In the month of April my car was in the shop three times. It was supposed to be one trip (O2 sensor, emissions, tires), but it wound up being divided into three because of some unavailability on my part and the mechanics’, combined with a slight delay on parts I ordered. Anyway, I got it back and figured I’d be done with that stuff for a bit. Within 24 hours I was jacking it up to see if a wheel bearing was bad, and within 48 hours I was riding back in a tow truck. Long story short, it looked to me like coolant was leaking into the engine; though upon a professional inspection, it was just a busted thermometer housing.

Of course, good old Ford decided to make that housing out of plastic. Yup, boiling coolant held in by plastic. Don’t worry though, I’m sure Ford saved a couple cents when they made it. /sigh

Anyway, I had already been on a bit of a rabbit hole thinking about cars. Given I was driving a Ford that’s approaching 100k miles, and given it’d already been in the shop a few times (though for non mechanical issues), it wouldn’t hurt to know what options there were. That search ramped up in the ~36 hours I didn’t know if the motor was toasted on my car or not, and here I figured I’d just dump a bunch of random thoughts and ramblings into this post. Don’t expect any rhyme or reason, or much organization; just Nate rambles on in “old man yells at cloud style” for however many words this post ends up being.

While this was originally intended to be one big post, like most of my posts, it ballooned well beyond the scope of what I originally intended. This is actually post 3 of 3 in a series, and you can read Part 1: Are EVs Worth It? and Part 2: 2 Wheeled Fun if you’d like a bit more context and/or want to read some similar rants and rambling.

While it might often be a warning I should stick on all my posts, it’s especially applicable here: I have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m not a mechanic or a car guy. I haven’t even ever changed the oil in a vehicle until less than a year ago. I also don’t really have much for sources either. I have tried to double check some information, but this is largely a compilation of information I found out during surface level research of some car models. I initially learned much of the information from YouTube and AI. Take what I say with a grain of salt.

I like my car

Despite the complaints above, I like my car. It’s a bit of a relic from an older era, back when we made real economy cars with decent-ish parts. The car itself is a 2017 Ford Fiesta sedan, containing a naturally aspirated inline four engine and a 5 speed manual transmission. It’s rated for upper thirties in gas mileage, though I’m pretty sure I get low forties on long highway trips.

Its got a bit of tech: traction control, rev matching when shifting up, and hill start assist in 1st gear and reverse. It’s got a small screen, but it’s only two colors (blue and black) with all input being knobs, buttons, and levers. However, it’s also a bit of a luddite’s dream: no iPad dashboard, no backup camera, no complicated driver assist modes, no auto stop-start, and it’s even got crank windows. I’m take it or leave it on some of that tech (see the tech rants section below), but I can appreciate the simplicity of it. For example, with crank windows: I honestly rarely roll down the windows anyway. Sure, it’d be slightly more convenient to press a button instead of spinning a lever, but at the cost of a slight bit of arm movement, it brings the price of the car down and is one less electronic to break and need expensive repairs.

It originally sold for $15,765 when it launched, although I picked up mine from a dealer for $7,100 with 46k miles in April of 2022. Outside of some scrapes on the driver’s side of the car, rare trouble finding reverse, and a hood sensor that got iffy about a week after I purchased it, it was in like new shape and hasn’t had any mechanical issues until April of this year.

It’s also really fun to drive. Before purchasing it, I’d never owned a Sedan or driven a manual car before (though I did have plenty of experience operating a clutch). I bought it because it was cheap; in 2022 (and still now) it’s not an easy find to get a 7k car that’s 5 years old and under 50k miles. Despite having an engine smaller than some motorcycles, it feels surprisingly quick; and being a smaller sedan it’s pretty nimble when turning or parking. It’s not perfect - two wheel drive and a low ground clearance have been a bit iffy in deep snow or when taking it off pavement, but so far I’ve managed alright with it.

I’m planning on holding onto it for a fair bit longer - “until the wheels fall off” as I put it elsewhere. Allegedly, the average lifespan of a Fiesta is 130k miles, although I think mine might have a few things in its favor. First, it’s got a lot of highway miles, which are way less wear heavy than city driving. Secondly, it’s a manual transmission; the DCT in the automatic versions had a lot of issues, and at 130k miles it might have very well been the second failed transmission at that point, leading to the owner giving up on it. The manual transmission lasts a lot longer, and is way cheaper to fix or replace if needed. Beyond that, I’ve also taken decent care of it; keeping up on regular maintenance without beating on the car too hard¹.

And, finally, I might have a bit of a different cost <> benefit analysis than other people. Putting 4k of repairs in a car only worth 3k might not make sense to some; but if the alternative is to spend 14k on a crummy car, or 24k on a decent new car that lacks a lot of what I liked about my current car, then sinking a bunch into an older car to get it roadworthy might make sense in my mind. My tune may change after a big wave of repairs, which I’m sure are approaching as a bunch of sensors, joints, and bearings wear out - but for now my plan is just to keep it on the road for a while. This is doubly true since my living & work situation, as well as the car market in general, may be different in a few years and I don’t want to have to lock myself into a particular vehicle for a long time if an alternative might be feasible a few years down the road.

The Ranting Section

A bunch of disorganized complaints.

They don’t make them like they used to

And I’m not only saying that because I’m a luddite. Vehicles have hit new reliability lows, and most manufacturers hit record recall levels in the recent years (shoutout to Ford). It varies a lot between manufacturers and specific vehicles, but as a whole, vehicles have been getting worse. And, not only that, but it feels like vehicles are being built to be disposable as well. “Lifetime” transmission fluid and timing belts have to be the worst. It’ll have a lifetime tank of gas, too, if they pull a KTM and make a camshaft out of cheese that breaks before you hit ‘E’.

However, the JD power study only monitors ownership across three years. If the average person drives ~12k miles per year, that’s record breaking unreliability at 36k miles. When I bought my 2017 Fiesta, I distinctly remember saying something along the lines of “I know it’s a Ford, but it’s under fifty thousand miles.” Vehicles by manufacturers known to be more reliable would have either cost a lot more or had way more miles on them, and I figured (and know now) it’d at least get me near or past 100k miles before it ran into issues. That’s not the case anymore. I was able to (rather quickly) find post 2020 recalls on the following brands due to catastrophic failures of engines &/or transmissions under 50k miles from the following manufacturers/congolomerates:

• Ford
• General Motors
• Honda
• Hyundai
• Kia
• Nissan
• Stellantis
• Toyota

Car prices as a whole haven’t changed all that much since I bought my car, but now the ’newer’ cars are becoming the older cars. When I thought mine was going to need replacement I was a bit concerned to find that the concept of buying a 5 year/~50k mile vehicle for half MSRP from a meh manufacturer could very well lead to an immediate catastrophic failure previously reserved for the 100-200k mileage range.

But beyond major powertrain failures, there’s also just general poorer quality parts. Like I just experienced, a plastic thermometer housing holding back boiling coolant is likely not going to last the life of the vehicle. A few model generations later, and even the oil pan is now plastic. An aluminum oil pan with a steel bolt and a crush washer is probably going to last the life of a vehicle. How many plastic oil pans with a plastic bolt and rubber o-ring will you go through when it gets hit by road debris or just wears out from being plastic exposed to extreme temperatures and weather? I’m sure there’s a million examples of downgrades to crummy alloys or outright plastic parts for critical components, but plastic exposed to boiling (or at least boiling temperature) engine fluids stands out rather starkly.

And then, of course, once you go to fix those vehicles it gets harder and more expensive. If you’ve got a reliable and (relative to other manufacturers) easy to repair Toyota - but a headlight goes out - you’re stuck paying $600-$1,400 for a new OEM replacement part (not labor/shop costs, only for the part itself). If you’re unlucky, and you’ve got a less reliable/repairable vehicle like a Ford, it’ll short out your can bus and could brick your car. And, once you get the parts and make the repair, you or your mechanic may very well either need to pay for expensive software or take it to the dealer to have the parts ‘paired’ with your vehicle to allow it to work.

Even basic maintenance isn’t free from this issue. Some engines by companies like BMW, Nissan, and Volkswagen require you to take the engine out of the car to service things like the timing chain - adding a huge bill to certain maintenance intervals (assuming the car makes it to ~100k miles, which - to be fair - is probably not something I’d bank on for those manufacturers). Self service tools like dipsticks and the like are also disappearing, making it that much harder to service a vehicle without a more serious set of tools and paid diagnostic software. And these are just a few random examples of issues I found when doing light research of car models - I’m sure this goes so much deeper.

You don’t own cars like you used to

Something that I tend to forget, and presumably you as well since I’m assuming you’re fairly technical if you’re reading my blog, is the state of tech nowadays - particularly the lack of ownership. Pre-installed software that can’t be removed, software you’re not allowed to install, ads at both the OS and software level, and insanely aggressive tracking - with all your data up for sale to nearly any individual, company, or government willing to pay for it. From the looks of it, modern vehicles are running into the same issues.

