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One thing I feel like we discuss rarely here is cars.
I drive a late 90s/early 00s German sedan. When I made less money, I spent a good amount of time wrenching on it. I wanted to have some minimal competence and understanding of the car, and it was a great way to save money.
It still would be a great way to save money - I won't kid myself there - but the stress of preparing for a maintenance job, buying the specialized tools/parts, and working in my extremely cramped garage has lost some magic. I still feel accomplished doing little things but when I'm constantly under pressure to be doing work or parenting, there's less magic in DIY. Bike maintenance provides a similar dopamine hit with far less commitment.
That said, I just picked it up from the mechanic this week after a month-long absence and some significant work being done. I truly do not understand how people put up with newer cars.
This thing is absolutely sublime. It strikes a perfect balance between the precision and feedback from all of its systems while driving and what you'd define as "luxury" and comfort. I splurged on an aftermarket exhaust that fades into the background on the highway and absolutely rips when I'm driving like I stole it late at night on more empty roads.
Not to mention how it looks. Of course, any car you see as a teenager is what you base everything else on, but the slightly angular design language of this period right before everything turned into aero blobs for fuel efficiency and crash standards just really gets me going. I absolutely still look back at it when walking into the office and find myself getting excited when I step back into it after a long day.
Whenever I'm on the road watching hundreds of drones driving dirty shitboxes without using their turn signals or trying to drive efficiently, I fall into such a superiority complex. How could you care so little about something you do so much? For a country supposedly in love with its cars, it would be tough for Americans to give less of a shit about how driving feels and how they perform at it. For all I'm made fun of about the time and money I've invested in an older car, when I spread that out over the time I've used it and the joy I derive from it it seems like an obvious trade.
I simply don't give a shit. I bought a nine year old Prius and drove it into the ground. Then I bought a four year old Prius which I am currently driving into the ground. 60 miles a gallon. Maintenance manual recommends oil changes every 15k miles. That's about all it needs to work flawlessly for 150+k miles. It even has a volume knob.
How much do you care about your pillowcases? You presumably spend more time on them then in your car.
The Prius really is a fantastic car! My first car was a 2004 model, had over 300k miles on it when it finally died (I don’t know the actual # because the odometer broke at 299,999)
You "used Prius" guys, how have the batteries held up? I always understood that that was a major limit to service life, but I might be wrong.
Newer Priuses have a 10 year manufacturer battery warranty, so that counts for something.
My last car was 14 years old when I got rid of it and the batter was still fine (it had other problems I got tired of dealing with).
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Mine definitely degraded with time but did not fail (my catalytic converter went which was ultimately what caused me to ditch the car). mpg went from around 55 at 200 k miles to 42 mpg at 200 k miles). I knew someone who refurbished his battery which cost him relatively little to do (he did it himself). The batteries used to just be a bunch of nicad cells in series and when a battery “went bad” it’s usually just a few cells which can be replaced (cheap to diy, I don’t even know if it’s a service most shops would do).
I’m also unsure how this works with newer Priuses since I think Toyota switched all of their hybrids to lipo batteries in 2016.
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They do eventually go bad, but it is often just 1 or 2 cells, you can just swap those 2 cells and the battery is good again, they are basically made up of lots and lots of laptop battery blades. I've done it with success.
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