Stop-gap car?

wyx087

Herzlos wrote: »

Your wife is right - 3 door cars with babyseats are a nightmare.

If you don't have adaptive cruise control now then you won't miss it in the next car. I'd either:

A. Sell the current one and put some cash towards a used 5 door car within your budget, and run that until you can afford the Tesla. If you can put money aside now, then hold off until nearer the baby is due, then you should have a fair amount of cash to play with.

B. Keep the current car and buy a cheap 5 door car to use with the baby.

C. Bin the Tesla idea, and put that savings plus your cars value into something long term that suits your mileage plus 5-door requirement. Your mileage means you might be able to use a pure electric like a Leaf (if you have charging point at work), or a plug-in hybrid like a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. Or just get a diesel Insignia like everyone else.

Buying closer to due date is the plan. Current car appears to be very reliable so far, so driving that as much as possible until 2-3 months before due date. I only talked to dealers now because I read the new road tax change means an additional £140 per year for hybrids.

My parents did mention option B. Something like a Yaris or Jazz and keep it long term as wife’s car. This will improve wife’s mobility, she can take her in-laws out while they are over here and she has recovered a bit. But problem is longer trips with the in-laws, a small cute car the wife prefers just doesn’t work as a family car.
(5 seat requirement came from needing to carry in-laws and the baby, 5 total in the car. If we were to do long trips like 150 miles to my parents, a small car will be very uncomfortable)
Feasibility of this approach is still questionable. But it is the preferred approach in terms of long term moneysaving. Buying and selling a car loses a lot of money due to dealer’s cut plus lost when selling.

[rant]
I don’t know if I’d ever be happy with a traditional car long term. Mechanical cars with a small electronic device are okay, they are limited in hardware. Connected cars like todays should all have OTA firmware updates. Why is there no change to my UI and vehicle capabilities when the software catches up?

Take the sat-nav map for example, why is most cars’ are skipping frames and laggy? Many maps’ user experience are no better than my university project 10 years ago! Because car manufacturers only do marketing tick-box exercise. Easy fix: car manufacturers have OTA updates, and after 6 months, push OTA update to make use of the graphical processor inside every mobile processor.

Besides, for a connected car, OTA updates to patch security holes are a must. All the cars today are essentially future moving botnet bots. There is no truly secure computer, as long as there is internet access, there is security concern.
[/rant]

Besides, buying fossil fuel car for long term is false economy. Especially for high mileage. If you drive 100,000 miles using both cars, the fossil will cost >£10000 in fuel (calculated using BMW 3er diesel ED model, one of most efficient out there) while EV will only cost £4000 (all electricity using current domestic rates, not taking advantage of free charging points). Then there’s the savings in servicing and much much less wear on brakes. Overall, monthly cost of running a slightly more expensive EV is less than fossil fuel car. So might as well save up for a good EV.

wyx087

Tarambor wrote: »

Its only useless if you drive up the !!!!!! of people and trundle along looking no further than the end of your bonnet with your brain in neutral. Use planning and preparation and proper lane discipline and standard cruise control is perfectly good for the job.

The lorries my company got in 2014 came with adaptive cruise control which was active by default. Didn't take many weeks of doing 300-400 miles a day using it before the adaptive part of it was the first thing you'd turn off when you got in the cab. If you like unintentially trundling along a motorway at 50MPH then adaptive cruise control is great because that is what you usually end up doing quite a lot without realising it.

Most drivers don’t drive at consistent speed though. Most drivers also have no lane discipline. Just this morning, a driver was driving on the right-most lane at 65-75 miles range, depend on road gradient. All while not really overtaking. 5 cars behind, speed becomes 60-80. It’s a ridiculous exercise. Why constantly change the cruise control setting when a computer can do it much more reliable than human can ever do? These repetitive tasks are perfect for the computer.

I drove a Mercedes GLA equivalent Infiniti rental car in Switzerland, it had adaptive cruise. It worked so well in every situations, including following a car in the mountain roads. On the motorway, ACC made it a breeze: drive on the right, until following a slow car, change to overtaking lanes, it automatically accelerates to overtake. Perfect.

People don’t like it most likely don’t understand how it works, or didn’t set it up correctly. You have to keep the ACC status screen on the dash, otherwise it’s too much guesswork on the state of the car’s computer.

henry24

How much do these Tesla 3 cars cost?

Rain_Shadow

I find the adaptive cruise control attached to the end of my right leg quite adequate.

caprikid1

"Your wife is right - 3 door cars with babyseats are a nightmare."


Sorry disagree, I actually found 4 doors can be just as challenging.


Plus a child can't get his fingers caught in a 3 door coupe !.


1st world problems.

mad_rich

The trouble with adaptive cruise control is that it's reactive, rather than proactive.

You can see the traffic, the gradient, the bends in the road. You can anticipate the complex ballet of vehicles in there lanes and work out when it's worth lifting off a fraction or adding a bit of gas in order to maintain speed. You can also judge when dropping or adding 5mph is the best course of action.

The car can't. It just dumbly sits there and tries its best to maintain speed based on the limited feedback it has. Accurate, but not efficient.

The only adaptive cruise control I've used was in an Audi a few years ago. Nice gimmick if you're sitting in one lane, but even then it had to use the brakes far more often than I would.

The Tesla may be different. I believe the range forecasting tool takes account of road type, gradient, traffic and weather forecast (if you have your destination plugged in). It wouldn't be too much to expect the assisted driving mode you know these things too.

mad_rich

henry24 wrote: »

How much do these Tesla 3 cars cost?

$35k was the headline figure quoted at launch, although Tesla have since said that they expect most people will spend $42k or more with some pretty important options missing from the base price. And quite a lot more if you want to upgrade from the base 215mi (150-180 real world?) battery.

UK pricing not announced yet, but don't be surprised if the $42k car comes out at a lot more than the equivalent £34k!

You can take £4500 off at the moment, but a) I think the funding for that incentive is limited, and b) ISTR something about a cap on the car price of £40k

k3lvc

wyx087 wrote: »

I’m a bit confused, how would leasing/PCP give me an asset after 3 years? I thought the monthly cost only pays for the depreciation.

I'm talking about using your planned 'lease' money to buy something outright - Merc/Audi/Volvo/VW often give 2yrs servicing/warranty on reasonably competitive finance deals which can be either HP or PCP depending on how you want to spread payments

forgotmyname

henry24 wrote: »

How much do these Tesla 3 cars cost?

Is that before or after the fire?

wyx087

caprikid1 wrote: »

"Your wife is right - 3 door cars with babyseats are a nightmare."


Sorry disagree, I actually found 4 doors can be just as challenging.


Plus a child can't get his fingers caught in a 3 door coupe !.


1st world problems.

Haha. Indeed, first world problems.

I imagine the problem is more to do with lifting the little one in/out of the seat. I think you can disable back door handle and window on most cars anyway.

k3lvc wrote: »

I'm talking about using your planned 'lease' money to buy something outright - Merc/Audi/Volvo/VW often give 2yrs servicing/warranty on reasonably competitive finance deals which can be either HP or PCP depending on how you want to spread payments

Okay. So approved used for that kind of money (10-12k) and walk away with an asset rather than hand the key back. Could C class/A4/3-er/Passat drop to that price while still be approved used?

I’ve seen Volvos V40 drop to 10k price range, probably Golf as well. Not sure about compact saloons......