The reliability of a vehicle isn't just the frequency of breakdowns.

It's the frequency of breakdowns times how fucked you are when it does break down.

So the actual math also depends on your means and where you live.

They’re also vastly safer

Modern engines are generally more reliable, yes. And galvanised steel and aluminium has helped chassis' and bodies last longer too. I think the 'sweet spot' has passed for most car categories though, the last being city cars when they got mandatory infotainment systems towards the end of the 2010s.

> They have a wealth of creature comforts and features beyond what 1980s cars had.

I don't want these, I don't want to pay for them. They raise the cost and they're unavoidable. This is a NEGATIVE, not a positive.

Both are true. New vehicles are more reliable and safer. New vehicles are vastly harder to maintain by a home auto mechanic.

I don't know enough to say whether realizability requires lower DIYability.

Declining service revenue has been a problem for car dealerships for a long time. EVs are only making it even harder as their maintenance needs are reduced further.

This is another topic where people look back on the past with rose colored glasses. At the risk of downvotes, this happens a lot on HN like in threads where people speak about their pre-SSD era computers as being faster and snappier than modern machines. I recently found my old laptop in storage and booted it up. I remember loving how fast it was at the time and being glad I spent extra for the fastest model at the time, but oh boy was it slow relative to anything I use today.