand that sitting is the new smoking, more and more people will reject autonomous cars as part of a general effort to both de-convenience their lives and regain control from machines. Yes, de-conveniencing is the next big thing. As for me, being one who already eschews escalators/elevators for stairs and parks as far as possible from entrances, they'll pry the steering wheel from my cold dead hands.
"Often the remedy causes the disease. It is by no means the least of life's rules: to let things alone." | Baltasar Gracián, S.J., The Art of Worldly Wisdom, Maxim 121
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bottlecap
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by bottlecap »

Until $10,000 self-driving cars are available, there is not concern. That's decades off. And if they outlawed manual driving cars without phasing them out, where would we put them? America's next big business would be scrap yards.

Since the update of the OP, I think the answer to the initial question is that luxury cars, particularly BMW's (which the author mentions), are more expensive to buy, more expensive to repair and maintain, are less reliable, and will not outlast non-luxury cars.

So no, a 4 year old $40,000 BMW is not more likely to last another 20 years than any other car and will cost gobs and gobs of money to fix and maintain over that period. And I wouldn't count on much residual value for a 24 year old BMW, either.

JT
alfaspider
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by alfaspider »

lazydavid wrote: The first device marketed as a smartphone was the Ericsson R380 in 2000:
According to Wikipedia, the first smartphone with both cellular calling and web browsing capabilities was the Nokia 9000 communicator in 1996.

Image

Technicalities aside, the point is that bleeding edge technologies often seem to come out quickly, but people tend to forget about the predecessors to the first sucessful product. Similarly, electric light bulbs were invented decades before Edison, cars were available decades before Ford came out with the Model T, but both those products are often thought of as firsts. The "first" commercially available fully autonomous car will probably be restricted to non-public environments, such as commercial use within industrial facilities, so the public will be scarcely aware of it.
happy77
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by happy77 »

alfaspider wrote:
jharkin wrote:
alfaspider wrote:
Agreed. The average car on the road is over 10 years old. Even if fully autonomous cars were available TODAY, it would be over a decade before they became the norm. I think we are AT LEAST a decade from full autonomy being available. It would likely be several decades after that before anybody considered banning user-driven cars (And such bans would probably only apply to certain roads, and there'd be exceptions for vintage cars). There's an enormous gulf between Tesla autopilot functions and a car that can completely drive itself in all weather. Nobody has yet made an autonomous car that is safe to drive in an area that has not been extensively pre-mapped, or one that can handle a snow-packed road- even heavy rain still poses problems. Uber's autonomy program has been a mixed success, and even they concede that full autonomous vehicles (i.e. nobody monitoring the car) are quite a ways out.
I was thinking of that, but I was also thinking about the farmer in rural Kansas who drives 50 miles in an old beat up pickup to go to the Fleet Farm in the nearest metro and get parts/feed/fertilizer/etc. Are you gonna use an autonomous car for that?


Will an autonomous car take me down an unpaved forest service road in the white mountain national forest to get to a trailhead for a backpacking expedition?

Will an autonomous car bring me to pickup a load of firewood? or supplies from Home Depot for a remodeling project?

and so on.... Life in much of suburburban and especially rural America is not as conductive to this model as it is in silicon valley or midtown Manhattan.
It seems to me that a fully autonomous car could be a real boon in rural areas. You could send it into town to pick up supplies without having to spend hours driving there yourself. Most likely, they would still have manual driving ability for situations like fire roads.
+1
Technology changes people in wonderful ways.
Farmers select the supplies online, autonomous trucks/drones would deliver it to your work-sites.
happy77
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by happy77 »

bottlecap wrote:Until $10,000 self-driving cars are available, there is not concern. That's decades off. And if they outlawed manual driving cars without phasing them out, where would we put them? America's next big business would be scrap yards.

Since the update of the OP, I think the answer to the initial question is that luxury cars, particularly BMW's (which the author mentions), are more expensive to buy, more expensive to repair and maintain, are less reliable, and will not outlast non-luxury cars.

So no, a 4 year old $40,000 BMW is not more likely to last another 20 years than any other car and will cost gobs and gobs of money to fix and maintain over that period. And I wouldn't count on much residual value for a 24 year old BMW, either.

JT
Many startups are working on autonomous kits that can retrofit on any car.
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tuningfork
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by tuningfork »

An interesting essay on some of the difficulties an autonomous car would face in the real world.
http://rodneybrooks.com/edge-cases-for- ... ving-cars/

Given the amount of money being spent on R&D, I'm sure these and many other issues are being studied. It shows just how complex the problem really is, and how the solutions to some of the problems require infrastructure and behavior changes beyond the scope of the car's software and hardware.
lightheir
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by lightheir »

dm200 wrote:Other might comment, but maintenance/repair costs for many "luxury" vehicles are higher.
Yes, this is definitely true. You are in for a rude awakening of you think you will get discount parts and service even for a 20 year old luxury car.
jayjayc
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by jayjayc »

The underlying assumption in the OP is that potential customers of luxury cars coincide with potential customers of 10+ year old cars. I don't believe that's the case. People who are in the market for luxury cars want real luxury and 10+ year old cars automatically disqualify themselves. People who are looking to purchase 10+ year old cars are looking for Toyotas and Hondas.
emoore
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by emoore »

