Investments change everyday, and the trends of how people can invest change as well. From silver, to housing, to own a business they are all very different. Today there is a new type of investment, by purchasing a new car to rent out to other people.

Car manufacturers are desperately seeking new ways to increase sales, maximize financial returns and address the changing needs of new generations like the millennial, but urging people to rent our their own brand new cars stretches credulity and will fall on stony ground.

News this week that BMW’s Mini will offer buyers of its cars the chance to offset the purchase price by renting out their vehicles surely won’t find any takers. BMW itself has a similar scheme called Drive Now, which board member Peter Schwarzenbauer has said is based on the idea from accommodation sharing web site Airbnb. Ford and GM have also joined in.

Schemes that allow people who don’t own cars to rent by the hour make much sense. This allows the young, who either can’t afford to own a new car, or don’t need one very often, to get wheels for specific jobs. It also allows makers of electric cars which nobody wants to buy, to get them off dealer lots and earn some money.

If it was a scheme that allowed, say, students to rent out their old clunkers to generate enough cash to pay for running costs and then some, it might make some sense. But is there anyone in the history of the world who bought a brand new car – whether it’s a little runabout or an expensive limousine, that would ever let a stranger drive off in it? The fact that they could afford a new car in the first place means the financial incentive just isn’t there.

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This May has been a good month to be in the market for a new car. There are plenty of deals out there on new cars. Regardless of what you’re looking for – an inexpensive sedan, a luxury coupe, a sport utility vehicle for your whole family or a pickup truck to get some work done – there’s a deal for you.

Using data provided by TrueCar.com, Autoblog compiled a list of the ten best new car deals for May. Whether you want to lease for the lowest payment possible or have the cash to buy outright, you’ll be able to find a good deal this month.

If you’re in the market for a new car, check out their list to find out which models offer the best bang for the buck. These deals won’t last forever.

We all build that connection with our car, but sometimes it causes more troubles than its uses. At that point in time you might have to get a new car.

Perhaps it’s because of the cost and the sacrifices we make to own and operate them, or because they represent independence and mobility. But regardless, all this emotion can cloud our decision-making process when it comes to parting with our beloved daily driver. Many automakers invest as much time and energy in creating and developing an emotional bond between their products and their customers as they do in designing and building the vehicles themselves. If you doubt this, consider the amount carmakers spend on advertising each year compared to what they spend on R&D. While every auto manufacturer will supply an endless list of reasons why you should buy their particular product, few will help you decide when, and if, it’s time to leave your wheels by the curb and buy or lease something new. Here, then, is some advice to help make that decision easier.

Time and distance

Of all the auto executives I’ve met over almost four decades, only one ever admitted to the lifespan for which they design and build their vehicles to survive. While no auto company will admit it, the useful life for the majority of mainstream, non-luxury vehicles is about 10 years and/or 250,000 kilometers. While many cars, light trucks and SUVs may exceed that mark without exceptional repair or maintenance, a good percentage are relegated to the boneyard much sooner. A vehicle’s reliability takes a decidedly marked downturn once these milestones are passed. Does this mean we need to rush to the nearest dealership when the odometer clicks past that fateful mark? No, but it means it’s time create a succession plan. No matter the many variables when it comes to our relationships with cars, there’s one constant you can rely on: when you are forced to make a rushed decision on purchasing or leasing a vehicle (because your present chariot is dead in the driveway) it will cost you more than if you planned ahead.

Major repair estimate

Everyone dreads this call. They’ve had the family car towed into their repair provider because it failed to start/move/stop, and they get the estimate to overhaul/repair/replace something big. A good rule of thumb in these circumstances is to review your options of repairing or replacing your vehicle if a single-repair estimate approaches or exceeds its wholesale value. A quick internet tour of just about any used vehicle sales website can pinpoint this value. Just take the average asking price for the same vehicle in your area (with identical equipment and mileage) and subtract around $1,500 from a retailer’s asking price to come up with a wholesale value. Vehicles, unless it’s a collector classic, are a depreciating asset. Spending its entire value in one repair won’t double its worth.

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Many teenage injuries in emergency rooms are due to preventable car accidents. Overall, teenage drivers drive faster and ride closer to the bumper in front of them than older drivers. Teenagers also are less likely to wear seatbelts then anybody else.

