My car I bought and paid for, over 10 years ago, is now sold and gone. She ran well, nothing wrong with her, but realized over the last year that I hadn’t been using it all thanks to decent bus service and my e-scooter.
In fact, turns out I haven’t even had it registered for years, I had forgotten to! It’s been sitting for so long out of nostalgia and fear that I would need it again someday.
Writing from the bus now, which I paid a few bucks for, I realized how much I was wasting by owning a car. $700 every 6 months, plus when it was registered that was another $600 a year. My total bus bill for the last year was $200.
We still have one car, but I’m excited! I think I’m going to use the money from the sale to buy an ebike!
Anyway, I just wanted to say it is possible, in north America no less.
Its been so much easier. Gone are any worries of where to park, or how much parking is, or traffic, or getting into accidents
Parking was my least favourite, it’s worse than the actual driving part. I can’t realistically park on-site where I live, and all the nearby roads are filled up too. There are multiple shopping malls and a university. Very busy area! On the unlikely chance that I need a car, I can just rent an EV by the hour. It costs a fortune and I don’t really need it anyway.
That sounds awful, and constantly worrying about your 30+ grand car sitting out multiple blocks away with no way to check on it sounds awful.
I had a Mazda Demio (aka Mazda 2) with third party insurance only (no fire or theft because there’s no need) and I had the best car alarm possible, I had pretty much every type of sensor but no GPS tracking.
Mazda Demio gets stolen because the key has no electronic security, whereas most cars have some kind of radio signal to authenticate. For the Demio it only needs the key turning in the lock, so I was smart and I got a proper alarm with a tilt sensor too, so nobody can even steal my wheels without triggering the alarm. Thieves will stuff up your ignition by ripping it out and playing with the wires and this happens all the time, even in people’s driveways.
A funny story - someone parked their Tesla near the airport on a public road. They were too cheap to pay hundreds of dollars for long-term parking, but because they parked on a public road for several nights, someone stole the tyres lol. They must have thought that because it was “high tech” therefore it was immune to theft. All the thieves had to really do was cover their faces hahaha.
Many of these cheap Mazdas get stolen by teenagers and then the police find the car rammed through a shop window at 2am. I never had that problem, nobody touched my car. If you have a valuable car it’s no good, you have to be so proud of it lol. Full insurance is so expensive it’s probably a good reason to not own a car again in the next 5-10 years. As soon as there’s a storm the premiums go up massively.