This website was founded three years ago, in the middle of a global pandemic that sent car prices to the moon. While cars have become slowly more affordable since peaking in 2022, my favorite affordability index shows that prices are finally down to below a level we saw before this website. That’s good news, albeit of the temporary variety.
The Morning Dump sat out yesterday as I ran through New York’s Javits Center, taking blurry photos of Subarus and getting trapped in cars. Today, we’re back, with a bit of good news followed by some bad news. Automakers are saying they’re going to pause raising rates because of tariffs, but only for so long. I’ll explain just how long you have based on what automakers are saying.
These tariffs probably help China, which already has a huge lead when it comes to electrification. That’s a risk to Tesla in China, and the last thing that Tesla needs is more risk at this point, as its sales are cratering in California. The good news for Tesla is that Musk seems to be creating an entire legion of buyers with half his genetic material.
The New Car Affordability Index Hasn’t Been This Low Since June 2021
There are many commodities, financial instruments, and items whose value can fluctuate immediately with the news. Cars aren’t quite like that. Most automakers don’t sell directly to consumers, and the complex journey from raw materials to a car sitting in a dealership, while perhaps not entirely efficient, can help shield cars from major swings.
Above is the Cox Automotive/Moody’s Vehicle Affordability Index, which looks at the weeks of income the average household would need to purchase a new light vehicle. As discussed at length in my Trimflation piece, supply shortages eventually led to a huge average increase in car costs. It’s not just that cars’ base prices rose; Automakers also stopped building as many lower-trim, affordable cars.
Initially, the shock of the pandemic led to prices dropping slightly as automakers had a ton of inventory, and people were cautioned against the kind of interactions that would lead them to test-drive cars. This period of neutral pricing also coincided with lower interest rates, but something would eventually have to give, and starting around March 2021, we saw prices climb rapidly, peaking in December 2022.
That’s changing, and there are suddenly a lot more affordable cars on the market and slightly more favorable interest rates. The index, which approached 42 weeks in 2022, just hit 36.7 weeks, the lowest level since June 2021.
“Affordability is a key consideration for consumers when vehicle shopping and has been steadily improving over the last several years,” said Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at Cox Automotive. “In 2025, we have seen improvements in affordability each month. In March, the average price of a new vehicle decreased once again. This decrease, combined with higher incomes and slightly lower interest rates, more than offset a reduction in incentives. However, the real test will come in April, when tariffs are likely to have more of an impact on the economy and the auto market.”
Like he said, I don’t think that’ll last long.
Automakers May Start Raising Prices As Soon As June, So Get A Car This Month If You Really Need One
Last November, I said you should buy your car before the next global trade war. The trade war is here. President Trump has paused some tariffs, but he hasn’t removed the 25% duty on imported cars. What does that mean for your next car purchase? Automakers built up inventories as much as they could in the last few weeks, so it looks like many of them will be able to hold the line until at least May.
Ford, for its part, lowered prices with an employee-pricing-for-everyone plan that’ll help it move its cars from now until at least later this summer.
Without a major change in Trump’s tariff policies, “we anticipate the need to make vehicle pricing adjustments in the future, which is expected to happen with May production,” Andrew Frick, president of Ford’s gas-fueled and electric car units, said Wednesday in a memo to dealers.
Ford vehicles built in May won’t arrive in US showrooms until late June or early July, after the conclusion of carmaker’s current employee-pricing-for-everyone promotion, the company said. The automaker also said it won’t change the price of vehicles in inventory now.
“The tariff situation is dynamic and we continue to evaluate the potential impact of tariff actions,” Ford said in a statement.
If you want a Ford, now is the time to get that Maverick or Bronco Sport, clearly. Volkswagen Group of America CEO Kjell Gruner also said basically the same about his brand yesterday at the New York Auto Show, according to Automotive News:
In April, VW told retailers it planned an “Added Import Fee” on affected vehicles once the tariffs went into effect. Gruner stressed that the added import fee, part of VW’s tariff scenario planning, has not gone into effect and was noncommittal that it would, even after the end of May.
“We need to see where tariffs are,” Gruner said. “If that goes away, the discussion goes away. That’s very easy to see. So let’s see what happens on that side.”
Gruner said that VW cannot absorb the full cost of the tariffs alone.
“The amount per vehicle is just too high,” Gruner said. “We can’t just keep absorbing it.”