Chevrolet has announced that it will offer parents a creepy level of oversight when it comes to letting the kids borrow the family ride, and the NSA-style spying begins with the 2016 Malibu. A system dubbed Teen Driver will debut on the bow-tie brand’s newest mid-size sedan (which itself bows at the 2015 New York auto show). It allows parents to set speed alerts, limit audio volume, and even receive vehicle reports “so parents could use it as a teaching tool with their kids—they can discuss and reinforce safe driving habits.” Um, who’s ever heard of a productive, teachable conversation with a teenager?

Anyway, like Ford’s MyKey system (both current and future), Teen Driver lets parents with a Jason Bourne complex program speed warnings that flash when their child exceeds a preset velocity (from 40 to 75 mph) and set sound-system volume limits. Parents can also pull customizable reports full of juicy stuff, such as distance driven, top speed achieved, preset-speed warnings exceeded, stability-control events, anti-lock brake events, and forward-collision alerts and auto-braking events—on vehicles equipped with those systems.

Wily teens might just shut off stability control, traction control, and the like, but a PIN-protected menu enables parents to dictate just what features can or cannot be deactivated. In that way, control over the activation status of stability control, parking sensors, blind-spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alert, forward-collision warning, automatic braking, daytime running lights, and traction control can all be wrested from your little speed junkie.

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Discovery Velocity is a new channel spread across Canada to deliver car-related programming. This channel will introduce old favourites that car enthusiasts have missed since the cancelation of Speed, as well as a variety of new programs designed to appeal to their interests.

“We’re looking to provide a really high-adrenaline, really exciting schedule and be somewhere that people can watch things they can’t see anywhere else in Canada,” said Director of Programming, Discovery Networks Lindsay Cowan Dotchison.

The new channel takes its name from Discovery Communications’ U.S. channel, Velocity, which was launched in 2011 and has a similar focus on automobiles.

“One of the reasons we launched Velocity in Canada is the huge success we saw with Velocity in the U.S.” said Dotchison.

“We looked to  Canada and we could see that our viewers were watching a lot of that big turbo factual content on Discovery.

“We saw really strong audiences with shows like Vegas Rat Rods, Fast N’ Loud and Overhaulin’ and we realized that we really wanted to create an exclusive home for factual, entertaining turbo content in Canada.”

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After being left in the dust, Honda motorsport has been awarded the same courtesy that Ferrari and Renault had already been given. Formula One places a significant value on technical innovation. After the regulators handed Mercedes an advantage, the loophole opened up allowing Ferrari and Renault the advantage of updating engines throughout the year.

As is often the case, the issue revolves around the specific wording of the regulations. Ferrari and Renault successfully argued that, contrary to its spirit, the letter of the law (or regulations, in any event) didn’t actually specify when existing engine suppliers had to complete their revisions for the upcoming championship.

The thing is that the rules were more clear when it came to new suppliers, so Honda was told that it would have to complete its design before the start of the season – unlike Ferrari, Renault and Mercedes, which would be allowed to continue development (albeit on a limited basis) throughout the year.

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You’ll always worry about your vehicle. It comes with the territory, what that weird ticking noise is, letting your kids take it out for the night, keeping the oil maintained, and making sure that the engine is in good and working order. Yet according to the FBI theft of your vehicle is not something most people worry about, because they don’t have to. According to statistics, 2013 showed the lowest number of stolen cars since 1967.

There were 699,594 vehicles reported stolen in 2013 – a positive figure no matter how you compare it to years past. Thefts were down by about 20,000 cars from 2012 and were 58 percent lower than their peak of 1,661,738 in 1991. An earlier look at the data found the Honda Accord and Civic to be the most stolen models in 2013.

The theft rate actually showed even more significant improvement. In 2013, there were 221.3 stolen cars for every 100,000 people in the US. That’s versus 659.01 in 1991. The last time figures were this good was in 1962 at 196.63 per 100k, according to the NICB’s data.

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Projections for 2015 automotive sales in the U.S. point to only a modest increase. However, Auto analysts say sales will continue to rise in the next few years but at a slower pace than past years.

U.S. auto sales are on pace to rise 5 percent in 2014 to 16.4 million — the best performance since 2006 — after rising by nearly 8 percent in 2013. The consensus is “cautious optimism” as production and sales will grow far faster in Asia, while Europe and South America face significant economic concerns.

LMC Automotive senior vice president Jeff Schuster said at a Standard & Poors auto industry conference that it predicts sales will rise just 2 percent next year to 16.7 million — fueled by 100 new, refreshed and redesigned vehicles being introduced in 2015, including Ford’s new aluminum F-150.

