The cat so fast he's a streak 
There is a new population of the elderly in the U.S. They are 284 million strong, their numbers are growing everyday, and their age is eye-popping: 12.5 years on average. That may not be much for you and me, but this senescent set is not made up of people, but cars. Never before has the American fleet of vehicles been so old—and that spells bad news for the long dreamed-of phase-out of gas powered vehicles, and the environment as a whole.
The new news on old cars comes courtesy of a recently released study by S&P Global Mobility, an independent research and policy group, which regularly tracks the state of the U.S. auto fleet and has seen some troubling trends of late. For six years in a row, cars on American roads have been getting older, with the biggest jump coming in the last three years, thanks in large measure to the COVID-19 pandemic. Supply chain issues caused by the pandemic and the related lockdowns led to a global shortage of computer chips on which new cars are increasingly dependent, driving down automotive supply and driving up vehicle prices. The average sticker price of a new car currently tops $48,000. Interest rate increases to battle inflation have driven the average loan rate for new cars above 6%. All of this has made people who would normally be ready to trade in their old cars more likely to hold onto them longer. Retail sales for new cars fell 8% from 14.6 million vehicles in 2021 to 13.9 million in 2022; that’s the lowest total of new car sales in over a decade.
“Multiple factors have driven vehicle costs higher while the cost of eggs and groceries and gasoline and everything else has gone up too,” says Todd Campeau, associate director of aftermarket solutions with S&P Global Mobility. “So the disposable income for households is already constrained and for many people, the thought of taking on a new car loan is something they’re reluctant to do.”
That hits the climate in a number of ways. For one thing, says Campeau, cars built 12.5 years ago are simply dirtier than cars that have benefited from improvements in fuel efficiency built into newer gas-powered vehicles. What’s more, even an old car that started out fuel-efficient will become less so as it ages.
“A car gets worse over time,” says Campeau. “It becomes less efficient. Just like humans as we get older, our bodies do not run at optimum once we get past a certain age.”
For electric vehicles, the question of age is moving in the opposite direction. There are currently just over two million EVs on the road in the U.S., representing less than 1% of the overall fleet—and they’re getting younger, not older. The average age of an EV is now 3.6 years, according to S&P, down from 3.7 in 2022. That’s because existing owners with money to spend are trading up, while less wealthy buyers are frozen out of the market as they face high interest rates coupled with the sticker shock for EVs, which currently cost close to $59,000 on average.
As to what this means for the replacement of the more than quarter-billion gas-powered vehicles on the road with clean electric ones, the outlook is not good. As owners hold onto their cars longer and the cost of electric vehicles remains high, Campeau does not see an electric switchover happening any time soon. Even if every vehicle sold going forward were electric, it would still take a decade to replace just half of the gas-powered fleet. Since every vehicle sold most assuredly won’t be electric, Campeau doesn’t see EVs outnumbering combustion vehicles for decades.
“I would put it in the 2040s,” he says. “Maybe even 2050.” American motorists may indeed be looking at a climate-friendly, all-electric future—but that future will be a long time in coming.
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Destroy the old. Save the environment. Chuck a battery into the ocean.
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It recharges the eels!
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Ring wing conspiracy theory dogwhistle detected, article discarded
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Is inflation considered an alt-right talking point rn? CNBC panics everytime Powell farts rn
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Tech lover, IT Admin, heckin pupper lover and occasionally troll. I hold back feelings or opinions, right or wrong because I dislike conflict.
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There was a few months where the narrative from some was that anyone talking about eggs going up in price was a right-wing saboteur heck-bent on destroying Biden by any means necessary. This line of reasoning really didn't ring true for fellow egg enthusiasts when you could obviously see a dozen eggs go from a bit over a dollar to $4-5 per dozen so it quickly got memory holed.
Personally, I just want my affordable, tasty proteins.
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Darn I didn’t realize that. Somehow we haven’t been impacted much in my area - are eggs one of those hyper local products like milk?
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IDK, I'm from a land of lots of milk and cheese. Egg prices spiked where I am for a bit, but it was only a few months, and they're closer to normal now.
The only people I really heard bitching about it IRL were people who thought the deep state was burning down food processing plants and farms to take over the country and other shit like that. It's more tiring hearing brainlets act like they've got the whole system figured out than it is paying a few more dollars for eggs for a handfull of weeks.
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I’ve been PA Dutch-maxxing and make hard boiled eggs soaked in pickled beets every week - awesome snack
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/18072/pickled-red-beet-eggs/
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Fascinating journo, now face the wall
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cars got better, more efficent, much more reliable, then peaked like late 90s-2010 but are getting worse, as in more technology. more computers, more cameras, gps and cellular tracking them everywhere, creepy remote engine stop feature, heated seats as a service
, all this garbage is making them more and more expensive, (for little actual benefit as an a -> b machine) and the electronics and complexity don't always age as well as a simple veecle from 2003 running great at >200k with no broken infotainment center, no glowie trackers, manual windows, physical handles on the doors, a physical cable on the throttle... etc
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My cars work. They get me to work. And they have a bussy blower
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We must manufacture new cars, forging a brand new car filled with rare earth metals uses less energy than running an existing car on gasoline, everyone knows this
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I want a new corvette but the dude at the dealer mechanic said some dude just picked up his after waiting for two years. Cry for my first world problem.
Krayon sexually assaulted his sister.
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Buy a Supra. They're less r-slurred.
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These people are salivating over the thought of turning a bunch of perfectly functional cars into scrapmetal and loading up tons of coal into the steel furnaces and mining lithium and cobalt to build new ones.
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Both ppl act like r-slurs over this.
Making new cars is obviously a hugely carbon inventive process. I don’t buy that somehow using “””rare””” earth metals makes EVs substantially worse (especially when bad actors gain from spreading FUD). More battery powered devices incentivizes better production practices - including the abolition of slavery in the process. Pretending like this is a static industry that can’t improved is giga-r-slurred.
Now what about existing ICE vehicles? I think there’s a case to be made for bio-fuels but they seem ultimately more carbon intensive than they are worth. Obviously running old ICE vehicles into the ground is a good idea.
People sperging about power generation being powered by fossil fuels even when we have EVs is also dumb. We can clearly make power more efficiently at one source. Again, incentivizing production here will improve our infrastructure. Ppl arguing from a “nothing will change” perspective should stop talking.
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Hydrogen cars are the future
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G*mers are a legitimate oppressed minority or something
I was high on blow last night and I wrote this. I have deleted the original post, but frick it here it is.
This is a REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY unpopular opinion. But I guess thats the point of This subreddit.
You might have seen the memes on the internet saying how g*mers are the most oppressed group on the earth. And how they will “Rise Up”. On the surface this is a pretty stupid, and mostly nonsensical meme. But despite how ridiculous it might seem, there is a line of truth to the meme.
Snapshots:
archive.org
ghostarchive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
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