I hate cars.
OK, let me qualify that. I love life with a car — the freedom, flexibility, and utility that a car provides for me. I certainly wouldn’t want to have no car. At least not where I currently live. Also, the engineer in me really likes cars and all of their mechanisms and software.
But I hate cars. I hate shopping for them, buying them, selling them, registering them, fixing them, parking them, putting gas in them (or, if I had an EV, which I will someday, I’d hate charging them), and cleaning them. It feels like I spend all of my money on my cars.
And, unfortunately, I have a pile of them. Five to be exact. Ask me some other time.
Americans love cars, or rather, pickup trucks. Americans bought 15.5 million new vehicles in 2023, with the top three selling vehicles being the Ford F-series, Chevy Silverado, and the RAM pickup. The first EV, the Tesla Y, shows up at number 5, and the first car, the Camry, tops the list at 8.
Even though it feels like I spend all of my money on cars, I don’t. The average American household spent 12.8% of their income on transportation. I looked at my own data, and I’m right around there myself.
I guess its like so much else in my life. What it feels like and what the data says rarely align.