DomDangelina wrote:As more and more people understand that sitting is the new smoking, more and more people will reject autonomous cars as part of a general effort to both de-convenience their lives and regain control from machines. Yes, de-conveniencing is the next big thing. As for me, being one who already eschews escalators/elevators for stairs and parks as far as possible from entrances, they'll pry the steering wheel from my cold dead hands.
What does sitting and smoking have to do with autonomous cars? Driving a car and sitting in an autonomous car has the same health issues.
alfaspider
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by alfaspider »

lightheir wrote:
dm200 wrote:Other might comment, but maintenance/repair costs for many "luxury" vehicles are higher.
Yes, this is definitely true. You are in for a rude awakening of you think you will get discount parts and service even for a 20 year old luxury car.
Not from the dealership you won't, but you can often get much cheaper parts for older luxury cars if they still have a following. For example, E36 BMW parts are pretty common and not too expensive used or aftermarket. There are also euro specialty shops that are much cheaper for cars like that. Of course, it's still unlikely to be as cheap to run as an old Honda.
Valuethinker
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by Valuethinker »

Spirit Rider wrote:
happy77 wrote:Today, buying any car other than a self-driving car(Tesla?) is not a smart purchase.

There is a revolution coming in the automobile world. Few more years, and all current car ownerships and insurance models will be history.
Balderdash. Maybe in a few decades, but in a few years they will still be in single digits percentages at most.
On self driving cars, I understand that:

- the technology is largely being funded with venture capital money i.e. not the established industry players (this was from an article in the Financial Times, which is a reputable source)

- the really hard problems are the ones not solved yet, and they really could be difficult to stop

So I'd broadly agree with you EXCEPT:

- the problems of heavy traffic are almost universal, and getting worse everywhere. Autos are now the biggest killer on the planet (non health related causes, including Emerging Markets) due to soaring death rates in EM

- if someone gets this working, then it will be a race for *everyone* to get it working, very fast. We could go from no per cent to 100 per cent in a couple of decades. Think the spread of smartphones

If someone gets this working, then I think the authorities will mandate its use in high congestion areas. Delays and accidents are caused by driver error/ bad behaviour, primarily, and so eliminating those could get maybe (guessing) 30% more thruput on the highways. Plus with an aging population, driver safety is becoming a serious issue-- the problem of people too old to drive, but with no alternatives, and the (very occasional) horrific accidents that result (a broader problem is old people being shut in because they can no longer drive-- seen that first hand).

So there could easily be a "tipping point" and I don't know if it is 5 years out (I doubt it) or 10 (more likely) or 20 (perhaps most likely). And we will go from virtually zero cars being autonomous, to 100%, in a very short time period-- because it won't be an option.

Once this technology exists on mass production scale, every car will be required to have it, and required to use it on high congestion highways, etc.

Truckers are expensive. They are already talking about convoys of self guiding trucks.

On electric vehicles

Similar arguments apply. There will be a tipping point on range, at which point the growth could be exponential.

I am of the camp that thinks that governments and society will have to do something sooner rather than later to electrify transportation. That sooner will come, and they will act. The history of western societies in crisis suggests they can act with blinding speed once they hit a "tipping point" -- they will just move, and move with an urgency that will surprise us all.

That tipping point is unlikely to be 10 years out. But it could well be before 20 years- and 2-3 years ago I would never have entertained that thought. The days of the Internal Combustion Engine (in its present form) are numbered. Again, 5 years ago I wouldn't have thought that (except in a broadly abstract way, "some day for sure").
Valuethinker
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by Valuethinker »

bottlecap wrote:Until $10,000 self-driving cars are available, there is not concern. That's decades off. And if they outlawed manual driving cars without phasing them out, where would we put them? America's next big business would be scrap yards.

Since the update of the OP, I think the answer to the initial question is that luxury cars, particularly BMW's (which the author mentions), are more expensive to buy, more expensive to repair and maintain, are less reliable, and will not outlast non-luxury cars.

So no, a 4 year old $40,000 BMW is not more likely to last another 20 years than any other car and will cost gobs and gobs of money to fix and maintain over that period. And I wouldn't count on much residual value for a 24 year old BMW, either.

JT
Out of curiousity can you still buy a car for $10k (new car) in America? I realize most people lease these days (new cars) so that is somewhat academic, but is there such a thing as a $10k car?

Isn't $20k a car a more useful benchmark, because that's much closer to what the average people pay for a new car?

I think you'd struggle to find a car for the equivalent of USD 10k in the UK. Dacia maybe (Romanian Renault, taken the world by storm).
wrongfunds
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by wrongfunds »

Isn't $20k a car a more useful benchmark, because that's much closer to what the average people pay for a new car?
Actually NO because the number is $30K+ I just don't remember if that is median or average new car purchased in America.

By the way your previous reply is absolutely spot on regarding the tipping point and self-driving and electrical cars becoming prevalent in less than 2 decades.
alfaspider
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by alfaspider »

Valuethinker wrote:
bottlecap wrote:Until $10,000 self-driving cars are available, there is not concern. That's decades off. And if they outlawed manual driving cars without phasing them out, where would we put them? America's next big business would be scrap yards.

Since the update of the OP, I think the answer to the initial question is that luxury cars, particularly BMW's (which the author mentions), are more expensive to buy, more expensive to repair and maintain, are less reliable, and will not outlast non-luxury cars.

So no, a 4 year old $40,000 BMW is not more likely to last another 20 years than any other car and will cost gobs and gobs of money to fix and maintain over that period. And I wouldn't count on much residual value for a 24 year old BMW, either.

JT
Out of curiousity can you still buy a car for $10k (new car) in America? I realize most people lease these days (new cars) so that is somewhat academic, but is there such a thing as a $10k car?

