Car?

So the car broker dude got back in touch yesterday. Wants to know if I want to come over to his lot and view the 200+ vehicles he’s trying to peddle. I like the guy a lot and am sorely tempted to run straight over to his shop and buy something from him.

But…lookee here! Google is making great headway with its prototypical self-driving car. And I do want one of those. That thing is gonna keep me out of the life-care community and, with any luck, out of assisted living until I’m ready to shuffle off this mortal coil.

Happened to glance at the Dog Chariot’s odometer yesterday: 131,000 miles. And change. Hm. That car is 15 years old, far more antiquated than any vehicle I’ve ever owned.

Normally, I figure I put 10,000 miles a year on a car. But…

131,000 miles/15 years = 8,733 miles per year

And to what do we attribute this anomaly?

Looks pretty obvious to me: since I got laid of my job back in 2009 and no longer had to make a 40-mile round trip four or five days a week, I’ve been driving a LOT less.  Even when I was teaching face-to-face, it’s only a 24-mile drive to and from the college, and that was two or at most three days a week.

The 40-mile trip to Tempe alone added up to 10,000 miles a year (40 x 5 days a week * 50 weeks a year), although as a practical  matter I often worked from home; probably on average I really drove out there four days a week.

I think what this means is that since I “retired” to 60-hour weeks served almost exclusively at my own computer in a home office, my mileage has dropped enormously. In addition, because the car is so old, I no longer drive it out of town.

So…hm. I’ve been doing a lot of my shopping on the way home from my weekly meeting in Scottsdale and have limited the Costco trips to one a month. Assuming I drive out of the ‘hood to a more upscale Costco outlet, what do we have here?

It’s 24 miles RT to the Scottsdale venue; add 4 miles to that for a shopping trip that takes in Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Sprouts, Walgreen’s, Safeway, and if need be a Staples, a PetSmart, a Fry’s, a Nordstrom’s Rack, and a FedEx office. Assuming I did that once a week — in fact, I don’t shop for all those things that often, so this will inflate the figures — that’s 1,400 miles in 50 weeks (there are two or three weeks when we don’t meet around the holidays).

It’s three miles to the church, but choir only meets about 9 months a year; so 6 miles per trip x (9 months x 4 weeks) = 192 miles. Hm. Am I making a mistake here? Can this be possible?

Okay, let’s add a trip to the credit union once a month, plus a couple of trips to errant Costcos: To the Costco on the 1-17 via the credit union is about 30 miles, RT. That would be 240 miles a year, right (30 x 12)?

How about a trip to the Mayo once a month, much as I hope never to see the inside of that place again? 50 miles RT. Actually, it’s unrealistic to think I’d have to go there every month; once a quarter would be a lot. So 50 * 4 = 200 miles a year.

Okay, let’s add an occasional junket around town: restaurants with friends, extra shopping trips, whatever: maybe 10 miles a week; that would be 520 miles a year.

That would put my base annual mileage at around 2672 miles per year (!!) assuming I’m don’t have to run out to the Mayo every time I turn around.

Chuck thinks the car will run at least to 150,000 miles; other guys at his shop think it should run to 200,000. Assuming Chuck, the grand old man of automobile mechanicdom, is right, that’s at least 19,000 more miles.

19,000/2622 = 7.2 more years in the vehicle’s life!

Can that possibly be right?

What if we figure I drive 5,000 miles a year, half of what I used to drive when I had a job and the car was spry enough that I felt safe driving it out of town?

19000/5000 = 3.8 years

That’s still almost four years. And if the car makes it to 200,000 miles (heavens to betsy!!) it could (in theory) run almost 14 more years! At 5,000 miles a year.

That’s assuming I keep it in good repair, keep throwing money at it, and never drive it very far.

There’s an outside chance these self-driving cars will come on the market in four or five years. If I’m still living in 14 years, they almost certainly will be available.

And that is what I want for the next car. A car that would drive me around town would moot about 90% of the reason for having to go into an old-folks’ warehouse. As for day-to-day care, it would cost one helluva lot less to have Gerardo come here every week and a cleaning lady or other caretaker come to the house every week — or even more often — than it would to pay four or five grand a month (or more!) to live in one of those places. One of those contraptions could very well make aging in place possible.

Keeping the Chariot is an inconvenience, of course. It has to be serviced more often than a newer car, and it’s pretty confining not even to be able to drive to Prescott or Bisbee. If it gets into a fender-bender, the insurance company is going to total it, and then I’ll be forced to hurry out and buy a car I don’t really want.

But…renting a car for day trips would barely register compared to the cost of buying a newer car. Insurance premiums are rock-bottom. Registration fees are negligible. And it runs like a proverbial top.

(Why are tops said to run so swimmingly? Mine always used to fall over…)

Images:
Toyota Sienna: Public domaiin.
Driverless Toyota; Google technology. Steve Jurvetson. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
“A Tough Gang of Spinning Tops.” Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.