The first, and probably biggest factor in that, would be the inability to replace certain parts or clear certain codes without dealership software. It obviously varies a ton from manufacturer to manufacturer, but we’ve approached printer levels of shenanigans and I can’t understand why people don’t get more angry about this.

And then there’s things like auto start stop or the various driver “assists” that you can’t permanently disable in most cars, at least not without OBD2 programming or hacking/physical modifications. I’ll complain more about those things in particular in the technology section, but the fact they’re just forced on you and unconfigurable drives me nuts.

And then of course, there’s always the more absurd stuff. Things like BMW trying to put heated seats behind a subscription² or threatening to reduce engine power if you don’t plug in your hybrid enough. Or Ford planning to record your conversations to sell to advertisers and once considering turning your car into a traffic camera that snitches on other drivers. And of course, the latest being the government mandated ‘kill switch’ - which I’ll rant about more in a bit.

I know I just jumped from a bunch of vague generalities to four highly specific anecdotal cases (3/4 being either theoretical or initially implemented and then reversed). But this isn’t a “Nate writes about the state of the auto industry keeping with journalistic standards” type post - it’s just a “Nate’s annoyed and ranting, ignore him and he’ll get tuckered out and go back to writing about social media protocols” type post. But, hopefully, it does sorta illuminate the four horsemen of vehicle non-ownership that we seem to be trending towards:

1. Companies are trying to extract money in sneaky ways, like charging subscriptions for hardware you’ve already bought or preventing the use of third party repairs.
2. You’re locked out of using a vehicle in the ways you want, even for things that should be easily configured (like auto start stop, or how often you charge a plugin hybrid).
3. Cars are spying on us, collecting our location, driving habits, and even potentially recording our conversations in them before selling that data to anyone who’ll buy it.
4. Cars answer to the manufacturer and government before they answer to us.

Over regulation

Nothing like the alliance between an overreaching government and soulless megacorps to ruin your day.

CAFE Standards

And, of course, speaking of cars answering to the government: over regulation has also made things worse. One of the biggest issues was the CAFE Standards, going so far as to require small cars and trucks to have an average efficiency of 61.07 MPG in 2025. Last I checked, even the Prius is in the 50mpg range - we just can’t produce vehicles to the efficiency standards that are required. There were exemptions to the standard: the bigger the vehicle, the smaller the MPG that was required - leading to the most predictable outcome imaginable - bigger vehicles with poor fuel efficiency. So, to any non-Americans wondering why many Americans who don’t need ground clearance or hauling/towing capacity still commute in light infantry vehicles: some of that comes down to everything else being regulated out of existence. Don’t drive that Honda Fit or Mitsubishi Mirage that get upper 30s MPG: they’re bad for the environment, which is why the government wisely prevented the manufacturers from selling them here. Drive an 18.5 MPG truck instead, the trees and fish will thank you.

And, of course, all the fuel efficiency technology (some of which I’ll rant about in the tech section) ends up being forced on the consumer. Things like auto start stop wearing out engines to eke out minute gains, direct injection worsening engine performance and requiring costly repairs, 4 cylinder turbos which have worse longevity and towing capacity compared to older v6/8 engines, or CVTs that shift slightly more efficiently at the cost of being a wear item that often exceeds the value of the vehicle by the time they break. In an ever increasing search for fuel efficiency, I wouldn’t be surprised if many would be 300k mile cars were turned into 120k mile cars with only small increases in fuel efficiency.

The standards didn’t just affect reliability and ban smaller vehicles, however. In order to achieve a lower average, manufacturers appear to have subsidized electrified options with combustion engine sales. In 2017 the Ford Fiesta had a starting MSRP of $14k, and today the cheapest combustion only vehicle by Ford would be the Maverick Lobo starting at 35.9k. Sure: inflation, supply chain shortages, increasing tech in cars, and tariffs contributed to that - not to mention it’s a different body style³ - but combustion engine prices still shouldn’t have doubled in price in less than a decade. Until you take a look at Ford’s 2025 balance sheets and find they made 3+ billion in profit from their gas vehicles, but lost 6+ billion overall, in large part due to subsidizing EVs. Every 2k down $9 a month Nissan Leaf lease⁴ to lower fleet averages is a reason why Nissan doesn’t sell gas cars under $20k any more.

It’s not all doom and gloom though in this area, however, things actually might be looking up: the CAFE standards were rolled back in 2025. It takes a lot of time for new car models to be introduced, but there’s plenty unconfirmed rumors of small trucks in the works, and companies like Ford which discontinued consumer sedans have stated that they’re back on the table as a possibility. Still, new 2026 cars were already built with those emission standards in mind, and the used market is going to suffer with them for a considerable amount of time even if newer vehicles in the coming years can be built better with more sane reliability <> efficiency trade offs⁵.

‘Kill Switches’

However, there’s another area of over regulation: so called “safety” equipment. The biggest one in the news lately is the ‘kill switch’ - an AI trying to judge if you’re too intoxicated to drive or not. Passed in 2022 and possibly coming into effect in 2027⁶, manufacturers would be required to install a system that attempts to detect if you’re intoxicated, then limit or prevent operation of the vehicle. Setting aside the aspect of “Excuse me, what the F, my car should answer to me and not some AI” it may look like it could be a good idea for the first couple of seconds. Then you remember AI can often be wildly inaccurate, and it will absolutely mess up at some point. If you took an average of two car trips a day, and even if it was 99.9% accurate - which I highly doubt it could reach that degree of accuracy - you’d be stranded once every 1.37 years. If it was 99.99% accurate, that’d be once every 13 years. Even at 99.999% accurate that’d be once every 130 years, which sounds like a low risk, until you realize that if the average person drove for 65 years of their life, then one out of two people will be stranded at some point in their life.

And, again, I HIGHLY doubt we can achieve even a 99.9% accuracy on current AI or ML Algorithms for a camera based intoxication detection system.

And, when people inevitably get their vehicles disabled by mistake, there’ll be consequences. It might be mundane like missed wages from not being able to get to work, it could be impactful like missing the interview for your dream job or missing a flight for a vacation, or it could be deadly like a car stopping on the interstate, preventing somebody from getting to the hospital, or exposing them to extreme temperatures. Not to mention, there’ll probably be a flag somewhere that it detected you were intoxicated. Data like that is already being sold to insurance providers, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’d also make its way to the government as well. I could argue on as to why this is a bad idea, but I’ve seen two other quotes that capture what I’d like to convey - one transcribed from a speech by Senator Thomas Massie and another from an anonymous YouTube commenter:

What I’ll describe sounds like it’s from a bad science fiction movie, but that’s what’s written in the law. Right now, in law, that’s going to be implemented […] for 2026 and beyond. Now the reality is that the technology doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t stop legislators from imagining things that they would like to do to infringe on civil liberties. But there’s a law that states every vehicle manufactured is going to have to have a kill switch in it. The car itself will monitor your driving. And if the car thinks you’re not doing a good job driving, it will disable itself. So the car dashboard becomes your judge, your jury, and your executioner. Imagine this: we got a snowstorm coming. A mom takes her kids out, they’re going to the grocery store - it’s snowing, they’re trying to get some groceries before the big storm hits. She swerves for a pothole, a neighbor’s pet gets in the way so she swerves for that, a first responder goes by [and] she pulls over for that. Her car says, “You’ve got one more swerve and we’re going to ground you.” There it is, the next she has to avoid - an icy patch in the road. The car has adjudicated her as unsuitable for driving. It disables the vehicle and there she’s stranded. My question is: how do you appeal your sentence once your car - the technology in your car - has judged you to be incapable of driving? Once it’s disabled you and your children at the side of the road, how do you appeal that? Do you press a button on the dashboard? Do you start talking to an AI? What if it really was someone who was drunk? Are you really going to send a police car after this disabled vehicle? Do we even have the resources to do that? There’s going to be so many false positives. This technology is unworkable. That’s why the DOT is still in the rulemaking process, asking for feedback on how this could even exist. […] It’s just a bad idea, but it’s […] law.

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How could this possibly go bad. Let’s count the ways: Disabled for dodging potholes. Disabled on the way to the hospital because [you’re] having a heart attack. Disabled on the way to the hospital because [your] child is dying in the back seat. Disabled when some stalker is following you. Disabled when some road rager with a gun is chasing you. Disabled in the middle of the highway. Disabled in the middle of nowhere. Disabled when you’re trying to evacuate from a flood, [… a] hurricane, [… or] a wildfire. Note if the system is 99.9999% accurate and the total trips taken each day by all drivers combined is 100 million that’s still 10,000 drivers falsely stranded each DAY! Wonder what they charge to tow your car in and get it reset?

