The future

[Graham]

So, the world is allegedly going over to electric cars and that's all that will be made from 2030.

Well, I have two NA1 NSXs which I plan to keep for many years to come but I'm wondering how the classic car market will look. Will the bottom fall out of it?

Will petrol be deliberately priced so high that nobody wants one any more, to drive us off the roads?

What to you guys (and gals) think?

[goldnsx]

I think collectors getting older and I do fear that the younger people won't value older cars as high as we do.

[Shawnsx5]

I think the best defence to the main risk of ageing owners is an active club to ensure we can get younger owners interested in our cars. I think this is what has happened with the NSX community in the US they seem to have a larger proportion of younger owners, no data to back this up just a feeling based on mainly facebook posts.

We have a club www.nsxclub.co.uk and many events planned for 2021 and if we can get good attendance this will be a start at getting our special and rare cars better known to a younger audience. Rarity works against us in the transfer of interest to younger generations.

For my part I doubt I will outlive the availability of petrol so I am not that concerned about this risk. Porsche will start testing green synthetic "petrol" in 2022 so this could be the answer:

https://www.carscoops.com/2021/02/porsche-will-begin-testing-synthetic-fuels-in-2022/#:~:text=Porsche%E2%80%99s%20synthetic%20fuel%20is %20created%20by%20combining%20hydrogen,the%20e-fuel%20with%20the%20aid%20of%20wind%20power.

[goldnsx]

I guess you're right about attracting younger people for the NSX.

In Switzerland (we had quite a lot of NSx per capita ), the market is in a dead end. Prices far too high for younger people who have different priorities than owning a 30 year old car. Repairs are overly expensive too.

[Heineken]

This seems to be true for any even remotely popular old car. Since roughly 2014 prices are climbing and climbing, similar to real estate prices all over the world.

[goldnsx]

I think there would be some interest in the car if only prices were not that high. And I remember 2-3 cars at around 50-65% of the 'moon' prices that sold within less than a month (all standing at Honda or ex-Honda dealers). Baseline is around EUR 40-50k for a good car without major problems and documentated service history. Garage queens might ask higher prices but every dealer thinks his one is a garage queen. :rolleyes:

[Papalazarou]

So, the world is allegedly going over to electric cars and that's all that will be made from 2030.

Well, I have two NA1 NSXs which I plan to keep for many years to come but I'm wondering how the classic car market will look. Will the bottom fall out of it?

Will petrol be deliberately priced so high that nobody wants one any more, to drive us off the roads?

What to you guys (and gals) think?

I think we’ll be dead by the time things really get serious! Check out the Harry’s garage video on YouTube discussing this very topic. It’s really interesting.
Personally I think these things take longer than we think they will. There are well over 30 million cars on the road, and a considerable amount of these cars are driven by people who cannot afford to buy or lease new electric vehicles. We are also lacking an adequate infrastructure. My friends who work at the power station tell me we’d be in a bit of trouble if we all started buying electric. This is hearsay however, but I think they’re right.
I guess the big changes will be driven from the cities where owning your own car will seem untenable in the next ten or so years. You’ll simply hire what you need when you need it. It makes me wonder whether driving will become a thing of the past for many; if you grow up in a city, then go to university in a city how likely are you to want or need to drive. You probably end up working from home anyway.
The classic segment is quite small in comparison to the bulk of vehicles on the road. Rising prices stop us from using them and they have a tiny carbon footprint compared to new electric vehicles. Exactly how much of a carbon footprint can a thirty year old car that does a thousand miles a year have?
With regard to the younger drivers becoming interested in classics. Well, where I live there is quite a lot of interest. It worries me that they are growing up with popularist junk like top gear. I watched half an episode last week. Just shocking painful rubbish. But there is a huge amount of content on youtube and other social media.
Personally I think that the 80’s to mid 90’s was the heyday of cars. They became usable and are still easy to work on. Build quality was better than it is now and cars were stylish. But with every generation that fades away, so another era of cars is eventually lost. If no-one remembers them, or they are too
Difficult to look after. There is little or no incentive to own them.

