We had considered a Tesla to the point of going to look at them at the local retailer. They were just too expensive and frankly the touch-cockpit was a worry both from a safe-to-operate standpoint and from a long-term maintenance standpoint.
We could not have waited a year. We bought a new vehicle when the old one no longer suited our needs. We saw the need coming and had spent the better part of a year researching. When we made our choice it was the best fit for that time, and luckily that choice, made before we had kids, was also a good choice after having a child.
Well for my wife and I, 150 miles is a reasonable range. 150 miles is about 50% over the longer drives we make in a day in our city, and is basically the equivalent of a half a tank of gasoline, and thus gives us enough reserve that even if we visit friends clear on the other side of the county we can still make side-trips on the way home if necessary.
The issue is that with a gasoline-powered car we know we can fill-up in a five-minute stop if we get low on fuel. The amount of time filling is almost so negligible that if we had to fill-up daily it wouldn't be that big of an inconvenience. An electric running out of power is a much bigger problem, both out of less opportunity to recharge, and out of a much longer recharge cycle. A five minute delay usually isn't a problem and it's fairly easy to just pad arrival times by five minutes anyway, but thirty minutes or more can't really be padded into trips as a matter of course. For electric cars to be accepted, that kind of problem must be worked out. Fast-charge may help, but simple range is the best approach.
For instance, people stop paying £20 every month for a CD when they start paying £10 a month for endless music from Spotify.
This assumes that people generally buy music monthly, and that the music costs a certain amount. It also assumes that the same selection is available on Spotify as in the record store.
When I buy music on a physical format, almost exclusively CD, it's almost always used. If it's not used it's because it's a new release and is not available used, and if my interests are not top-40 or top-100 then it's probably not available on Spotify either.
I'm going to hazard a guess that Spotify isn't displacing as much physical media or purchased media files as it is listeners of satellite radio and FM radio, where listeners got tired of excessive numbers of ads or of not getting enough of the music that they want, or of paying for stations that they don't listen to.
It's often commented that 80-90% of one's business comes from 10-20% of one's customers, the die-hard, repeat customers. Based on my own observations, with music this seems to hold true. Sales to the very occasional buyer of an album are not insignificant, but they're not as important as sales to those who feel that they are connoisseurs and make regular purchases. Those in the latter group are probably going to still buy, it's the casual buyers that will be lost to services.
Replace "Service providers" with sellers, and it's been accurate since the dawn of humanity.
Anyone selling has incentive to make as much sales as possible, and that includes immoral or dishonest means if those means do not lead to far less sales. For businesses theoretically operating within the law this is why it's important to have groups like the consumer products safety commission and the federal trade commission, because businesses will go through whatever steps are necessary to protect themselves up-to and including hiding their bad behavior from the public to deny the public the ability to do research on them.
For entities that operate in grey-areas of law or illegally, there's generally no good way to verify. Caveat emptor, buyer beware. Hell, that VPN service could even be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the FBI and you could be spending your $7.99 per month to be specifically logged and investigated for everything that you do on the Internet. You don't really have any way of verifying that. And an argument that the FBI facilitated you gaining access to illegal content would probably ring hollow as they did not compel you to do it, you sought to do it and made the mistake of who to trust in the process.
In my opinion the only thing that private VPN services are good for is getting around workplace Internet filtering, to access otherwise-legal things that work may block. But in this day and age with cell phones with data plans, there's no need to incur the risk of being fired if the workplace discovers one circumventing their filtering through their own network on their own computers. Besides, aren't you supposed to be working?
Eh, the Leaf's headlights are the straw that breaks the camel's back for me. I've heard their assertion that the headlights act to make the airflow over the mirrors less problematic, but they're just so ugly...
With the MIT lithium battery improvements today with asphalt and carbon nanotubes, it might very well be the gigafactories are better than predicted. Oops. They tested their v0.1 batteries at my site and explosion and ignition characteristics were determined. How many gigafactories?
I suppose I add that I think Ford's was actually a two-door. Fiat has a 500e, but apparently it's only sold and supported in California since its only reason to exist is to satisfy California emissions laws, they have no interest in wider sales even though it actually has good visual appeal.