Isn't $20k a car a more useful benchmark, because that's much closer to what the average people pay for a new car?

I think you'd struggle to find a car for the equivalent of USD 10k in the UK. Dacia maybe (Romanian Renault, taken the world by storm).
It is possible. I know someone who paid $9,500 for a new Chevy Spark. Mitsubishi Mirage can also be had for under $10k. I'm not sure I'd actually want to drive either, but it can be done. You are right that $20k is probably a better benchmark. That's what you'd expect to pay for a medium-optioned compact sedan like a Honda Civic or Mazda 3.
jharkin
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by jharkin »

I still think that you are all missing a major issue - and its not technological, its socialogical.

Outside of this board, whee most people seem to hate cars for some reason ???? , most Americans LOVE cars and LOVE driving. That mindset wont change overnight.

Maybe a farmer can call in a drone to air drop supplies... doesn't mean s/he is necessarily going to want to. People like control and being able to do what they want, where they want when they want. That wont change quickly.

America changed form a society of walking and horse carriages to a cars almost overnight, because it was a change that INCREASED mobility and personal freedom. Many people will see this autonomous driving wave as taking freedom away, and it will be resisted.
michaeljc70
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by michaeljc70 »

I don't think a BMW is going to last any longer than a Honda or Toyota. In fact, it is going to cost you way more to own and maintain the BMW. And are you really going to keep a car 20 years? Almost nobody does that. This sounds like finding reasons/excuses to buy a luxury car in my opinion.
alfaspider
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by alfaspider »

jharkin wrote:I still think that you are all missing a major issue - and its not technological, its socialogical.

Outside of this board, whee most people seem to hate cars for some reason ???? , most Americans LOVE cars and LOVE driving. That mindset wont change overnight.

Maybe a farmer can call in a drone to air drop supplies... doesn't mean s/he is necessarily going to want to. People like control and being able to do what they want, where they want when they want. That wont change quickly.

America changed form a society of walking and horse carriages to a cars almost overnight, because it was a change that INCREASED mobility and personal freedom. Many people will see this autonomous driving wave as taking freedom away, and it will be resisted.
You are right that is very sociological. However, one thing to keep in mind from a sociological standpoint is that urbanization is still a trend, and the individual or family farmer is giving way to big-agra megafarms. Joe farmer may not want a drone to drop supplies, but his opinion won't matter if Monsanto runs the farm. His children have already left the farm and work in city jobs. They use the automated car so they can read the newspaper on the way to work. To a large degree, the automation does increase their mobility and personal freedom.
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by jharkin »

alfaspider wrote:
You are right that is very sociological. However, one thing to keep in mind from a sociological standpoint is that urbanization is still a trend, and the individual or family farmer is giving way to big-agra megafarms. Joe farmer may not want a drone to drop supplies, but his opinion won't matter if Monsanto runs the farm. His children have already left the farm and work in city jobs. They use the automated car so they can read the newspaper on the way to work. To a large degree, the automation does increase their mobility and personal freedom.
Ok, so we kill the small farmer( I dont like that but that's another discussion)...

What about Joe 6 pack who owns a boat and takes his family cruising the lake on weekends, or fishes. Does he call an uber to tow his boat trailer?

Same applies to the high rolling family with a kid that competes in equestrian - will uber haul their horse trailer?

You already mentioned my drive down dirt forest roads to a backwoods campsite is done.

And forget about the folks wheeling 4x4s in offroad parks.


And so on. I worry its going to completely kill off individuality and we will all be living in perfectly safe mind numbing conformity... All living in a big mega city in identical apartments with identical jobs and identical hobbies (because there wont be many options to choose from and anything not "safe' will be legislated out of existence for our own good) surrounded by a sea of drone operated farms/factories.

Hopefully we will at least be allowed to turn off our telescreen's once in a while........


( I'd love to point back to an earlier thread where somebody brought up the Sully Sullenberger editorial where he pointed out that the industry should look to the precedent of automation in commercial aviation where the technology is used to augment human decision making, not replace it)
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by Valuethinker »

jharkin wrote:
alfaspider wrote:
Agreed. The average car on the road is over 10 years old. Even if fully autonomous cars were available TODAY, it would be over a decade before they became the norm. I think we are AT LEAST a decade from full autonomy being available. It would likely be several decades after that before anybody considered banning user-driven cars (And such bans would probably only apply to certain roads, and there'd be exceptions for vintage cars). There's an enormous gulf between Tesla autopilot functions and a car that can completely drive itself in all weather. Nobody has yet made an autonomous car that is safe to drive in an area that has not been extensively pre-mapped, or one that can handle a snow-packed road- even heavy rain still poses problems. Uber's autonomy program has been a mixed success, and even they concede that full autonomous vehicles (i.e. nobody monitoring the car) are quite a ways out.
I was thinking of that, but I was also thinking about the farmer in rural Kansas who drives 50 miles in an old beat up pickup to go to the Fleet Farm in the nearest metro and get parts/feed/fertilizer/etc. Are you gonna use an autonomous car for that?


Will an autonomous car take me down an unpaved forest service road in the white mountain national forest to get to a trailhead for a backpacking expedition?

Will an autonomous car bring me to pickup a load of firewood? or supplies from Home Depot for a remodeling project?

and so on.... Life in much of suburburban and especially rural America is not as conductive to this model as it is in silicon valley or midtown Manhattan.
But you won't use your autopilot for those purposes.

