Early this year we bought a car. For me this was not a dream come true but mostly a final adaptation after swimming against the tide for a long time. A car is a big milestone for many, right up there with a house as purchase of pride. You will regularly see people put up a picture of their first car, especially when it’s a nice fancy one.
This was not the case for me. My extended family owned cars but my immediate family didn’t. I think growing up in Mumbai, I was happy enough with autos, trains, cabs, etc. to ever bother with owning a vehicle. Car ownership exists but public transport is the lifeblood of the city. A few friends had bikes. But buying a bike or a car never crossed my mind.
This changed completely after moving to the US. The US is car country through and through. Everything is designed for the car and assumes the car is the only means of transport. Streets are full of parked cars making many beautiful paths into an eyesore. This is at least true in San Francisco where the view of tranquil sunny streets lined with beautiful houses and trees will be molested by cars parked along the road. Footpaths are narrow to make space for car lanes. And of course, everything is spread out in a low density environment making a car trip necessary to buy small things like milk. San Francisco though is relatively blessed. It is one of the few American cities with decent public transit. So both of us were able to make do without a car. The local MUNI system of buses and trains more than sufficed for most local trips. You could even travel down to the Bay using Caltrain. Things of course got complicated once you ventured out of SF or wanted to travel to nearby destinations. Then you’re helpless and it is impossible to use public transit to travel. Impossible for normal people with time constraints, unless you’re a broke student, hippie, hobo, etc.
In these cases we ended up renting cars. Car rental isn’t that cheap but for the most part we were able to get some employer discounts and get nice rates. Even then you have the hassle of handling pick-up and dropoff before the rental place closes. Apart from airport ones, none of these places are 24x7 and mostly close by 5 pm! So if your trip brings you home by 6 pm, you’ll still have to keep the car till the next morning.
As lil baby babloo was nearing birth, I discovered that having a car seat is a must to take your child back home from the hospital. We ended up doing several long-ish rentals to make do with hospital and doctor visits during the initial period. Later on as visits slowed down, we discovered that our car seat is portable; so we started fixing the car seat in cabs and relied on cabs. This system worked for quite a while till the baby got bigger. This was also the time when we felt lil baby babloo was due for daycare.
We didn’t get a response from a daycare that was walking distance from our house, and felt daily daycare pickup and dropoff will be a pain without a car. So we bit the bullet and decided to get a car. I spent a lot of time researching this and initially leaning towards a sedan; because I wanted minimum car in terms of size.
I really loved the Kia Soul we often rented :D and was generally leaning towards the “forever sedans” (Civic, Accord, Corolla, Camry). But some advice from friends and concerns about space for lugging things around made us jump to the “compact SUV category” of Honda HRV, Toyota Corolla Cross, etc. While tempted by the fuel efficiency of hybrids, I didn’t want to pay more, the prices were quite a bit higher. Electric was out of question because we don’t have EV charging in our apartment garage and I didn’t want to add an annoying charging trip to our lives. After doing the customary calls and visits to car dealerships, I was disappointed to find out that the car I wanted was sold out! Then I was doubly annoyed when the dealer added like $10k-$20k of accessories and fluff when quoting the price. I decided to ditch the dealership altogether and go with used cars from Carvana and Carmax. The difference between the two is a few thousand dollars and comes down to the high touch service that Carmax provides. By this point I had settled on a final few models and my final criteria (price, max mileage, age, wireless android auto, etc.). I think I decided to go with Toyota and Honda because of their reliability and safety. Kia has more bells and whistles but they have a slightly poorer record. Mazda was maybe the other brand I considered. Though I did consider the Chevy Trax initially because of its attractive price, I think some videos warned me about its underpowered engine and Chevy’s poorer reliability. I recall flirting with cool cars like Mini Cooper, etc. before ruling them out due to impracticality for family needs and/or cost. A Corolla Cross that matched the sweet spot finally popped up on Carvana and I decided to pull the trigger. The buying experience was super smooth save for one hiccup where they kept failing then forgetting to complete the smog test because things had been reset.
Funnily we ended up delaying daycare but the car was put to immediate use by the wife who didn’t have to jump between multiple modes of transport anymore to get to her office in Foster City. Even when we did start daycare, it is mostly useful to her for dropoffs. I do pickups but since I work from home, I take the bus or tram to get to the daycare. It is pretty convenient and I don’t feel too chuffed about driving in evening commuter traffic when people are losing their shit and driving rashly to reach home 6 milliseconds sooner. For me it’s an occasional convenience, for her it’s a godsend. Her routine was walk, Caltrain, and then company bus. The company bus was not very frequent so the last mile was often a cab; and the low bus frequency also meant she was always rushing to catch it. Sometimes the bus would reach the Caltrain station late on the return journey and she’d have to take a cab. All that drama is now gone and is replaced with a simpler process. Though she does occasionally get stumped when gameday crowds trigger insane traffic snarls near our house.
We did one longish trip with the car to test out our new car and it was a disaster; not because of the car but because of holiday weekend traffic and sad weather at our destination. The car was totally perfect!
I think the average American car does 9000 miles or so annually, we will be way short of that. Even the wife doesn’t do the long commute everyday. She has the option to go to offices in San Francisco instead and uses that often.
The car overall has held up to its promises since the start. The acceleration is good, responsiveness is nice, wireless android auto/carplay makes life easy even if it is slightly janky. Controls are nice physical buttons. It was missing the guided path lines when reversing but we’ve learned to live with it.
I think it has been a moderately positive addition to our life. Why moderately positive? Well within a few weeks of us getting the car, somebody vandalized our windshield and added a nice big crack to it. I was shocked and initially suspected debris from the road but basic analysis of the crack pattern made it clear it was vandalism. I hate damage to new things (I often leave many nice purchases in the box for a few days!) and was really bummed about this. Funnily this happened in Oakland, when a friend who lives there wanted to meet us for lunch and show us that “Oakland is nice”. Ouch! I am not looking forward to car washes, car tuning, the fabled oil changes, etc. I am yet to figure any of these out. Maybe it’s just annoyance or anxiety at having to figure these new things out. Oh yeah and we’ve also added some scratches to our car (our fault only). Of course, fuel prices and insurance are new costs that tag along now.
On the plus side, we have unlocked lots of local travel. We have happily visited our cousins in the East Bay without the hassle of renting a car. Similarly we’re able to visit friends who live in South San Francisco or in the Bay without extra planning. We have made several trips to Ocean beach and other places in SF for walks, hikes, eating out, etc. I think we are warming up to the idea of doing Costco trips. We were able to use the car to go attend the Stern Grove festival and avoid the crowds on the MUNI right after. I don’t think Jevons paradox has kicked in for us yet, at least not heavily. We are doing some more travel but not a lot more. I also did a fun calculation where if I just count marginal costs i.e. fuel, it is absurdly cheaper to drive to the local Costco than to rent an e-bike; of course with a car you save time too!
We’ve had two surprises in this car journey so far. We bought it for daycare but are using it for commute. We made one of the biggest purchases of our lives but don’t have time to dwell on it, too busy with lil baby babloo!
I still don’t drive as much as I can; and am not driving on freeways yet. Hopefully milestones are crossed soon. Overall I like my car but I still have one eyebrow raised wondering if the juice is worth the squeeze. I still enjoy the ease of just jumping on a bus. My wife’s opinion might differ!