True, but in a message board of maybe 100-ish active users, personal observations remain relevant.

True, but in a message board of maybe 100-ish active users, personal observations remain relevant.

 

Only to those who make them. I guess we all just want to be heard even if no one is listening. Yes, I'm being a jerk.

My niece is 19, politically liberal, lives on W 132nd near Lorain, and attends Cleveland State. 

 

She used to take RTA to school and I believe to her job as well.  One would think she'd be a candidate to remain car free for awhile.

 

She recently, at some effort and lifestyle shift, bought her first car.

 

I think having her phone stolen on the bus had a lot to do with that.

 

And the reason why you posted that is, what? To point out that the KPMG study is wrong? That your niece will keep the trendline from moving 0.0001% farther from the status quo you hate to see fading?

 

Whenever you're studying a trend, the motivations of people who should be following it but are not have relevance, IMO.  As to what may stop it, or help maintain it. 

Whenever you're studying a trend, the motivations of people who should be following it but are not have relevance, IMO.  As to what may stop it, or help maintain it. 

 

If that experience expands to include thousands of people, then it deserves recognition.

Having a car and a home is expensive so some people live in their cars because there's few other ways to get around without one. Soon you may have no choice but pay for a car AND a home.....

 

The Trendiest Law in America May Be a Ban on Sleeping in Cars http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/10-facts-homelessness-2014 … #Top20

 

So the word is a guy here at my workplace who makes about $12/hr just cashed out his retirement to buy the new Chevy Malibu out in the lot.  He's about 50 years old and now he has no money in retirement savings.

...he only had enough to buy a Malibu at 50?! That's..scary. He could've at least gone for a better car if he was going to screw himself over.

At least a sports car would hold much of its value if properly maintained.

That's insane. I know it seems like a stretch to say that car ownership is an addiction but stories like this make me thinks it really is.

That's insane. I know it seems like a stretch to say that car ownership is an addiction but stories like this make me thinks it really is.

 

It gets better -- he's taking the car over after work to get the windows tinted.  Plus I recorded a conversation with him talking about the time he bought an Eddie Bauer edition Ford Explorer for his wife for Christmas. 

Wave goodbye to the two-car family

Phil LeBeau | @Lebeaucarnews

Tuesday, 18 Nov 2014 | 1:57 PM ET

 

Imagine the typical American family.

 

Odds are your vision includes a home with two kids, as well as two or more cars.

 

But according to a new study by KPMG, that image is becoming a less common reality. As a growing number of consumers participate in car sharing, wait longer to buy their first vehicle and move to the suburbs, KPMG predicts that in about 25 years, fewer than half of U.S. households will own more than one vehicle.

 

"We think that the two-car family, over time, it is not going to go down to zero, but a significant amount of people are going to reduce that number," said Gary Silberg, a partner at KPMG who conducted the study.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102193080?utm_content=buffer678c4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#

 

Articles like that drive me nuts.  Not because of the content, but because of some lame attention grabbing headline that really doesn't backup the content of the article.

 

"Waving goodbye to the 2 car household" is the headline, but the real numbers within only indicate the current amount of just over 50% will drop to just under 50%.  No data either to indicate how much of this is due to choice or forced through declining incomes.  Just some comments about apparent trends & such.  yawn

 

I think a more likely trend will be the emergence of REALLY cheap cars.  Like just 4 wheels & a basic engine, little to no options.  Not like so many of todays cars with pricetags upward of $40k with customizable wheels, paint, interiors, upgraded brakes, engine, suspension, stereos, etc.  Something like the Kia Soul with a $15,000 price tag, but even cheaper.  60 months of payments on that thing is only about $200.  That's cheap transportation right there

I agree about the cheap cars.

 

Also, I think we're even more likely to see declines in the number of households with more cars than residents.  I've mentioned this here before, but there was a time in my childhood when my four-person household had six vehicles.

 

But most importantly, I think we're likely to see people keep their cars longer and drive them less.  Many threads here have documented how overall vehicle-miles have fallen.  My wife and I could afford to trade up our cars every 3-5 years like it seems lots of upper-middle-class households did in the '80s, '90s, and pre-Recession '00s; instead, I bought a used '01 Altima in 2007 and have been driving it ever since.  I might trade it up at some point, but even if I did that tomorrow, I'd still have gotten more than seven years out of it, and it's up to 168k.  (My wife is, admittedly, pushing me to upgrade--thinks something that old can't be safe--but it's gotten me reliably from Point A to Point B for a long time now.  And I digress.)  The best man at my wedding is an aerospace engineer for Boeing; when he doesn't bike, he's been driving the same Subaru (he really is a Seattle stereotype) basically since he moved out there a decade ago.