Speed Limiters

Jumping from federal level stuff to a few state level things, NY recently passed a law (SBS4045C) requiring people with 16 automated speeding tickets to have a limiter installed on their car to prevent them from speeding. Automated tickets are a bit different than regular tickets - regular tickets written by an officer can stack and revoke a license if you get too many, while an automated ticket is a simple fine⁷ that’s a more transparent money grab. Still, 16 tickets is quite a few, so it’s not going to be applicable to the vast majority of people. But it’s something I’m a bit worried about, for several reasons:

First, of course, if you were forced to have one installed (presumably on your own dime) there comes the risk of technology controlling your max speed. My GPS occasionally confuses which road I’m on or gives an incorrect speed limit. What happens when it thinks you’re on a side street when you’re on the highway next to it, or mixes up the speed limit, and you’re doing 35MPH on a 65MPH road? What happens in construction zones, especially with ones that only have a decreased speed limit when work is being actively done? What limitations does it default to when it loses GPS reception? Ect.

Secondly, it’s a slippery slope. Yes, I know that the slippery slope fallacy is, in fact, a fallacy. However, it’s also an accurate observation of the world on many occasions⁸. Less than 20 years from when we started forcing people convicted of DWIs to have a breathalyzer in their car we’re already trying to mandate similar technology in all cars. How long until they start reducing the number of tickets, or until they try and mandate it on every vehicle?

Third, automatic speeding tickets could likely accumulate quickly. I know a guy who got a few because he was speeding on the highway in a construction zone - it was set to 45 MPH in a usual 65 MPH, but most other people were speeding so he kept up with the flow of traffic. Or, maybe an accident knocks down a speed limit sign. In a case like that, a cop pulls you over once, and you might get hit with a single fine, but now you know not to do that. In the case of an automated system, you might very well go blissfully unaware you’re invisibly racking up tickets, until weeks or months later when you start getting letters in the mail that state you owe thousands and your car can’t be driven until you get a speed limiter installed.

Fourth, automated tickets are tied to your car’s registration instead of you. If you were to loan out your car to a friend or family member and they racked up some tickets, unless you can prove it wasn’t you driving, you might very well be forced to install a speed limiter in your car. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue - somebody gets pulled over and the car’s driver gets the ticket. The camera, however, isn’t pulling drivers over - it’s just reading license plates and spitting out fines to the car itself.

And, finally, automated systems make mistakes. Of course there’s the technology issues - while OCR might be much more reliable than other AI systems, it can still make mistakes. Fighting a couple thousand in fines because some speeder had a similar license plate would still be better than fighting a couple thousand in fines AND a car with state mandated spyware & limitations. There’s also human mistakes: a camera that was set to the wrong speed, left out after a work zone was decommissioned, or a camera monitoring a road with a missing speed limit sign. Not only can an officer understand those sorts of things, but it’s also a lot easier to challenge in court. If an officer pulls you over for doing 35 in a school zone, it’s rather easy to take a photo of the school zone sign lying on the ground. If a speed camera detects you doing 35 in a school zone twice a day for a couple weeks, and by the time the fines come in the mail the sign has been replaced, you’re going to have a hard time fighting it (or even knowing said missing sign was the reason why you were speeding).

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The above is specific to the recent NY law. Something I should have probably done before I wrote all that, but that I just did now after doing so, was to see if similar laws were enacted or pending in other states. There’s a few, although NY stands out as unique in its use of a high number of generic automated tickets. Illinois and the District of Columbia require speed limiters after two tickets for going 25+ miles over the speed limit, and one ticket for going 20 miles over the speed limit, respectively. Most other states appear to implement it as an optional alternative to license suspensions. In other cases, like Georgia, a speed limiter is installed after multiple cases of illegal street racing - replacing the previous penalty of having the car seized.

Again, most people won’t ever meet the requirements of the laws as they are now. And it appears all states aside NY require an officer to issue citation(s) to the person directly, followed by a hearing and the standard burden of proof that the state should be required to have for any criminal offense. Still, it’s a concerning trend to keep an eye on: these laws sit at the crossroads of fines and mild civil liberties infringements, which tend to expand quickly in a lot of jurisdictions.

Cars don’t drive like they used to

Alright, after all that, let’s have a pallet cleanser. This is a lot more of a “Guys, things are slightly different than I’m used to, and I don’t like it” than anything else.

We have some bucket trucks and F550s at work I occasionally need to move around when I’m working on their electronics. That F550 is supposed to be a rather powerful vehicle, boasting ~3x the horsepower and ~4x the torque of my car, utilizing a massive V8. Putting around in it, the best words I could describe it with is an “anemic boat.” You press the pedal, and it crawls to a start, shifting early through its massive gearbox. Yes, there’s a lot of stuff loaded onto the back; and yes, I’m sure if I pressed the pedal to the floor it would utilize a lot more of its power.

And, since writing that, I recently worked on a Chevy Silverado 5500 Turbo Diesel. Again, I went to drive it and pressing the pedal down probably 30-40%, I’m gaining about a mile per hour a second. It’s going across the parking lot going …7MPH…8MPH…9MPH, etc. This is a completely stock diesel truck with no load aside from myself and some tools, which you’d expect to have quite a bit of get up and go. And yet my Fiesta could nearly accelerate faster idling, even if I haven’t fed the squirrel running on the hamster wheel that’s there in place of the motor.

I’ve even seen similar things from regular consumer vehicles when I borrowed one from a family member while mine was in the shop. It felt like the first ~33% of the pedal was “accelerate very slowly” and the second 33% was “accelerate slowly.” Then once I’m merging onto the highway barely doing thirty I stomped on it only for it to automatically downshift and nearly hit the redline.

Compare that to something like my motorcycle. Pulling the throttle pulls a physical steel cable that opens a tube for air. The more air that flows through the tube, the more fuel that’s pulled out of the carburetor - a marvel of analogue engineering that gives you a precise and linear control of engine power. My car is the opposite - throttle by wire (aka a sensor the computer reads while the computer physically adjusts the throttle) - with a modern fuel injection system. And yet, it feels near identical to a mechanical throttle. I get the same precise linear control over engine power.

As much as I might joke about being a luddite, I’m rather tech agnostic here. It’s not the difference between an analogue braided steel cable or a digital copper wire, but the direct control the vehicle puts you in. Some of this comes from emissions: the lower the RPMs and the slower the acceleration, the more drops of MPG they can squeeze onto a spreadsheet. But with the amount of reviews I saw praising the presence (or lamenting the lack) of one pedal driving on vehicles leaves me to believe that the more appliance style of driving, as opposed to a traditionally programmed throttle, is simply what many people prefer.

Another of my old man yells at cloud complaints would be the loss of manual transmissions here in the US. Just like the way throttles are programmed, it doesn’t actually affect the car’s practicality much (although manuals are cheaper to produce and often last longer). I’ve come to enjoy driving a manual, and up until recently, you’d get transmission options on most things. Now, however, it looks like you have to not only seek out a car with a manual, but you often pay a premium when doing so.

Finally, there’s also the lack of smaller, sportier cars in the budget category. A smaller, nimble car with a lower displacement engine is really the only way you can get a sporty feeling vehicle while also making a practical decision. The Fiesta, for example:

• Is the most fuel efficient non-electric/hybrid vehicle sold in the US
• Was one of the cheapest vehicles you could buy
• Is a fun car to drive

It’s practical enough I wound up buying it with no intention of getting something fun, only looking for something cheap and with decent MPG. Getting a similar car from the 2026 line of cars involves paying a 10-15k premium over budget cars now. Throttle tunes, transmission options, and car types don’t have the practical issues that most of my other complaints run into. Still, they affect your day to day driving experience. A Kia might only start on fire while you’re driving once, but the way your car operates may very well make or break your experience every single day.

Tech in vehicles

What the bulk of this post was initially going to be about: tech, and my ramblings on what I do and don’t like.

Auto start stop

Let’s start tech off with a good ol’ luddite complaint: auto start stop. Let’s stop the engine when it’s idling and only run it when you’re actually driving. It might only save a few pennies worth of fuel, but you might as well. Except, wait, how much engine wear comes from starting it? Oh, right, all of the wear. I know it’s not quite 1:1; if it’s been sitting for a while then starting the engine is going to effectively run without oil until it gets circulated. If it was running recently, like with what auto stop start does, there will still be some oil on the engine parts. But it is still going to do a considerable amount of wear on the engine.

Some hybrids, which need to stop and start the engine even more often, are getting around that by using an electronic pump that circulates the oil before starting the engine. That sort of technology, as much as it adds complexity that might cost more to fix as the vehicle ages, could probably solve the wear auto stop start causes. The Priuses for sale with 300-500k miles are proof we can build engines that start and stop a lot if done right. But most manufacturers are not doing a lot right in the present, and for now I want to avoid auto stop start like the plague.

From the looks of it, you can disable auto start stop on most vehicles. Most vehicles have a button you can press to disable it until the car shuts off, but that sounds annoying to have to do every drive. For a more permanent fix, it looks like some allow you to permanently disable it via OBD2 programming. For the vehicles that don’t allow that, it looks like it can be permanently disabled via some low tech hacks (e.g. jamming a paper clip into the button) or installing an aftermarket button that sends a signal that it was “pressed” automatically every time the car turns on.