When we bought our last new vehicle in 2016 we were willing to consider electrics, but basically there were no four door 100% electrics with conventional styling that had the range we we wanted and the cost we could bear. Ford had a hatchback that had acceptable styling but its range was too low. Tesla's Model S was far too expensive even as a used car. Basically everyone else's styling was stupid, with unnecessary panels that only existed to say, "look at me, I'm an electric!"
I guess I'm in the minority since I like wide, long, low vehicles rather than tall narrow vehicles, but if car makers would offer 100% electric variants of their conventionally-styled combustion-engine models, where styling changes are relatively conservative, we might be more inclined. Weird styling and this one-upsmanship of it is just gaudy.
Do you have a copy of the terms of the contract that dictates what the contractor is and is not allowed to do? Can you provide information on relevant law governing information access? Can you cite what level of clearances are involved?
If you cannot cite those, then you're left with addressing that an adversarial nation-state used commercial software developed by one of their nationals as a conduit for espionage.
Additionally, blame is not a zero-sum game, there's no full-quantity that gets dished-out as units to the relevant parties. If the contractor actually did wrong, then the contractor and can be blamed for his or her wrong actions. The nation-state did wrong, and can be blamed for its actions. Now, if the contractor's actions resulted in the nation-state's actions being made easier then it's not a stretch to increase penalties on that contractor because of what they loosed, but regardless, the contractor's ills do not excuse the nation-state's.
I may agree in other circumstances, but awarding a contract for fraud prevention to what's probably the largest victim of a form of fraud in human history- an entity that is now trying to deflect blame by citing conditions that they themselves created in the first place, is about as stupid as it gets.
Equifax deserves to have its charter revoked, basically the corporate death penalty, with its assets liquidated and all of the proceeds going to a mitigation fund to attempt to combat the expected identity theft that the public will see in the upcoming years. Its officers should be prosecuted and if the ensuing investigation shows they were willfully negligent, the personal gains they made through those negligent actions should be confiscated through a civil forfeiture process as they're sentenced to jailtime. This is not the company that one awards a no-bid contract to.
With a 4x4 for an urban buyer it's about want, not need. While some may only want 4x4 for rare situations where it's unexpectedly needed, for most it's about being able to go out and use it, even if they don't actually use it.
We bought ours because we had borrowed vehicles for this sort of trip a few times and my general rule is if I borrow something regularly I should probably get my own. As a customer that bought new from the dealer, I would not have bought an electric as through past experience I can reasonably see myself in situations where it would be a detriment.
Now, for my little 2wd runabout of a quarter-ton pickup truck, for a commuter car, for a minivan, no problem. We had even considered an electric commuter car instead of the Jeep but there wasn't anything 100% electric with the price, range, and styling we were acceptable with. Either they were too expensive (Tesla S), too short of range (Ford), or ugly (basically everything else; specifically Mitsubishi and Chevrolet offerings though) so we did not make that step.
I had even considered a home conversion of my Nissan Hardbody or trying to track down one of those old electric S10 pickups that GM experimented with but didn't feel like that amount of work at this time.
You can't even do 20MPH on most unpaved but fairly flat trails in 2wd. Where you're climbing obstacles you may be lucky to go a couple of miles in three hours.
With a current 4x4 outfitted for basically offroad excursions you'll have the ability to bring ten extra gallons of fuel with you with basically no penalty. This is essentially 50% to 75% additional range for two Jerry Cans sitting on the racks at the rear bumper, and unlike batteries, the mass of the vehicle decreases as the fuel is spent. So one tops-off the main tank as one gets close to where one leaves the road, and between the full tank and fuel cans one can spend several days enjoying the wilderness. And if somehow fuel needs were miscalculated it's easy to bring more fuel in to the vehicle. Hell, it can be backpacked-in or brought-in on pack animal if it must.
I doubt it. I get about sixteen to seventeen miles per gallon in my '95 Impala SS and the fun-factor offsets the price of fuel even if cost me double what it currently does.
The Chevrolet SSR fits your description to a T. Only problem with many of the "lifestyle" trucks is they need to pass what's known as the dirtbike test, which is, the need to be big enough for the owner to take his dirtbike out of town to go riding. Ideally they're big enough for a single quadbike, but there are always bigger trucks or trailers for those.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles considered taking a lighter truck that was basically a modern take on the old K-car based Rampage and bringing it to the US, but the truckbed was just too small, so they decided to not bother with the expense of getting it prepared for and certified for the US market.