You can barely sell cars under $15k in the USA due to safety regulations. And there's more on the way such as mandatory back-up cams. There's no margin on cheap cars; car companies don't give a crap about volume if there's no margin. They're not going to hara-kiri themselves just to keep "happy motoring" alive. I find it interesting that people want businesses to turn into charities just to keep some 1960s vision of America around.

 

The margin on SUVs and trucks is anywhere from 5-10X higher than on a basic small car. You can't sell enough el cheapos to make up for that. You'd have to sell 5-10X as many cars. And hire a bunch of people and build more auto plants.

 

Used cars are a good long-term value but nowadays they have supply problems.

You can barely sell cars under $15k in the USA due to safety regulations. And there's more on the way such as mandatory back-up cams. There's no margin on cheap cars; car companies don't give a crap about volume if there's no margin. They're not going to hara-kiri themselves just to keep "happy motoring" alive. I find it interesting that people want businesses to turn into charities just to keep some 1960s vision of America around.

 

The margin on SUVs and trucks is anywhere from 5-10X higher than on a basic small car. You can't sell enough el cheapos to make up for that. You'd have to sell 5-10X as many cars. And hire a bunch of people and build more auto plants.

 

Used cars are a good long-term value but nowadays they have supply problems.

 

Yeah apparently the SUV craze took off a little by itself in the 90s when people started buying them instead of minivans and the American car makers were happy to oblige.  A 2010 or 2011 book I read about the GM/Chrysler bankruptcies claimed that the bankruptcies would have happened much earlier if not for the unexpected SUV craze.  Now there's hardly a minivan to be found, and the "crossover" is a way for these companies to tack a few thousand in profit onto a sort-of SUV on a car chasis.  Chryslers Fiat experiment doesn't appear to be taking the country by storm. 

 

Meanwhile earlier this year I bought Mobile Eye stock (manufacturer of rear cameras and driverless car sensors) a week after the IPO for $30/share and sold it about a month later for $50 share.  It then surged to $58, then dove recently down to $39, and is trading this morning for $44.  Probably will buy it again next time it drops since it seems inevitable that it will be bought out at some point in the next five years. 

 

 

 

 

 

You can barely sell cars under $15k in the USA due to safety regulations. And there's more on the way such as mandatory back-up cams. There's no margin on cheap cars; car companies don't give a crap about volume if there's no margin. They're not going to hara-kiri themselves just to keep "happy motoring" alive. I find it interesting that people want businesses to turn into charities just to keep some 1960s vision of America around.

 

The margin on SUVs and trucks is anywhere from 5-10X higher than on a basic small car. You can't sell enough el cheapos to make up for that. You'd have to sell 5-10X as many cars. And hire a bunch of people and build more auto plants.

 

Used cars are a good long-term value but nowadays they have supply problems.

 

Yeah apparently the SUV craze took off a little by itself in the 90s when people started buying them instead of minivans and the American car makers were happy to oblige.  A 2010 or 2011 book I read about the GM/Chrysler bankruptcies claimed that the bankruptcies would have happened much earlier if not for the unexpected SUV craze.  Now there's hardly a minivan to be found, and the "crossover" is a way for these companies to tack a few thousand in profit onto a sort-of SUV on a car chasis.  Chryslers Fiat experiment doesn't appear to be taking the country by storm. 

 

Meanwhile earlier this year I bought Mobile Eye stock (manufacturer of rear cameras and driverless car sensors) a week after the IPO for $30/share and sold it about a month later for $50 share.  It then surged to $58, then dove recently down to $39, and is trading this morning for $44.  Probably will buy it again next time it drops since it seems inevitable that it will be bought out at some point in the next five years. 

 

There's some irony there because minivans boomed because they didn't count against CAFE the same way larger cars did.

 

I suspect a lot of the two-car ownership happens because people have two older cars and aren't stuck if something happens to one of them.

The minivan replaced the station wagon because station wagons weren't cool, then SUV's replaced minivans because minivans weren't cool, and now crossovers are looking more an more like station wagons in disguise -- they just haven't taken that leap to have rear-facing seats in the trunk.  Meanwhile the Ford Flex is simply a minivan in disguise. 

