I have always considered leasing a car to be throwing away money.
I was in the market for a car back in the start of 2023. I was floored at how leases were at the same monthly cost as just financing new for the same exact car. As in, there was practically zero advantage in doing so. Why do people do this?
this just means driving their fossil fuel burning car longer until they can figure something out.
The cost of new and used are at a point where if you own your car outright, it’s far cheaper to just keep it on the road. I know not everyone can afford the downtime for big repairs, and keeping $1000-2000 on hand for repairs is not easy. But it can work out to a lot less per year which is the trick. Sadly, economics got us into this mess and without some kind of intervention, they’re gonna keep us here for a while.
Virginia has a model for this that can be a tad regressive; not sure about CA. On the one hand, there’s regular safety and emissions tests that must be passed or you cannot (re)register your car for the coming year or two. This more or less keeps deathtraps and oil-burning-smog-machines off the road. On the other hand, it has absolutely crippled plenty of households just scraping by where that old car is needed to just break even every month. Depending on where one stands on car-dependent culture and if owning/operating a vehicle is a necessity, it can be quite the contentious issue.
Point being, I can easily see how a higher bar for registration, and re-registration, can change the makeup of what’s on the road. I can also see how that can suddenly prevent a whole chunk of the population from participating.