Can't find an immediate source for it, but I remember a story of an arabian man that commented that his grandfather rode a camel, his father drove a Dodge truck (or something practical for working in the oil fields, and the Dodges were apparently very common), he drives a Mercedes, he expects his son to drive a Dodge, and for his grandson to ride a camel.
The point was that the ramifications of a severe reduction in the demand for oil are not unknown, but at the same time there's only so much they can do about it. I gather that some of the oil-wealthy are taking steps to diversify, but as they're all still humans, many are not looking long-term and the gains they currently have will be temporary.
The switch to electric might make the most impact per-unit on large, inefficient vehicles, but again, for an actual four wheeler it is a nonstarter. Look at the Tesla Model X, it's not a four wheeler. It's the exact same floorpan, drivetrain, and nearly the same suspension as the Model S, it's simply taller. It's crossover, not an SUV.
The one place I could see electrics being popular are minivans, but only if the electrification of the drivetrain doesn't impinge on features that are popular. Looking a Chrysler minivans specifically, stow-n-go means that batteries can't readily take the entire floor, the seats have to have somewhere to fold-in. There may be savings in not having to route an exhaust system, but there are still some physical limits.
It's also the case that those who would buy the huge road-going 2wd SUVs like that Highlander simply aren't interested in electrics. If the Prius buyer previously was a corolla or civic buyer then it may be that those are the people that want to be efficient, and the drivers of big SUVs don't care.
First thing to bear in mind, banning all combustion-engine-powered cars would be an absolute nonstarter. There are a number of groups that would absolutely band-together to lobby against it, even if those groups that may not normally have a lot to do with each other (enthusiasts for horseless-carriage-era cars and modern auto manufacturers for example) would immediately find common ground to coordinate efforts.
Second, there are classes of vehicles and types of use that do not readily lend themselves to electric use. In particular vehicles designed for heavy offroad use would not make for good electrics when they go places that the electric grid doesn't service, and the mass-penalty in carrying batteries would be a problem for offroad performance. Additionally many commercial-service vehicles would make poor electrics if their daily range far exceeds what a charge can provide, as commercial vehicles might not even have opportunity to charge at their destinations.
Realistically, passenger cars that are not primarily geared toward commercial use would be the best application for electric adoption. Roads are built close to infrastructure and are themselves infrastructure, so recharging cars is practical or can be made practical. Additionally, when the entry-level electric car has a range equivalent to half a tank of gas, which is usually 100-150 miles, suddenly it becomes practical for most commuters for their daily use. Sure, some people do drive more than that in a given day, but most do not, so most people could make that kind of range work for them.
In addition to passenger cars, many 2wd commercial chassis would be designed with an electric option. While a lot of commercial vehicles would not be suitable as electrics, plenty more would be. It is not unrealistic that delivery vans could be made electric if their routes are sufficiently short, and personal-use "lifestyle" 2wd pickups could also make for good electrics when they're used similarly to passenger cars for things like commuting.
I expect that small and mid-sized sedans would be all-electric first. Small cars are usually least likely to be used for passenger livery, and mid-size sedans are extremely popular and the number of sales would make quite a dent in gasoline power. Large sedans would probably follow last since they're often used for police and passenger livery, and they may well always have a gasoline variant. Once these prove popular and successful then we might see coupes and sports cars work as popular electrics, and eventually trucks, vans, and other chassis.
The first important bit is that they're not merely assembling a flat-pack kit, they're actually manufacturing furniture. It's not manufacture-then-assemble as two separate stages, it's assemble-as-manufacturing as a single process.
Second, the product is designed for its finished result, not for its flatpack design. It's probably better furniture simply because it's not designed with flatpack as a strong consideration.
Whenever someone talks about gig-worker rates I'm reminded of Benny Hill's "Fred Scuttle" character on The Benny Hill Show that would do things like organize budget vacations for four quid, with predictably disastrous results.
I bet if you do a cost-benefit analysis you'll find that it's competitive to buy slightly better, preassembled stuff than to pay someone to put cheap stuff together for you.
Slashdot Mirror
We had considered a Tesla to the point of going to look at them at the local retailer. They were just too expensive and frankly the touch-cockpit was a worry both from a safe-to-operate standpoint and from a long-term maintenance standpoint.