 

It's hilarious how I remember moms saying that it was "easier" to get a kid in and out of a car seat in a minivan than it was in a station wagon.  Um, okay.  Then there was the fact that people liked being "up high".  Somehow you needed a giant trunk for a load of groceries when you could just put the groceries elsewhere in the car or just not buy as much dumb stuff at the store.  The bottom line is that most car buys aren't made by people who actually lay out the fact and then buy something they can afford.  It's inherently an irrational purchase for most people, disguised as a need. 

most people don't care about cars at all or know anything about them, yet they sure have strong opinions about them. Usually wrong ones.

most people don't care about cars at all or know anything about them, yet they sure have strong opinions about them. Usually wrong ones.

 

And they don't understand that financing, depreciation, and insurance are combined a much larger expense than gasoline.  Go ahead and buy a 4 year-old SUV with cash and you'll likely spend much less over the life of that car versus financing a brand-new hybrid. 

 

Just saw that this is from last year. Oh well, still a good article so I'm posting it anyway!

 

Hamburg Announces Plans to Become a Car-Free City Within 20 Years

by Charley Cameron, 01/12/14

 

Hamburg is currently working on a plan that would eliminate the need for cars within the next 15-20 years, making the city a greener, healthier and more pleasant place to live. The city’s proposed Grünes Netz, or “Green Network” will create pedestrian and cycle paths to connect the city’s existing, substantial green spaces, and provide safe, car-free commuter routes for all residents.

 

Hamburg’s Green Network will be constructed over the next 15-20 years, and it will create car-free paths between all major parks, playgrounds, community gardens, and cemeteries in Hamburg. The resulting network will cover 40% of Germany’s second-largest city, and it should enable commuters and tourists alike to navigate the once-car-dependent city entirely by bicycle and on foot.

 

The goals of the Green Network are multiple. On one end, Hamburg recognizes the need to change in the face of global warming; in the past 60 years they city’s median temperature has increased by 1.2 degrees Celsius to 9 degrees Celsius, and sea levels have risen by 20 centimeters—and they’re expected to increase another 30 centimeters by 2100. While a car-free city will undoubtedly do much to lower C02 emissions, the expanded green spaces that will fall along the new, green paths will also help to alleviate flooding in the event of heavy rainfall or superstorms.

 

MORE:

http://inhabitat.com/hamburg-announces-plans-to-become-a-car-free-city-within-20-years/

The minivan replaced the station wagon because station wagons weren't cool, then SUV's replaced minivans because minivans weren't cool, and now crossovers are looking more an more like station wagons in disguise -- they just haven't taken that leap to have rear-facing seats in the trunk.  Meanwhile the Ford Flex is simply a minivan in disguise. 

 

It's hilarious how I remember moms saying that it was "easier" to get a kid in and out of a car seat in a minivan than it was in a station wagon.  Um, okay.  Then there was the fact that people liked being "up high".  Somehow you needed a giant trunk for a load of groceries when you could just put the groceries elsewhere in the car or just not buy as much dumb stuff at the store.  The bottom line is that most car buys aren't made by people who actually lay out the fact and then buy something they can afford.  It's inherently an irrational purchase for most people, disguised as a need. 

 

you must not have kids (small ones that require car seats) or park in a cramped garage.  If you did, you'd realize the attraction of a minivan is the sliding door that allows you to reach all the way in without having to squeeze between a regular door and the wall or the car next to you in order to buckle up your child.  Also, car seats take up a ton of space.  Two car seats in a vehicle make the back seat useless for most anything else.  It has nothing to do with cool.

 

People didn't care for SUV's 30 yrs ago because they just tossed their kids in the back and yelled "sit down!" at every stop light.  You could tell the kids to squeeze over when the groceries needed set in the back seat.  Can't do that with car seats.  My wife & I have a smaller SUV but know we will be getting a minivan soon enough.  It's just impossible to reach in & out to get the kids out of the back when you are trying to scissor yourself between the door.

 

I wish it was as simple as "not buying as much dumb stuff at the store"...  what an irresponsible comment.  As if you know how much groceries it takes to supply a family of 4+ for a week....

Except the vast majority of SUV and minivan owners don't park in cramped garages, they park in oversized garages attached to their oversized houses on oversized lots in oversized suburbs.