Rather, when you get to the crowded highways that surround our cities, you will have to automatically engage autonomous driving.

Why do I say have to? Because traffic congestion is a real problem, and it doesn't seem to be shrinking*, and probably won't unless we get radical movements to working at home (and then when do all those online deliveries from Amazon arrive?).

Since the majority of traffic delays are about human error, autonomous technology will address those. Worst problem is it will be quite disconcerting when a car drives at the *feasible* speed on a busy highway, not the human-cautious one.

* FWIW I also expect nearly universal congestion pricing. Road repair and maintenance has to be paid for, and general tax revenue is increasingly not a tappable source (being tied up with aging populations etc.). However I am entirely cognizant of the huge political issues around that. That approach to infrastructure finance may turn into one of the durable legacies of the current US Administration (not trying to start a political debate about the possibility of that, the desirability of that, etc. -- just noting that it would seem to fit with intended policies re private investment in infrastructure etc.).
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by Valuethinker »

jharkin wrote:
alfaspider wrote:
You are right that is very sociological. However, one thing to keep in mind from a sociological standpoint is that urbanization is still a trend, and the individual or family farmer is giving way to big-agra megafarms. Joe farmer may not want a drone to drop supplies, but his opinion won't matter if Monsanto runs the farm. His children have already left the farm and work in city jobs. They use the automated car so they can read the newspaper on the way to work. To a large degree, the automation does increase their mobility and personal freedom.
Ok, so we kill the small farmer( I dont like that but that's another discussion)...
I am pretty sure, if we checked the statistics, that the "small farmer" in America died 30+ years ago. Farms now are huge corporations-- they may be family corporations (one farming family that stayed in the business and got big by buying other farms). But they are huge farms-- multi million dollar producers.

Those "small farmers" that remain in America, are, largely, I believe, hobby farmers or ones who have another primary source of family income.

Note that large farmers will be number one on autonomous farm vehicles. That kind of robot is already in use (one combine harvester, manned, leading a row of them unmanned) at least in demonstration.
What about Joe 6 pack who owns a boat and takes his family cruising the lake on weekends, or fishes. Does he call an uber to tow his boat trailer?

Same applies to the high rolling family with a kid that competes in equestrian - will uber haul their horse trailer?

You already mentioned my drive down dirt forest roads to a backwoods campsite is done.

And forget about the folks wheeling 4x4s in offroad parks.
There's certainly no problem renting 4x4s for the weekend -- in fact there might be a whole new business around that. However the market you describe isn't enormous in all car users. 5%? 10%? And autonomous systems will presumably be able to be shut off-- for the weekend use.
And so on. I worry its going to completely kill off individuality and we will all be living in perfectly safe mind numbing conformity... All living in a big mega city in identical apartments with identical jobs and identical hobbies (because there wont be many options to choose from and anything not "safe' will be legislated out of existence for our own good) surrounded by a sea of drone operated farms/factories.

Hopefully we will at least be allowed to turn off our telescreen's once in a while........
It's a long way from a car with an autopilot to 1984 ! ;-). The reality is that technology in some ways makes us more similar, but in other ways allows differentiation-- consider how the 100 channel TV world has produced shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad or Mad Men, none of which could have been created under the old 3 network oligopoly. For an absolutely perfect example of that (same writers, many of the same team) consider Homicide: Life on the Street (network TV, very good, but somewhat conventional) vs. The Wire (perhaps the greatest tv ever made).

We all use Facebook (nearly 1 billion of us, anyways) but we all use it in different ways, to create our own unique personalized space. Technology can go both ways on that. AFAIK there's no modern equivalent of "Amos and Andy"-- a show which most American households (that had a radio) must have listened to.

As to the built environment. That doesn't change very rapidly. We still live in 100 year old homes, some of us. Americans live in suburbs now, they will live in suburbs in 50 years time.

Autonomous vehicles do open up the possibility of commuting *further*-- people commuting from even further flung exurbs. Because the real cost of commuting is the time cost, and if the car drives for you, then that matters less. Imagine having answered all your morning emails before you get to your desk?

Traffic is so bad in some Asian cities that cars come equipped with porto-potties, so no reason you couldn't do that in America. That does suggest that autonomous cars could make traffic *worse*.
( I'd love to point back to an earlier thread where somebody brought up the Sully Sullenberger editorial where he pointed out that the industry should look to the precedent of automation in commercial aviation where the technology is used to augment human decision making, not replace it)
Commercial pilots are highly trained and have vast experience flying their planes to all kinds of destinations in all kinds of conditions. It's a profession. Even so, (see William Langewische's brilliant Fly By Wire about Sullenberger's flight), Airbus analyzed the causes of airplane crashes, and it was pilot error which was far and away the most significant cause of airplane crash (a local private school lost 20 boys on the Tenerife one-- the famous one where the First Officer failed to overrule the veteran KLM (Swissair?) pilot who went to takeoff in the morning fog; the worst aviation disaster in history pre 9-11 - 583 dead).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster

And so was born the Airbus control philosophy, which prevents the pilot from making some lethal mistakes.

Car accidents are primarily caused by human error. Someone very dear to me lies beneath cold Canadian soil because of driver human error.

The more we take the human out of the loop in driving, the better, in my view.
clutchied
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by clutchied »

I like to buy BMW's that are about 5-8 years old from private parties who have maintained them well.

I either buy them with 70,000ish or over 100k on the clock b/c of repair cycles that can be very expensive.