This appears to be where most automakers are shaking out right now, although expect some variance.
China Is Ahead Of The World In Quality Of EV Patents: Report
The lithium-ion battery might have been invented in the United States, but it’s China that now leads the world in the quality of EV patents, according to Japanese mega-conglomerate Mitsui & Co.’s internal Global Strategic Studies Institute.
From Nikkei Asia:
Ryusuke Ishiguro, a senior manager in MGSSI’s intellectual property department, told Nikkei Asia, “Chinese players have fewer [patents], but they carefully select the ones they apply for.”
The findings underline the scope for automakers to use intellectual property (IP) licensing to help them cope with the tariffs put forward by U.S. president Donald Trump without building new U.S. factories. Licensing technology to a local manufacturer allows the patent owner to avoid tariffs and earn patent royalties. These fees are usually a certain percentage of the product price, according to Ishiguro.
MGSSI cited Chinese battery maker CATL as an example of a company working to secure royalties as U.S. restrictions tighten. Ishiguro said, “It has begun to happen that [The Chinese company] can’t sell its product but can earn patent licensing fees.”
Ford Vice Chair John Lawler had a warning about China at a conference yesterday, via the Detroit Free Press:
The real threat right now is China, he said, and tariffs only worsen domestic automakers’ ability to fight off future competition.
Not only do tariffs put the U.S. at a short-term disadvantage, Lawler said on a Bank of America conference call April 16 that they irreparably harm any other automaker’s ability to do business in North America once Chinese automakers arrive.
“I don’t think we can say no, they’re not going to come to the U.S.,” he said. “The Chinese are coming, and they are a force to reckon with.”
It should be noted that Ford is one of the companies trying to license battery technology from CATL. This is the strange new world where American companies build stuff, and the more lucrative, more important work is done by other countries like China.
Tesla Sales Slide In California, WSJ Publishes Report About Elon Baby Mama Drama
California’s auto dealers do a great job of breaking down quarterly registrations, which gives us a detailed look at the most important car market in the country. It also gives a better view of overall trends in EV adoption, as California is generally the biggest proportional and total buyer of electric cars.
So what’s the news? Zero Emissions Vehicle (basically EVs and a small handful of fuel cell-powered vehicles) registrations have generally stalled out at about 21% of total market share in Q1 2025, which is up considerably from 9.3% in 2021, but a little off the peak of 22% for all of 2024. Hybrid share continues to increase every quarter, rising from 13% in Q1 2024 to almost 18% in Q1 2025.
While Tesla is still the biggest electric automaker in the California market, its sales have plummeted along with its market share. As of last quarter, Tesla registrations dropped 15.1% year-over-year to just 42,322 vehicles. That’s still a lot of cars, of course, but it means Tesla’s market share is just 9.1% so far this year in the state, compared to almost 13.0% in 2023.
Pundits pin these issues on vehicles he’s been slow to update and his political misadventures, but there are other things going on in the Muskverse that are probably not going to help, either.
A wild report in The Wall Street Journal gets into Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s child situation under the headline: “The Tactics Elon Musk Uses to Manage His ‘Legion’ of Babies—and Their Mothers.”
Elon Musk is certainly allowed to impregnate as many women as he wants, especially if he believes that’s what’s necessary to save humanity. Normally, I would say it’s none of our business (and for the most part, it is), but Elon Musk is the business when it comes to Tesla, and reports of “Harem drama” as one mother describes it – on a major news publication like the Wall Street Journal — are yet another distraction from an executive who seems to have no end of distractions lately.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Grimes felt just a little too on the nose this morning, so here’s fellow Canadian ethereal, beat-heavy electronic band Purity Ring with their perfect “Fineshrine.”
The Big Question
If you were in the market for a new car, would you buy now or try and wait for a year for a potential market crash? What would you try and buy and what’s your price?
Lead photo: Hyundai
We wouldn’t be in the market anyway, at least for a bit, but we’re in total “no new spending” mode. If it’s something we’ve already committed to, we’re trying to make it work. We’re shaving expenses as much as possible, Y membership suspended for the summer, opted out of the next 8 week cycle of swim lessons, summer vacation plans are on hold indefinitely, and I suppose I’m about to be putting some temporary supports in to keep my front porch from falling by myself instead of having a contractor replace that and the porch roof.
It’s going to be a year of entertainment = go on a walk.
