Some automotive brands have remained at the top of predicted reliability rankings for years, and while new vehicles have become far more durable than they were even a few years ago, many of those top-ranked brands continue to dominate. iSeeCars recently studied the vehicles and brands most likely to reach 250,000+ miles, but many of the top brands won’t come as any surprise.

Toyota was the top-ranked brand, with a 17 percent overall chance of having vehicles reach 250,000 miles. The top seven brands:

1. Toyota: 17%
2. Honda: 13/6%
3. Ram: 11.5%
4. GMC: 11.4%
5. Chevrolet: 10.5%
6. Lexus: 9.7%
7. Ford: 9.5%

The average vehicle on America’s roads has an 8.6 percent chance of lasting a quarter-million miles or more, so those vehicles outperform the rest of the crop by notable margins. Looking at the list, it might be a little odd seeing Ram, GMC, Chevy, and Ford mixed in with brands like Honda and Toyota, but there’s a good reason for their success. The Big Three American brands sell a ton of trucks, which scored favorably in iSeeCars’ analysis. It’s worth noting that this ranking doesn’t include heavy-duty models, which show a strong ability to stand the test of time.

The Ram 3500 had a 42.6 percent chance of lasting 250,000 miles, followed by the Toyota Tundra, Chevrolet Silverado 2500HD, GMC Sierra 2500HD, and Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD. Beyond the fact that heavy-duty trucks are built for abuse, some of those pickups’ longevity is likely due to fleet management and regular maintenance that commercial owners tend to follow.

Breaking out other vehicle categories shows that SUVs hold 16 of the 30 top spots. The list also holds eight pickup trucks and four sedans. iSeeCars used data from more than 402 million vehicles for this study. It analyzed odometer data at each yearly age and used a proprietary model based on those mileage numbers to estimate the longevity of vehicles and brands.

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GMC,SUV,Luxury,Off-Road Vehicles

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If you live anywhere near an urban center, there’s a good chance that you will spend more time than you’d like looking for parking. Planners try to incorporate as many parking spaces as possible, but it’s rarely enough to handle the influx of commuters and everyday drivers that most cities endure. Waiting on a solution can take a lifetime, so it’s up to the market and technology to help frustrated citizens find parking.

Smartphone apps are the perfect answer to this problem because they enable on-the-go assessments of parking spots and can provide maps or directions on reaching them. Most people have a smartphone, so the barrier to entry is low, and many apps are incredibly cheap or even free. They don’t solve every problem, but a solid parking app can help you save time, money, and stress.

Parking apps typically compare prices for garages, lots, and other parking locations to help you find an open spot for a better price. Some allow in-app payments to speed through entry and exit, and you won’t have to keep track of a ticket through the process. That said, you’ll need to ensure the app you choose works in your city and with the particular garage you’re hoping to use. Most apps feature similar layouts and interfaces, but not all apps work in all places.

Apps and Websites to Find Free Parking Near You:

Before we get started, we should talk about apps that help locate free parking. Most of the tech solutions to parking woes focus on paid parking lots, because there’s money to be made, but few offer information on free spots. Parkopedia.com is a good place to start your research, as the site has amassed a database of thousands of free parking lots, including street parking and garages. Others, such as Spot Angels, focus on specific cities and neighborhoods to deliver free parking information. 

Parking Apps:

BestParking

If you’re looking for an app that works in dozens of cities and airports across the United States and Canada, BestParking is your jam. The app has been featured in several major publications and media outlets, including ABC, Fox, CBS, and NBC. It’s got great reviews and boasts 850,000 active users. Parking locations are sorted by price, so you can easily find the best deals around you. 

SpotHero

SpotHero promises discounts of up to 50% off the price you pay at the entry gate. The company is able to do this through partnerships with parking facilities. SpotHero gets to sell the last remaining parking spots for a steep discount, which could save you big on regular parking. The app works in most large cities.

ParkWhiz

ParkWhiz has thousands of parking partners across 35 states and 50 cities. The company purchased BestParking in 2015, expanding its empire, and it owns a business parking subsidiary that helps companies provide and manage parking for employees and customers. Sweetening the deal, ParkWhiz offers discounts of up to 60% in some cases, which bests the industry average.

ParkMe

ParkMe has more than 84,000 locations in over 64 countries, and its app offers an easy way to find, reserve, and pay for spots. If you have a stored credit card, you can pay to reserve a spot early, and the app can track parking spots up to two weeks in the future.

Parking Mate 

Parking Mate provides logs, so you can see where you’ve parked in the past, and the app tracks your time parked to help you avoid expensive tickets and tow bills. If you live in a place with wonky parking laws, Parking Mate enables you to track your parking time and will notify you when your time runs low to prevent towing. The app crowdsources local information, so if you see a spot or learn about a new parking rule, you can share that information in the app for other drivers. 

New cars are packed with all sorts of tech and safety features, but more isn’t always better for buyers. J.D. Power’s 2024 U.S. Tech Experience Index Study found that the loads of features in new vehicles can be polarizing for owners, with some praising the tech and others saying it was frustrating.

The organization ranks vehicle features on a “problems per 100 vehicles” (PP100) scale. Owners reported 43.4 PP100 for gesture controls, with 21 percent of them saying that the feature lacks functionality, according to a new performance metric J.D. Power included in this year’s study. Other tech, such as the myriad of hands-free driving assistance systems, received low scores for usefulness, and more advanced versions of those systems didn’t fare much better in the study.