Automated Braking

Automated braking sounds great on paper, but I question its safety in practice. The ability to judge when to brake or swerve is quite literally a matter of life or death. You know the deal: a vehicle pulls out in front of you, or a person or animal steps into the road, and your tires literally don’t have the capacity to stop you before you hit them so you need to swerve. Automated braking might be life saving for people who can’t put their phones down while driving down a residential street, or for older drivers who have poor reaction time (or just bad drivers in general). But I’m not sure it’d be an aid in the hands of a decent driver.

Swerving has saved me a few times. The most notable time was on my way home from work a while back. I’m probably doing 44 in a 45 (the cops like to camp out on that stretch of road, so I’m always on my best behavior when driving there) and a kid is playing with a ball walking down the sidewalk. Like in every driving school example ever, the ball rolls into the street and the kid full sprints after it right in front of me. I cranked the wheel and barely missed him, cutting across a few lanes of (thankfully empty) road. Had I slammed on the brakes instead of swerving I probably would have hit him doing ~30mph.

If the computer’s logic boils down to “object detected, apply brake” then I’m worried it’d risk causing an accident. You can’t swerve and brake at the same time, so even if a computer can react a few milliseconds faster than I can, if it does the wrong thing it doesn’t really matter. I’d bet it came about because some 80 year old in congress was like “Man, somebody stepped out in front of me two blocks away and I almost didn’t stop in time. Cars should really be able to stop themselves.” Then it got forced on all of us.

I’m sure we’ll get to a point where the computer can judge road conditions and distance, then make a judgment call on swerving/braking better than the driver. When that happens, or when I get older and my reaction time gets worse, I’ll re-assess my thoughts on automated braking. Until then, however: I’ve been in 0 accidents⁹, and have managed to swerve and avoid a number of accidents, so I’ll be hesitant about any driver assists that take control of the wheel in those circumstances.

Disabling automatic braking looks to be rather easy, a bit of tape over the camera sounds like it disables most driver assists on most cars. I’d bet it’d also be possible to “brain in a jar” the computer by feeding it a looping video of driving down an empty road or something similar. Some cars also look like it can be configured out in some drive modes or settings, though settings like that generally reset every drive.

ABS

On the topic of braking, however, I’m going to do a 180 on ABS. Unlike something like swerving vs. braking, preventing the wheels from locking up while braking is a lot simpler and a computer can do that better than I can every time. Unlike most of the tech in this list, my car has ABS, and I’m glad it does. Every car I’ve driven has had ABS (albeit it was broken on one of my parents’ vehicles for a time when I was learning to drive), so my brain often does a ham-fisted (ham-footed?) brake press if I need to stop fast - trusting the computer to apply the maximum amount that’ll keep the wheels from locking up.

I can get by without ABS on my motorcycle since - unlike cars - I’ve used ATVs and bicycles all my life, and more recently an ebike, with none of them having ABS. I can instinctively manage proper brake pressure on vehicles like those, although I would probably be able to stop my motorcycle a bit faster if it did have ABS. Disabling ABS on older cars seems to be possible by pulling a fuse, and on some newer cars via OBD2 and/or button hacks, though I’d personally never disable ABS.

Traction Control

Traction control - ABS’s evil twin - is another story. I hate traction control with a burning passion. My car isn’t all that powerful, and I don’t drive like a hooligan, so traction control never kicks in … unless there’s snow. On my old Nissan, traction control operated as such: if the wheels spin, cut the engine power. The tiniest amount of wheel spinning at low speeds would bring the vehicle to a near halt. If I was pulling out into an intersection, that meant I’m going to be nearly stopped on a road where other people can’t stop easily - putting me in danger. If I was going through deep snow and my wheels started spinning, it means I was brought to a stop AND stuck in snow I could have gotten through without traction control. My Fiesta is the same as my old Nissan, except the Fiesta is a manual, so not only am I stopped but it also stalls itself if I don’t realize what it’s doing and push the clutch in.

I know how to drive in the snow, unlike the programmers of traction control that I’ve used. I’ve heard people sing the praises of traction control in the snow on modern vehicles, so I assume not all traction control is made equal (and/or they don’t know how to drive in the snow).

Disabling traction control on startup has been a driving ritual of mine whenever there’s snow on the ground (it always defaults to “On” when starting the car - I think it’s a legal requirement for manufacturers to implement in many jurisdictions). Since my Fiesta supports permanently disabling it via OBD2 programming, and since I’m back in WNY full time, buying a Forscan license and permanently disabling it on my Fiesta has been on my “I should do that at some point” list. Older vehicles would let you pull a fuse (although I think my car’s new enough to not be able to do that without nuking a bunch of other components), and I’m sure there’s always button hacking as well on some supported vehicles.

Lane assist

Lane assist is something that, in my mind, is either a great idea or the worst idea ever - depending how it’s implemented. A ding or a dashboard warning you’re drifting outside your lane could be handy. I don’t have any issues keeping my car in the lane, but you usually can’t go wrong with a fail safe. I might find it annoying if my car yells at me when I’m going around a pothole on the pothole infested roads, or yells at me when it mistakes lane changing on the highway for drifting out of a lane (I use my blinkers - I’m not a BMW driver - but apparently some systems can misinterpret turns with a blinker on).

Then, I looked into civics. Apparently, some lane assist systems actively fight you on the steering wheel. Not some ding or dashboard alert, but physically attempting to prevent you from steering outside what it considers your lane. Apparently Honda’s is particularly bad: I saw it described along the lines of “occasionally feeling like it’s actively trying to kill you.” The idea of trying to change lanes or dodge something (or someone) in the road only for the car to try and prevent me from doing that is horrifying.

In Honda’s case, it sounds like there’s three modes: off, warn only, and on. From what I saw, if you set it to warn only, that setting will carry over each time you start the car. If you turn it off, however, then next time you start the car it’ll turn it back on. Most vehicles probably follow along those lines as well. The other option I saw online was tape over the cameras. When I read it there was a warning along the lines of “But don’t do that or else it will disable all the other driver assist features too.” My reaction was 😍. If I buy a new car I swear I’m gouging out every last one of its digital eyes.

Blind spot detectors

Blind spot detectors, at least on paper, get the “Nate’s stamp of semi-apathetic approval.” My neck does, in fact, turn - so I always check my blind spots. I’ve also got blind spot mirrors on my car as well. I don’t need a blind spot detector, but like some things on the list, having a failsafe is good. You can’t really go wrong with a failsafe, and even if it occasionally beeped at me unnecessarily¹⁰, it’d probably not hurt overall to have it installed. Unlike all the other tech complaints, there’s nothing wrong with this tech, but my mind has been changed on blind spot detectors. This all started when I watched a guy review a Jeep, and he said the blind spot detectors had already saved him from several accidents. My two brain cells were like “Hold on, wait a minute, this silly goose isn’t checking his blind spots properly.” Another video sometime later, and someone else explicitly praised blind spot detectors as being more convenient than turning your neck.

Blind spot cameras are good at detecting cars. Not perfect - no algorithm is - but good. They are not, however, good at detecting anything else (cyclists, bikers, pedestrians, ect). This creates an extremely dangerous situation for anybody not in a car where somebody in the car uses the failsafe (blind spot detectors) as their only means of knowing if it’s safe to turn. It’s not that the tech is bad, but I do wonder if blind spot detectors could do more harm than good. A mediocre failsafe is good; people disregarding their vision and relying solely on it is very bad.

Backup cameras

I’m going to take a break from being a luddite for a bit, however, and talk about backup cameras. There’s really no drawback to having them, minus maybe a couple bucks added to MSRP, but that’s pretty negligible. On a small sedan like my Fiesta (which doesn’t have one) it wouldn’t hurt to have, but it’s rather easy to see behind me when I turn my head so it falls in the “might be nice to have but I don’t care all that much” bucket of things. On bigger vehicles, though, man are they handy. I occasionally move around some bigger trucks like F550s for work if I need to fiddle with/replace tech components in them, and even on mostly stock trucks the ability to actually see behind me is rather nice. Throw in a truck with a box or a bucket lift on the back that obscures the rear view completely, and I legitimately don’t know how people drove them before backup cameras were implemented.

CVT Transmissions

I’m kinda iffy on CVTs. At the end of the day, CVTs are more efficient than regular transmissions - there’s infinite gears and a computer that’s optimized for the most efficient shifting. The problem is, they’re also a wear item. While a regular automatic/manual transmission might last the lifetime of a vehicle, and can be repaired if broken, a CVT is going to fail and need replacing.

I’m not sure if some of the issues with CVTs are really just a sign of the times rather than an issue with the technology, however. The fact manufacturers may seal a CVT with “lifetime” fluid and not sell you a replacement belt¹¹ (opting to force a transmission to be replaced entirely) might very well be in a similar class as Ford selling a 10 speed transmission with (unsealed) “lifetime” fluid and only selling replacement transmissions instead of replacement transmission parts.

CVTs are also not all made equal. I heard Toyota is using a real first gear in their CVTs; the car using a physical gear to get moving then the CVT for efficiency when already driving - drastically increasing the lifespan of the transmission. There’s also the trade off of efficiency vs reliability. If a car knocks a buck or so off every tank of gas, but needs a transmission replaced twice in the car’s life, how much does the replacement cost actually cost after taking into account gas savings? Like I said, I’m iffy on it, though if given the option I’d personally opt to avoid one.