We could not have waited a year. We bought a new vehicle when the old one no longer suited our needs. We saw the need coming and had spent the better part of a year researching. When we made our choice it was the best fit for that time, and luckily that choice, made before we had kids, was also a good choice after having a child.
Well for my wife and I, 150 miles is a reasonable range. 150 miles is about 50% over the longer drives we make in a day in our city, and is basically the equivalent of a half a tank of gasoline, and thus gives us enough reserve that even if we visit friends clear on the other side of the county we can still make side-trips on the way home if necessary.
The issue is that with a gasoline-powered car we know we can fill-up in a five-minute stop if we get low on fuel. The amount of time filling is almost so negligible that if we had to fill-up daily it wouldn't be that big of an inconvenience. An electric running out of power is a much bigger problem, both out of less opportunity to recharge, and out of a much longer recharge cycle. A five minute delay usually isn't a problem and it's fairly easy to just pad arrival times by five minutes anyway, but thirty minutes or more can't really be padded into trips as a matter of course. For electric cars to be accepted, that kind of problem must be worked out. Fast-charge may help, but simple range is the best approach.
For instance, people stop paying £20 every month for a CD when they start paying £10 a month for endless music from Spotify.
This assumes that people generally buy music monthly, and that the music costs a certain amount. It also assumes that the same selection is available on Spotify as in the record store.
When I buy music on a physical format, almost exclusively CD, it's almost always used. If it's not used it's because it's a new release and is not available used, and if my interests are not top-40 or top-100 then it's probably not available on Spotify either.
I'm going to hazard a guess that Spotify isn't displacing as much physical media or purchased media files as it is listeners of satellite radio and FM radio, where listeners got tired of excessive numbers of ads or of not getting enough of the music that they want, or of paying for stations that they don't listen to.
It's often commented that 80-90% of one's business comes from 10-20% of one's customers, the die-hard, repeat customers. Based on my own observations, with music this seems to hold true. Sales to the very occasional buyer of an album are not insignificant, but they're not as important as sales to those who feel that they are connoisseurs and make regular purchases. Those in the latter group are probably going to still buy, it's the casual buyers that will be lost to services.
That's proxies. Not VPN providers.
And seven wasn't enough, remember?
Replace "Service providers" with sellers, and it's been accurate since the dawn of humanity.
Anyone selling has incentive to make as much sales as possible, and that includes immoral or dishonest means if those means do not lead to far less sales. For businesses theoretically operating within the law this is why it's important to have groups like the consumer products safety commission and the federal trade commission, because businesses will go through whatever steps are necessary to protect themselves up-to and including hiding their bad behavior from the public to deny the public the ability to do research on them.
For entities that operate in grey-areas of law or illegally, there's generally no good way to verify. Caveat emptor, buyer beware. Hell, that VPN service could even be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the FBI and you could be spending your $7.99 per month to be specifically logged and investigated for everything that you do on the Internet. You don't really have any way of verifying that. And an argument that the FBI facilitated you gaining access to illegal content would probably ring hollow as they did not compel you to do it, you sought to do it and made the mistake of who to trust in the process.
In my opinion the only thing that private VPN services are good for is getting around workplace Internet filtering, to access otherwise-legal things that work may block. But in this day and age with cell phones with data plans, there's no need to incur the risk of being fired if the workplace discovers one circumventing their filtering through their own network on their own computers. Besides, aren't you supposed to be working?
That swoop between the C-pillar and D-pillar, WHY?!
Why can't they just make normal looking cars?
Take the Hyundai Geneis coupe. The window behind the B-pillar cuts down into the beltline. Why did they do this?
Eh, the Leaf's headlights are the straw that breaks the camel's back for me. I've heard their assertion that the headlights act to make the airflow over the mirrors less problematic, but they're just so ugly...
With the MIT lithium battery improvements today with asphalt and carbon nanotubes, it might very well be the gigafactories are better than predicted. Oops. They tested their v0.1 batteries at my site and explosion and ignition characteristics were determined. How many gigafactories?
Are you a bot? I think that you're a bot.
I suppose I add that I think Ford's was actually a two-door. Fiat has a 500e, but apparently it's only sold and supported in California since its only reason to exist is to satisfy California emissions laws, they have no interest in wider sales even though it actually has good visual appeal.
