I’m in the $9k used car camp. How much pleasure do you derive from your car? For me driving is somewhere between absolutely miserable to slightly uncomfortable and the things that determines where my experience falls outside factors such as how much traffic is on the road, how far do I have to be, how much of a hurry I am in, and how long I’ve been in the car. I’ve driven all sorts of things: trucks, suvs, sport cars, luxury sedans, jeeps, and the economy sedan. As long as I trust the reliability and the AC/heat is working none of other aspects of a car make it more or less pleasurable for me. Driving sucks hard stop.
The total cost difference between a base model Tesla and my $9k sedan is about $25k, and having an extra 25k in my brokerage account at my age reduces my estimated retirement age by 1 year. With the opportunity cost in mind owning a Tesla would actually reduce my overall pleasure from life.
What am I missing? How are people getting so much pleasure from their cars? Do people actually like driving? Do you live in a place with no traffic and perfect roads?
I used to be exactly like you. I drove mid-price cars (around 10k) and was 100% miserable. I could drive shorter distances around town, but I was completely worn out after 200-300km of continuous driving. When we got wherever we were going, I needed to take a good 30-45 minutes to rest my brain.
I bought a Hyundai EV about a year ago and I actually kinda like driving now. The electric drive train is somehow more logical to my brain. I tell it to go faster and it does without any fuss or noise. No switching gears manually or alternating engine RPMs from the automatic gearbox.
The best part is the lane keeping assistant and smart cruise. When I'm on a bigger road with proper markings, I can just lightly hold the wheel and the car does the annoying minutiae of driving.
Now I can easily drive 400km+ in a single day and not feel completely drained afterwards.
Something about the need to slightly manage the steering wheel every second while also maintaining a safe distance to the car in front of me drained my brain. I was unable relax at the wheel. Now I can focus on actually following the traffic around me.
Some of us get pleasure out of acceleration and 'sportiness' in our vehicles. And also creature comforts inside the vehicle. Maybe I'm a victim of marketing. But I feel like if I'm going to be spending thousands of dollars, I want to feel like I'm buying something ... fun?
That said, my "sporty" car is a Chevy Volt in sport mode, not a Tesla Model S Plaid. I'd still like to be able to retire someday.
I guess the question would be, if I have a $9000 toyota corolla with comfortable seats, good tires, the AC blows cold, the cruise control works properly, etc...
Would I gain what I subjectively consider to be $45,000 worth of additional comfort and pleasure by buying a model 3? Or $85,000 of comfort and pleasure by buying a model S?
If you think about the math of what one actually pays for a car like that it becomes much easier to stomach.
At the end of the day you still wind up with an asset that was 85k. If you bought say a 3/4 year old car and bought wisely, it will have minimum depreciation. So while you are certainly out more money, it's not like you've lost 85k, it's more like 10-30. Whereas you probably are only going to be able to sell your corolla for let's say 4. We're now talking about the comfort/pleasure of ~25k, but the cost between the vehicles of between 9k - 85k. Let's say you have this car for 5 years, the difference in ownership is 4/5k per year. If you can afford this, even if I'm off by a factor of 2/3, it's really not that bad.
At the same time, used cars are ones that have already taken that depreciation hit and prices eventually plateu (or even inflate regardless of condition if its a desirable car like an old porsche or a 2000s toyota land cruiser). I bet you could drive a $9000 used corolla for three years and sell it for $9000 afterwards, and it would have to be close to death for that car to ever be worth less than $5000, which is like the baseline for a used car without major mechanical issues.
as a data point I know somebody in Canada who bought a 12 year old mazda3 with 230,000 km on it for $3500, drove it in BC for two years, and sold it for the same they paid for it.
by far their biggest cost was the liability insurance.
Realistically speaking, there's 6 things my life I might have to randomly spend $22k on: my house or my family (5 of us). Adding another thing to that list would make my life much less pleasurable.
Your life must be pathetically short on pleasure if the choice of car substantially moves the needle, make some effort to diversify your sources of pleasure away from powered wheelchairs.
I don't know, there seems to be a lot of people who enjoy cars -- whether for looks, sport, status, collecting, fixing, restoring, etc. I don't think it's particularly surprising if I were chatting with folks at a party and someone would mentions cars as a hobby of theirs.
I think your charge could be leveled against most hobbies, especially collectibles. It seems a bit mean-spirited.