Although the CVTs programmed to pretend to shift like regular gear boxes are just silly.

Misc Sensors

One of the few issues I’ve had with my car, which occurred shortly after I purchased it¹², was a hood sensor. After it first alerted that the hood was open and I checked to see it was physically locked, I watched a YouTube tutorial on how to fix it and plugged and unplugged it. When the IT go to of “turn it off and back on again” failed, I brought it to my mechanic who was able to fix it for a few bucks. In the meantime, every time I started the car, I hit “Okay” on the radio to clear the “Hood Open” alert on the radio screen. My car is pretty laissez faire when it comes to sensors: it’ll give me a single chime or message on the dash, but it’ll never become too invasive or prevent the car from moving. Sensors are great, you really don’t want to drive down the highway with a flat tire or a hood that could fly open at any moment; just as long as they don’t try to override your human judgment.

You can probably guess where this is going: they’re often overriding human judgment. A while back I saw someone share this clip, where someone was unable to reverse because there was a pole in front of him - the car forcibly shifting him back to park. More recently, I was helping a family member line up a trailer when her truck refused to drive because the door was open so that she could hear me. In both of those cases, not only did the car overrule human input, but they were wrong. I can only imagine the frustration of having to have my car towed because the hood sensor went bad hundreds of miles from my favorite mechanic, knowing that the car was perfectly fine to drive and mechanically solid, but a random sensor said otherwise.

Electronic Keys

RFID keys have me going y tho? From what I can tell, they don’t generally offer a benefit. Most cars appear to require them to be inserted in the steering column or placed in a highly specific spot on the dash or center console to actually drive, so it’s not like it’s some magic luxury that means you never have to go digging in your pockets or a bag for your keys. For these non existant benefits, you lose the analogue reliability of regular keys - no more unlocking the car door with a physical mechanism regardless of if the car or FOB is out of battery. They’re also hackable: anyone with the right hardware can theoretically clone your key for a short period of time and drive your car away. This cloning works through walls and doors, so somebody could theoretically steal your car by walking past your front door and cloning the keys on your coat rack. It just feels like a stupid trade off.

Touchscreen Displays

The big touchscreen devices seem emblematic of complaints about tech in cars - I’ve used ‘iPad on wheels’ a couple of times in this post and the previous post in this impromptu series. They’re distracting - a UK study (article, study) showed what was already common sense - taking your eyes off the road to tap at a touch screen is more dangerous than touching a physical button on a dashboard or steering wheel. The article even claims it’s more dangerous than driving drunk.

Some controls on them are also stupid and pointless. Why in the world would you need to dive through system menus to change which direction air flows out of a vent? Not only is it a stupid and dangerous hassle, but an electric motor that moves a piece of plastic is certainly more expensive than a nub on the end of the piece of plastic that lets you move it with your hand while keeping your eyes on the road. And, finally, replacing them is expensive. Replacement screens/infotainment systems (from the looks of it with some manufacturers, part pairing and forced part assembly replacements increase the scope of the repair) can cost hundreds or even multiple thousands for the parts alone, in addition to labor.

Cellular Connectivity

Cellular connectivity is my emblematic complaint about cars. The only benefit cellular connectivity brings is the ability to contact emergency services in the event of a crash. HOWEVER, not only do cell phones have that ability (including automatic crash detection that notifies emergency services in the event you were incapacitated), but the ability to contact emergency services with your car is often paywalled. Everything else that cellular connectivity brings, in my opinion, is bad.

First, it’s the cornerstone of manufacturers controlling your car as opposed to you. They can’t track your driving habits and sell it to insurance providers and data brokers without it, and they can’t charge you subscriptions for features in your car. It’s also the birthplace of the vibe coded and ever hot fixed car OS. Remember when machinery and appliances were air gapped and worked just fine with a simple operating system that never needed to be updated? Now, instead, many cars get regular updates and (per the JD power study) regular electronic issues. These updates can also lead to bricked devices and laggy performance in older model vehicles. And then, of course, it enables vehicles to be remotely disabled (and in some cases controlled) by anyone with the software signing keys or a zero day.

It also allows:

• Ads on your dashboard
• Your car being used as a moving traffic cam
• Manufacture penalties for driving habits
• The recording of your conversations
• Self repoing cars
• The collection of your biometrics
• Easy assassinations

Most manufacturers will let you disable most of that in the settings of the vehicle. In most cases, that’s really all that’s needed, and it’ll likely remove any tracking and telemetry. I’m also not the enemy of any state, so I’m probably safe from government assassinations, and I’m far too boring to be worth any private attempts to hack a vehicle. Still, if/when I buy a new car that comes with a modem I’ll be disabling it. Mostly on principle, but also as a precaution against any form of zero day that could be used to remotely mess with cars.

Luckily, modems in vehicles are rather easy to mess with. You can go the caveman route of “Haha me smash box behind glovebox with wrench” or the slightly more sophisticated method of removing the modem, pulling its fuse¹³, or removing its antenna. While I’ve never disabled a built in modem, I occasionally install/maintain third party vehicle modems for work, and they’re fairly simple to add or remove. Given a modem is a rather simple and easy to understand form of hardware (incoming power, signal processing component/the modem itself, and an antenna) it’d likely be easy to modify or remove.

The most sophisticated modification would likely be replacing the modem with a dummy antenna. A dummy antenna isn’t actually going to work as an antenna, preventing the vehicle from sending/receiving data, but tricks the vehicle into thinking it’s just perpetually outside cell range. If/when I’m forced to use a vehicle with a built in modem I’ll likely first disable all the tracking I can in the dash¹⁴, then install a dummy antenna to truly air-gab the vehicle. If I ever need warranty work done on said vehicle, I’ll re-install the regular antenna and tape a print out of the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act to the windshield.

Vehicles I looked at

At some point I’m going to need to replace my Fiesta. It’s approaching 10 years old and 2/3rds of the average Fiesta lifespan, not to mention it’s got some growing (surface level for now) rust on the frame. Especially since I’ve been driving more than twice the miles of the average driver, while I hope to get at least a couple more years out of it, it’ll need replacing at some point. The following options have stood out to me when researching vehicles:

Whatever I can find a good deal on is probably the most likely of these in the list. Just like my Fiesta, I didn’t set out to buy a Fiesta (or even a Ford, or even a sedan). I just found a good deal, realized it’d probably fit my needs, and jumped on it. There’d be a bit of a method to the madness when searching for ‘any’ good deal. The best bang for my buck seems to be a 4-6 year old vehicle with ~30-60k miles from a meh manufacturer. Too much newer and it won’t have depreciated as much, too much older and the savings vs longevity calculus starts making less sense. Anything from a highly reliable brand will probably have depreciated very little, and a highly unreliable model might already be at risk of a catastrophic failure within a few tens of thousands of miles (or, in an unlucky case, within a few miles). Anything luxury/performance is also probably going to be less reliable while costing way too much.

Toyota hybrids look interesting. My plan B or C, if it didn’t make sense to fix my Fiesta when it broke, was to buy a new Corolla Hybrid. It’s cheap (relative to other cars anyway), lasts a long time, and is impressively fuel efficient (important given how many miles I drive at the moment). After some thought, I wonder if a Prius with a lift kit and an aftermarket tow package might be the better option. Stop laughing, hear me out. A Prius is a little bit larger with a few more features while only being a few grand more than a Corolla. It’s also got a sorta fake AWD, where two wheels can be driven by the hybrid motor, and two wheels can be driven by small electric motors; not as good as real AWD, but better than 2WD in the snow. Adjustable air suspension would be the best of both worlds: it can be raised to get me over a rut or through some snow, then lowered to give the best fuel efficiency. While sounding silly, it could actually be a practical modification. Finally, while the Prius doesn’t have an official towing capacity in the US, previous models were given a 1.5k LBS towing capacity; an aftermarket hitch and small trailer offering some light truck capabilities. Toyota hybrids last forever, which is great - the only problem being that they depreciate really slowly because people know that - newer used ones often close to their original MSRP. New or used it’d be a more expensive option than any other vehicle I’ve had in the past, although their longevity might make up for that.

A Civic SI is also something that catches my eye. It’s less practical, new ones run 32k, and used ones lose value very slowly. Still, it’s pretty much everything I like from my Fiesta - a small, fuel efficient, manual transmission sedan that’s fairly reliable. If I wanted to replace my car with something similar, it’d probably be a Civic SI. Again, adjustable air suspension and an aftermarket hitch might be considered here as well.

Chevy Bolts & (newer) Nissan Leafs are definitely the cheaper options if I were to get an EV. A 5 year old 50k mile option appears to run ~15k, and while I’d be less likely to trust an economy GM/Nissan vehicle, being electric means there’s less to go wrong. It’d be very cheap to fuel, and would likely outlast a combustion engine vehicle with good care. An EV, however, would be contingent on living somewhere where I could charge at home by the time I need to replace my Fiesta.

