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But don't worry, you will be at moderate risk of the car breaking down before 10,000 miles and you can't fix the part because it has been deliberately engineered so that mechanics can't fix it and it has to be replaced.
https://xcancel.com/unusual_whales/status/1987985187918192870
Do cars seriously not hold up 15 years? I'm very obviously not a car toucher, genuine question
Cars can easily hold up 15 years of regular use if maintained properly.
...which costs a lot of money and free time.
The biggest problem is 1) owning a car doesn't mean you know what necessary maintenance even needs done to begin with and 2) almost everybody working paycheck to paycheck means nobody has money or energy to fix shit NOW so small problems get left until theres nothing but big gaping problems you still can't afford to fix
My fucking car has been sitting in the driveway since March because my registration expired and to renew it I needed an inspection done but I can't get an inspection done because "something chewed through the harness" holding my O2 sensor onto my engine or whatever and since the mechanic I usually use said I "had to take it to a dealership because they have the tools needed" I basically was like "well that's never getting done since that sounds expensive"
I could maybe still pay my registration if they'd let me switch it to the new county i live in because they don't require an emissions inspection but like, I still don't have money. And the battery is dead and who knows what else is wrong with it after 6+ months sitting in the driveway
yeah I mean if you're a mechanic then, sure enough you can actually do that but talking commuter vehicles absolutely not. It's not "easily" for most people, it's a huge chunk of your livelihood trying to keep up on these shitboxes if you're barely keeping ends meet lmao
the question rent or car (also food but food is dramatically cheaper day to day) is a question that comes up constantly in the states when you're on the low end
EVs will probably last longer because there's so little maintenance and the battery degradation hype is way overblown
Good God no. Well cared for you get like 5-7 years with regular commuting. Rarely over 300,000 miles or so
I mean, 300,000 miles is a lot more than 5-7 years for most people. Now, American cars don’t last, but my car is old enough to get its drivers license, and it’s still doing pretty damn well. Until I moved into the city this year I was regularly getting 36-38mpg, I’m still getting 30 with my short city driving commutes though. Sitting at 240,000 miles. It’ll probably take about 5 more years to hit 300,000 unless I do some big road trips.
I mean I don't drive much, obv, but I've never had a car younger than 15 years and they all held out for years. Is there like a split here when they enshittified the things that hard?
It's mostly a mileage thing. You can buy a car that old so long as it doesn't have a ton of miles on it. Also, yeah, enshittification hit cars probably before anything else
I think the problem is you need expensive scan tools to diagnose modern cars and even just do basic maintenance.
The scanners aren't nearly as expensive as they used to be. You can get bluetooth OBD2 scan dongles for about $30. Sure those don't have all the features of the pro scan tools, but they'll read codes and that's all most people need.
Can the cheap OBD2 tools reset maintenance intervals, TPMS, etc? My perception was you had to spend a lot more to get scantools that would do that stuff. Newest car I've owned is a 2001, newest bike a 2009 and it was still carbureted, so I've never dealt with the modern stuff personally.
edit: and just to vent, I work on a family member's car pretty often and it's a 2014 - it has no dipsticks. You have to work through a bunch of menus and idle the car until warm before the dash will give you an actual oil level reading. I hate modern cars.
I'm not sure if they can reset the maintenance intervals. All the cars I've owned or worked on, those are reset through menus or other means.
Also 100% agree on modern cars. One of my dads vehicles needed a special factory tool to change the sparkplugs. It's complete bullshit.
That's wild, but it's a problem with specific models/manufacturers, not the entire industry. i have a 2018 car and a 2022 motorcycle and both are pretty maintenance friendly.
Don’t you typically reset the dash lights through codes in the cab? Like, my maintenance light resets by doing something like turning the key five times and pushing a button, I can’t remember because it’s been a few years.
At the very least, it will prevent you from needing to pay the $35 OBDII fee that most mechanics have. They'll still use it because they never believe you when you say what codes yours spit out, but they won't be able to charge you for something you specifically mentioned when you bring your car in.
I have one and I make sure they can see it when I drop my car off.