To me, unless you’re REALLLLLLY confident that you career is in rock solid shape no matter what the future holds, I wouldn’t be taking on new debt. Not now that’s for sure. Though if you have a car reaching the end of it’s useful life, you gotta do what you gotta do.
I’m pretty interested in that Kia wagon that is coming out later this year…If the economy and the country still exist then I guess I’ll weigh my options. Not feeling very optimistic about things at present and I’m trying to hunker down with my money as much as possible while the orange man rages.
1,374 days to go.
You mean the EV3? https://www.caranddriver.com/kia/ev3 and https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/kia/ev3/2026/overview/?EXTKEY=SM72C02&&gclsrc=3p.ds&&msclkid=cf4799d03c8c1c4c4905f1d1026b1946&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=NB_NA_Cars_DSA_Cars-Content_A_X&utm_term=cars&utm_content=NB_NA_Cars_Cars&gclid=cf4799d03c8c1c4c4905f1d1026b1946&gclsrc=3p.ds&gad_source=7 I’m kinda looking forward to that (and that PV5 EV van from them too). I’m not wild about their current cyberpunk aesthetic, but I can deal with it if the car beneath all that ‘design’ is decent.
No, the K4 wagon, there was an article about it yesterday. I love a cheap little wagon, so I’ll definitely take a look when they come out.
Ah! I didn’t know there was going to be a K4 wagon coming. I saw a K4 (sedan) yesterday and for whatever reason, it didn’t look quite as nice as photos suggested. I mean it looked modern, but it also had a small-as-possible and built-to-a-price kind of feeling about it. Still, I’d like to test drive one to see for myself.
EDIT: I just looked at the Kia K4 wagon and DAYUM! A small two-door wagon actually for sale in the US? It’s kinda sexy AF. The heavy-handed Blade Runneresque styling works SO much better on the wagon.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/the-2025-kia-k4-wagon-is-coming-to-the-us
Now I have to add another car to my want list dammit! 😉 Thankfully, no version of the K4 is available with a manual transmission (which would make the wagon almost irresistible) it’s either a CVT w/the base engine, or a 8-speed auto (not a DCT I think) with the 1.6T engine in the GT Line.
Gah, I suppose it would kill them to offer it with the manual transmission that was available in the Hyundai Venue for the first couple of years… even on the base engine. 🙁
It’s actually four doors, well five I guess, but they way they’ve styled it gives it that cool two door shooting brake look! I won’t even look at the CVT, my current daily has one and it takes a little bit of my soul everyday. Never again.
Ah! You’re absolutely right of course Strangek. I fell for that trick of hiding the rear door handles up in the black plastic. Still, handsome for what it is.
Yah, I really can’t think of any car that I’d buy with a CVT. I’ve driven several over the years: Nissan, Honda, Subaru, a few others. Some are better than others, but none are objectively good IMO.
Lovely color that goldy-bronze on the K4 hatchback. I bet they only offer it on the GT or GT Line higher end trims in the $30K range though.
Matt with the excellent song selection again. Raise your hand if you first heard Fineshrine on Letterkenny!
Yeah I belt and suspendenderd my used car solution last fall, so I have two old cars that are both reliable and in reasonble condition. Even if one were to be completely totaled in a terrible crash that dosen’t kill me I still won’t have to buy something to get along.
My current lifestyle does not require new car debt to sustain itself, so I’ll stay out of the market for a few more years at least. I do like the new Bronco and Maverick, but not enough to spend new car money on them.
Max is wise.
Same. I will not run out of things to drive any time soon. They may not be the most pleasant to drive every day, but drive they will…
I actually enjoy driving both my Civics, so I also don’t feel like I’m depriving myself. If I keep up on the maintenance they may both outlive me.
I also have two Hondas. A 2017 Accord and a 2024 ADV160. If the Accord gets totaled, I’ll just ride the scooter and Uber/Lyft around when the weather is uncooperative. And rent something when I need to go further.
And if the ADV160 gets totaled, I probably will be as well. 😉
I’ve got two Civics an 03 Lx Sedan and a 13 Si sedan, both manuals of course. I clearly have a type…
Price increases are coming. My company is doing 7% May 1st and Siemens will have some sort of increase same day as well.
Remember when Republicans hated taxes?
Well, as they say at Siemens ” don’t get any on you”!
LOL!