The Ford Maverick hybrid also looks interesting. It would be a bit of a faustian bargain; in one sense, I’d get a pretty complete package: a smaller size for easy maneuverability, fuel efficiency better than a small combustion only sedan, and basic truck capabilities. However, it comes at the cost of reliability and price. Reliability is a bit iffy; I hear the early models were really unreliable, and though they’ve since gotten better, they’re still a Ford. The price is also higher, starting around ~30k new, and running $22-26k for a moderately used one at dealers.

Small EV trucks - be it the Slate or the Ford Universal EV - might also be something I consider. By the time I need to replace my Fiesta, if their launches go well, there’ll probably be somewhat widespread with used models already hitting the market. A 25-30k new price would probably lead to cheaper used prices, and both models are (theoretically) going to have some fairly high levels of repairability (and user ownership in the case of the Slate, the Ford being unknown). They’d likely outlast most combustion engine vehicles, offering basic truck capabilities while being maneuverable and extremely cheap to fuel; of course at the cost of EV limitations.

Unconventional repairs/modifications is also something that I might consider, though this is really more in the thought experiment realm than something I expect to actually do. The most likely consideration would be buying something moderately old and having it fixed up. Finding some old Honda/Toyota or their luxury variants (Lexus & Acura) in a rust free climate, then having a mechanic do a tune up and replace most wear items, would (hopefully) result in a fairly reliable vehicle with purchase price + repairs equivilent to a 5 year old 60k mile car. A 2005 well cared for Lexus might very well be a more luxurious and less tech infested option with a similar overall cost of a newer used car. Eventually it’d need serious repairs, the salt from WNY roads would rot the frame, or parts would get hard to acquire - but hopefully that’d be at least as far out as the years/miles I could get from a standard used car.

Another, more adventurous option, would be to try and find something broken that could be fixed to be reliable. That’s a very narrow range of vehicles, but there’s probably a handful of circumstances where a car would be sold broken but be long term reliable if fixed. Fiestas with DCT transmissions come to mind as a possibility. If I could find a broken transmission Fiesta/Focus with lower miles, buy it for a grand or two, then pay a mechanic 6k to swap the transmission (bonus points - for fun and longevity - if it’s a manual transmission installed) then it might be a cheap long lasting car if the upfront car + repairs can be paid. Same deal with hybrids. I’ve seen a lot of otherwise fine hybrids with bad batteries on places like Facebook Marketplace for very cheap. Since replacement batteries are cheap (often 1-2k) it might be worth it to buy one and pay to have the batteries swapped.

Finally, the most adventurous, makeshift EV conversions look interesting. I’ve seen people harvest motors/batteries off wrecked EVs for near free. I’ve also seen people buy electric motor kits (1-2k) that bolt directly onto a combustion engine transmission. Combine the motor with some cheap LFP batteries, and it might be possible to make a cheap EV out of a vehicle with a blown motor and some elbow grease (or, more likely, a labor bill from somebody who knows what they’re doing).

Side note: this assumes consistency

Of course, this all assumes I’m doing similar mileage by the time I need to replace my car. By the time my car gives out I could be in a remote area on a few acres of land, working a remote job, and finding myself looking at full sized trucks. Preferably ones that come with live unicorns. Anyway, point is, all the vehicles I’d consider today mainly focus on fuel efficiency and longevity, something I might need to worry about less in the future if my mileage is halved or quartered at some point.

Side note: Are EVs worth it?

A TLDR of my much longer post: probably, under some circumstances.

EVs:

• Cost considerably less in per mile fuel costs.
• Theoretically should be lower maintenance, although tech heavy EVs cause the average EV to have more issues than the average combustion vehicle.
• Often cost more to insure and register.
• Have a higher upfront cost.
• Have range limitations, although they exceed the average driver’s daily needs.
• Last for considerably more miles, but batteries degrade over time, so that mileage needs to be done quicker than on a gas car.

My conclusion from surface level research was that EVs are worth it if you can charge at home and rarely (if ever) need to exceed range limitations. You also need to drive average or more miles per year, and hold onto the vehicle for a considerable amount of time to make the fuel savings beat out additional prices - taking 100k+ miles and a decade or more for a 10k/yr driver deciding between a Corolla hybrid and a Chevy Bolt (the US’s cheapest EV). Since I’m driving 2.5 times the national average right now, and rarely if ever exceed 250 miles in a day, I’d be a very good candidate for an EV. Though that assumes that I have a home and home charger, and that I’m still racking up this many miles by the time I need to replace my car.

Misc Tangents

Stuff I couldn’t fit elsewhere.

The luddite approach is never the way forward

As much as I (semi) jokingly referred to myself as a luddite a lot of times, it’s important to note that the future is rarely found in the rear view mirror. Lets take a detour as I find a way to work decentralized communication protocols into a post about cars: Activity Pub will never be the future of social media, at least not in it’s current form. It’s effectively trying to turn an email chain into a social media protocol; a rather outdated design, and it’s entirely populated by people hoping to return the web to late 90s tech. Like swapping the drivetrain in an old Lexus and using it as your daily driver: both allow you to escape AI, surveillance, and lack of ownership. They’re both a stopgap, and something you might want to consider given they’re better than the alternatives right now. But they’re that: a temporary stop gap. If the world was going to put in all the effort to turn towards what’s in the rear view mirror, they wouldn’t have driven forward to begin with.

That’s not to say that everything new is the future. The Board Ape Yacht Club was new, sure; yet it failed spectacularly as a way to ‘own’ your digital avatar. It’s also not to say that the current bad tech in vehicles is the future no matter what. A better future without much of this tech could very well be the case, but it just won’t be found in re-releases of older vehicle models or in the constant rebuilding of older vehicles in boycott of newer ones.

If I were to take a gander at what a good future would hold, I’d keep an eye on something like Slate. While it’s important to note they haven’t actually shipped any vehicles at the time of writing this, they certainly look promising. In a sense, it’s the future: electric drive train, 3d printed parts, and some technology (e.g. a backup camera). Yet it brings a lot of what’s lost from modern cars. It’s made up of less than 600 parts - making home repair much more possible. It lacks much of the invasive tech, and is also smaller and likely more practical for the average user compared to the ever growing vehicles. And, in a combination of both the earliest cars and latest technology, they plan to release CAD files of many parts. Just as a Sears home blacksmithing kit might have let the average enthusiast fabricate parts for their early horseless carriage or Model T, we may very well be able to fabricate our own parts again with a laptop and a 3D printer.

And this ‘good’ future doesn’t necessarily need to be with Slate, or with EVs in general. In fact I’m willing to bet a combustion engine truck made with similar parts would make even larger of a splash, and run even cheaper. Tech isn’t necessarily the issue here, it’s the application of it, and if you’re looking for a better future you’re better off using the tech to your advantage. The luddites smashed machines, delaying the machines for a bit, before things continued on. A few air filters and a minimum wage, however, turned the industrial revolution and our modern economic structure into the best thing that ever happened to humanity.

Forever Cars

I’ve seen a couple trending videos on YouTube about the concept of “Forever cars” - i.e. a car you intend to use forever, fixing it as opposed to replacing it every time an issue arises. It’s worth pointing out that I don’t watch YouTube signed in, and automatically clear cookies, so it seems to think the concept of a forever car is a widely appealing subject (I’ve seen a particular video recommended after watching a single House of The Dragon episode breakdown, so this isn’t some highly personalized algorithm). The exact models in the videos vary a lot, but it’s usually an older 1970s-2008 model vehicle that’s intended to be used (at least in part) as a daily driver indefinitely. I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes a wider trend, it’s a pretty pointed rejection of modern cars and their issues. It’s also certainly an appealing idea. However, it’s the luddite approach - and I don’t think it’d work in practice.

Most importantly, nothing lasts forever - least of all regularly used mechanical things. I know it’s not quite literal - the goal of a 30 something getting a ‘forever car’ might just be to have one main commuter car for the next ~30 years. Still, I’d expect that a lot of people would run into some unforeseen issues if they really try to accomplish that. The biggest issue is simply that old cars bring old car problems. Yes, a 25 year old Civic might reach 300k miles, where a brand new Kia might die at 120k miles. But even setting aside rusty climates, a 100k mile 25 year old Civic is going to be worn down. Every bit of rubber and plastic is going to need replacement sooner or later, and wear items are probably going to come soon after.

In order to have a long term reliable vehicle, you’ll probably need to replace all of that at once, with the purchase price + repairs quickly meeting or exceeding the price of buying a meh used car that’s ~5 years old. Or, alternatively, you can only fix things as they come up, but then you’re probably going to find the so called “reliable” car to be, in fact, very unreliable. Now, none of this is a dealbreaker in itself. I’ve even considered this as a potential next vehicle option: rebuild a vehicle that’s a bit older for the price of a newer used vehicle, and have something that should work for a while. For a while, however, is the important note.

