I love my plug in hybrid Toyota prius prime, but it is a small car and only seats 4.
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My sister loves hers, too!
I love my practically- new 2024 Nissan Ariya. It’s all electric…about 300 miles on a charge.
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Hybrids help those of us with range anxiety—rational or not. Haha!
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Replying to your older post, we bought a 2025 BMW X5 xDrive50e (PHEV) as “my” car. Other car is EV. I usually drive less than 20 miles a day. Full charge is ~45 miles. But when we want to take a road trip we don’t have range anxiety.
Only challenge is when we both want to charge (do timed charging for best electrical rates) but not a big deal.
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Now that the thread has been bumped, we can review how prices have changed since the thread started in March/April. The graph below this post shows CPI new car prices. CPI prices peaked in September 2023. There has been no significant change in CPI since March/April.
I bought a used 8th gen Camry in the past year. CarGuru lists a 0.5% decrease in price for the model+year I bought over past 90 days and 5% price decrease over past year. However, looking up my saved search on cars.com for the specific type of Camry that I wanted in a 75 mile radius from my home, the models that interest me start at 10% more than what I paid. I expect this primarily relates to regional differences. At the time of my purchase, my region of SoCal had then 2nd lowest prices in US on this model+year+trim+… (lowest was a region in Florida). Now it does not. Other areas of US have comparable cars at ~5% below what I paid. In my region, prices have increased on this make and model, even though overall prices across full US apparently have not.
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I watch autonews daily. They have a price change chart.
New cars are $49,788 - on April 13 was over 50,000. Here’s another chart.
Auto tariffs, on the EU for example, haven’t yet hit. A lot of the agreements you’ve read about haven’t been implemented. Someone is taking credit for a nothing burger yet. They are coming though. While the manufacturers will have to incent more, I do think prices go up. But I still say buy when you want - and not forced over a hundreds or thousand dollars swing.
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I can’t comment on price aspects. But I can say I adore all the new cameras and safety features on the new car as compared to the 2006 Odyssey it replaced. (There is a counterpart that things are more complicated setting up different settings, profiles etc.).
Financially speaking, the old car with only 103K miles was fine for around town. But with my husband’s car not quite trustable anymore on a long road trip, we needed a new one and decided to replace mine. That road trip had unexpected reasons to get extended, and it was lovely on those 6700 miles to have the new car.
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My H just picked up the new Lexus IS350 he ordered. It’s a lovely car to look at and has many safety and comfort features not in our other two cars. H is thrilled. It’s an ICE only car and gets poor mileage but since it will only be driven about 2500-5000 miles/year or so, we don’t really care. It has a CD player so I guess we can play our old CDs. Haha!
It will also sync with either ApplePlay or GooglePlay for navigation, which will make our kids very happy!
He’s giving his old 1998 volvo s70 to a handyman who has a good mechanic because it was getting too troublesome for us to maintain. The funny thing is the old Volvo had more ports for people to plug their electronics in than this new Lexus. Fortunately, it’s only for driving short distances in our small state, so not important. If it was for long road trips, I can see that it would be an issue for the back seat passengers.
At least this car seats 5 people fairly comfortably — my Prius Prime only seats 4 passengers, as there is a rear console in the middle between the rear passengers.
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@aMacmom, how do you like the X5 PHEV?
I am really attracted to the idea of using the battery for local driving (my driving distance to Costco is 11 mi; my trip to Harvard Square is 17.5 mi; my trip to the airport is 28.5 mi). Our longer drives, which I would prefer to do on an ICE to avoid range anxiety, are to New York City (roughly 220 mi) and environs (for culture and weddings, of which there seem to be a lot), our house in Canada (roughly 350), the Gulf Coast of Florida (1500 miles), and Ontario (600 mi), plus random trips (got a wedding in New Hampshire next weekend).
I love my BMW 335GT xDrive with some kind of Sports option (maybe better suspension and seats, I can’t remember). Ten+ years ago, I preferred the 3-series to the 5-series because of handling. It looks the closest replacement is a 4 series Gran Coupe. I would buy that when it comes out in PHEV.
@Colorado_mom, I love big screens on cars like Tesla and the protective driving features more generally. I’m a techie at heart and love gadgets but I think I will pick a car based on the handling and safety.
I assume that this round of cars will be the last we will drive. The next round will be autonomous – whether owned by us or Uber/Lyft.
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All in all, I like it. It replaced a 2010 Lexus sedan (RIP) that had the same footprint, but without all the updated cameras, etc. On the BMW, assisted parking seems to be a bit inconsistent. For example, it recorded a path into the garage. Where it actually parks can vary by almost a foot. Love the curved wide screen display, but wish it had more customizable options. User interface seems a bit clumsy to me. I’m still learning how to customize the BMW’s features to my needs.
Our other car is an older Tesla, maybe I’m just used to its auto park feature and display interface. This is mostly H’s car.
We already had a Level 2 charger in the garage for the Tesla. I probably charge about every three days. Tesla is on an approximately five day charge need. We work it out.
Go take a test drive!
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I’m a techie at heart too. But I was a reliability engineer for the first 20 years of my career, and I’m still burdened by the worries about what might break on new purchases. Also I like simplicity, and new stuff can be complicated. Nonetheless we still got a lot of bells and whistles on our new Lexus (and for the first time extended warranty). It was all a splurge. But I can’t begin to explain the joy in having a car with smaller footprint AND fantastic cameras… gives this aging, short, cautious driver/parker so much extra confidence. For example, we use the rear view mirror in “camera” mode - that means no more issues of interference from rear headrests.
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And here is an example of display - the “top view” at left from 360 camera helps me pull into a space when I can’t see the parking lot lines.
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I love those top down cameras! DH has one. Ironically, my “fancier” car does not. What an asset!
My hunch is that as cars have been made safer (more metal, less glass) the ability to see around you to ground level has decreased. Or maybe I have just gotten worse at parking!
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You’re making me feel less bad about myself, @ucbalumnus !
Haha—H bought a new car—Lexus IS350 but now decided he prefers the ES because it’s roomier and smoother (less “sporty”).
I’m having a little bit of a hard time utilizing all the cameras in my new car. I’m used to looking over my shoulder to back up or change lanes. Old car did beep (faster beep as you get closer to an object front or back), but I knew the edges of that car very well since I drove it for 15 years.
I do like the “top view,” similar to what @Colorado_mom posted, especially as I learn the edges. Sometimes it just kicks in, sometimes I need to push the parking button on the center console. Also like the vehicle warning triangle that shows up in the sideview mirrors.
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It’s taken me a while to get used to the various bells and whistles. Now I’m spoiled. During a recent long roadtrip, my husband did a lot of city/Boston driving and turned off the feature that automatically switches from map view to camera view at very slow speeds. I missed that, even though the button to switch it is very easy to reach. We just reverted the config this afternoon back to automatic.