Companies are already getting hit with huge tax bills on stuff they ordered pre-tariff. Some small companies probably won’t be able to cover it. Imagine you had a $30000 order of parts, and when it shows up suddenly the bill is $60000. Not every company has enough cash just lying around to eat that cost, even if they do eventually pass it along to the customer (assuming they still have customers at the new inflated prices).
This will probably kill a lot of small businesses that don’t have a giant corporate war chest to soften the blow in the short term. Which some in this administration probably see as a feature, not a bug.
“doing 7%” ?? what is that?
I think he means bumping their prices (on goods/services) by 7% across the board to offset increased costs.
We bought last November after being casually in the market and browsing for a year or so. Wife’s car was getting older and figuring (correctly) that everything was going to go sideways once Trump was sworn in even though we are Canadian.
We also locked in our mortgage in a 5 year fixed three years back before interest rates went up drastically. Once in a while we make the right call. I’m clearly omitting all the bad ones here.
There’s nothing that I am particularly drawn to at the moment, so it would be more based on what feels like a value vs. availability. New, likely some kind of turbo Mazda, but that would be a mileage hit. Hoping to avoid having to make the decision for several years.
My dad casually mentioned maybe shopping after getting one of the regular “your car’s value” Carvana updates showing a little increase, right after doing a repair. I think he’d like to have something warrantied and is thinking it might be a good time for the reasons regularly discussed in TMDs. But we haven’t gotten as far as discussing what that that would mean as far as type of car, or even new vs. used.
I laugh, one of the biggest exports to the US from one single EU nation are raw products processed by my company, and my company only. We use this product internally downstream in the US. Our company is US based but has global reach.
I have a 2017 accord right now- i just hit 117k, it has a little rust on a door, and is too early to of gotten features like wireless android auto, adaptice cruise, and lane keep. All features i would like. I was shopping for a new car until recently, and stopped for one reason-
I dont have a car payment. With the instability of it all, I would rather keep 400/mo in my pocket. So the timing belt is done, i bought some extra brakes for upcoming maintenance, it just got a new torque converter from a TSB, and the Honda will run for another 100k.
I’m in a keeping cash mindest… which does not help the economy overall. No debt!
Car’s paid off, credit cards at zero. My debt is in the house, and that’s about it! I’m going to try to keep it that way as long as I possibly can!
I have to say though, the Elantra N is looking pretty nice…
I’m actually considering buying a new motorcycle in the next year-ish or so. I’m sure tariffs are going to shaft that industry, too, but curious to see if bike sales go up as people start looking for cheaper transportation.
I’d be surprised if bike sales went up in America as car prices rise. As a middle-aged guy with a M1 license and a small Suzuki motorcycle asleep in my garage, I think it’s too big a change for most folks. American/middle-class/first world drivers can’t even manage to deal with manual transmissions in cars for the most part… it’d be asking too much of them to use both hands and feet simultaneously to do so on two wheels, while still keeping the bike upright at stop lights.
Don’t get me wrong: I’d like to see what it’s like to live in a world where people choose appropriate/efficient transportation based on their needs, rather than their wants. TBH, almost all of the short, single-driver around-town commutes would be handled fine by electric scooters: not those Lime ‘stand up on it’ thingies littering public sidewalks everywhere around LA, but rather regular ‘sit down on it and be kinda comfortable’ EV scoots. You don’t even need to know how to feather a clutch to ride those.
But we’ll not see such a transportation revolution here I don’t think.
If you are shopping “new” motorcycle and not NEW motorcycle (new not used vs 26 or 27 model) The deals are out there on most bikes. Dealers near me still have new stock 23’3 and 24’s. Motorcycle market dropped hard a few years ago. If the economy tanks like it seems to be heading, used 4k mile bikes will hit the for sale by owner market at big discount just to get people over the hump of needing to pay for their new now 8k air conditioner. I’m hoping to buy The Royal Enfield 650 Bear off some one who is buying new this year.
Local Honda dealers are playing tariff games here already.
On bikes they already have in stock.
It’s criminal.
I was ready to pull the trigger, just for fun till that crap began.
This is the part a lot of people are missing. Tariffs will give non-tariff goods/companies cover to raise prices.
Funny, my credit union left an unprompted voicemail for me just yesterday asking if I wanted to take advantage of falling interest rates on a new auto loan.
For all kinds of reasons I’m not interested in taking out an expensive loan on a depreciating asset right now.
