Automobiles

[j44ke]

Out here in suburban LI, the expectation is your kid play a sport etc if there's hope to be competitive getting into college. My son plays travel soccer, my daughter travel and school soccer. That's at least 6 local car trips per week and the weekends are spent driving around Long Island for games. Horrible for gas consumption. The flip side is we rarely have time to drive anywhere else except on vacation.

When I grew up everything happened in the neighborhood. You could walk to play ball, to school etc. My friends and I would play in the street. I live in a fairly typical neighborhood and I haven't seen kids playing in the street in 11 years living here. It's all car based travel to a game, field, Bouncy House etc.

I understand your point, and we’ve gotten by thus far with a van and a smaller car. We also were a one car household for nearly a decade until our second and third kids arrived and I’ve bike commuted to every office job I’ve had since 2005. Fact is, if you start pulling that thread, where do you stop? Climate change says we probably shouldn’t have had kids in the first place, and we definitely shouldn’t visit the grandparents in Europe, is having a dog sustainable, etc etc etc.

My original point is that for better or worse, this is a two car household, and as a car buff, I am thinking a second car that I really like is a better option than buying a 20 year old runaround that will eat into the relatively few miles that we as a family drive each year.

For us, the justification for the first wagon was the seven seats. We came close to buying an Odyssey when the first large one was introduced (around 1999?) but my wife hated how big it was.

We could shepherd our one and only child and various groups of her friends all over town. Which we did all the time for years. We've driven a Taurus wagon, followed by a Sable wagon. Both workhorses. The Sable was replaced by the Fit we still own. A year later we bought the TSX wagon to replace our 2001 TL. Only five seats, but our wagon love persisted even after the kid left home. The CoMotion Speedster came a few years later. And now with the E450 All Terrain we've got seven seats; the ability to transport that Speedster; car-camping capability; range; luxury; and power, all in a stealthy if-you-don't-know-it-is-you-won't-even-notice-it package.

We'll keep the Fit around because it's a sunk cost, cheap to operate and maintain, and can be shared with guests and even the aforementioned kid. I'd be shocked if our next car (10+ years down the road) isn't electric. But for now, an EV couldn't meet our needs.

Thanks, these are good answers. I was not so much wondering about buying a (single) family car as buying an extra car of a particular size to function primarily as a kid-carrying device for daily, relatively short, trips. Ideally I'd say that the ideal kid-schlepper is small and electric. Emissions are like bees - most concentrated around the hive - so reducing the concentration of emissions around the daily destinations seems to make sense. Mass transit and alternative forms of travel (bikes!) make more sense, but assuming nearly zero appetite among the targeted demographic, an electric car would be better.

Then the gas-machina gets loaded for trips where mileages are longer.

So drive everyone everywhere around town in the (electric) Fit and use the wagon for trips towards the distant horizon. Which means everyone buying Teslas based on their single-charge range might be doing it backwards. Most cars do far less than that on a daily basis. And definitely buying a Chevy Suburban "because we need to take the kids to X" is over-sizing.

[davids]

If you want a 7 passenger ev your options quickly dwindle.

And an affordable 7 passenger ev? Maybe the VW ID. Buzz? Soonish?

[j44ke]

If you want a 7 passenger ev your options quickly dwindle.

And an affordable 7 passenger ev? Maybe the VW ID. Buzz? Soonish?

Huh, we saw those in Japan. I think they qualify as mini-trucks. I didn't know they were electric.

[Saab2000]

The Tesla Model Y is available as a 7-passenger vehicle. The X likely as well but of all the Tesla models (all four of them) that’s the one I investigated the least because it’s basically a 6-figure minivan.

Not sure the third row of the Model Y is useful for more than a short trip with small children but it is there if a buyer chooses. The one I have on order is the 5-passenger option.

The Model Y hides its size well until you’re next to one and realize it’s larger than you first imagined. But the third row is of zero interest to me personally for my usage.

Frankly, I wish the Model 3 were a lift back configuration like the Model S. The 3 is for me the driver a far more interesting vehicle but for me the cyclist the Y won out.

[bigbill]

So drive everyone everywhere around town in the (electric) Fit and use the wagon for trips towards the distant horizon. Which means everyone buying Teslas based on their single-charge range might be doing it backwards. Most cars do far less than that on a daily basis. And definitely buying a Chevy Suburban "because we need to take the kids to X" is over-sizing.

This is us. We both drive 3/4 ton diesel pickups, hers to pull a gooseneck horse trailer and mine for the travel trailer. We've discussed buying an electric, something less than a Tesla, something that gets 100 or so miles is more than enough for us to shop and run errands in town.

[j44ke]

Nissan Leaf SV Plus?

[caleb]

This isn't a rant, just wondering if this daily peregrination is sustainable. How much extra money is spent on ferrying children, is the return greater than the costs and what could that money do otherwise if redirected to something that might be more constructive but perhaps more concentrated? Like no extra car, no multiple events outside a particular radius of home, but more travel as a family to destinations further afield and renting per occasion rather than annual ownership.

Two updated stats were in the news this week.

1) Brookings came out with a new study that the marginal cost of a second child averages $18,271/year until age 18, totally excluding any college costs.

2) AAA says the average cost of each car is now $10,728/year.

Those numbers compound to large sums of money over time.

[caleb]

Out here in suburban LI, the expectation is your kid play a sport etc if there's hope to be competitive getting into college.

