There is no affordable car today that you can make any money today that you need to use. They require money in order to maintain it well enough to use.
Tires are expensive. Gas is expensive. You've got filters and oils and fluids to replace, and headlamps. Without the required disposables, a car is basically useless.
A house without running water, or power, or natural gas, or a furnace filter, or water softener, or lightbulbs, or toilet paper, etc. still provides shelter without all of those things.
A car gets you from point a to point b until it doesn't. At that point it's disposed of.
My next vehicle will be. no reason to have a gas anything. Unfortunately I'm in the middle of a divorce, so I have no idea how long it will be before I can make any positive changes. Fuck I don't even know where I'll be living in 8 months.
I agree, I think the real problem is the cost to maintain one and the economics around it. For too long the expectation was to put as little money as possible into maintaining it and getting a new one some years later. We need to stop making them the massive status symbols they've become.
Won't be a problem because more and more people don't want a car.
Car manufacturers know this and that's why they are focusing on self-driving cars. Taxis will be replaced by robo-taxis owned by manufacturers and private firms.
Within 20 years, will be like a luxury like owning a horse