That’s because you have a brain, whereas such clumsy marketing efforts (my credit union regularly sends me such offers too) rely on the fact that not everyone makes significant financial decisions with thinking involved.
Love your username btw. 🙂
The credit union saw my username and decided to see if I would live up to it. Nope!
Until about six months ago, my credit union (First Entertainment in SoCal… the Hollywood branch on Forest Lawn Drive to be exact) had some sort of commercial-grade, automated espresso machine. It didn’t take K-cups or Nespresso pods… but rather some sort of capsule. It was plumbed into the wall (so no need to refill a water tank) and I won’t lie: I kind of loved it. I was only there in person once every couple of months, but I’d look forward to the visit MAINLY because of that coffee machine. I googled it once and it cost like $15K.
Then they got rid of it (it must have been leased with a service contract) and replaced it with a crappy K-cup thing that you can find on Amazon for under $75 which makes awful coffee. I’ve barely been there in person since then, which maybe was their intent.
My company used to have the K-cups, but then downgraded(!) to some kind of paper flying saucer puck things that are nearly undrinkable in any of the few flavors I tried. I’m sure it saves them some money with almost nobody drinking it.
As someone about to take out a mortage, I wish interest rates were falling. My bank has shot up half a percent over the past couple of weeks, likely in anticipation of crushing inflation. And it’s not likely to improve anytime soon since last I heard the Fed is not interested in any more rate cuts right now (understandably).
I bought a used 2022 Accord 2.0T at the end of March. Normally I would buy new, and almost did. Decided practicality and durability were the priority at the moment, as well as owning instead of leasing so I wasn’t tied to another purchase in the next 3 years.
Jeez. I know it’s basically a curse word around here, but just lease a new car. You either end it easy peasy, or get a good deal on a buy-out.
China is coming here, no matter what. Who knows what that means at the end of the day, but it’s gonna happen.
Lock in. Figure it out later. Shit, you might be dead by then anyway.
There are still some cheap lease deals out there, and they are worth jumping on before they are gone. I guess unless there are low promotional interest rates on the vehicle you want, but the good stuff that’s in demand isn’t getting those.
I can’t say what car prices are going to be like in a year. If you had asked me last year, I’d have said “prices are going to come down and so are interest rates”. Now, you may very well be staring down the cheapest price for a car you’ll ever see again. But I’m not sure rolling the dice on that is a good call unless you need a car now and lock in a decent rate.
I’m not a new car buyer, but unfortunately this will drive used car prices up as well. I should have pulled the trigger on something last fall; prices have increased a good bit on the late model used cars I was looking at back then.
OTOH, with our self-inflicted economic doom upon us, last thing I want is to have any type of payment. My 4Runner has been paid off for 4 years now, and while it has going on 200K, it’s surely got another 100 or 200K in it if I can keep it from rotting away. Bonus that I can sleep in it if I end up homeless.
I may buy some kind of sub-5K beater to keep commuting miles of the 4R. The only other vehicles I’m interested in now would be a 40-year-old Suburban or Blazer.
I’m strongly looking at a new Mini Cooper S 2-door. I want small and fun, but still nice enough to drive cross country twice a year (which I do) Not sure if I’ll pull the trigger before June because I don’t need a new car and it might be beneficial to wait this out.
With that being said, as someone in the car sales business, do not wait if you do need a new car. All of the manufacturers and sales managers really are trying to throw everything they can at customers to get them buy.
Now thinking about if cars were able to be traded like financial instruments and I could do something like buy a futures contract on a 67 Alfa GTV.
You probably don’t need me to tell you this, but you really have excellent taste. 🙂
Thankfully don’t need any new cars, but if one of them was totaled today, I’d be buying something used and kick the can down the road another four years.
I went to the Audi dealer I bought a few cars from back in 2021 when the full impact of chip shortages was being exposed. There were NO cars in the showroom and people were fighting over what inventory was incoming. You had to pay OVER sticker on a Q5 that was missing basic shit like a second key, blind spot monitors, and in some cases heated seats. This fucking self-imposed trade war is going to do the same thing with regard to inventory.
All of the shortages and price increases but without the low interest rates. It’ll be great.
Quit sanitizing fascism. It is essentially how we got into this mess and is 100% inexcusable. If you don’t want to talk politics, then don’t. If you do, try to find a thread of integrity.