Most of the time the niggling issues have presented and been fixed at those points.


the price points are usually about 25 -30% of new with usually 50% of the remaining life left. I only buy cars with service histories.


currently have 2 older BMW's with 183,000 and 99,000. They are both wonderful cars, but they are performance vehicles and as such parts wear out and have to be replaced which I am usually able to repair myself.
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by Valuethinker »

jharkin wrote:I still think that you are all missing a major issue - and its not technological, its socialogical.

Outside of this board, whee most people seem to hate cars for some reason ???? , most Americans LOVE cars and LOVE driving. That mindset wont change overnight.
Not true of this board-- look at the 100+ long post car discussions! And I think you overstate how much Americans love driving. I don't hear many people tell me they love their morning commute*.

The charms of the open road, aren't, if the roads are not open. Most Americans live in urban megalopoli and that seems to be increasing not decreasing. Think Atlanta which was less than 1 million in 1955 say and is 6+ million now? Or Washington DC. Or Houston. Or Phoenix. Or DFW. Whereas a lot of middle to smaller sized cities (Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, etc.) are shrinking.
Maybe a farmer can call in a drone to air drop supplies... doesn't mean s/he is necessarily going to want to. People like control and being able to do what they want, where they want when they want. That wont change quickly.
Do you know many farmers? In my experience they are heavily technological (satellite guidance for ploughing etc.), and the are desperately time poor. Small businessmen, highly capital intensive, who work nearly 24/7 at certain times of the year.

If a spare part can be dropped off in hours and they can get that Combine back on the fields, they'll grab at it. And they already use drones to keep track of fields & herds, etc.

I've always been sceptical of drone deliveries. Seemed like the sort of thing Silicon Valley techies would dream up as a great idea, of marginal utility in the real world. *but* farmers? That's one market I can actually see the need. You have isolation, and you have need.
America changed form a society of walking and horse carriages to a cars almost overnight, because it was a change that INCREASED mobility and personal freedom. Many people will see this autonomous driving wave as taking freedom away, and it will be resisted.
Nothing like overnight. Took decades and Henry Ford. And the gas stations had to be built, and the paved roads. One of the reasons Bonnie and Clyde were able to get away with it for as long as they did was that the US was just not that well linked up. It really wasn't until President Eisenhower and the Interstates that America became a truly "auto culture".

Autonomous driving *increases* freedom. Gives people back time, which is the thing they don't have now.

Also, if you have ever dealt with the under 20s (even under 30s) they have a completely different relationship with technology than we do. Life, to them, is another ap that you download. They will take to this like ducks to water. The younger generation does not define itself by its cars, the way the Boomers did.

* life satisfaction decreases with time spent commuting. However if you commute by public transport, that effect is generally attenuated or not present-- probably because you can work, or daydream out the window. I imagine that the patrons of the New York Metro subway system don't have the same positive effects.
Last edited by Valuethinker on Thu Jun 22, 2017 12:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Valuethinker
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by Valuethinker »

wrongfunds wrote:
Isn't $20k a car a more useful benchmark, because that's much closer to what the average people pay for a new car?
Actually NO because the number is $30K+ I just don't remember if that is median or average new car purchased in America.

By the way your previous reply is absolutely spot on regarding the tipping point and self-driving and electrical cars becoming prevalent in less than 2 decades.
The way a guy from BMW in Europe explained it to me was "a usership model rather than an ownership model". People rent (lease) their cars, and change them every 4-5 years. That seems to be the modern pattern, at least for new cars. It's easier then to upgrade to a new driving technology.

And the $30k number (which doesn't surprise me, but nonetheless seems very high in a financial sense) is sustained by the pattern of car finance. For better or for worse it allows people to drive nicer cars.

Autonomous vehicles & EV

I must admit I (was) sceptical about 2 decades. Average car lasts 13 years, etc. But I have been persuaded (by 1 or 2 posters here) to look at it and think a bit more laterally. It *is* possible and I can see external factors that could make it happen.

On autonomous vehicles it will be about traffic congestion. Places like California where the congestion is awful and likely to get worse. At an (absolute) guess autonomous vehicles will enable thru-puts of 20-30% higher on roads, simply by avoiding human error, That's got to look pretty attractive to city planners and politicians (and voters!) in L.A. and the Bay Area.

California first, but then places like Atlanta because the scale of the problem is so large. Houston perhaps? Southern Ontario (see next paragraph) where there is one main E to W highway.

What's going to happen is that on busy highways at busy times, you won't be allowed on unless you can go autonomous. This will attract howls and screams (just like HOV lanes did), but the traffic problems are so bad, and the construction of additional highways is just infeasible, particularly in mountainous areas like Los Angeles or where the expropriation of property would be too expensive, that something will be done when the technology presents itself. If Ontario can build the 22 lane Highway (the Macdonald-Cartier/ 401 in the northern edge of Toronto) and still have horrendous traffic problems then one can see the limits of road building.

EVs there are external factors and we'd have to get into politics. But, it's all starting to happen much faster than I expected-- again I have had to revise my expectations. The technology is happening faster than I thought-- hitting that say 350 mile range limit, which is c. what a tank of gasoline can do. A related point is urban air pollution is back on the agenda -- NOX limits and also an increasing awareness of the very serious hazards around PM 2.5 particles. London is going towards being a total Low Emission Zone in the next 15 or so years-- and that's a city of 9 (will be 10) million people.

