I don't even think about buying cars less than 10 years old or so. I have actually had better luck doing this than when I used to buy cars new or nearly-new. It weeds out the lemons and the owners who don't take care of their cars.
Let someone else take the depreciation and find out how they hold up in the long term. Does Apple have any history of supporting its hardware for that long?
This is something that really worries me about current automotive trends. Carmakers tend to assume a 10-year lifespan for their vehicles, though last I saw the average age of cars on the road in the US is slightly higher than that[0]. My current car is approaching 30 and I'm planning to replace it with something closer to 10-15 in the near future, old enough to avoid touchscreens and new enough to not be destroyed by rust (yet).
With vehicles incorporating more technology, I'm concerned they might stop lasting long enough for rust to be an issue. Tech companies have already perfected a model of planned obsolescence. If cars start becoming obsolete and unusable as fast as tech products do, they won't have a chance to depreciate enough for me to afford one.
I forgot where it was exactly, but I remember a discussion on a podcast about how auto manufacturers deliberately price their replacement electronics to force planned obsolescence. The example brought up was an SUV that has a large display that controls everything from HVAC to the radio. The screen had an expected service life of something like 7 years, but a replacement price of something like $7k. The thought was that when people are faced with a price tag like that on a depreciated asset, they'll be more likely to trade it in for a new model.
Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon but that would all but guarantee my new model wasn't bought from the same manufacturer.
Could that have been 2.5 Admins episode 78? They were discussing the incident where a radio station broadcast a corrupted image file that bricked Mazda radios that received it.
The specific number sounded familiar, but I bet a lot of podcasts were talking about replacement automotive electronic parts in the wake of that Mazda radio news.
I was trying to do this and the market seems terrible. I can buy a 10-12yr old car with 150k miles for >$10k (at least in models that I was looking at). Or stuff that is hard to maintain for $5k (which is what I'm already driving). Newer used cars are almost as much or even more than new! Ended up putting a deposit on a new one.
I have a 2009 Toyota Prius and it has never once had a mechanical problem. Literally the only issue it has ever had is an inaccurate tire pressure indicator light on the dashboard.
Let someone else take the depreciation and find out how they hold up in the long term. Does Apple have any history of supporting its hardware for that long?