Given the fact that Musk’s stepmother and stepsister are the same person I doubt he is any more competent in his private life than he is in his public one.
You might want to get some fresh air, lol
The reality is that if I provide all the evidence of his strange baby mama drama, third reich-adjacent gestures, and all the other nonsense he gets into on a daily basis and it doesn’t mean anything to you… then me calling him Joseph Gargglesballs or referring to the Cybertruck as the IncEl Camino isn’t going to be effective either. I’ve had this conversation with a friend who writes for one of the more politically-active late night shows and there’s a point where I think other sites just make it impossible for people with differing viewpoints to exist in the same place, which only makes the problem worse. I would like us to be different and I think, in the long run, it’ll be a more effective way to have a society that progresses forward.
Not in the market for a car currently though almost may have been as today a deer ran right in front on an F150 that was in front of me this morning no damage to the Miata that I can see though. Will have to look for damage more after work. The F150 took some bad damage to the passenger side but the driver was okay though.
I went with a 25 Nissan Leaf S. It does everything I need it to do, I could get an aftermarket LSD for it, and I got it for $21,500 Brand New with free delivery.
Besides the personal preference reasons I went with the Leaf from a practical perspective the car has been mostly unchanged since the second generation came out in 2017, and it shares many parts with the first gen Leaf, so BEV wise parts are pretty plentiful, and the vehicle with it’s passively cooled battery pack is pretty simple so even though I don’t have any Nissan dealers locally it is unlikely to give me problems unless it is a lemon, and if it is then that’s what lemon law is for.
Only possible problem I see is that while I have lived in this area for the past 1.75 years the winters have been extremely mild in terms of snowfall, but from what I’ve been told the past two winters have been very mild, so if next winter we get a heavy winter I’ll probably wish I got the Polaris Kinetic XP electric UTV I was cross shopping the Leaf with, but the Leaf was half the cost, with 47% more range, is an actual car, that has been crash tested against other cars.
Worst case we get a ton of snow next winter that is so deep I can’t drive the Leaf, I end up getting the Polaris, and gifting my Parents the Leaf to replace the old beater they keep as a guest car.
Where tf do you live that you could drive a Polaris Kinetic XP electric UTV instead of a Leaf as a daily??! Rural or a gated community compound neighborhood in the mountains?
WY. You can register and insure UTVs, then you can drive them on the roads, you just can’t drive on the interstate.
Didn’t know that.
Seems you’re not driving too far in the UTV, as specs indicate a 45 estimated mile range.
Take Care
Thanks
If you chose the higher end model (which I would) you get an up to 80 mile range, and a 55 mph top speed. Just really damn expensive though.
80 miles range and 55 mph!
WOW! Now your comment about crash safety testing makes much more sense.
I mean, it still makes sense when you’re sharing the road with semi trucks, regular trucks, and regular cars, yeah but the extra speed doesn’t help anything.
Guess driving a UTV in winter temps with the “bonus” of a windchill might give you pause. It would me. I did look a bit further into the Polaris website and see the crazy extra cost of doors and a better windshield. Easy to top a low $40k price. …just, wow!
I’ve driven a 6-wheel drive diesel John Deere Gator, but can’t imagine going twice that speed in a similar sized rig. In the depth of winter. With much larger vehicles coming toward me in snowy, icy conditions.
I upgraded to my current car to enjoy heated seats. I had 10 years of regularly driving between -20 to -40F during the dark winter, and in -48F for 40 miles (stupid) when few were on the road, but all that was in an enclosed car. It doesn’t take long for hypothermia to set in when there’s no source of heat in low winter temps.
Though I still have some -20F clothes, and a couple of -40F pieces, I now live where it rarely gets down to single + digits. And, I don’t have to drive when I don’t want to… You might be so bundled up for warmth that moving inside the UTV cab could pose challenges.
My Subaru has good ground/snow clearance, which the Leaf seems to lack, but hopefully four snow/ice tires will allow the Leaf to manage plowed roads. The new Trailseeker appears more than a year away.
In 3-5 years, I plan to go BEV when my current car surpasses 180-200k miles, but will see where things are with battery tech, charging rates, and […gesticulates with hands…] with the state of the US.