At a certain point, to hold onto a daily driver indefinitely, you’ll wind up needing to Ship of Theseus it. Eventually, everything is going to give way, and it’ll likely exceed the cost of buying a brand new car. Replacing an engine and/or transmission on said hypothetical older civic would probably get you close to the cost of buying a brand new Civic or Corolla, and even once it’s done, you’ll probably have a rebuilt-but-used engine/transmission and a bunch of wear items already approaching due for replacement. There’s a balance to life - while many people probably disregard cars too quickly - paying for a new car piece by piece (and dealing with the unreliability that comes with doing so) can go too far in the other direction.

And, if you go too old, you’ll be doing this with a vehicle that:

• Lacks useful tech like OBD2
• Has an MPG that makes an F-150 look like a Prius
• Has poorer safety and no crumple zones
• Is probably going to be less reliable than a Nissan wielding a CVT

Point is, I really don’t think it’d be worth it to try and get an older “forever car” for daily use on a practical level, even setting aside the risks of salt or accidents making a “forever car” very temporary. If you truly want a car to hold onto for decades, your best bet is probably to buy a brand new Prius. Do what you can to mitigate tech you don’t like, do everything you can to prevent wear (e.g. undercoating in rusty climates and a rigid oil change schedule), and swap the batteries every decade or two (way less expensive than larger EV batteries). Seriously, a once-legendarily-reliable-now-old vehicle purchased today would probably be put to shame by a Prius - and would probably cost more in total ownership cost than the Prius when compared over a few decades.

That said, all these complaints are irrelevant if it’s a hobby or principled decision rather than a practical/economical decision. They also don’t apply to a ‘forever’ utilitarian or fun vehicle that’s not daily driven. It could also be logical if one were to get one just to stash it away in the event new vehicles might someday become unusable (from simply regulation/manufacturer shenanigans or some global supply chain breakdown that makes fixing modern vehicles impossible).

It only takes one mover to change things

Right now, there’s not a ton on the market that captures the older, simpler, long lasting vehicles. Toyota, and to a slightly lesser extent Honda, still produce long lasting vehicles. Even still with them, you’ll run into a lot of the things I complained about above: tracking, expensive assemblies as opposed to parts, more difficult repairs, ’lifetime’ fluids, and decreased longevity - even if at much less of a degree when compared with other brands. Ford is way worse; I’ve picked on them a lot, and much of what they’ve done encapsulates the worst of what I wanted to complain about.

Despite that, seemingly in response to Slate, they’ve announced the “Universal Electric Vehicle Platform;” planning to launch a small Slate style truck in 2027 for $30k. It’ll use Tesla’s open charging standard, and was described as being ’like Legos" in regards to having easily swapped 3D printed parts. While I have no idea if it’ll include the tracking and restrictions of many modern Fords, Slate could have very well nudged Ford to make a simple and easily repaired truck that could last for the better part of a million miles (LFP batteries last a while) for cheaper than anything else they sell. If they launch a hatchback or sedan model as well, and benefit from some economies of scale, it’ll likely fall even cheaper still.

We might very well be in a spot where things have gotten about as bad as they can (famous last words, I know) in regards to price, reliability, and tech/restrictions in vehicles. With any luck, we only need one new or existing manufacturer to move away from some of the issues to force everyone else to adapt or die.

Mileage/tech offset

Something else is the ability to offset MPG, technology, or features through multiple vehicles. The most relevant for me now would be motorcycles. A cheap commuter motorcycle can be had for only a couple grand, has lower energy costs per mile than an EV, and will likely be either low tech or entirely analog. It could be useful in a handful of circumstances.

If I’m stuck owning a car with a lot of invasive tech, I might be more willing to accept it with the understanding that if the manufacturer, hackers, or global supply chain decide to make the car a lawn ornament I can still hop on a carburetted motorcycle and travel. A motorcycle could also reduce my fuel costs. If I wound up traveling less for work, I might end up considering a car/truck that had less fuel efficiency for either fun or utilitarian purposes. In that case, if I’m driving a car/truck that only gets ~20 MPG, it could be offset a bit by making some trips on a motorcycle that gets 70 MPG. Or - if I bought an EV - it might be nice to store some stabilized 0% ethanol fuel so I can drive during a power outage.

But motorcycles (and other two wheeled vehicles like mopeds and e-bikes) aren’t the only way that’d be relevant. At some point I’d love to buy a house and a couple acres of land, in which a truck might be rather handy for hauling, towing, and ground clearance. In that case, spending 15-24k on a Corolla hybrid plus 5k on a beater truck makes a lot more sense than paying 30-80k on a truck intended for both truck stuff and daily driving. The Corolla hybrid gives great fuel mileage, reliability, easy city driving, and a lower upfront cost. The truck can be purchased for cheap, being much older, but doesn’t need the reliability or fuel efficiency of a daily driver since it won’t get many miles per year.

Multiple vehicles are heavily dependent on both the money to afford them and the space to store them (albeit easier with something like a motorcycle or e-bike). Still, in some circumstances, it might be worth considering.

I’ve really begun to like the concept of low speed vehicles

I’ve slowly been coming around to the idea of low speed vehicles. After riding my ebike (capped at 19mph), and after getting in the habit of taking my motorcycle on the back roads in place of the interstate I’d take my car on, the concept of a lower speed vehicle has grown on me a lot. Lower speed vehicles are almost universally both cheaper and less regulated than their other counterparts. At least here in NY, there’s three different types of low speed vehicles.

Ebikes are pretty simple: they’re incredibly cheap, don’t require registration/insurance/licensing, and have little in terms of regulations on their construction. They’re capped at 750 watts and 20MPH in all of NY except for NYC, where they’re capped at 750W & 27MPH (although State Senate Bill S5532 is likely to turn Class 3 ebikes (750w/27mph) into state wide mopeds with registration & insurance). Other states also allow motorized bicycles under similar laws, which are even cheaper than ebikes and - if long distances are required - more practical at the cost of being higher maintenance.

Honestly, ebikes are the epitome of cheap practical transportation at the cost of speed limitations. Nowhere else can you get a vehicle for ~$350 US (or more like $200 for a DIY motorized bicycle) that will get to places at near Olympic sprint speeds. While a regular bicycle can also do that, and just about everyone can likely hit 20MPH on a bicycle during a sprint, the ability to get the average person’s sprint speed on a bicycle consistently over miles makes previously difficult bicycle commuting/travel possible for the average slightly flabby American. The biggest issue holding them back, however, is the speed limitations. 20MPH is fine on bicycle infrastructure or quiet roads, but can get sketchy anytime where there’s a lot of traffic and/or the inability for traffic to safely pass you.

If I were king for a day, I’d probably just set a weight limit at ~150-200 pounds and say any vehicle under that is completely de-regulated¹⁵. But, I’m not king (unfortunately, or maybe from most of your guy’s perspective, fortunately). If I were a NY lawmaker trying to propose a law that could pass, I’d leave class 1 & 2 ebikes as they are in speed and power, but add a weight limit and delete Class 3 ebikes. I’d then propose a “motorized bicycle” class of vehicle. This vehicle would require a one time registration, but no renewals/inspection/insurance. You go to the DMV, you show them your license, register the vehicle by VIN or serial number, and get a sticker to slap somewhere on the frame as well as a transferable registration. A “Motorized bicycle” would be a gas or electric vehicle with peddles that’s capped at ~35 MPH and 300LBS via software limitations or a power that cannot consistently operate above that speed; which could be registered & operated with either a drivers license or a motorcycle license. The drivers license requirement forces legal operators to actually understand the rules of the road and basic vehicle safety (something many kids on e-motos don’t), and the 35MPH speed limit lets it keep up with traffic on most city roads without handing somebody who’d never driven a motorcycle something with motorcycle speeds.

Mopeds are halfway between e-bikes and motorcycles. They’re more expensive, running about $2k for a cheaper new one by a reputable manufacturer, but still rather cheap for a vehicle. They require licensing, registration, and insurance - but can be done so on a standard drivers license instead of a more complicated motorcycle license, and insurance is often less than the cheapest Netflix subscription. They can be gas or electric, and there are no engine power limits, but class B¹⁶ mopeds are limited to 30MPH and can only come from ‘certified’ manufacturers. Some states don’t require licensing/registration, but the 30MPH speed is fairly standardized.

If I were a lawmaker trying to propose a law that might have a realistic chance of passing, the first thing I’d do would be to axe the certification requirement. If somebody wishes to register an ebike as a moped, or a moped from a manufacturer that the state hasn’t certified - as long as they meet the requirements - then they’d be able to do so. Perhaps the hard certification requirement turns into a list of models that are always approved, with non-certified models going from unregistrable to requiring an inspection by a DMV employee to ensure the model meets the moped specifications.

