Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
I'm not against Aptera; the car is an efficiency marvel.
I'm just realistic... the point of a car isn't to be efficient. The point of a car is to move people and their things in comfort and safety. Whenever something is designed around x exclusively, it comes at the expense of y and z.
I would proudly build and unveil the Aptera as my college science experiment. I'd have no expectation of creating a successful business that manufactures them.
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I guess from my standpoint is I'm sick of overkill. I know a guy who got a brand new, top-of-the-line MacBook Pro with 64 GB of RAM that costs in the thousands and thousands of dollars to do book keeping that would have worked just as fine on the cheapest Chromebook. Why?
I see large, dual cab pickups used to transport a single individual. Why?
Obviously there's the swiss-army-knife way of looking at vehicles. Why buy a barrage of vehicles for different purposes when you can have a one-size-fits-all vehicle for all your personal needs?
On the other hand I do contradict myself a bit. I do want the most efficient, affordable vehicle that's still practical. So I jump between wanting a Smart Car or Aptera or even a Honda PCX to wanting a minivan. And in truth, a Trax might be exactly the kind of car I would truly benefit from, because:
- I have a family. I do need to haul around more things than just my overgrown teenagers.
- We do drive down dirt roads and in deep snow at times, so having a greater ground clearance would be better.
- There are always going to be things that can't be transported in a hatchback, unless we're talking a very old school station wagon or mini van that you could take the seats out (you apparently can't do that in even the new Toyota Sienna) which necessitated a trailer. And the Trax has a tow rating, which my current car, the Avalon, does not have.
- The Trax has a spare tire. Most other cars I look at do not.
Maybe I'm just stupid, or maybe I'm brilliant. I don't know. All I know is that I dislike things that seem like they could be more efficient than they are. The typical 5th door hatch design is -to me- practical yet innefficient. For all those miles I'm not carrying around a free dresser that my wife wants for the spare bedroom, what purpose does a squarish rear end have other than to make more air drag?
I guess the real reason for my morbid obsession of finding the most cheapest and efficient vehicles is not that I couldn't buy a bigger and better vehicle, but that I find modern cars so dead boring. My Avalon is one of the most boring cars I've ever owned. I feel like it was a big mistake to put down so much money on a car that really isn't any more practical than my 1985 VW N/A diesel. The only two things I appreciate from the Avalon is that it is safer and it gets better emissions. Other than reasons such as those, I'd rather spend as little as possible for these necessary evils on wheels. My car needs to get me from point A to point B. I don't care what it looks like, how much power it has, what fancy bells and whistles it has nor what brand it is. Just as long as it gets me from point A to point B as efficiently and cheaply as possible without being impractical.
This is why I'm not buying a Bolt any time soon. I don't want to spend more money on something that I don't need. If I could just forgo owning a vehicle altogether I would do so in a heartbeat. I will buy another vehicle when I have no other choice but to buy another vehicle.