 

The minivan, to an extent, does have the advantage of sliding doors when it comes to ease. But that's where the real benefits stop. There's no need to have three rows of seats if you have one or two kids. There is no need for a HUGE trunk that can fit a queen mattress if you're just planning on a weekly load of groceries. There's no need for a huge V8 in an SUV when you're just tooling around your suburb. Anyone who thinks otherwise is lying to themselves.

 

My brother has a daughter. He drives a 2002 Nissan Sentra. A pretty small sedan. There's plenty of room for a car seat, the small scale means it's not cramped when around other cars, and there's plenty of room for other passengers and things like groceries in the trunk. You can pretend you need to upsize suddenly because of kids, but the huge number of people who don't show that it isn't actually a necessity but rather a luxury.

 

When I was young I'd go grocery shopping with my dad. For a family of five a week of groceries fit in the trunk of his sedan. If he brought all of us along we could all fit in the car in addition to the groceries. It's not like having a kid quintuples the amount of groceries you need.

 

This doesn't even begin to comment on the "two SUV" or "SUV and minivan" families that I question continuously. Or the couple that drives an Excursion. Or the single guy that drives a Ford F150 yet never hauls anything. People THINK they need things like big vehicles but very few situations actually require such a vehicle.

When I was young I'd go grocery shopping with my dad. For a family of five a week of groceries fit in the trunk of his sedan. If he brought all of us along we could all fit in the car in addition to the groceries. It's not like having a kid quintuples the amount of groceries you need.

 

This doesn't even begin to comment on the "two SUV" or "SUV and minivan" families that I question continuously. Or the couple that drives an Excursion. Or the single guy that drives a Ford F150 yet never hauls anything. People THINK they need things like big vehicles but very few situations actually require such a vehicle.

 

What year was your dad's car?  Something like a 1970's ford or chevy sedan with a cavernous trunk?  I'm sure the groceries did fit easily back there...

 

Last point I'll make about this futile discussion is that people today travel so much more than families did a generation or two ago.  My wife & I are constantly going back to my parents or her parents.  Both sets of grandparents are 3 hrs away.  It takes a hell of a lot of packing for a 2 night trip with 2 kids. 

I'm 25, my dad's car when growing up was either A 1996 Dodge Neon, the Nissan Sentra my brother now drives that I mentioned, or most recently a Hyundai Sonata before I left for college. Hardly cavernous by any stretch of the imagination.

 

How often do you travel? Is it cheaper to ALWAYS be in possession of a huge vehicle that can handle the handful of big trips or to just rent a larger vehicle when you need it?

A lot of people can't even use their garages for storing their cars because they have filled them with boxes of junk.

 

How does the rest of the world raise their kids without giant vehicles? Few people in Europe drive anything larger than a midsize sedan.

 

Believe it or not, one of the things that often forces people into pickup truck ownership is having to transport gasoline cans. One can of gas can make your car stink for months and give you severe headaches. I hate driving a pickup truck everywhere but the second I consider driving my car down to the farm I get smacked with some filthy task.

I find myself borrowing my parent’s minivan quite often because it can fit an 8' x 4’ piece of plywood or drywall in the back. Most SUVs can’t do that, crossovers definitely can’t, and even a pickup truck typically only has a 6’-0” bed plus the cargo is exposed to the weather. Not everyone has this need, but if you do a minivan is great. Some of the older station wagons may be able to pull it off but I don’t know if they have lay down seats or not, they were a bit before my time. Minivans may be big, but some of them have little 4 cylinder engines and get good gas mileage, unlike SUVs that may be bulkier and heavier, but have less cargo space. One of the things that has always bothered me about crossovers or small SUVs is that they are built on the same frame as cars. You pay more to get a little bit more space, most of which isn’t very usable, to sit up high, and to get worse gas mileage.

I often feel like a heel bumming lifts off of friends with trucks when I have furniture to move, while I drive around most days in my compact little '01 Altima (this was before the redesign when the Altima basically moved up a size class ... my Altima is basically the size of a newer Sentra).  I always let them know I'm willing to throw a few bucks of gas in their tanks for helping me out (or a few beers from my fridge, but that's not much of an incentive because I have kind of an open-fridge policy at my house anyway), but I still feel like a mooch.  But at a larger level, it really doesn't make sense for everyone to have a truck.

