Official: Toyota sells six of 10 of hybrids in California

The average age of vehicles in the U.S. continues to increase, now it's at about 11 years. That doesn't mean that the original owner kept it for

11 years though. In 2011, an R.L. Polk study showed that Americans were keeping their new vehicles an average of 71.4 months, that's nearly six years.

Using "3.5" years is not insane, it's dishonest. I know it wasn't you that stated the "3.5" figure, but you should be careful about believing what some people say in their posts in their effort to "prove" something.

You're incorrectly claiming that people are making the decision to buy a new car purely on emotion.

The fact is that for certain makes of vehicles it doesn't make a lot of sense to buy them used. If a vehicle has terrible resale value then a used one can make financial sense (though the reason for the terrible resale value might be worth investigating). If a vehicle has very high resale value then a used one often makes no sense. You get less of a warranty, less overall service life, and often save very little, if anything in the original price.

New car buyers are keeping their new vehicles an average of six years. Let's assume that they don't want to keep a vehicle that's more than six years old. So they can buy a three year old vehicle every three years, or a new vehicle every six years. It's after six years when a lot of wear items on a new vehicle need to be replaced, such as brakes, tires, batteries, CV boots, shocks, struts, timing belts, etc..

Good article about this here: : "The added cost for CPO models, coupled with higher financing rates compared with new cars, can sometimes push their price close to that of an equivalent new model ? or in some cases, even beyond."

By and large, that's what drives the "buy a new car every 3 years" decision.

That was not the premise.

I never discussed particular brands.

and, frankly, is a piece of shit to sit in and drive.

Have you actually done that?

What Toyota have done is to push the old Camry experience on up to the Avalon.

To be fair, the Prius is a larger and more comfortable car than a Corolla.

A Camry hybrid is also, despite the complexity, enormously more reliable than anything VW has ever put on the streets.

Germans do love their complexity as well, even on simple non-hybrid cars--but they don't care, and as a culture have come to accept and expect that complexity and the maintenance and repair cycles that come with it.

In short, VWs are absolute and utter pieces of shit.

The word is "judgment," not "judgement". And secondly, no, it's not my judgment; it's fact. Buying a new car every 3.5 years is a WAY WAY WAY worse financial decision than choosing a hybrid over the non-hybrid version of said same car.

To talk to such a person about the hybrid financial discussion inside of that is ridiculous. That person has already made such an expensive (and emotional) financial decision, what's the point of trying to talk him out of adding a couple points onto that decision (in an equally emotional manner, no doubt)?

Since my 2003 Avalon is still in great shape [39,000 mi] what about "converting" to a Hybrid?

what state is the technology for Conversions? [i did do a little research, but no conclusion]

thanks, marc

But the intelligence of buying a car that often is not the topic, and it is also a practice that happens no matter how stupid you think it is. I happen to agree with you that it's stupid, but I assume nobody needs to be told that. You know it's stupid, I know it's stupid. I let others decide for themselves.

Given that foundation, most people that buy a hybrid for the savings do not save anything. THAT'S the point.

You are not going to convert. It would be far cheaper, that's F-A-R cheaper, to sell the Avalon and buy a hybrid. Wha'ts even more cheap is to keep the Avalon for another 10 years when it might hit the 80,000 mile mark. At this point you will have a very desirable car -- one that's in Like New condition but is 20 years old.

Of course. I helped my sister-in-law buy one earlier this year. A wonderful vehicle. You almost feel like you're driving a Lexus. I was a little concerned because after the third generation Camry, Toyota did some decontenting on the fourth generation. But the seventh generation they apparently realized that they had to undo the decontenting. As Car and Driver wrote: "More luxury and more mpg for America's most popular car." The styling is pretty bland though. I think the Accord has better styling, but we (my family and extended family) are done with buying Hondas because they lack the long-term reliability of Toyotas.

No offense, but the Prius feels very utilitarian. It's fine for a daily commute car, but you would not want to take any long trips with four full-size humans and their luggage.

Actually they're very close. The Corolla has slightly more rear leg room, front hip room, front head room, and rear shoulder room, while the Prius has slightly more front leg room, rear head room, and front shoulder room. By virtue of the hatchback design, the Prius has nearly

10% more interior space. The Prius also has 15% more rear hip room. This for 2013. For 2014 the Corolla is redesigned and is supposed to have more interior room.

I agree that Toyota's are more reliable. Yet if you look at a table of vehicle longevity, VW is second only to Toyota for percentage of vehicles still on the road. This was for Canada, I could not find a similar table for the U.S..

The real issue is that Toyotas can be abused in terms of maintenance, VWs cannot.

The reason VWs do so well in the long term is because they have very reliable engines and bodies so it's worth fixing the other stuff that constantly goes wrong. And in the past I've owned water-cooled VWs so I'm well aware of all the stuff that goes wrong. My friend has a Passat where replacing the clutch was $2000. But I could have sold my 160,000 mile Rabbit and not told the buyer that the 60,000 on the odometer was

160,000 because the car looked very good and the engine was well within spec for compression.

I'm just saying, why discuss at length how some sub-decision is financially unsound when the main decision that generates the discussion is financially unsound.

Thanks for the laugh.

Sitting in the seats, it's not even close.

Of course they can. But what's the point? Why tell someone who has already gone down the path of making a bad financial decision how some small detail of this bad decision can be slightly changed to make it a very slightly less bad financial decision?

Once you've gone down the bad road, it really doesn't matter whether you drive on the right side or the left side.

You are saying it is stupid to buy a new car because it is financially unsound. I'm saying it is stupid to buy a hybrid for the finances because they don't work out.

REALITY CHECK It's the same thing. Do not buy a hybrid to save money because you will not UNLESS you do the things that makes it a good decision to buy a new car in the first place.

If one has a short ownership window, then a new car is a bad buy. If one has a short ownership window, then a hybrid is a bad buy -- argueably even worse than buying other kinds of cars and not keeping them very long.

Buy a new car if you want, but the economics of a hybrid do not work out unless the ownership window is very large. That's what I'm saying.