• Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    2 days ago

    It’s OK, we’ll just rent vehicles per journey, and in order to make things more efficient, put extra seats in and run bigger cars between popular destinations. Maybe even use rails for really popular places.

    Maybe they’ll think of a name for this in the future.

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Then maybe the auto industry should stop donating to Republicans.

    The numbers don’t lie. Republicans are bad for our economy. Bad economy means people don’t buy the 1st or 2nd most expensive thing they’ll ever buy (since many will never be homeowners).

  • bassad@jlai.lu
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    1 day ago

    Maybe it is time to switch to communities built not around cars?

    Maybe we could have 4 days weeks and more work-at-home to save gas?

      • AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Without public transportation they aren’t. When you live 20 miles from your job in Bumfuck, USA how do you get there without a vehicle?

        • VeganPizza69 Ⓥ@lemmy.vg
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          21 hours ago

          No, they still are. You can always turn a luxury into a relative need by stretching out resource intensity. I could easily make the case for commuting with rockets from the Moon to Earth and back, or for some billionaire commuting with a private jet. Doesn’t make it not a luxury.

          If you hate it, protest against the car system and suburbia, and for dense urban development with public transit. There is no alternative.

        • SnarkoPolo@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Dude, I’m in the San Diego area. And if I had to rely on the bus, a simple grocery shopping trip would take at least 3 hours, not counting a mile and a half walk to and from the nearest stop. I did take a train and an express bus to work, because it happened to stop directly at my workplace.

  • jj4211@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    He has been thinking about replacing his 2020 Ford F-150 pickup truck

    Just… wtf… Your car is only 6 years old and it’s just so old that you really think to need to replace it? And your story is so relatable it lands in an article? How much difference can you even see between that 2020 and a 2026 model really?

      • pachrist@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Nah, the guy is probably badly upside down on the loan, and the truck is depreciating so fast he won’t be able to roll the loan/trade-in over into another truck.

      • jj4211@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I don’t think it’s lying, I was in a lot in 2022 looking at a used 2021 with like 8k miles on it and wondered what they got bought after trading in. The guy said that he actually bought a 2022 of the exact same model, because he didn’t want to be seen driving anything but the current years model.

        They certainly exist and can be found to quote, just seems out of touch to treat the situation as somehow “worrying” enough to make the cut. Figured you probably could have found someone with at least a decade old car to comment…

        • TrollTrollrolllol@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          “I don’t want to be seen driving last years model” Rolls the $36k he still owns on that old truck into the $100k loan on the new one.

    • rothaine@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      If they are a frequent driver, they could be putting 20k-25k a year on their truck. Like yeah I wouldn’t want a Ford with 120k miles on it either.

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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      3 days ago

      I mean, it’s a Ford tho.

      Surprisingly, a majority of Fords made in the 90’s are still on the road today!

      …It’s simply not worth the expense to haul them away. XD

      Jk

      How much difference can you even see between that 2020 and a 2026 model really?

      I wonder if it was manufactured in that weird sweet (bitter?) spot where “supply chain issues” made everyone use cheaper parts and forego many chip-based components entirely.

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I don’t want air ride and I don’t want 10 speed auto. My father got a 2020 F350 with a 10 speed auto and it turned itself to gravel. It’s a POS that I’m hounding him to sell once it’s payed off. Who the fuck thought a press on timing gear was a good idea?

        My father is a boomer and can be shamed into vanity purchases. That’s who’s speeding 100k on trucks.

  • BranBucket@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Corporations pay stagnant wages, raise prices, funnel money out of the economy to shareholders who hoard wealth, and then get worried when there’s no one left who can buy their products?

    Tell me again why we think C-Suite folks are smart?

    Right, because they’ll get bailed out again and stay rich. That’s why.

    It’s a god damn disgrace.

    I’m sure someone will come around and tell me how complicated economics is and why we should trust business and industry leaders who went to school for this sort of thing, like basic pattern recognition and common sense couldn’t have predicted that people who can barely afford groceries would stop buying cars…

    Fuck.

    • treesquid@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      The government made money on the auto bailouts. That actually turned out to be a good investment. Cash for Clunkers was the real bailout: taxpayers paid thousands of dollars to people buying new cars so they’d destroy their old car instead of putting it into the used car market, driving up the prices of all cars and denying lower-income folks the ability to purchase a reasonable car for a reasonable price. Then Covid hit and demand shot through the roof and we all got fucked.

  • Octagon9561@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    If I’m buying a car it would be a BYD, not some gas guzzler by an overpriced American manufacturer which are laughing stocks all over the world.

  • CannedYeet@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    This is kind of a misleading statistic. Cars have gotten more reliable. There’s less reason to buy new. Saavy buyers buy used so the average new car buyer is increasingly from the subset of the population that’s materialistic and bad with money.