Savy Senior - Top New Cars for Older Drivers

I like the mention of easy to use, intuitive, tactile controls. Older drivers remember how it used to be, before cars became rolling smart phones.

 

+2 for the RAV4s. After our Fathers passed, I assisted the Moms getting replacement vehicles, both getting 2012s. Aside from care free reliability, the next priority was ease of ingress and egress. Sliding into/out of a vehicle is preferable to climbing up into/out or down into/out as the body looses rubber.

 

@Mendel, I remember dumb cars and dumb phones. I had a Motorola bag phone in my Saab 900 S.

And I had DynaTACs and StarTACs and a RAZR until Moto lost its way and it became MotoGoogle, then Google ditched it and the market changed.

But my Prius isn't a rolling smartphone, heaven forfend!

I can only imagine doing a chat with some ID10T careening 100 mph down some road, somewhere, asking how to factory data reset the vehicle he's driving because he can't play his game!

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Oooh! I haven't seen the "ID10T" error mentioned in a long time. Nice one! How about "PEBKAC?"

 

The third largest cell phone manufacturer in the world behind Apple and Samsung is Huawei and they now own the a Motorola brand. BTW, I have a Huawei P9 and think it's the best I've ever had in many ways. It uses their own IMEI launcher 5.0 which is similar to iOS, though to can download any regular Android launcher from the Play Store.

 

Lenovo bought Motorola. I own a Huawei Mate 9 and Nexus 6P, although I prefer Nova Launcher to EMUI. Huawei is in Plano TX, too.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Your so right, thanks. I got confused there because I bought SWMBO a Lenovo P3 about the same time as I got my P9. I was unsure about emui 4 but stuck with it and when it got upped to emui 5 I kinda like it. I'll try not to be jealous of your Mate 9 tho!

 

There are quite a few very big cars there - the Highlander, the Sorento and the Santa Fe, for example. I can see the advantage of a small SUV, but those big ones are cars you have to climb into, rather than slide into as you would with, as @frodoz737 says, a Rav4. I'm not sure that would be ideal.

I think it's interesting that there are so many cars that are marketed as funky cars for The Youth which are actually ideal for old people. Here, I think the Nissan Juke would be the best example of that, but on the list, cars like the Kia Soul, Honda Pilot and Subary Crosstrek (XV in other markets) are sold as fun, surf-lifestyle cars but in real life they're bought by old people who find them easy to get in and out of.

 

I'm looking for a small SUV for my mother-in-law to replace her decrepit and peeling Honda CR-V. My father-in-law's knees and my mother-in-law's hips are pretty dodgy, so they need something of small-SUV height.

She's a nuclear physicist, but she finds the tech in my Merc and in my previous Prius a bit much, so I need to find something that's got a reversing camera and Bluetooth, but nothing else intimidating. It's really quite a challenge.

 

I've been to Huawei's headquarters in Shenzhen a few times. It's like a Googleplex, but more enormous.

They've got their own beachside hotel, too. That's for the techs from foreign telecom companies who come for training before they roll out a Huawei network in their own countries. I haven't been in, but I'm told by Huawei employees that it's very nice.

My very old Huawei is close to death after a long and hard life, but I'll be upgrading to another one: I do like the interface, and you get a lot of functionality for the money.

The one area where Huawei loses out to Samsung is that the Mate 9 doesn't have the Galaxy Note 7's handy firelighting function.

 

That's what lead to Scion's demise here.

 

Yes, I can see that. The funky young Toyota C-HR is proving very popular with old people here too.

 

Well, they are more likely to be able to afford it.

 

That is also true. All these "lifestyle" cars aimed at twenty-somethings but costing $20,000 and up.....

When you're in your twenties, you shouldn't be spending five figures on a car. Four is a bit much.

These kids they're targeting should be (and probably are) spending what little money they have on drink and drugs.

Actually, so should the retirees.....