买车纯粹是无用功？

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2020年07月19日

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买车纯粹是无用功？

私家车一直以来对于许多人而言是出行必不可少的工具。然而在城市人口和车辆增长造成大规模交通拥堵的今天，买车原本应带来的便利与快捷几乎已经被压榨殆尽。无论从环保、生活压力亦或是经济方面考虑，买车似乎都不再是最佳选择，公共轨道交通和线上叫车服务的发展正在逐渐使私家车的存在必要降低。买车是否真的已经失去意义？

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

haggle 讨价还价

undercut 廉价出售

commission 佣金

emission 气体排放物

depreciation 贬值

hassle 麻烦的事情

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Why buying a car makes no sense（787words）

By Michael Skapinker

* * *

The news this week that James Hind, 28, has raised £5.9m to launch Carwow, an online vehicle marketplace, took me back to the day when I bought a new car over the internet.

It was 2003, when Mr Hind was still a schoolboy, but, even then, Sir Richard Branson was declaring the whole business of going to a dealership and haggling with a salesman outdated.

By reimporting UK-assembled cars that had previously been exported to Cyprus, Virgin Cars was able to undercut the dealers. You chose a car online, made a payment and picked up your vehicle at an out-of-town garage.

The catch? There wasn’t one. When the car alarm went off for no reason, Virgin Cars sent someone around to fix it. And the Honda Civic, still running, if a little chipped and bumped, has not given a moment’s trouble since then.

So when it finally dies, will I buy a new car online? No. Virgin Cars is no longer around. Shortly after I bought mine, Sir Richard decided to get out of the business. Only 7,000 people were buying his vehicles annually, compared with hoped-for figures of over 50,000.

Carwow, which comes after US online sites such as Cars Direct, works differently from Virgin Cars. The company sends your online car preferences to 1,000 dealers, who contact you with their best offers, pay

Carwow a commission and then sell to you directly.

I won’t be using them either. I can no longer see a reason to buy a car. It makes no sense. There are greener, less stressful and cheaper alternatives.

Start with the stress. In most cities, driving is horrible. It is stop-start, boring and bad-tempered.

Many people say they drive because they do not like being crushed against other sweaty, disagreeable commuters. I have driven and I have commuted. Fellow passengers are a great deal more civilised than other drivers — and their odours are less offensive than the emissions you inhale in a car.

In many cities today, there really is no need for a car. Public transport and walking can get you almost everywhere you need to go. It is healthier and it is greener. In London, I don’t drive for weeks, or sometimes months, at a time. (Others have taken to bicycles. I do not regard them as healthier — certainly not in London.)

Do not listen to anyone who tells you London’s transport is unreliable. I have taken the Northern Line, London Underground’s supposed “misery line”, twice every working day for 24 years. It lets me down two or three times a year.

Compare that to the hours drivers spent trapped by roadworks, diversions, or other cars. There is nothing convenient about driving.

In most European and many Asian and US cities, it is far quicker and easier to get around without a car. There are apps to tell you when the trains and buses are leaving. And there are apps to get you a car when you really need one.

In a blog post last year, Kyle Hill, chief executive of Home Hero, which provides carers for the elderly, explained why he had sold his Lexus and decided to do without a car — in Los Angeles.

He said he cycled on journeys up to five miles. For anything longer he used Uber. He calculated it was cheaper than running a car, with its purchase payments, interest, depreciation, insurance, petrol, maintenance and taxes.

And do not, he said, forget parking. At a recent dinner in New York, someone told me he paid $500 a month to park in his apartment building. When I expressed astonishment, everyone else chipped in that that was cheap.

A New York Times article in September said that the average residential parking space in Manhattan cost $136,052 to buy, and that some were selling for up to $1m. A secure underground parking space in Knightsbridge, London cost £350,000, the paper said.

Those are extreme prices, but all parking is a hassle, as are parking tickets.

There may be people who really cannot manage without a car: those who live in the country, for example, where there are no good bus services.

But the majority of us are city dwellers, and even in those places without good public transport, there will soon be online taxi services, if there aren’t already.

Some will say that none of this matters because cars will soon be self-driving. If so, that is another reason not to buy one you have to drive yourself, whether from a dealer or online.

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1. Why did Sir Richard decided to get out of the business of online car-selling?

a. His company has gone broken

b. The competitors are too strong

c. The customers are less than expected

d. Loss of market share

2. Which of the following company mentioned by the author does not sell cars online?

a. Carwow

b. Virgin Cars

c. CarsDirect

d. HomeHero

3. What’s the author’s attitude towards buying a car?