When I was young I'd go grocery shopping with my dad. For a family of five a week of groceries fit in the trunk of his sedan. If he brought all of us along we could all fit in the car in addition to the groceries. It's not like having a kid quintuples the amount of groceries you need.

 

This doesn't even begin to comment on the "two SUV" or "SUV and minivan" families that I question continuously. Or the couple that drives an Excursion. Or the single guy that drives a Ford F150 yet never hauls anything. People THINK they need things like big vehicles but very few situations actually require such a vehicle.

 

What year was your dad's car?  Something like a 1970's ford or chevy sedan with a cavernous trunk?  I'm sure the groceries did fit easily back there...

 

Last point I'll make about this futile discussion is that people today travel so much more than families did a generation or two ago.  My wife & I are constantly going back to my parents or her parents.  Both sets of grandparents are 3 hrs away.  It takes a hell of a lot of packing for a 2 night trip with 2 kids. 

 

I usually just avoid getting pulled into these kinds of conversations, because they are invariably led by those who are not in a position to speak knowledgeably about the subject.

 

I find it laughable that we're targeting minivans now. Once you have a couple kids....and carpool with their friends to activities, playdates, etc....then you can tell me whether or not a 3rd row is needed.

 

I have a 4 door sedan, and I only can transport my three kids in it now because 2 of them are out of carseats, and it is still cramped as hell. They are all too young to sit in the front seat. The back seat of most sedans can handle 2 car seats with precious little space in between. Same with minivans and SUV's. At one point I did have 3 kids in car seats, and I absolutely needed a third row.

 

I'll agree that the SUV phenomenon was driven in large part by parents who didn't want to drive an uncool minivan. But the minivan is the ultimate in efficient family transportation. Both with the way the internal space is laid out, and, as was mentioned before, with the lesser sized engines that are more fuel efficient than SUV's.

 

There's a reason so many families have one. It's not to show off to their friends, I assure you.

 

This doesn't even begin to comment on the "two SUV" or "SUV and minivan" families that I question continuously. Or the couple that drives an Excursion. Or the single guy that drives a Ford F150 yet never hauls anything. People THINK they need things like big vehicles but very few situations actually require such a vehicle.

 

Maybe he has a boat he needs to tow.  Or a camper.  Or owns rental properties and has tools in the back.  Or has large dogs.  Point is, you don't know. 

All I'll say is that you missed where I said, "most" not "all" people buying them do not actually require them. That's it. Some people do, a lot don't. The fact that there are infinitely more large vehicles now than in the past yet families are shrinking shows that it's not actually a necessity but rather a luxury we've convinced ourselves is necessary.

All I'll say is that you missed where I said, "most" not "all" people buying them do not actually require them. That's it. Some people do, a lot don't. The fact that there are infinitely more large vehicles now than in the past yet families are shrinking shows that it's not actually a necessity but rather a luxury we've convinced ourselves is necessary.

 

Annual vehicle miles traveled is way up from the last 20-30 yrs.  It's leveled off since 2008, but still way up from where it was a generation ago.  People are much more mobile.  When you're always on the go, there is a need to take it with you.  My wife is in sales and is always carrying product with her.  She has a tri-state region she covers & puts 40,000 miles a year on a vehicle.  Try not to judge her when you see a single woman driving in a SUV on the highway....

This doesn't even begin to comment on the "two SUV" or "SUV and minivan" families that I question continuously. Or the couple that drives an Excursion. Or the single guy that drives a Ford F150 yet never hauls anything. People THINK they need things like big vehicles but very few situations actually require such a vehicle.

 

Maybe he has a boat he needs to tow.  Or a camper.  Or owns rental properties and has tools in the back.  Or has large dogs.  Point is, you don't know. 

 

Don't own a boat, camper, or a heard of large dogs.  Each are insanely expensive and destroy any middle class person's ability to save for retirement.  As for rental properties, keep a set of tools (especially lawn care) at each property and rent a truck on the rare occasion that you need one. 

 

I actually should get a crappy minivan and take the seats out of it to move product from Cincinnati (where my distributor is) to my store since moving it in a car limits my space severely and the fuel mileage is much better than a full-size van. But that would cost $2500 or so and it's hard to justify the outlay. Instead I go down there 7-8 times a year when I could limit those trips to 5 if I had the van. Insurance on the van would be the real killer even if it was just liability -- but you don't want just liability when you're moving that much stuff annnnnnnnnnd I'd be using it for business purposes which may mean additional insurance concerns.

