Which state was the dealership in? It hasn’t always been a huge scam. It initially started fairly small but keeps growing as these dealership assholes change state laws in their favor. One I learned about recently was West Virginia which seems to have a lot of car dealership assholes in state politics. Most sites report that the cap on their doc fees is $175 which is old news. It was raised to $250 in 2019 and then again sometime to the current cap of $499.
Last two were in IL and CA.
I’m not a fan of consumer reports car ratings. They tend to treat cars similar to dishwashers and other household appliances. It leads to an over rating of vanilla Japanese brands. JD power i think does a little better job capturing overall customer experience.
CA fees are defined here. Absolute maximum of $85 and no electronic filing fee allowed.
IL’s max was reset to a base value of $300 for 2020 and is adjusted annually by CPI (lol), giving us a 2023 rate of $347.26.
Chicago Auto Trade Association - 2023 DOC maximum is $347.26.
The dealership(s) you bought from may not charge the doc fee at all, but in most states it appears that charging one customer $X requires charging all customers the same doc fee.
I bet your criticism is 100% fair. They work for me because I want safety, low repair costs, high mileage and care much less about comfort, drive, noise or infotainment.
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Yeah, I’m not sure how it works. It’s just never a detail I pay attention to. I make it clear that I’m only concerned with the price out the door, I don’t really care how they arrive at that amount. Some dealers don’t want to play ball when I set those ground rules, but enough do that I can find a seller willing to offer a very good deal.
Car dealers are well aware their rent seeking is enabled by state legislatures, much like lol title insurance assholes, and are therefore well represented in statehouses. Your typical car dealer will sell something like 3,000 new and used cars a year - $500 doc fee, boom $1.5 million of complete bullshit pure profit.
Probably worth $50 million easy. LOL car dealers.
My car needs some repairs done to replace normal wear and tear type stuff but the total for the repairs is about the same as the value of the car so I’m torn on getting it done or just biting the bullet and buying a new car. I’m thinking that since the repairs are about the same cost as 6-10 months of payments as long as I keep the car that long it makes sense to do but I also know if some other repair pops up I’m going to be kicking myself for spending so much money fixing up an old car when I could have used it for a down payment instead.
Part of my issue is I can’t imagine buying another ICE car and the best option for an electric car is a Tesla and the idea of making $700 a month car payments makes me 
. The Chevy Bolt EUV looked like a nice middle ground between price and features so of course Chevy discontinued it.
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Highly recommend the bolt if you can find one. Don’t be afraid to buy a used one that had the battery swap performed.
They aren’t great for long road trips but they’re awesome for around town or trips around 200-250 miles round trip.
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If your car is otherwise a known reliable/tanky model, definitely consider getting the repairs done. I had to make this decision with my 2011 Civic to the tune of $2500ish a few years ago, and gotten nearly 100k miles out of it since, with only one blip outside of the usual tires/brakes stuff (a slow trans fluid leak that was thankfully just a problem with a line and nothing with the transmission itself).
I’m in the same spot as you with wanting to go straight to electric. Will consider trying to get one of the last Bolts later this year if it makes sense, and if not, I’m just crossing my fingers that the Civic coasts along to like 400k miles and I hopefully have a ton more options in a couple years.
I looked when it was announced they were being discontinued hoping that there might be some kind of sale to try to clear out inventory but instead they all had a $3k dealer markup added 
. Used might be the way to go but I haven’t checked that much into pricing there.
It’s a 2011 Ford Fiesta, I’m not sure how reliable they are in general but other than replacing the transmission in 2020 (after years of it seeping transmission fluid) it hasn’t needed anything but standard maintenance.
100k miles in a few years is crazy. The only people I know doing that are regional type sales reps in my industry. Would an electric work well for someone doing that kind of mileage?
To be fair we’re talking about like 3.5 years of a 64 mile round-trip commute (no COVID break for me, bleh) plus whatever misc driving I’m doing (still largely local stuff, my wife’s newer car is the road trip vehicle). I rounded up, might be closer to 80 than 100 but still up there.
For that kind of usage, electric feels like a no brainer, even something like the Leaf with its 150ish mile range would be fine for me, although I really want 200+ for some flexibility. Not to mention I get cold winters so I’d have to plan for shitty range for a couple months every year.
Fiesta’s are beer cans on wheels. When you’re done with them you crush them and and get a new one.
I ordered an AWD Ford Maverick about 8 months ago and it just got built a few days ago.
Brand new, sub 30K. I’ll post a pic when it arrives.
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You want that extra range. Battery life diminishes if you regularly charge past 80%, so 150mi will turn into 120mi. You also don’t want to go below 10% regularly, so 120mi turns into 105mi. Etc.
But EVs are awesome and everyone should get one—the pros outweigh the cons AINEC.
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Cant an EV fast charge these days in 15 minutes whole you grab a coffee?
Ones that can use 480 volt fast charging can get a ton of charge quickly but a lot of the more affordable electric cars can’t charge as fast, this guy driving a Bolt EUV went from 9% to 63% after an hour for example.