I had thought "p--k oil demand" was a myth. Now? Not so sure. And it could be sooner than I had imagined.
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by Valuethinker »

alfaspider wrote:
Valuethinker wrote:
bottlecap wrote:Until $10,000 self-driving cars are available, there is not concern. That's decades off. And if they outlawed manual driving cars without phasing them out, where would we put them? America's next big business would be scrap yards.

Since the update of the OP, I think the answer to the initial question is that luxury cars, particularly BMW's (which the author mentions), are more expensive to buy, more expensive to repair and maintain, are less reliable, and will not outlast non-luxury cars.

So no, a 4 year old $40,000 BMW is not more likely to last another 20 years than any other car and will cost gobs and gobs of money to fix and maintain over that period. And I wouldn't count on much residual value for a 24 year old BMW, either.

JT
Out of curiousity can you still buy a car for $10k (new car) in America? I realize most people lease these days (new cars) so that is somewhat academic, but is there such a thing as a $10k car?

Isn't $20k a car a more useful benchmark, because that's much closer to what the average people pay for a new car?

I think you'd struggle to find a car for the equivalent of USD 10k in the UK. Dacia maybe (Romanian Renault, taken the world by storm).
It is possible. I know someone who paid $9,500 for a new Chevy Spark. Mitsubishi Mirage can also be had for under $10k. I'm not sure I'd actually want to drive either, but it can be done. You are right that $20k is probably a better benchmark. That's what you'd expect to pay for a medium-optioned compact sedan like a Honda Civic or Mazda 3.
Thank you. Without checking, besides the mini cars (and the BMW Mini is not a minicar ;-)) you'd be in the land of the Dacia here (I think they do an SUV for less than £10k which is about $12,000 these days). Perhaps a cheap Korean.
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by Valuethinker »

westie wrote:buy a 3 year old Cadillac?
If you want a European style driver experience it just doesn't have it.

I'd rather have a Lexus if I was going that route.
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munemaker
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by munemaker »

I recently heard on Clark Howard that there is a sweet spot in the market right now for 3 year old sedans (not trucks, not SUVs), especially 3 year old luxury sedans.

What do you mean by "smarter?" Luxury cars, almost by definition, are not going to be the low cost alternative. Because of the extra features, they are generally not going to be the most reliable alternative, although some may be reliable.

Looking at it from a value perspective, if what Clark Howard says is true, a 3 year old luxury car may be a smart purchase right now.
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by scooterdog »

Fascinating discussion everybody! From the apples/oranges of Lexus vs. German luxury cars (note: I own both, and both bought used) to self-driving cars and the probability/improbability of any of this happening sooner than we think (or later as the case may be). Even Peak Oil - except that it was not on the demand side, Hubbel's theory was Peak Oil was on the supply side, that being a non-renewable source would run out of supply.

Wikipedia has some interesting graphs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

Anyway, wanted to say that another sociological dimension arguing against self-driving cars is a legal system adjustment: who will take on the huge liability for injury and death that will occur (admittedly they should be few but they will happen) due to an automatic system driving for them? I can easily put any autonomous-driving car company out of business, and quickly.
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by Maverick3320 »

Since this has turned into an electric/autonomous car discussion, here's how it will play out:

1. Autonomous cars will become more prevalent
2. At some point, a tipping point will be reached where a large consensus (backed by science) will show that autonomous cars are simply much safer
3. Legislators will mandate autonomous driving for most vehicles
4. Non-autonomous driving will become almost like flying a light plane: it will require fees, additional licenses, etc. Driving your own vehicle will slowly become a relic of the past, and a somewhat expensive hobby. Parents will wow their children with tales about how people used to pilot 4000 pound hunks of metal hurtling down the road at 80+ MPH with no computer to help them (gasp!)
5. Society profits

6. Skynet takes over the world.
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by Tracyfaa »

happy77 wrote:Today, buying any car other than a self-driving car(Tesla?) is not a smart purchase.

There is a revolution coming in the automobile world. Few more years, and all current car ownerships and insurance models will be history.

We are living in the last years of manual driving.

So, just wait for fully automated mobility services with different levels of ETA and comfort; and pay a monthly fixed or variable service fees just like any other utility. And the best part is – you don’t have to drive.

And yes, if you love driving, just buy a performance car now without giving any thoughts to money. In few years, all manual driving would be banned and the only resort for car lovers would be to shell out money at specialized private tracks to manually drive a car .

LOL!!!
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by jharkin »

Valuethinker wrote: But you won't use your autopilot for those purposes.

Rather, when you get to the crowded highways that surround our cities, you will have to automatically engage autonomous driving..
If that's the case sure, I can get on board with that. But what a lot of folks are talking about is that autopilot cars will not be personally owned at all. Cars will be a service you hire like subways and buses. I just dont see that working as well in rural areas and rural lifestyles.

Valuethinker wrote:
I am pretty sure, if we checked the statistics, that the "small farmer" in America died 30+ years ago. Farms now are huge corporations-- they may be family corporations (one farming family that stayed in the business and got big by buying other farms). But they are huge farms-- multi million dollar producers.

Those "small farmers" that remain in America, are, largely, I believe, hobby farmers or ones who have another primary source of family income.

Must be the area you live in. I live in New England and small farming is acutally GROWING tremendously. There are at least a half dozen small family farms in my town alone, we get lots of our produce from farmstands and farm-to-table restaraunts are the latest rage, especially in New Hampshire and particularly Vermont. There has been a lot of writing, editorials in t Boston globe etc, that small local farming might be really big in the future since it eliminates a lot of complexity/long distance transport cost of current centralized agriculture.