When we bought our last new vehicle in 2016 we were willing to consider electrics, but basically there were no four door 100% electrics with conventional styling that had the range we we wanted and the cost we could bear. Ford had a hatchback that had acceptable styling but its range was too low. Tesla's Model S was far too expensive even as a used car. Basically everyone else's styling was stupid, with unnecessary panels that only existed to say, "look at me, I'm an electric!"
I guess I'm in the minority since I like wide, long, low vehicles rather than tall narrow vehicles, but if car makers would offer 100% electric variants of their conventionally-styled combustion-engine models, where styling changes are relatively conservative, we might be more inclined. Weird styling and this one-upsmanship of it is just gaudy.
Do you have a copy of the terms of the contract that dictates what the contractor is and is not allowed to do? Can you provide information on relevant law governing information access? Can you cite what level of clearances are involved?
If you cannot cite those, then you're left with addressing that an adversarial nation-state used commercial software developed by one of their nationals as a conduit for espionage.
Additionally, blame is not a zero-sum game, there's no full-quantity that gets dished-out as units to the relevant parties. If the contractor actually did wrong, then the contractor and can be blamed for his or her wrong actions. The nation-state did wrong, and can be blamed for its actions. Now, if the contractor's actions resulted in the nation-state's actions being made easier then it's not a stretch to increase penalties on that contractor because of what they loosed, but regardless, the contractor's ills do not excuse the nation-state's.
I may agree in other circumstances, but awarding a contract for fraud prevention to what's probably the largest victim of a form of fraud in human history- an entity that is now trying to deflect blame by citing conditions that they themselves created in the first place, is about as stupid as it gets.
Equifax deserves to have its charter revoked, basically the corporate death penalty, with its assets liquidated and all of the proceeds going to a mitigation fund to attempt to combat the expected identity theft that the public will see in the upcoming years. Its officers should be prosecuted and if the ensuing investigation shows they were willfully negligent, the personal gains they made through those negligent actions should be confiscated through a civil forfeiture process as they're sentenced to jailtime. This is not the company that one awards a no-bid contract to.
Hell, if anything, the levee isn't draining the swamp, it's actually preventing the natural outflow and turning it into a lake!
With a 4x4 for an urban buyer it's about want, not need. While some may only want 4x4 for rare situations where it's unexpectedly needed, for most it's about being able to go out and use it, even if they don't actually use it.
We bought ours because we had borrowed vehicles for this sort of trip a few times and my general rule is if I borrow something regularly I should probably get my own. As a customer that bought new from the dealer, I would not have bought an electric as through past experience I can reasonably see myself in situations where it would be a detriment.
Now, for my little 2wd runabout of a quarter-ton pickup truck, for a commuter car, for a minivan, no problem. We had even considered an electric commuter car instead of the Jeep but there wasn't anything 100% electric with the price, range, and styling we were acceptable with. Either they were too expensive (Tesla S), too short of range (Ford), or ugly (basically everything else; specifically Mitsubishi and Chevrolet offerings though) so we did not make that step.
I had even considered a home conversion of my Nissan Hardbody or trying to track down one of those old electric S10 pickups that GM experimented with but didn't feel like that amount of work at this time.
You can't even do 20MPH on most unpaved but fairly flat trails in 2wd. Where you're climbing obstacles you may be lucky to go a couple of miles in three hours.
With a current 4x4 outfitted for basically offroad excursions you'll have the ability to bring ten extra gallons of fuel with you with basically no penalty. This is essentially 50% to 75% additional range for two Jerry Cans sitting on the racks at the rear bumper, and unlike batteries, the mass of the vehicle decreases as the fuel is spent. So one tops-off the main tank as one gets close to where one leaves the road, and between the full tank and fuel cans one can spend several days enjoying the wilderness. And if somehow fuel needs were miscalculated it's easy to bring more fuel in to the vehicle. Hell, it can be backpacked-in or brought-in on pack animal if it must.
I doubt it. I get about sixteen to seventeen miles per gallon in my '95 Impala SS and the fun-factor offsets the price of fuel even if cost me double what it currently does.
The Chevrolet SSR fits your description to a T. Only problem with many of the "lifestyle" trucks is they need to pass what's known as the dirtbike test, which is, the need to be big enough for the owner to take his dirtbike out of town to go riding. Ideally they're big enough for a single quadbike, but there are always bigger trucks or trailers for those.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles considered taking a lighter truck that was basically a modern take on the old K-car based Rampage and bringing it to the US, but the truckbed was just too small, so they decided to not bother with the expense of getting it prepared for and certified for the US market.