The second thing I’d take a look at would be the speed. Here in NY there’s generally 3 speed limits: city & town roads at 30/35 MPH, commercial roads and ones on the outskirts of population centers at 40/45 MPH, and rural roads at 55 MPH. Going slower than traffic is statistically more dangerous than going faster to keep up with traffic¹⁷, and especially on gas powered moped that’s unable to go above 30MPH because of engine limitations, a moped may not even be able to hold a constant 30. Going 28 down a city road where the average driver is doing 33 in a 30, or 38 in a 35, is already going to be more dangerous and disrupt the flow of traffic; keeping up on 40-55 mile roads being out of the question. If I were a lawmaker, I’d be trying to propose a law that limits Class B mopeds to 45 MPH¹⁸ - fast enough to keep up with city traffic and roads in commercial/industrial/population-outskirts - while still being low enough that it’s not a full motorcycle. If that failed, I’d be trying to settle for 40 MPH or 35 MPH; not able to keep up with all speed limits in population centers, but closer than before.

Low speed vehicles is another classification that I recently learned about, which covers cars and trucks that can do at least 20 MPH, but cannot exceed 25 MPH. They have considerably fewer rules about what safety features are required on them, and are usually much cheaper than a standard vehicle to buy. The speed, however, is a fairly limiting factor - as discussed in the footnote of the mopeds section, it’s rather dangerous to operate at low speeds. In NY State it’s also illegal to operate a low speed vehicle on roads with a speed above 35 MPH. Other jurisdictions have similar laws, for example Quadricycles in the EU - which can be driven without a license in some jurisdictions. Some can be purchased for as little as 10k - half the MSRP of the cheapest car sold in the US. Though most resemble golf carts or side-by-sides, Stellantis has recently announced the Fiat Topolino which is a fair bit more car like, starting at 14k¹⁹.

The idea is certainly appealing: a super cheap vehicle that’d make for a good city car or short trips - especially handy as a second vehicle in a two vehicle family, a first vehicle for a teenager, or for an urban dweller who barely needs a vehicle and could get away with something like that. While a low speed vehicle is fairly limiting in what it could do - if you didn’t need those capabilities or could get away without them - there’s no point in paying for a vehicle that can speed 130 MPH down the autobahn when all you need to do is drive down a side street or rural road to get to work or the grocery store.

If I were a lawmaker, I’d propose a law that either widens the limits of existing low speed vehicles, or creates a second class with wider restrictions. It’d set a speed limit of 45 MPH, and axe the laws that prevent it from driving on roads with higher speed limits (except for the interstate, which it’d be illegal to take it on). It’d be able to keep up with traffic in population centers, and while it’d be slower than traffic on rural roads, the roads are a lot less busy and rural drivers are already used to sharing the road with non-standard vehicles such as farm equipment. As a bonus, I’d make it easier to register low speed vehicles that were homemade or purchased from manufacturers not certified to sell regular vehicles - requiring only the basics (turn signals, lights, wipers, etc) instead of requiring DOT certified parts²⁰. I’m sure those 2k-5k (without batteries) electric k-truck style vehicles you can find on Aliexpress could find quite the niche on today’s roads.

Learning Mechanics

I’ve been trying to learn more mechanical stuff over the last year or so. Most of this has been super basic: oil, tires, basic part swapping, etc. I’ve certainly saved myself some money by doing so, and it worked out fairly well since I started trying to learn the basics while between jobs, and then a couple months later I started my current job that has light work on company trucks to maintain our third party electronics on them.

The thought has crossed my mind of getting some tunnel vision and diving really deep into it. Getting a 3D printer and CNC machine before they’re more heavily regulated, then learning to weld, might be insurance that I can keep something running even if manufacturers or the global supply chain prevent me from getting parts. Or, I could jump into the deep end in a different way. Maybe research models of vehicles that can be easily engine/transmission swapped, buy a broken one, then teach myself to do it trial-by-fire method.

While I don’t think I’d actually do either, they do sound interesting. And that’s why I’m writing them here: I’ve got to get the stupid ideas out of my head before they bounce around too much and I try doing them.

We did this to ourselves

Democracy and capitalism: the only two systems that have ever managed to reduce the truly horrific components of people existing alongside each other. Yet, the people are stupid, and thus those two systems often amplify society’s stupidity. I figured I’d end this post on a low note: what a little part of me has been thinking, and what’s probably the best rebuttal to everything I’ve complained about, is that we did this to ourselves more so than any big bad government or corporate greed.

Most people don’t care about privacy or companies/governments having co-control over their electronics. Maybe this is my “Old man yells at cloud” or “I’m not crazy, everyone else is” thing. Most people accept the EULA and Privacy Policy without a second thought, and couldn’t be bothered to go to Settings->Privacy to toggle a simple switch. This applies to phones, cars, and just about anything else. Most people won’t research the privacy or electronic ownership restrictions of a product before choosing one (from cars to search engines to ebooks). The knowledge that electronics track people is permeated enough in the culture that they can’t claim they had no reason to consider researching something or going to the settings and checking what can be toggled. Society’s consensus has been to agree to tracking, either directly agreeing to it or through complete apathy. It’s not even forced on anyone either; it’s literally like three swipes to be rid of the bulk of it in most circumstances. Most people just don’t care.

The same goes for tech, largely speaking. I’ve seen plenty of people online complaining about tech in cars (such as calls to replace large screens with buttons), but I have no way of knowing whether it’s just a few fellow luddites or some actual push back against tech in vehicles. Otherwise, though, tech tends to be a selling feature as opposed to something people would like to avoid. Tech - be it motors to angle vents or screens replacing mirrors - is something I should be aligned with the automakers on. I don’t like it because it’s something that can break and be expensive to repair, and one more way a computer is unnecessarily between me and a mechanical function; the automakers likely sharing in that dislike because they’re exceedingly unnecessary costs. But the market has spoken: why move your hand to grab a plastic nub on a vent, when you can be so luxurious as to tap through a few menus on a dashboard to have a motor move the vent for you.

Americans like big vehicles. As much as I lament the CAFE standards banning smaller cars, which included the Honda Fit, people also just choose to purchase larger vehicles. I watched a video by the YouTuber Barts Car Stories mourning the discontinuation of most small cars. In it, he mentions missing his old Honda Fit (which seats 5), which was replaced with a bigger vehicle so he and his wife could transport two kids and a dog. One of the top comments pointed out some irony. 0:39 That's the answer to the video. No, you did not need a bigger car. I don’t want to throw shade - it’s their money and their choice, and I might have very well made the same decision in their shoes. It does, however, feel like the perfect means of expressing the rebuttal to the complaint that regulations killed small cars: people don’t buy them because they’ll pay more for SUVs and trucks, regardless of whether it’s a need or a want. Now that CAFE is repealed, if we don’t see small cars back for sale here in the US over the next few years, it’ll almost certainly just be because there’s not much interest in them.

People choose expensive cars. Yeah, cars are expensive, and it’s bad that the cheapest cars went from 11k in 2016 to 20k in 2026. But you can still buy new cars for 20k today, or a Corolla that’d meet the needs of most people while being super reliable for 23k. The average car costs 50k because people decide to pay that. Some people need muh lifted truck or think the quilted interior of a G Wagon is sooo cuute. Even if I’m going to mildly make fun of the idea, it’s their money and their choice to purchase what they’ve decided is worth it. But the average vehicle - as much as I might blame government policy and corporate greed - is largely driven up by the average person choosing something more expensive.

Similarly, it’s not a secret that many models are unreliable. Some people make an informed decision and prefer models considered less reliable. I can see the value in a Jeep, a big Ford/Chevy truck, or a BMW. If someone sees the value and considers it greater than a con I complained of above then that’s their decision to make. It’s not like McDonald’s is evil or unethical for making expensive and unhealthy food, it’s just a product you might want to exercise caution with. Similarly, information isn’t that hard to find. When I thought I’d have to replace a car I had an AI window open telling me about the longevity, mpg, common issues, recalls, ect. of every car I’d look at on Facebook Marketplace²¹, Craigslist, and AutoTrader immediately being fed into the chat with What about a [year] [make] [model]? If somebody purchased something less reliable and couldn’t even be bothered to go to chatgpt.com and type “kia break lots?” then it’s on them as much as it’s on the company that made a less reliable model.

And, last, maybe we’re bad enough drivers to deserve tech intervening in our lives. I’ve got a bit of a guilty pleasure of feeding my writings to NoteBook LLM and having it turn them into a podcast. Usually it’s just a good time sink to listen to on a long drive, but sometimes it offers a correction/critique or it structures things in a way that make me trim some fat off the post²² or restructure it a bit. When it got to the part about automatic braking, it called me out, saying that emergency automatic braking statistically protects both cars and pedestrians and that I was focusing on an anecdote from a good driver as opposed to the average driver. I do think of myself as an above average driver²³, but statistically so do most people, but I’m far from anything that above average.

The knowledge of whether to swerve or brake is, in my opinion, not a matter of “exceptional drivers” as the AI put it, but a foundational tenet of safe driving. It’s a sad state of affairs when a computer that doesn’t know that outperforms the standard driver - be it because of an aging population, because some states temporarily or permanently rolled back driving tests as a license requirement, or just because people can’t put their stupid phones down when driving in city traffic. Traffic fatalities have spiked in recent years, and maybe in the future the kid who ran in front of me needs to die because statistically fewer people will die overall when an AI or algorithm takes the wheel.

Footnotes: