What do you like about the vehicle you drive and would you have changed anythin about it?
Realized that with my new job I’m at $500/month for gas. Starting to seriously consider a hybrid or electric but damn they expensive. Either way might just need something more reliable than my 320k+ car.
Was literally in that situation back in 2018. 110 mile round trip daily commute, ~$500/mo in gas. Had to fill up every other day.
Bought a 2017 Ford Fusion hybrid and cut my monthly gas expenditures down to about $200. Payments were about $225/mo so I ended up saving $50/mo once the insurance differential was factored in. A tank now lasted me just over a week.
As of 2020, l’m still driving it, but I’ve since moved much closer to work. A tank lasts me about a month now.
As of 2021, I work from home. A tank lasts me 3-4 months on average. Car is paid off.
Also have a 2017 Ford Fusion. Great car. Shows its age but runs like a champ as primary commuter work vehicle. Literally my only complaint is that I didn’t spring for the hybrid.
I’m in northern Ontario, so I’m in the bush quite frequently. I pull trailers, haul 4 wheelers, wood, and other things in the back, and it does it without issue. Decent on fuel, being a truck and it’s mostly reliable… Older though, so I’ve had things break on me, but nothing I couldn’t fix myself.
The S4 is a hella fun car. I drive to Toronto a number of times throughout the year, and its handles the 24hr round trip with ease. Decent on fuel if you stay off the gas. Quite reliable, but the car is known to have a few rather expensive problems. One of which is the PCV, which I plan on replacing next summer as preventive maintenance, along with some other minor maintenance items. Hoping I don’t have to do the timing chain and tensioners any time soon, but it is a 200k km car. This is a 6 speed, so it doesn’t have the issues the DSG models have. It’s also lowered and has an exhaust… It is quite raspy unfortunately. Would like to install a resonator to help get rid of some of it.
I’ve replaced wheel bearings on both. 4WD actuators, some coolant hosing, O2 sensors, fixed the wire harness in the rear doors, patched the cab corners and a handful of other things on the ford (I’ve owned it longer than the S4).
I could go on forever about these two vehicles, but overall they’ve been good to me, and I haven’t had any major issues or have been left stranded (though I almost was a couple times with the ford, but I was able to get home).
I’d say with most vehicles, as long as you take care of them, they’ll take care of you, although there are some exceptions.
I like my car (subaru OBXT) because it is fast and can generally be pretty flexible. I want an electric because gas is staggeringly expensive. Luckily though, I moved to a city that has an electric train and is extremely dense, so I can walk or take the stupidly cheap train. The train tickets also work on the buses, surface rail, boats, and other transit. Spending a lot less on gas, which is nice.
It’s at least defrayed my need for a car within city limits.
I drive a 2000 bmw z3 dispute it being a bmw it’s been quite bullet proof oil changes are a brease you can replace the rear windshield by unzipping a zipper my only complaint is how it occasionally breaks the laws of physics like how it smashed into a giant boulder and only broke off a single reflector and the airbag indicator light works even when there’s no bulb or any light source of any kind the oil separator somehow got water in it and didn’t effect the rest of the engine in any way ultimately it takes a lot to make something go wrong in this car and when they do fixing it will make you question if we are living in a very laggy simulation I’m honestly surprised I haven’t lagged into the backrooms in this car yet
Drive a 2018 Nissan leaf, fantastic car except for the fact that it uses CHADeMO for DC fast charging (cancelled connector, getting harder to find)
Would recommend getting an EV, especially if you can charge at home. With tax credits and the savings in gas you’ll have paid the difference before you’re done with the car for sure.
I’m looking at getting a used leaf or a bolt. Do you know what the battery range degradation after 5 years would be approximately? 30%? Is there likely to be some sort of cascading failure at some point that would necessitate a battery replacement? Or are they good to drive to hundreds of thousands of miles with reduced range?
Mine needed a full battery replacement after almost 5 years due to a defect, many 2018-2020 models will also have gotten the same due to the same issue. If you get one of those you get a new pack with ~170 Miles (default was 155 for mine)
Before turning it in I’d gone down to an estimated 125-130ish from the 155 it started at, honestly it didn’t really feel like it’d lost much range at all, had the battery not failed due to a manufacturing efect I feel I’d have gotten at least another 10 years before really feeling the squeeze. That’s gonna depend on how often you DC fast charge vs level 1 or 2 slow charge, though. Then again, I’d mostly used DC fast charging to charge that battery so idk how much it ACTUALLY hurts the battery in the long run.
If given the choice I’d go for a bolt, preferably one with the refurb batteries from THEIR recall. Main reason being slightly more miles on the battery + CCS-1 (More common than CHADeMO and adaptable to NACS) DC fast charging
My leaf does a daily 46 mile one way commute and I get home with 35-40% charge every day, which I’d say isn’t bad at all. If you don’t road trip it, it rules
2017 Leaf here. It’s my first EV and I can’t see myself going back. The fact that I never have to put gas in it hasn’t gotten old. I should note that 2017 is ancient in EV years so the range is pretty bad. I can only rely on this as my primary vehicle because my partner has a gas car.
I love the fact that I have no modern annoyances. No cacophony of binging noises to warn me about every small pointless thing: a car passing me, minor speeding, upcoming cameras, a car braking in front, reversing towards an object. Nice and quiet… just the hum of the engine. I don’t think I can drive a ‘new’ car.
2016 Toyota Camry. Up until that, I always bought used old beaters and ran them into the ground, but in 2017, my new job required a car less than 6 years old, so I bought the Camry.
I might be jinxing myself, but, besides normal (disposable) things like tires and brakes and minor tune ups, it hasn’t needed any major repairs since I bought it.
I bought a used 2015 Camry and have had no problems that I couldn’t handle myself. Or just ignore, like tire pressure sensors that give false failure signals.
I bought a 2019 Corolla, the Camry’s cheaper cousin, for the same reason. Hoping it lasts til 200,000 miles with no issues. 300K would be fantastic. Last Toyota I had was a Tacoma and it made it to 270K buy replaced the transmission twice 😭
I have one of the new Nightsters, it’s a harley-davidson that isn’t a vibrating air cooled dinosaur. It’s smooth, fast, and quiet. It handles great. It gets decent gas mileage.
If it’s raining or cold, I drive an old Samurai. It’s not a vehicle for those on the spectrum like myself who have trouble talking to people, because it sometimes draws a crowd.
I currently drive a hybrid escape, ~600 miles per 14.5gal tank, pretty happy with it. Mine has the lane/brake assist but I turned off the lane since my state is so bad at painting lines it was trying to steer me out of lanes due to old lines being still visible or no lines being visible meant it was worthless too. That’s really my only complaint so far, had it 2 years now.
My driving is a mix of city and highway, I average low-mid 40s
I went from £400 a month fuel spend to just over £100 going to hybrid. My insurance came down from £700ish to £450 p/y (all the anti collision toys etc). The services were 4-600 a year now 250-300. It’s been 4 1/2 years and I’m keeping it. It cost me about 10k more than I’d normally pay for a car and I reckon I’ve made my money back and then some. That anti collision stuff has also saved my arse a couple of times.
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