Comment on Arguing for the car as a good method of transportation is like arguing that having personal diesel generator to power you home is a good idea

• JustJack23@slrpnk.net ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Renting a car is more expensive than owning?

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  • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Rent a car by the hour? Where do you live?

    Oh, that explains it all - you really have no idea how the rest of the world works, and think that how your tiny little corner works defines it all.

    You need to get out and see how everyone else lives.

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    • birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Has it ever occurred to you that this may also apply to you?

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• danielquinn@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Car rentals are exceptionally cheap compared to paying to own and drive a car capable of hauling a couch for that one time 4 years ago when you needed that.

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  • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I rented a car for a week recently: $1000

    I’ve owned my car (small pickup) for 20 years now, paid $11000 for it. I’ve put nothing but, oil changes, tires, brakes, regular maintenance. Gas is a wash because a rental would use the same gas.

    If I rented a car 2 or 3 times a year I would’ve paid as much as for my little pickup.

    OP is clueless.

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    • birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      My bike cost me €800 in 10 years.

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    • danielquinn@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Your math is waaaaay off. Let me help you.:

      Let’s assume that you commute a rather conservative distance of just 25mi to work. That’s 50mi/day, 5 days/wk, plus let’s say half that over the weekend. Assuming an (again, generous) fuel efficiency for your truck at 25mpg, given a ballpark 300mi/week, that’s 12 gallons of fuel/week. The current average price of gas in the US is a remarkably low $3.071, and that adds up to $36.85/week.

      Now consider the costs of maintenance. If you’ve really had zero problems in the last 20 years on a pickup truck (honestly this is far from average), you likely did an oil change every 3 months at the very least. These days it’ll run you about $100.

      In terms of insurance, I asked this site for the average cost of insuring a Toyota pickup truck for one year: $1937. Let’s be grossly optimistic and pretend that those rates will never go up.

      Initial cost: (Provided)                    = 11000.00
      Fuel costs: (50 × 6 ÷ 25 × 3.071 × 52 × 20) = 38326.08
      Oil changes: ($100 × 4 × 20)                =  8000.00
      Insurance: (1937 × 20)                      = 38740.00
      Parking:                                    = ?
      ------------------------------------------------------
      Total                                         96066.08
      

      Excluding the cost of parking, the purchase of your miracle never-needs-repair truck if purchased today would be roughly $100,000. Note also how very conservative these values are. It’s entirely possible that your real costs are well above what I’ve stated here.

      The total cost of the rental was $1000 plus fuel costs, so using our above figures, that’s a grand total of $1042.99 assuming you drove it roughly 50mi/day for all 7 days of the week. That’s assuming that you don’t opt for the much lower rates that appear to be available to you in the area of $250 - $350/week.

      So, if you didn’t own a car and instead only rented on when you needed to “move a couch”, you would save just over $95,000. In other words, your insistence that you absolutely must own your own vehicle has cost you the equivalent of a downpayment on a house.

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