That said, some advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) received favorable ratings. Owners like features like blind spot monitoring, which address a specific need while driving rather than introduce an innovation that they don’t understand.

Few owners responded positively when asked about passenger display screens, with many classifying the feature as “not necessary.” Automakers have pushed to include more screens in higher-end models, but only 10 percent of vehicles regularly have front passengers, and dealers have struggled to educate owners on how to use the displays.

Tesla, one of the most tech-forward automakers around, but it is experiencing growing pains as it expands beyond eager early adopters into more mainstream buyers. Some features in the company’s repertoire trended downward in this year’s study, with tech such as the direct driver monitoring system causing issues for owners.

J.D. Power collected responses from almost 82,000 owners of 2024 model-year vehicles within 90 days of their purchase. This year, the organization introduced a new return on investment analysis, which it will use to help automakers determine the best tech features for new vehicle models.

In a report, the White House released new figures on the build-out of the nation’s EV charging network, a small positive development in what is typically a sore spot for EV adoption.

In its third quarter update, the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation revealed there are over 192,000 publicly available Level 2 or DC charging ports in the US, an increase of approximately 9,000 ports from Q2, though down from the 13,000 ports added in Q2.

The nation’s charging infrastructure includes mostly privately owned networks, though the government, through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, is funding this build-out as well as state initiatives to increase publicly owned chargers.

President Joe Biden has put tremendous political capital into the EV transformation of the US, and part of that is a $7.5 billion build-out of the nation’s EV charging infrastructure. Through the use of public and private funding, the White House is targeting 500,000 new chargers by the end of the decade via the NEVI program.

The Joint Office of Energy and Transportation said the size of the nation’s charging network has doubled since the start of the Biden-Harris administration.

In March, the White House took some heat when it revealed only seven publicly funded charging stations had been built with 38 ports available for charging since the program began in 2021. The White House countered that it took its time with the program to “get it right,” and that the build-out would speed up as 2024 progresses.

“Currently, there are 69 NEVI-funded public charging ports in operation across 17 stations in eight states, more than twice as many operational NEVI ports as last quarter. A total of 40 states have released at least their first round of solicitations,” said the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation in the Q3 report. “Of these states, 29 have issued conditional awards or put agreements in place for over 2,800 fast charging ports across more than 700 charging station locations.”

Experts believe the delay is also down to state and local governments, who, despite NEVI funding, have little to no experience building out charger infrastructure.

Nevertheless, the build-out and sheer increase in the number of publicly available chargers is crucial to the administration’s goal of electrifying the nation’s fleet of vehicles. The White House’s new vehicle emissions target, though less severe than originally planned, still requires more EVs on the road by 2030.

And a huge component of that is charging. A Yahoo Finance-Ipsos poll conducted in late 2023 found that the main reason Americans are holding back from buying an EV is a lack of charging stations or home charging, with 77% of respondents stating that concern.

“I’m often asked if there is a magic number for the number of public charging stations we need in the United States. That’s a very difficult question to answer since so much of having an adequate charging infrastructure is predicated on the number of EVs on the road, access to home charging, use cases, etc,” said Brent Gruber, executive director of J.D. Power’s EV practice, to Yahoo Finance. “Instead, I look at the number of charging ports in terms of how well they’re satisfying EV owners with their availability.”

Gruber notes that while the number of charging ports in the US is growing, satisfaction with the availability of chargers is mixed. J.D. Power’s latest survey found satisfaction with DC fast charging availability rose by 20 points year over year (from 673 to 693), though the much more prevalent and less powerful Level 2 charger availability fell (from 593 to 583).

“With the satisfaction levels for both categories being as low as they are, we’re certainly not yet at the level we need,” Gruber said.

John Bozzella, CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an automotive trade group, doubled down on that sentiment earlier this year, noting the administration’s EV adoption plans are at stake.

“America’s EV transformation goes hand-in-hand with reliable EV charging infrastructure. You can’t have one without the other, he said. “Getting more Americans comfortable with going electric starts with making sure they’ve got access — no matter their ZIP code — to reliable and ubiquitous public charging.”

Pras Subramanian is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Twitter and on Instagram.

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At a time when many people are feeling the crush of higher prices and stagnant wages, any ability to save money can be a lifeline. Owning a car is a significant expense of a substantial number of people, but it turns out that where you live can have a big impact on how much it costs to have a vehicle. National Business Capital recently released a list of the best states to own and operate a car in 2024, looking at prices, taxes, and other factors to calculate the costs.

The study found that people in western states face the highest car ownership costs, with stout gas prices and higher registration fees. Vermont topped the list as the best state in which to own a car, with low average annual insurance rates of $400 for minimal coverage, cheap used cars, and low sales tax rates. At the same time, Vermonters pay more in gas prices and registration fees than dozens of other states. The remaining top ten best states to own a vehicle include:

1. Vermont
2. Ohio
3. Minnesota
4. Delaware
5. Pennsylvania
6. Indiana
7. Wisconsin
8. Texas
9. New Hampshire
10. Mississippi

Those states had reasonable insurance rates and gas prices, and people there paid less in registration and use taxes. That said, the states at the other end of the spectrum pay exorbitant prices to own a car. Nevada was ranked as the worst, followed by California, Colorado, Illinois, and Washington. Those states have “more aggressive environmental policies,” according to the study, and higher fees for less “green” vehicles.

National Business Capital also looked at used car purchases. It found that used vehicles are cheaper in the Northeast and Midwest due to several factors, including lower car prices, plenty of choice, and the potential for rust from the harsh winter weather.