LMC sees U.S. sales rising to 17 million by 2018. LMC predicts the market will rise to 17.5 million in 2020 — which would represent the highest ever U.S. auto sales. Auto sales were above 16 million between 1999 and 2007 — hitting a high of 17.4 million in 2000.

JD Power notes that U.S. consumer spending on new cars and trucks will break a record in 2014 — estimated at $407 billion — up from $376 billion in 2013 — as average transaction prices have risen dramatically to $30,000 this year — up from $26,560 in 2007. U.S. retail sales in 2014 expected to be 13.8 million vehicles is near an all-time record, with incentive spending up slightly in 2014 at $2,975 over 2013 when it was $2,834.

This year’s spending is more than the gross domestic product of Austria, said Joe Derkos, director of consulting and analytics at J.D. Power.

Automakers keep introducing new models. LMC says automakers will hike the number of U.S. models offered from 295 this year to 331 in 2018 — with 75 new nameplates expected through 2018 — along with 200 redesigns and 210 facelifts. As a result, the average number of vehicles sold per model will fall from 55,463 this year to 51,728 in 2018, LMC said. Biggest growth through 2018 will be in small luxury cars and small luxury SUVs.

But 2018 sales of 17 million will be more profitable than sales in 2006, since there will be fewer rental car and other fleet sales in 2018 than 2006, LMC says.

Read the full article here.

Today’s teens aren’t as eager to learn to drive as previous generations but many are still obtaining driver’s licenses and getting behind the wheel. Unfortunately, a recent study found that many are driving vehicles that are woefully insufficient in terms of crash protection and safety technology.

This is particularly crucial, as car crashes remain the leading cause of death among Americans ages 15 to 19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Among 500 parents queried by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), just over half reported buying cars for use by teen drivers that were from the 2006 model year or earlier; if it was a model that was passed down from parents or an older sibling, two thirds were eight years old or more. That’s significant because vehicles of that vintage are far less likely to include safety features such as electronic stability control and side-impact airbags than are cars from more recent model years.

What’s more, 28 percent of parents/teens picked subcompact and compact-sized cars that inherently fare worse in a collision than do larger and heavier models. A separate IIHS study shows that teenagers killed in crashes are more likely to have been driving small cars and older vehicles than adults.

Many parents tend to purchase an older “beater” car for a couple thousand dollars or less as a teen driver’s first ride, but the experts suggest families dig deeper into their pocketbooks to properly safeguard their offspring. “Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to get a safe vehicle for a teenager at the prices most people are paying,” says Anne McCartt, IIHS senior vice president for research. “Our advice to parents would be to remember the risks teens take and consider paying a little more.”

Read the full story here.

It may come as a surprise to some, but women and men value similar features when selecting a new car. The top features sought by both sexes are exterior styling and overall value. This is a according to TrueCar.com, an auto buying site that regularly surveys buyers. Past experience with the brand and driving performance are next on the list.

But while men usually give an edge to styling and driving performance, women tend to rank safety and fuel economy more highly than men do, TrueCar says.

Those small differences are important as women become a larger force in the marketplace. Forty per cent of new vehicle registrants were female in the first four months of this year, up from 37 per cent in 2009, according to Edmunds.com. And that’s only expected to grow. Among younger buyers, women are already outpacing men.

“Women represent the biggest marketing opportunity in the world,” says Chantel Lenard, Ford’s U.S. marketing director.

Even when preferences converge, it may be for different reasons. For example, “reliability” is important to women because they don’t want to get stranded on the road, Lenard says. Men want reliable cars because they don’t want to spend a lot of time in the shop, she says.

Horsepower is important to men, which helps explain why Lamborghini has the highest proportion of male buyers of any brand, at nearly 95 per cent, according to the car shopping site Edmunds.com. But it’s also important to women, who want to know that they can accelerate quickly away from a problem, Lenard says.

Debbie Parsons sprang for one high-tech luxury — remote start — on her 2014 Chevrolet Spark after spending a frigid winter watching her neighbors use it to heat their cars. But mostly, she bought the subcompact for its cute styling and lemon-yellow paint.

“I’m sure they target women with these cars,” said Parsons, 58, a retired state employee who now does maintenance at an apartment complex in Charleston, West Virginia.

Parsons was also drawn to the car’s value — starting price $12,170 — and fuel economy. With safety in mind, she paid extra for OnStar, which gives her hands-free calling and quick access to emergency services.

Read the full story here.