Latest cars are getting increasingly expensive. But they’re also more durable than before, which suggests drivers have a greater likelihood of getting their money’s value.
As the typical transaction price for brand spanking new cars reached an estimated $45,872 in November — the best on record, in keeping with a joint forecast from J.D. Power and LMC Automotive — the typical age of cars on the road also hit an all-time high of 12.2 years in 2022, a separate report by IHS Markit found.
The typical age had been just over 11 years a decade ago. In 2002, it was 9.6 years.
Advancements in every part from materials to technology have helped, in keeping with Will Kaufman, news editor at Edmunds, “and it doesn’t hurt that today’s vehicles have higher ways to alert owners when there are maintenance issues.”
10 cars with the best potential lifespan
Among the many models with the best potential lifespan, Toyota Sequoia topped the list, with the flexibility to travel nearly 300,000 miles, followed by the Land Cruiser, in keeping with a recent iSeeCars study, which analyzed greater than 2 million cars over the past 20 years to see which vehicles could last the longest.
Overall, SUVs and trucks are essentially the most common vehicle types to rank in the highest 10, while more fuel-efficient passenger cars, including the Prius and Avalon, earned two spots on the list.
“Shoppers really, really value reliability, and automakers are definitely sensitive to how big an impact a fame for reliability — or unreliability — can have on their brand,” Kaufman said.
Six of the highest 10 were Toyota SUVs, trucks or cars. Other contenders in the highest five include the Chevrolet Suburban and GMC Yukon, each three-row SUVs.
Every automobile and truck on the list can reach nearly a quarter-million miles or more, the report found.
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As a general rule of thumb, most drivers consider the 200,000-mile mark the upper limit of a automobile’s lifespan, although some models clearly have the potential to travel much farther.
A limited supply of recent cars and trucks as a result of the continuing chip shortage has pushed consumers to make use of their existing vehicles for longer, in keeping with IHS Markit, which tracks vehicle registrations in every state.
At the identical time, thousands and thousands of people that previously commuted to their jobs put fewer miles on their cars while they worked from home, further extending the lifetime of their vehicles.