Lockheed Martin?
Perkin-Elmer?
Can't find an immediate source for it, but I remember a story of an arabian man that commented that his grandfather rode a camel, his father drove a Dodge truck (or something practical for working in the oil fields, and the Dodges were apparently very common), he drives a Mercedes, he expects his son to drive a Dodge, and for his grandson to ride a camel.
The point was that the ramifications of a severe reduction in the demand for oil are not unknown, but at the same time there's only so much they can do about it. I gather that some of the oil-wealthy are taking steps to diversify, but as they're all still humans, many are not looking long-term and the gains they currently have will be temporary.
The switch to electric might make the most impact per-unit on large, inefficient vehicles, but again, for an actual four wheeler it is a nonstarter. Look at the Tesla Model X, it's not a four wheeler. It's the exact same floorpan, drivetrain, and nearly the same suspension as the Model S, it's simply taller. It's crossover, not an SUV.
The one place I could see electrics being popular are minivans, but only if the electrification of the drivetrain doesn't impinge on features that are popular. Looking a Chrysler minivans specifically, stow-n-go means that batteries can't readily take the entire floor, the seats have to have somewhere to fold-in. There may be savings in not having to route an exhaust system, but there are still some physical limits.
It's also the case that those who would buy the huge road-going 2wd SUVs like that Highlander simply aren't interested in electrics. If the Prius buyer previously was a corolla or civic buyer then it may be that those are the people that want to be efficient, and the drivers of big SUVs don't care.
First thing to bear in mind, banning all combustion-engine-powered cars would be an absolute nonstarter. There are a number of groups that would absolutely band-together to lobby against it, even if those groups that may not normally have a lot to do with each other (enthusiasts for horseless-carriage-era cars and modern auto manufacturers for example) would immediately find common ground to coordinate efforts.
Second, there are classes of vehicles and types of use that do not readily lend themselves to electric use. In particular vehicles designed for heavy offroad use would not make for good electrics when they go places that the electric grid doesn't service, and the mass-penalty in carrying batteries would be a problem for offroad performance. Additionally many commercial-service vehicles would make poor electrics if their daily range far exceeds what a charge can provide, as commercial vehicles might not even have opportunity to charge at their destinations.
Realistically, passenger cars that are not primarily geared toward commercial use would be the best application for electric adoption. Roads are built close to infrastructure and are themselves infrastructure, so recharging cars is practical or can be made practical. Additionally, when the entry-level electric car has a range equivalent to half a tank of gas, which is usually 100-150 miles, suddenly it becomes practical for most commuters for their daily use. Sure, some people do drive more than that in a given day, but most do not, so most people could make that kind of range work for them.
In addition to passenger cars, many 2wd commercial chassis would be designed with an electric option. While a lot of commercial vehicles would not be suitable as electrics, plenty more would be. It is not unrealistic that delivery vans could be made electric if their routes are sufficiently short, and personal-use "lifestyle" 2wd pickups could also make for good electrics when they're used similarly to passenger cars for things like commuting.
I expect that small and mid-sized sedans would be all-electric first. Small cars are usually least likely to be used for passenger livery, and mid-size sedans are extremely popular and the number of sales would make quite a dent in gasoline power. Large sedans would probably follow last since they're often used for police and passenger livery, and they may well always have a gasoline variant. Once these prove popular and successful then we might see coupes and sports cars work as popular electrics, and eventually trucks, vans, and other chassis.
The first important bit is that they're not merely assembling a flat-pack kit, they're actually manufacturing furniture. It's not manufacture-then-assemble as two separate stages, it's assemble-as-manufacturing as a single process.
Second, the product is designed for its finished result, not for its flatpack design. It's probably better furniture simply because it's not designed with flatpack as a strong consideration.
Whenever someone talks about gig-worker rates I'm reminded of Benny Hill's "Fred Scuttle" character on The Benny Hill Show that would do things like organize budget vacations for four quid, with predictably disastrous results.
I bet if you do a cost-benefit analysis you'll find that it's competitive to buy slightly better, preassembled stuff than to pay someone to put cheap stuff together for you.