I think we’ll be ok for a while.

Cheers.

[britlude]

the plan won't involve people owning or leasing cars, the model will be to ping an app and the self driving car will come and ferry you to where you want to go, or where the app will allow you to go!

why do you think we are seeing all the add-ons being fitted to cars, everything from lane change alerts, self braking cars to avoid accidents, self driving cars that have to be watched all the time, self parking cars. none of this is 'driver aids', it's all on road testing without the big OEMs having to pay (or be liable for the inevitable cockups) for all the millions of miles of testing to be carried out. the 'oh look at my new gadget' brigade are doing all the testing for them, and when it goes wrong, like self driving teslas crashing, it's the 'drivers' fault for not being poised all the times to jump in when something goes wrong... but you can be sure the car has logged all the parameters for the manufacturers investigation after.

as for fuel.... they won't stop it, it'll just get too expensive to buy.....

[NZNick]

The churn of cars in the UK is at most 2 million per year - to replace 30 million will obviously take a while. I'm not sure that all will be replaced, as per Jonathan's points above. Also, a fair number of cars sold between now and 2030 will still have an internal combustion engine, and cars sold up to 2035 can be hybrids, so petrol for our NSXs will be available for another 15-20 years at least. And as the NSX has a solid, stable platform (no rust), an EV conversion of some sort isn't going to be too difficult in the future...

[Shawnsx5]

I have worked in the energy sector for all my career on the pipes and wires side. At one point I was responsible the design and capital investment program for the National Gas Transmission system originally built to bring natural gas to the UK from the North Sea fields. In the 90s and early 2000s this network was expanded to respond to the "dash for gas" which refers to the significant number of gas fired power stations being built that contributed significantly to carbon emissions by replacing coal fired generation.

The electricity challenge is not just transport but space heating where the peak gas demand is 4-5 times the current peak electricity demand. One of the proposed solutions is to shave the heat load peak by smart control of car batteries, so your car battery will be used to power your house heating at say 6-8 in the morning - oh dear then you have no power to use the car for a while.

The electrification of all our energy needs has major impacts on the electricity infrastructure not only on the network side but also in the home, you may need a bigger cable or a 3 phase supply if you have a high heat pump load to heat your house and several car charging points for your family. So this is why the government is supporting test projects and research into repurposing all the natural gas infrastructure for the distribution of Hydrogen - the big challenge the production using green power. Hydrogen boilers already exist - the pipes to get it to your home already exist it makes economic sense.



I think we’ll be dead by the time things really get serious! Check out the Harry’s garage video on YouTube discussing this very topic. It’s really interesting.
Personally I think these things take longer than we think they will. There are well over 30 million cars on the road, and a considerable amount of these cars are driven by people who cannot afford to buy or lease new electric vehicles. We are also lacking an adequate infrastructure. My friends who work at the power station tell me we’d be in a bit of trouble if we all started buying electric. This is hearsay however, but I think they’re right.
I guess the big changes will be driven from the cities where owning your own car will seem untenable in the next ten or so years. You’ll simply hire what you need when you need it. It makes me wonder whether driving will become a thing of the past for many; if you grow up in a city, then go to university in a city how likely are you to want or need to drive. You probably end up working from home anyway.
The classic segment is quite small in comparison to the bulk of vehicles on the road. Rising prices stop us from using them and they have a tiny carbon footprint compared to new electric vehicles. Exactly how much of a carbon footprint can a thirty year old car that does a thousand miles a year have?
With regard to the younger drivers becoming interested in classics. Well, where I live there is quite a lot of interest. It worries me that they are growing up with popularist junk like top gear. I watched half an episode last week. Just shocking painful rubbish. But there is a huge amount of content on youtube and other social media.
Personally I think that the 80’s to mid 90’s was the heyday of cars. They became usable and are still easy to work on. Build quality was better than it is now and cars were stylish. But with every generation that fades away, so another era of cars is eventually lost. If no-one remembers them, or they are too
Difficult to look after. There is little or no incentive to own them.