I think society would loose a lot of we only had one big mega farm and "factory" produced food to choose from.

Maybe Im a luddite, maybe I was born a century too late. But I just dont see these developments as good things.

Valuethinker wrote: It's a long way from a car with an autopilot to 1984 ! ;-). The reality is that technology in some ways makes us more similar, but in other ways allows differentiation-- consider how the 100 channel TV world has produced shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad or Mad Men, none of which could have been created under the old 3 network oligopoly. For an absolutely perfect example of that (same writers, many of the same team) consider Homicide: Life on the Street (network TV, very good, but somewhat conventional) vs. The Wire (perhaps the greatest tv ever made).
But a lot of this technology is converting us to a culture that just consumes pre-packaged entertainment and stares at screens all day. YOu are describing a future where our only option is to live in a mgacity and be attached to screens 24/7. I dont find that healthy (and I work in tech). I want more options.

Valuethinker wrote: We all use Facebook (nearly 1 billion of us, anyways) but we all use it in different ways, to create our own unique personalized space. Technology can go both ways on that. AFAIK there's no modern equivalent of "Amos and Andy"-- a show which most American households (that had a radio) must have listened to.
I think you dont realize how much you are projecting the needs of a narrow few onto all. (and I say that as one of these 'few' on facebook) That's still only 1/7 of the world population. Far from everyone.

Valuethinker wrote: As to the built environment. That doesn't change very rapidly. We still live in 100 year old homes, some of us. Americans live in suburbs now, they will live in suburbs in 50 years time.
I know, I live in a 220 year old home. And that's my point, is you are not gong to have everyone living in Manhattan or Tokyo in 50 years - there will still be people living in Kansas 100 miles from something resembling a city, in rural India, in the Australian outback, in the African bush. I think the tech sector "deep thinkers" who have never ventured outside of southern California dont quite get that.
Valuethinker wrote: Autonomous vehicles do open up the possibility of commuting *further*-- people commuting from even further flung exurbs. Because the real cost of commuting is the time cost, and if the car drives for you, then that matters less. Imagine having answered all your morning emails before you get to your desk?

Traffic is so bad in some Asian cities that cars come equipped with porto-potties, so no reason you couldn't do that in America. That does suggest that autonomous cars could make traffic *worse*.

I am fine with that as I would love to live farther from Boston and not have to sit in an hour of traffic. That not my concern.

And I am familiar with 3rd world traffic. I've sat in 4 hour jam ups in Mumbai more than once... and in Shanghai and elsewhere...

Valuethinker wrote: Commercial pilots are highly trained and have vast experience flying their planes to all kinds of destinations in all kinds of conditions. It's a profession. Even so, (see William Langewische's brilliant Fly By Wire about Sullenberger's flight), Airbus analyzed the causes of airplane crashes, and it was pilot error which was far and away the most significant cause of airplane crash (a local private school lost 20 boys on the Tenerife one-- the famous one where the First Officer failed to overrule the veteran KLM (Swissair?) pilot who went to takeoff in the morning fog; the worst aviation disaster in history pre 9-11 - 583 dead).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster

And so was born the Airbus control philosophy, which prevents the pilot from making some lethal mistakes.

Car accidents are primarily caused by human error. Someone very dear to me lies beneath cold Canadian soil because of driver human error.

The more we take the human out of the loop in driving, the better, in my view.
Take a read of the Sully interview and tell me what you think.
http://www.thedrive.com/tech/8300/can-s ... iving-cars\

His point is not that autonomy is bad, he thinks that trusting it completely to replace humans is very premature. Using it to set boundaries to keep us out of trouble while still relying on human decision making is the better approach right now. And this makes a lot of logical sense to me. Until we perfect AI there are always going to be situations we cant predict where human adaptability and creative thinking is key.



I think we are just never going to see eye to eye on this... And thats ok, I'm just making my opinion clear.
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by lthenderson »

One thing that I never see mentioned with autonomous vehicles is how long they will last. Living in the Midwest with regular freeze thaw cycles all winter long, the roads are abysmal by spring. There are regular axle snapping potholes all over that we as drivers become familiar with and can easily avoid but how about autonomous vehicles? I can't count the number of times I've swerved around tire puncturing steel shards from exploded tires or nail studded pieces of wood, even things like spilled paint and other leaking substances. What will an autonomous vehicle do? How about following that truck hauling small gravel and sand that is sandblasting me from 100 feet away? I accelerate and quickly put that behind me but will adaptive cruise leave me forever behind that truck getting sandblasted all the way to my destination? Whenever I see videos of autonomous vehicles doing their thing, they are always driving in idea conditions. I've never driven in such conditions.
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by sunny_socal »

Those who imagine that all cars will be on autopilot within a few years needs to get out more. There's a world beyond silicon valley! There are millions of people driving in Asia for example, roads aren't marked consistently and drivers behave unpredictably. Drone cars are possible from a technical sense but in practical terms it's not happening in our lifetime.
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by Valuethinker »

scooterdog wrote:Fascinating discussion everybody! From the apples/oranges of Lexus vs. German luxury cars (note: I own both, and both bought used) to self-driving cars and the probability/improbability of any of this happening sooner than we think (or later as the case may be). Even P* O* - except that it was not on the demand side, Hubbel's theory was P* O* was on the supply side, that being a non-renewable source would run out of supply.

Wikipedia has some interesting graphs. [
Hi, we are not allowed to use that term here -- PO. Reason being (mods showed us) it attracts really awful drive by trolling, antisemitic etc. The worst.