I mean the way I treat my Leaf and in general how I treat the BEVs is that I only use the heat for the defroster, though the heater seems to work better than expected, I don’t doubt for a second that it reduces the range a good bit on account of the lack of waste heat that can be repurposed as cabin heat. Once you get in the negatives F wise you need to have quality gloves on as soon as you exit the car anyways, so you’re already dressed for the outside weather. That wouldn’t be any different for the Polaris, though its single cab design would probably take less time and heat overall to heat up with a heater than the Leaf, and honestly I don’t use the rear seats at all, so the extra space is mostly extra thermal mass I have to heat up when using the heater.
Part of the reason I went with the Leaf is the passively cooled battery pack tends to run hotter than the liquid cooled offerings from other automakers, which sucks if you live somewhere like Vegas or Phoenix, but in WY we regularly get in the negatives here during the winter and my current rental lacks both a driveway and a garage, so I needed something I knew could actually take a charge in below freezing temps, and the Leaf can do that.
The Polaris has independent suspension all around an oodles of suspension travel so it should handle a lot better than a 6×6 Gator, but it’ll almost certainly lean in corners at high speed.
Right now I got the Leaf on Michelin Crossclimate 2 All season tires, and while generally speaking I’m a big proponent of snow tires, with how little snow we have gotten here snow tires tend to do worse on dry pavement than quality all season tires designed for those temps. With how few miles I drive I’ll probably age out these tires long before they run out of tread. So getting a second set for snow that never sticks doesn’t make sense at the moment, if next winter we do I’ll ether get a set of snow tires or get that Polaris.
I understand you wanting to wait to get a BEV. In many ways I settled for the Leaf. What I really wanted was the Production Ready Jeep Wrangler Magneto concept, but instead of producing it they made 2 fully custom one offs for hundreds of thousands of dollars that have absolutely no hope of being produced.
Before the Leaf I was under contract for a 24 Wrangler 2 Door Sport V6 6MT that was the last in the country with the Hardtop and the Trailer Tow Package. The Factory built it wrong and after waiting for a part from Jeep corporate for over a month that was not only still in production but was being put on 25 MY Wranglers Jeep corporate did not give the dealership and ETA on when the part would be allocated for the Jeep they built wrong from the factory. So my thinking was pretty simple: ‘If Jeep won’t allocate an in production part for a brand new Jeep they built wrong after a month to a Major Jeep Dealer, what will parts allocation look like when the Jeep is used and a Jeep dealership in a podunk part of Wyoming requests it… My guess is a lot worse than a 1 month wait.
So I skipped it and went with the Leaf, which honestly was the best car either way due to my drives being very short, which for a normal ICE car would mean it wouldn’t get up to temp during 95% of my drives, and even if I had an engine block heater installed that would mean I’d have to plug it in like at worst 4 hours before I planned on leaving.
So far the Leaf has made me into a BEV Convert, so I doubt I’ll buy another ICE vehicle again, the experience is just that much better, and with less maintenance to boot! I still think there is lots of room for improvement with BEVs. But drivetrain wise I think they got the tech sorted. The improvement necessary is in relation to the interior (like making electrically heated windshields standard) and reducing unnecessarily technophilic additions (like getting rid of electric door handles).
Overall I think you’re right to wait to get a BEV, I got the Leaf to be simple enclosed transportation that goes more places than the local busses and it does that job great, and does an even better job on long journeys when I use cruise control. Once BEVs become more mainstream I believe we’ll see the elimination of the technophilic crap and we’ll have normal automobiles that happen to be BEVs, and they’ll be able to replace a ton of ICE powered automobiles, it’s just a matter of building them at a price point people can afford.
QOTD: I’ve been in & out of the market for a few years, and I’m still patient. I’m working to make my old beater roadworthy enough to be used daily, and the wife and I still share one main DD.
If my beater exploded today, I’d be out looking at a CR-V hybrid, probably new (for maximum life and the fact that Hondas don’t depreciate much). Or maybe a couple years old, not sure.
Everything is up in the air, but I’m super tempted to put a sticker on my beater that says “I’ll drive this until he ends the trade war” which would probably get my car vandalized. Which might be a cosmetic improvment.
No one is bored enough to give a shit about your beater. Put whatever you want on it. lol
Personally, I thought his idea was hilarious.
If I NEEDED a car now, I would buy one now. I have zero confidence in what the market will look like in a year. I suspect that many automakers will suspend imports due to tariffs, causing supply to dwindle, and the effects to still be on going in a year.
