I know someone with both a hard & soft top for their Jeep. In reality the hardtop lives on it 100% of the time. You need at least two people to swap them, just because of size. When the softtop is on, the hardtop & Jeep can’t both fit into the garage so you need a separate place to store it. It’s good in concept to have a softtop for the summer but it doesn’t work so well in reality.
Plus you gotta stop faw a cabinet.
Leases, definitely. Probably very few people, except the very wealthy (or very stupid), are cycling through new cars which they actually own that rapidly these days, especially given that financing on new cars is typically a five- or six-year term now.
FWIW, in the late '70s, my father bought a one-year-old used Cadillac Sedan DeVille. There were apparently several well-off guys in Green Bay, at that time, who bought a new Caddy every single year, and thus, were trading in low-mileage, one-year-old cars.
Thanks for the video. Something I will bear in mind when making a final purchase decision.
Which was my original point: people say they want a cheap econo-box/truck, but then they want more than what they’ll every use. Leaving aside the fact that those manual 5-seaters at MSRP were rarer than hen’s teeth, typically only advertised to get you into the store and upsell you but curiously already sold when you showed up, you’re leaving out the fact that almost none of the buyers need “more room, more storage, and bigger engines.” It’s not just Escalades you see on the expressway with one occupant, it’s Aveos and Corollas, and - for people that burned down an orphanage in a past life - Yugos. Ideally, one with magic powers, because the big counter-argument I always got for why I should have gotten an Aveo instead of my Smart was “What happens when you get hit by a semi?”
Every recent attempt at actual minimalist economy vehicles has failed unless the manufacturer can sell the model to commercial fleet buyers (previous Ford Ranger). And that’s the mindset that will kill the Slate - the buyer that will never go off-road, haul more than 100 pounds of sod, or carry more than one other person but insists on a used V8 Tundra TRD SuperMax because gosh darn it, there’s one on Craigslist for the same price.
Almost no buyers need a back seat?
The issue isn’t whether or not someone needs it, it’s the fact that if I can buy a teeny underpowered microcar without a back seat for $12k, or a small underpowered 4 door sedan for $12k, I’m taking the sedan. Hell, if I could get a brand new V8 Tundra TRD Supermax for $12k, I’ll get that. I want value for my dollar.
Economy vehicles need to be priced like economy vehicles, not give me less for basically the same price.
Like everything else in America, it depends on what you can afford. And depending on who your friends and neighbors are, either everyone has a new or nearly new car, or almost nobody does.
One of the coolest things about the 'Dope is getting to have conversations across lots of different social, cultural, and economic divides.
From the perspective of generating used cars, it doesn’t matter whether the new car owner buys or leases their vehicle. A year or three later they replace it with a different new vehicle and their “wake” of used vehicles grows by one.
And what you want. That a tiny truck can be used to haul dirty stuff whereas one might not want to fill the back seats of a sedan with stinking kitchen debris or goats is important.
My mother was born in Chicago back in the 1930s and had lots of older brothers and sisters. One of whom grew up to own a Cadillac dealership in Bumfuque Iowa shortly after WWII.
Mom used to regale us with tales from her brother of the successful farmers who would come in, buy a Cadillac, then end up with goats or chickens or a calf riding around in the back seat because the pickup truck was broken down or already in use.
But unlike ICE vehicles, a big problem with a used EV is the high cost of the battery and the replacement cost thereof. An EV is basically a huge array of batteries and a computer mounted on wheels. If the array of batteries is nearly worn out, what are you really buying?
The battery array is kinda more or less equivalent in value to the engine in an ICE car. Except that ICE engines in most cases, if reasonably maintained, are among the most reliable components of a modern car. Other things tend to fall apart or rust out while the engine is still just fine.
The used market for EVs will be interesting, to say the least.
The argument that used EVs will have largely range-crippled capacity-depleted batteries is 10+ year old FUD. That behavior really is not showing up in current high mileage EVs.