In any case, PO has receded. It's all about a demand peak now. Given environmental factors plus fracking technology: "the Stone Age did not end because mankind ran out of stones"--Sheikh Yamani, Saudi Oil Minister in the 1970s & 80s.
Anyway, wanted to say that another sociological dimension arguing against self-driving cars is a legal system adjustment: who will take on the huge liability for injury and death that will occur (admittedly they should be few but they will happen) due to an automatic system driving for them? I can easily put any autonomous-driving car company out of business, and quickly.
The first thing to note is that autonomous vehicles will be much safer than human guided ones-- most accidents are human error. In the long run (think Robert Heinlein) what will be a crime will be driving *without* your autonomous systems on. I think it's one of Heinlein's novels where the character casually mentions the death penalty for doing that in rush hour in a major urban centre?

(ahh no. It's Larry Niven's Gil The Arm series. In a world where you can be carved up for organs, that will then lengthen the life of every other taxpayer and voter, he postulates a long list of death penalties-- including driving without an autopilot).

Second, if the US does not address this then other countries where the tort litigation system is less exiguous will and the US will lose a major new area of technology and industry (which was really created by DARPA money ie by US government funding of R&D).

You may remember that Britain fell behind France, US, Germany in the automotive race because of the "Red Flag Rule"? A man was required to walk out in front of any motor vehicle, carrying a red flag-- that was an Act of Parliament. Also cars drove down the centre of the road until Parliament passed a law saying they had to drive on the left hand side (the Americans didn't get the memo ;-)).

I think US authorities would be mindful of this precedent and the lost commercial opportunity. Plus of course the technology has huge military applications (hence DARPA's decades long pursuit of it).

So I suspect that laws would be passed to address that problem.

Consider the Anderson Act, which made possible the civilian nuclear power industry in the USA by providing a maximum private sector limit for claims against a nuclear accident.
Last edited by Valuethinker on Fri Jun 23, 2017 8:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
indexonlyplease
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by indexonlyplease »

Sure it is great to drive a nice sports car if you can:

pay cash for the higher cost up front
have extra money to repair because it cost at least twice the money to fix a sports car.

Example, my son drive a 2009 mustang. The ac evaporator went out $2000.00. My friend owns a BMW 3 2009 325, ac evaporator went out cost $4000.00 Car cost twice the money to purchase and twice the money to fix.


So you better have extra cash and really enjoy the car and not complain when it breaks.


It's that simple.
Valuethinker
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by Valuethinker »

sunny_socal wrote:Those who imagine that all cars will be on autopilot within a few years needs to get out more. There's a world beyond silicon valley! There are millions of people driving in Asia for example, roads aren't marked consistently and drivers behave unpredictably. Drone cars are possible from a technical sense but in practical terms it's not happening in our lifetime.
Turn it round. Asia also has the most technologically advanced societies. South Korea. Japan. Singapore. Hong Kong. Taiwan. China itself in some ways (consider their high speed trains vs. the ones the US does not have).

Japan it's a love of technology and rapidly aging demographics. They will go first on this technology. South Korea ditto.

And you have relatively centralized governments-- Singapore and PRC in particular- -that like technological solutions. "Make it so, Mr. Lee Kwan Yew".

When the technologies work, some parts of Asia will probably get there a lot faster than North America.

Since road deaths now kill more than 1 million people pa worldwide, and most of those deaths are in Emerging Markets, there is every incentive for places like India to jump on the bandwagon early. Whether they will or not, given the costs, etc. remains to be seen.

But there's definitely a future in Asia and Africa for private sector built toll highways. The governments just can not afford to build them and keep them repaired. Rather in the way that rich people in NYC might never take the bus, subway or bicycle-- they have chauffeurs, or they have cabs. In a place where the vast majority of people (in Manhattan below the Park anyways) don't drive and may not even own a car. That sounds a lot like parts of Asia to me. Those toll highways could be set for autonomous vehicles-- if you think of the traffic jams in say, Lagos, it would make sense.
Valuethinker
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Re: is luxury car a smarter purchase?

Post by Valuethinker »

lthenderson wrote:One thing that I never see mentioned with autonomous vehicles is how long they will last. Living in the Midwest with regular freeze thaw cycles all winter long, the roads are abysmal by spring. There are regular axle snapping potholes all over that we as drivers become familiar with and can easily avoid but how about autonomous vehicles? I can't count the number of times I've swerved around tire puncturing steel shards from exploded tires or nail studded pieces of wood, even things like spilled paint and other leaking substances. What will an autonomous vehicle do? How about following that truck hauling small gravel and sand that is sandblasting me from 100 feet away? I accelerate and quickly put that behind me but will adaptive cruise leave me forever behind that truck getting sandblasted all the way to my destination? Whenever I see videos of autonomous vehicles doing their thing, they are always driving in idea conditions. I've never driven in such conditions.
The problems you describe are very real: I think Volvo made similar points about Sweden.

On the other hand, in Iowa you probably don't have too many traffic jams?

I think it's probably *easier* for an autonomous vehicle to avoid potholes and other bad road obstacles-- faster reactions than a human.

Driving behind a sand gritter? Not sure what, if anything, it would do.

This technology will come first to high traffic congestion areas, like urban and near urban highways. LA, SF Bay Area, Atlanta, the Ruhr, greater Tokyo, Seoul, Toronto 401, NYC, Washington DC area. The first 2, at least, don't have big issues with bad weather.
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