I actually should get a crappy minivan and take the seats out of it to move product from Cincinnati (where my distributor is) to my store since moving it in a car limits my space severely and the fuel mileage is much better than a full-size van. But that would cost $2500 or so and it's hard to justify the outlay. Instead I go down there 7-8 times a year when I could limit those trips to 5 if I had the van. Insurance on the van would be the real killer even if it was just liability -- but you don't want just liability when you're moving that much stuff annnnnnnnnnd I'd be using it for business purposes which may mean additional insurance concerns.

 

Rent, rent, rent.

 

That is a major hassle though. Each trip requires a coordination of getting a vehicle to the rental place, specing it out online ahead of time, dealing with the staff, returning the van on time full of fuel, filling out paperwork, making sure they get a minivan there rather than a big van... in addition to the expense. That's why I make the extra two trips in the regular car each year. And the regular car gets 5mpg more then the minivan would. See in this case the larger vehicle is NOT a requirement, unlike trying to tow a boat with a Corolla. So I pay an additional $60 in gas per year and lose two days by making the extra trips. Renting the van 5 times would certainly cost more than $60 and would use more gas.

 

So there's a lot of cases where a smaller vehicle is better than owning or even renting a larger one.

What about a small enclosed utility trailer? They're about $2k and a couple hundred to put a trailer hitch on your car. I've hauled a couple jetski's and small boats around in a 4 cylinder Camry. A lot less on insurance than the van I'd expect.

 

 

That's not a bad idea really. I'd like to have one of those anyway. Already have a hitch on the truck. The main problem with using the truck is stuff getting wet but I don't want a cap on it since every time I needed to dump farm filth in the bed the cap would have to come off. I drove a truck with a cap for 10 years ad found out very quickly that one of the main appeals of a pickup was the fact that you can dump items in it rather than having to load them as with a van. Also the ability to carry things taller than the roof is more important than I initially thought. Also cleaning something that you can't stand up in is very lame.

 

Nonetheless, the extra trips are only costing me about $60 a year and two days. Also a trailer significantly reduces a truck's already crummy gas mileage.

you folks are really splitting hairs.  Time is money and the "utility" of a truck or an SUV is very hard to put a price on.

 

Driving 15,000 miles a year, in a car that gets 27 mpg on average, paying $2.50/gal of gas costs $1,388 a year.

 

Driving the same in a truck/suv that gets 17 mpg on average only costs $900 more.  I'll take that small penalty every day and twice on Sunday to have the extra flexibility and capability to haul kids, tools, dogs, lumber, a trailer, etc.

^You've completely left out the major cost in owning vehicles, the cost of the purchase. SUVs are absurdly expensive. Spending 40k-70k on a vehicle that's usually not even that nice (I recently got driven around in a 65k dollar Tahoe...what a heaping pile of garbage) and making those payments vs. 20k-25k, or less, on a sedan is a major difference in annual vehicle expenditure. That's not splitting hairs, it's hundreds per month. On top of higher insurance rates. And then gas is the cherry on top. SUVs cost a ton more, there is zero argument in the other direction.

My partner and I are working on getting one new vehicle to replace our current two (my prius and his forrester). We're going with a new '15 Outback. For day-to-day trips, we both either walk, bike, bus, or I use my scooter. This is to get to work or short errands. However, we wanted the larger vehicle for a couple reasons -

 

We camp several times a year

Transport two dogs

Tow a camper/equipment

 

From my research, outside of a full-size truck, this was our most affordable option to tow with AND get some extra bells and whistles (moonroof, Nav) at about $30K. We justified the cost because we downsizing to just one SUV/Crossover and a scooter. And it still gets 32-34 MPG. Its large enough for all our fun stuff and towing, but small enough to be practical. We actually just placed the order today, and I can't wait to drive it the first time!

I have a chair that's worth almost as much as my car. I spend more time in the chair, though.

Having a car and a home is expensive so some people live in their cars because there's few other ways to get around without one. Soon you may have no choice but pay for a car AND a home.....

 

The Trendiest Law in America May Be a Ban on Sleeping in Cars http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/10-facts-homelessness-2014 … #Top20

 

 

Just wanted to bump this KJP post to say how these laws are freaking offensive. This is classic government overreaching and it should piss everyone off.