A far larger issue is that the earliest EVs had primitive batteries with inherently limited ranges even when new. Those will be the bulk of the first EVs to reach age e.g. 10. EVs really became mainstream products around 2020. Going to be awile yet before lots of 10yo used EVs will be the fully functional low-compromise vehicles of today.
People were making that argument when the first hybrids came out, too. “But when the battery wears out it’ll be too expensive to replace and all those Priuses will just get junked”, they said. But you know what? I see plenty of 15-20 year old beater Priuses on the road today.
To be fair, a hybrid like a Prius still has a workable gas engine even if the batteries have no storage capacity left.
I pointed that out when people were making that argument about the Prius decades ago, and the naysayers said “No, the Prius’s owner’s manual says you’re not supposed to drive it without a working battery”. Now I haven’t confirmed that the owner’s manual really says that, but if we assume that part is true, then it would seem like all those old Priuses I see do in fact have working batteries.
ETA: Now that I think about it, as I understand it the Prius uses purely electric power below 20 mph; the gas engine only kicks in above that speed. So I don’t think they would work without a working battery.
I’m going to go with “Yeah.” Similar to most of the population’s unused truck beds, I’d bet most people with small sedans aren’t using them. I’ve owned a Fiat 500 and Mini Cooper S, and no one ever sat back there. Ditto the Tesla Model 3 I have now, or the BMW X3 it replaced. I’ve literally gone years without owning a vehicle with a backseat will no issues, be they single-cab trucks, motorcycles, or sports cars. And I don’t think I’m an exception.
It’s only the American penchant for seeing excess as “value” instead of waste that keeps people buying more than they’ll ever use. In my experience, someone in America that actually needs 5 seats doesn’t buy an Aveo sedan - they buy a 5000-lb SUV with the biggest engine they can find, then complain about the poor mileage, the difficulty parking, problems with visibility, narrow roads, how it won’t fit in their 1950s-era garage, how expensive huge tires are, or any of the other downsides they ignored in the name of “getting bang for the buck.”
Hehehe, I somewhat agree. The back seat of the BRZ is a crime against humanity, after all. But I’m generally driving with the rear seat folded down. I use it to carry stuff, such as musical equipment. Same thing with my WRX, and I did the same with my Fit and Mini when I owned them.
So, I’m not really using the back seat, but I’m using the back of the car about 30% of the time I drive it. Often it’s stuffed to the gills, and I’m filling up the front seat as well. Now I’m starting to wonder if you can get a SUV top without any windows. It’d be nice to be able to load one of these to the gills and not have to worry about a bass or a mic stand smashing through the windows.
I don’t know about “10+ year-old FUD”, but thank you for cluing me in to new information. It does appear that modern battery tech has improved and they can retain decent capacity for a surprisingly long time, potentially losing only about 1.8% capacity per year, but that’s not the whole story. There are important caveats.
As with an ICE engine, this only applies if the battery has been well maintained, meaning (a) avoiding discharging below 20% or charging above 80% as much as possible, (b) avoiding routine DC fast charging (DCFC) and using AC level 2 as much as possible, (c) avoiding temperature extremes, especially heat, and (d) simply limiting the number of charge cycles as much as possible, which is just the same rule that applies to any car: low mileage is good.
If all of those conditions are met, an EV with modern battery tech might last as long as you might expect any car to last. But if the EV was owned by some rich dude who only expected to keep it a couple of years and used DCFC all the time and violated other recommendations, then the longevity might be disappointing.
I think Slate’s biggest mistake is making it a two door. For a pickup truck a two door work version makes sense, and there are a few people who would buy a two door Maverick with a 7 foot bed. But if you want to sell vehicles, four door is the way to go.
Are there any two door SUVs, other than the two door Wrangler? The two door ones have all vanished, because that isn’t what sells. Two doors are almost exclusively sports cars.
What I’d like to see on the Slate is more versatile side panels. Let it transform from a pickup, to a flatbed, to a four door SUV.
I’d prefer a 2-door. A 4-door won’t fit in my garage or tiny driveway pad.
Two more doors adds cost. Not something you want with a minimalist vehicle.