Do you mean that they need to play a sport to also play in college, or just to be admitted to college?

My experience would say that somewhere between few and no colleges use athletics as a litmus test for admission (the Service Academies perhaps excepted).

[bigbill]

Do you mean that they need to play a sport to also play in college, or just to be admitted to college?

My experience would say that somewhere between few and no colleges use athletics as a litmus test for admission (the Service Academies perhaps excepted).

As the parent of a recent service academy grad, unless your kid is expected to be an NCAA-level athlete, service academies put more weight on participating in varsity-level sports than excelling in them. My son lettered in swim, cross country, and track. He was an above-average swimmer, average in everything else. I umpired travel league baseball tournaments; the parents put so much pressure on their kids for the very slim chance that their kid might excel in high school and get a baseball scholarship.

[Todd Amunrud]

This is us. We both drive 3/4 ton diesel pickups, hers to pull a gooseneck horse trailer and mine for the travel trailer. We've discussed buying an electric, something less than a Tesla, something that gets 100 or so miles is more than enough for us to shop and run errands in town.

We picked this up with equity from selling our Tacoma. 2017 i3, no range extender. About 100mi in the winter 140mi in the summer. 98% for around town, but in a pinch can get to the metro area and back if needed. We’re almost at no pumping gas for two years. The other car is a model Y. No issues getting on longer trips throughout the Midwest(our 14yo plays club baseball) with their supercharger network.

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[rwsaunders]

Do you mean that they need to play a sport to also play in college, or just to be admitted to college? My experience would say that somewhere between few and no colleges use athletics as a litmus test for admission (the Service Academies perhaps excepted).

When you look at Division 1 schools (350 as of last count, not counting Division 2 and 3 (755 in total)), about 4% of the student body plays a varsity sport. Move down to NAIA schools (438), on average, over 1/2 the students play a varsity sport, so the athletic coaches are key recruiters of kids who might not be able to compete at the Division 1,2,3 levels, but they loved the sport that they played in HS and perhaps through a club. It’s one of the reasons that a lot of small schools pay attention to their athletic fields, tracks, gyms and pools if they have one, as they are recruitment tools, making up in a sense, for the absence of athletic scholarships.

https://www.ncsasports.org/recruitin...lege-divisions

[robin3mj]

Way off topic now but whatever. Three kids. We’re saving as if each is going to Princeton full whack, but in the background hoping one goes to a VA state school if we still live here, one goes to UK on mom’s citizenship, and one gets a sports or scholastic scholarship. (Younger daughter is fast as hell and has had preternatural body coordination since she was crawling, so who knows.)
Each of the those iterations accelerates our retirement by some measurable amount.

My understanding is colleges want participative kids so if it’s not sports then it needs to be drama/music etc.
I ran XC and track in high school and there is all kinds of room to participate in those sports and swimming even if you’re not a killer athlete.

[j44ke]

Sports schmorts. Give me a well-lit classroom led by actual professors with expertise and life experiences any day.

"It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there." WCW

But how about that 2023 Nissan Leaf eh? That's a pretty sporty sled for shooting kids around the town for their badminton games and bridge tournaments, right?

[caleb]

We picked this up with equity from selling our Tacoma. 2017 i3, no range extender. About 100mi in the winter 140mi in the summer. 98% for around town, but in a pinch can get to the metro area and back if needed. We’re almost at no pumping gas for two years. The other car is a model Y. No issues getting on longer trips throughout the Midwest(our 14yo plays club baseball) with their supercharger network.

F92D964D-44B4-4B88-B8E0-D86F5C67367B.jpeg

Have you driven the i3 in the winter? My wife wants one, but the narrow tires give me pause.

[rec head]

Sports schmorts.

School schmool. These kids need to get union labor jobs.

[Scott G.]

School schmool. These kids need to get union labor jobs.

Like the man said, if you want an education, join the Merchant Marine.
School is to education, as a map is to the terrain.

[Todd Amunrud]

Have you driven the i3 in the winter? My wife wants one, but the narrow tires give me pause.

We do. No issues yet, but it's pretty much easy around town driving. We're planning to budget in an extra wheelset with Blizzak's or similar set up, but other things have eaten into that budget...maybe this winter. We picked it up at GS Motors in Hopkins, only used electric car sales, definitely recommended.

[j44ke]

School schmool. These kids need to get union labor jobs.

Like the man said, if you want an education, join the Merchant Marine.
School is to education, as a map is to the terrain.

Philip Levine spent the 1950's (started at 14 years old) working the night shift in the car factories of Detroit to support his family. Later he fit in a college and began publishing poetry. His poems in What Work Is are about some of his years in the factories and the people there. That's a book you get in hardcover.



Not totally OT - he once worked in the bumper chroming factory for Cadillac!

[72gmc]

My poetry books by Levine, Bishop, and Limón are paperback, but I did buy them at City Lights.

I’ve seen several restored, or at least loved, VW Transporters appear at curbside around here lately. I don’t see them under way, just looking good at rest.

[caleb]

We do. No issues yet, but it's pretty much easy around town driving. We're planning to budget in an extra wheelset with Blizzak's or similar set up, but other things have eaten into that budget...maybe this winter. We picked it up at GS Motors in Hopkins, only used electric car sales, definitely recommended.

Good to know that they make real snow tires for it. I had some unfounded impression rattling around in my head that the tire selection was very limited and not great.