This has sold more trucks and SUVs to people who don't need them than anything else:

 

Sad that sleeping in cars is being banned across America. I came across this first when I was traveling in the UP of Michigan a few years back. Police watched the streets because no cars were allowed to be parked next to a curb between 12 AM and 3 AM in this one particular town.

 

I remember one instance pulling off onto a shoulder on an off-ramp - like truckers do, for a ten minute catnap in Ohio. An officer pulled up behind me not more than a minute later and asked that I step out. It didn't matter the reason; he suspected I was drunk and tried to give me a sobriety test. You don't see the police harassing truckers, but drowsy driving is one of the leading causes of injuries and deaths for motorists. By placing bans in cities, in rest areas and elsewhere, it is only enabling the problem to get worse.

 

On my last big trip this past week, I spent 3 night on friends couches, 2 night in a hotel and one night in the back of my Subaru. I'm thankful I have a 2/3 - 1/3 split for my rear seat, because the 1/3 split fits my 15F sleeping bag and pad perfectly. I can quickly derobe down to my briefs and slip in and keep (very) warm and wake up refreshed.

 

At this point, because of the times I have to be up for sunrises and sunsets, I hardly bother with hotels. It's far easier to camp in the back of the wagon near the location. It's also far cheaper.

It almost looks like the sleeping in vehicles ban is an offshoot of outlawing Occupy-type activities.

^You've completely left out the major cost in owning vehicles, the cost of the purchase. SUVs are absurdly expensive. Spending 40k-70k on a vehicle that's usually not even that nice (I recently got driven around in a 65k dollar Tahoe...what a heaping pile of garbage) and making those payments vs. 20k-25k, or less, on a sedan is a major difference in annual vehicle expenditure. That's not splitting hairs, it's hundreds per month. On top of higher insurance rates. And then gas is the cherry on top. SUVs cost a ton more, there is zero argument in the other direction.

 

People never consider the opportunity cost of car ownership and operation.  If you have a $500 payment instead of a $250 payment, that's $250 less that you could invest.  In the case of many American families, we can easily double that number since so many have financed a pair of $30,000+ vehicles. 

 

You can expand this concept to homes, private schools, vacations, restaurants, hobbies, a house full of pets, and all of the junk so many people spend money on that robs them of a secure future. 

 

People fool themselves into thinking they can afford a particular car because they got "a deal".  You only get a deal if you buy a used car and then behave yourself on the road as to minimize wrecks and maintenance. 

When I was young I'd go grocery shopping with my dad. For a family of five a week of groceries fit in the trunk of his sedan. If he brought all of us along we could all fit in the car in addition to the groceries. It's not like having a kid quintuples the amount of groceries you need.

 

This doesn't even begin to comment on the "two SUV" or "SUV and minivan" families that I question continuously. Or the couple that drives an Excursion. Or the single guy that drives a Ford F150 yet never hauls anything. People THINK they need things like big vehicles but very few situations actually require such a vehicle.

 

What year was your dad's car?  Something like a 1970's ford or chevy sedan with a cavernous trunk?  I'm sure the groceries did fit easily back there...

 

One great example of why government shouldn't try to micromanage people's lives is that when CAFE caused the automakers to phase out station wagons and big cars, people didn't do what they were "supposed to" but instead bought minivans, SUVs, and even trucks, which fell under a different category and were even less efficient.

Correct. The only popular wagon out there is the Subaru Outback, and I attribute that partially because of its height and stance and its class-leading fuel MPG - up to 32 highway, for an AWD. The lower version, the Subaru Legacy Wagon, just didn't sell well in the states, although you can still find it oversees. Volvo still has their XC60 and XC70 for height, the V60 for the length and the V60 Cross Country for the Subaru-like AWD, but they are considerably more expensive. I'm not sure who else makes wagons anymore.

Cadillac does.  So does BMW, Mercedes, and plenty of others.  Honda CrossTour is very popular

Station wagons also became very uncool because they came to represent "Mom's car" to the Boomers. I like wagons -- especially ones that don't wish to be SUVs -- but they've been a tough sell since about 1990. Minivans have never been cool and that's why ones that are over 5 years old lose all their value and become "poor people's cars". There was one year (2010 I think) where almost no minivans were available. SUVs haven't reached that point yet across the board, but old-style body-on-frame ones based off pickup trucks have lost a lot of popularity outside of rural areas. Driving an H2, H3 or Excursion is regarded by many as "piggish" behavior these days.