what’s next? joint bank accounts?
My partner and I have joint financial accounts, but it still would be weird to us to take whatever car.
Why? Is it weird to use whatever plate or fork? What about couch cushions? Umbrellas?
I see cars as tools, so there’s not “my car” and “their car,” but “the small car” (hybrid w/ great gas mileage) and “the big car” (minivan). Before we had kids, we only had one car, and if we needed to be in different places, I would ride my bike, walk, or take the bus. That almost never happened, and it wasn’t a big deal when it did.
Plates, forks, cushions, and umbrellas are not typically as personalized as a car.
Don’t even need to hit it sometimes - the profile often goes with the key fob too.
Yeah but if they’re just grabbing keys that wouldn’t work, but hopefully would let them pick the profile when car starts
As someone who used to work on other people’s cars, I think I’ve had my knees jammed into the dash way too many times to ever want this on one of my cars. Fuck that.
I can relate to this so much lol. I’m very tall and I remember getting into the Mercedes of a little old lady. The seat started moving forward while the steering wheel extended towards me. Felt like I was about to be featured on the hydraulic press channel.
You mean due to the risk of accidentally hitting a button that sets the seat to a short position while you drive?
My wife and I are about the same height so we don’t have to adjust our seats.
It’s not a big deal. My SO and I are very different heights (like a foot/35cm), and it takes all of 10 seconds:
- slide seatbelt adjustor up/down
- move seat forward/backward
- adjust mirrors
We do it like 2-3x/week, and as the taller person, I’m totally capable of doing the adjustments while driving out of the neighborhood. It’s really a non-issue.
My wife and I are just the right height difference that the little flicky switch on the internal mirror will swap between the angles each of us need.
One day we got a car that has some auto light filtering for night driving and it doesn’t have the switch. Can’t wait to sell it.
You could just replace the mirror, it’s not normally that difficult to swap out
When I drive my girlfriend’s SUV, I have to stand outside of it and work the controls until I’ve got enough room to get in. It’s not awful, but does kind of suck on hot summer days when I just want to be in the air conditioning.
Our old (2006) minivan has an electronic adjustor, so I just hold that down while getting in (butt in seat, press button, swing legs). Our other car (2007 sedan) is even easier, since I just tap the adjustment bar under the seat and it slides back as I’m sitting on it (again, sideways). Then I adjust the shoulder seat-belt just before grabbing the belt to buckle, then I adjust the rear-view mirror while checking as I back up. It’s pretty smooth and routine.
Our AC takes a while to turn on anyway, so I don’t expect any AC until I’m at least a mile or so down the road. We park in the shade (garage at home and work), so I don’t need the AC anyway when setting out.
Power seats and mirrors with multiple memory is still a luxury car feature and not mainstream like power windows.
The OP did not say what kind of cars they have. It is possible to have 2 cars with memory seats and mirrors. Now if only we could get memory rear view mirrors on the same cars as memory seats. Oh and seatbelt height adjustment memory.
I wouldn’t call it a luxury car feature. In the US basically every car >30k has that. And most new cars cost >30k at this point. Basically every trim over base that’s like the first thing they add.
I had a Ford Focus rental car with power seats once.
We’ve got 1 car. If I need to go somewhere and the wife has it, I get the bus. It’s a lot cheaper than owning 2 cars.
That’s fantastic if your city offers busses! Or public transportation at all 😭
Yeah but that would raise my commute to two hours daily. And an hour of that would be biking home after midnight in a town where I’m very likely to get shot, stabbed, and mugged. Probably at the same time.
Not to mention my bike getting stolen and the fact that I’d likely get stopped by the police here every night due to dark skin
Distances are far in places designed for cars. My city was made at the height of car based design so it takes an hour and a half to cycle from where I live to where I work, and that’s typical. We do have transit though, which is especially pointed at moving people from residential areas to work places and back
Bike theft is such a problem where I live I’ve been very hesitant to get another one. If they can’t get the whole bike, they’ll wrench off tires/seats, etc. My town might be an outlier, but I wonder how other people deal with this kind of thing when their bike is their primary form of transport.
My closest bus stop is 1.5 miles away and the bus runs every hour (or so they claim)
The city added some sort of public “uber” that you can hail and ride for I think $2 but it only works within city limits and my wife has many friends in the neighboring cities so it was useless if she wanted to meet them, and also sometimes it’d take more than an hour for a pick up
I was gonna say “wait until this guy hears my wife and I SHARE a car… oh, the humanity!”
Do you ever run into issues with the bus taking a lot longer, and you not accounting for the extra time if your wife take the car? Where I live, 15-20 minute car rides are often 35-45 minute bus rides, and the bus comes half an hour.
Not really. I just leave at the time needed to get to work on time for whatever mode I’m using. It’s about 8 miles, and before COVID it was usually quicker to cycle than sit in traffic. Now there’s less traffic so cycling takes a bit longer than car, but not much. Bus is about the same as cycling.
I’m 57 and not hugely fit, but I can cycle 8 miles each way without any problem. Takes 30-35 minutes depending on wind direction.
Right now I work a hybrid job and landed this job not long after totaling one of our vehicles in an unavoidable wildlife encounter. We ended up not buying a second car and I’ve been biking to stuff in town when I can (I live in a small town and various stuff frequently calls for running to other nearby towns for this or that) and it’s been really nice only having one car to worry about, but with the kids starting school and my wife looking at going back to work, the time to get a second car might come sooner than later
I can’t even entertain this premise. There’s no way neither of them has a preference…
Yup, that’s how we do it. We have kids and two cars: minivan and hybrid sedan. The hybrid gets more than 2x the mileage vs the minivan, it’s smaller, and both of us prefer it, so it’s what we use 90% of the time. We take the minivan if we’re all going somewhere, or we both need to be somewhere at the same time. I’ll also take the minivan for cargo (hardware store, dump, furniture store, etc).
Before we had kids, we had one car. When we both needed to be somewhere at the same time, I’d take my bicycle or the bus, and my SO would take the car.
Each person having “their” car makes no sense to me, I see cars as tools in the toolbox, and we take the one that’s best suited to the task at hand.
That’s pretty much how we do it, but with a phev and an SUV. On days we both work she takes the phev, I the SUV. When one of us is going somewhere we take the phev. But if it’s snowing or we want to haul kayaks or load up heavy to go camping, the SUV.
The phev is "hers"and the SUV “mine”. But only vaguely 🤷♂️ we don’t actually care that much. But also it’s not a free for all. She would probably be a little miffed if I just randomly took the phev to work forcing her into the SUV. But if we talked about it first she’d probably be fine 🤷♂️
For snow, snow tires should be more than sufficient. That’s what we do and it works fine for us here in Utah. No AWD, just decent tires.
We bought a second car when our first was born because our existing car (2-door coup w/ manual transmission) was a bit frustrating to load a car-seat into (we did it for a year though), and my SO couldn’t drive stick. So we picked up a hybrid (the same one we drive today about 10 years later), and the stick became “mine” by default (commuter only), and the hybrid was “hers,” at least for a couple of years until I was able to junk it because I was riding my bike to work every day. We stuck with a single car for another few years until #3 was born and I switched jobs (both in the same year, new job was more than twice as far), and the bike commute just wasn’t happening.
And that’s where we are today. My SO still feels some ownership over the hybrid, but it has largely become my commuter now. We’ll probably swap the hybrid for an EV soon-ish and later exchange the minivan for something my SO likes to drive more once car seats aren’t an issue. And when the kids leave the house, we’ll go back down to one car (ideally none, but I don’t think my SO would go for that).