Exactly. Waiting on the sidelines for this to shake out will not help anyone. You can only react to what you know to be true right now, and right now there are new cars on lots and prices haven’t been adjusted for god-knows-what tariffs.
I wouldn’t assume a market crash would bring down the price of anything.
There were deals to be had in 2009-10 because interest rates were near zero and automakers were bailed out. People who lost jobs (like me) were obviously in bad shape, but if you held on to yours, you weren’t living in an environment where everything was getting more expensive at once.
This kind of self-inflicted crisis doesn’t really have a precedent. But if the price of everything is rising, even a relative deal on a car might not feel like one. Rates will probably need to stay high to prevent inflation from getting even worse.
I don’t need to buy anything new, thankfully. Anything I buy would be a bonus car for fun. In that spirit, let’s say an LC500 convertible for my wife.
It’s amazing how many people say they are waiting for a crisis or crash to buy something, I hear it with houses and cars, as if they will somehow be unaffected by it and will be able to finally afford something when others can’t. I’m just never sure how they picture that working.
It did work that way for some during the GFC and Covid.
In the former case, because houses were cheap. In the latter, because office workers got rich by no longer commuting and spending their stimmies and/or PPP loans on stuff.
And I have no doubt that whatever happens the next couple years there will be those who come out better through it.
I would simply not count on being one of the ones who do.
You can count me as one of the ones it worked out for since I bought my home in fall of 2020 and the value has risen substantially since then, but at the time that was very much not the rhetoric. There were bidding wars, low supply, house values rising quickly, some people I know decided they wanted to wait until things calmed down to try to buy. Those people are still waiting since value stayed high and rates have increased.
Yeah, sorry if the post was confusing. 2020 wasn’t a great time to buy a house (apart from low rates), but 2008-09 was.
Those stimmy checks amounted to like $3k over the course of a year. Big whoop.
People are still talking like anyone got rich off of that, lol
Not saying anyone got rich, but the idea of “buying something when economic times are bad” owes a lot to that memory.
The people who spent them on Pelotons or vacations or down payments on their cars probably have a much different memory of the pandemic than the people who spent them on food or rent.
Of course, for your local 7-11 cashier, it was a “windfall” of a month’s salary. lol
For most people, though, it was an easy way for the government to abide the public from noticing their money actually went to big pharma/middle pharma/major factories as a triad of contracts.
Those dudes lucky enough to make those ventilators and such at a GM plant (one example) made a killing. They were making $90/hr plus. It was a gravy train.
Well, a few folks did get rich offa that, thanks to fraud. I still see a news story about someone getting caught years after the fact. But with DOGE firing all the people who actually know how to audit in the federal government, chances are frauditors who haven’t been caught yet (probably quite a few) are likely to get away with their crimes indefinitely.
To be fair, those folks were caching blank checks anyway. I should know. I was one of them.
Gesus F-ing Christ?
Sorry, what does “GFC” stand for? Are you talking about the ’07-8 financial crash? Just wondering.
Global Financial Crisis
Ah! Of course! Thanks.
And here I was thinking the “F” must stand for the F-word. 😉
That’s understandable, especially given how close the acronym is to the also somewhat common GFY. 🙂
Great Financial Crisis is what I’ve always heard, but I suppose Global works too.
I think Alex Trebek may have accepted either interpretation after conferring with someone off stage.
I certainly can’t think of a higher authority than that
Nobody asked (of course) but that X-Files episode with Alex Trebek “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Chung%27s_From_Outer_Space still ranks among my favorites of all time. The standalone eps like this one were always better than the drawn-out, convoluted, and onanistic mass conspiracy story arc stuff, but Jose Chung was among their best. It also had Jesse Ventura and a rad old Lincoln and a mid-60s Plymouth Valiant Barracuda fastback in it.
That’s a good episode, and Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose with Peter Boyle is a stand out as well. I agree, the mythology episodes were mostly meh and really bogged down after the first movie as they tried to continue to spin the story along.
Great read, would definitely hold off on upgrading current car and wait to see where the economy is in a year. That is of course if my current vehicles working without major problems.
I almost jumped on a Mustang Mach E lease at the end of last year when Ford was paying to have a charger installed for every lease/purchase. Once Trump was reelected, that went out the window because I had no clue where the economy/automotive sector would be in the ~2 years for the lease expiration, and I didn’t want to mess around with that drama. That was a good call as I sit here today and look at the mess that is the United States of Tariffs…