I think we’ll be ok for a while.

Cheers.

[Papalazarou]

I don’t disagree that the things mentioned above will happen. I just think they will take a huge amount of time to happen in any significant way.
I do think that the necessity for many to work from home during the lockdowns and the serious reduction in retail will move us a step closer to Jonathan’s vision.
In an attempt to address Graham’s original question. Will the bottom fall out of the classic market. I think that there is a natural wastage of cars that are no longer appreciated, or just too difficult to Maintain. These cars will disappear and become like the vintage cars we see in 1930’s war films.
However, if the future is electric, perhaps we will all be driving electric cars, and our old classics will be a weekend affair. Perhaps car shows will become more popular because the general automotive world will be so sterile.
I wonder what will happen to track days? Will they disappear? Or will we run with electric elises?
Sorry, off on one again. The classic and sports car market is massive. It generates huge amounts of income and nostalgia. It is a connection to our past and the past of our parents and so on. They are a commodity. And as Harry mentions in him YT video. Look at what happened to mechanical watches when quartz watches were introduced.

Cheers.

[flyingsniffer]

My view is that 2030 will come and go, it will be many more years before every new car sold is an EV - that year was chosen by Boris to suck up to Biden and he knows he'll be long gone by then. However, it will come to pass - I run a Jaguar iPace as my daily and it's brilliant, so if they can sort the charging infrastructure out (look up Gridserve for a taste of what it would need to be like) and make them more affordable, then I'm all for it....in the context of an EV being an alternative powertrain.

However, being developed alongside EVs is autonomy and this will be the big sea change in 'driving fun'. Remember that Tesla with the steering yoke? How we all laughed. But then consider this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSWLPawtIWc and suddenly it all makes more sense. From next year, new models will have to have speed limiters that restrict you to the limit on every section of road and from 2023, on all new cars. New cars will become increasingly less fun and more managed. We'll probably need a Vaccine Passport to drive one!

So my view is that there will always be a nostalgic yearning for 'proper' cars, even more so than there is now.

[Shawnsx5]

I agree with flyingsniffer the prospect of only ever being a passenger in future cars is not something I look forward to. I also think in future we will be buying a service for transport (a smart/autonomous taxi service perhaps) rather than buying a car.

Here is a UK company that is developing a Hydrogen fuelled powertrain based vehicle with an innovative commercial model.

https://riversimple.com/

Sadly it would place high in the ugliest cars of time poll.




My view is that 2030 will come and go, it will be many more years before every new car sold is an EV - that year was chosen by Boris to suck up to Biden and he knows he'll be long gone by then. However, it will come to pass - I run a Jaguar iPace as my daily and it's brilliant, so if they can sort the charging infrastructure out (look up Gridserve for a taste of what it would need to be like) and make them more affordable, then I'm all for it....in the context of an EV being an alternative powertrain.

However, being developed alongside EVs is autonomy and this will be the big sea change in 'driving fun'. Remember that Tesla with the steering yoke? How we all laughed. But then consider this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSWLPawtIWc and suddenly it all makes more sense. From next year, new models will have to have speed limiters that restrict you to the limit on every section of road and from 2023, on all new cars. New cars will become increasingly less fun and more managed. We'll probably need a Vaccine Passport to drive one!

So my view is that there will always be a nostalgic yearning for 'proper' cars, even more so than there is now.

[britlude]

The populus is already being weaned off the principle of owning a car, so many are on 3 year rolling lease now, where you dont own it, just give it back and get something else at the end of the term...

[NZNick]

^ Most people in the UK drive used cars - this will continue to be the case, especially as the lease returns above ramp up.
I am always grateful that someone in Japan chose and bought the NSX that i have now.