I work on my own cars now (as a hobby really) and one of the reasons the new cars are so expensive is they are much more complicated. A lot of this seems to be over-engineering IMO. This is alluded to in the article, but not explicitly stated.
The cars I work on are from the early 90s and everything is very simple to understand.
e.g. Electronics are normally simple circuits that aren't much more complicated than what you would find in a door bell and finding faults is normally just tracing wires and using a multi-meter. I had issues with the brake lights / reverse lights not working, the issue turned out that the spade like connector in the fuse box was pushed through and was making partial contact. Price to fix this was £0.
EDIT: Just remembered this isn't accurate. I had to buy a new reverse light. The entire reverse light assembly was ~£20. So the price to fix was about £20. The light assembly itself was like a big bicycle light.
My newer car needs a OB-II scanner to diagnose anything with a phone app. While this is arguably quicker it can be misleading. Sometimes it will be telling you that something is malfunctioning but it is really the sensor itself. These sensors are £200-£300 a piece. Replacing 4 glow plug sensors cost me £800. I was paying essentially to make the "you must service your engine" light to go away. There was nothing wrong with engine itself.
Same ... I'm still running an early 2000's Toyota and got myself a VW Beetle 1969 just for the fun of it ... love maintaining them as they're so simple and rewarding and parts are cheap! ... And I can in no way be called a mechanic.
I've been lusting over the ioniq 5 for a couple of years but I'm just thinking, in 10 years time I'll be knee deep in your last paragraph ... I like long lasting cars
You can still buy a new subcompact car (like a Renault Clio or Skoda Fabia) in Europe for under 20k EUR.
The more interesting question is why these cars disappeared in the US. And while many of the factors discussed here are true for both EU and US (inflation, interest rates, manufacturer profit margins etc) I am surprised no one mentioned the 'SUV loophole' of US regulations that effectively boosted the SUVs (off-road vehicles are classified as non-passenger automobiles with everything that entails, notably much less stringent emission standards) and made the small cars unprofitable to make in comparison.
Also, the more SUVs are driven, the less safe people feel (and arguably are), accelerating the need to buy an SUV for safety reasons.
On the other hand, if you kill someone in a traffic accident, you feel shit the rest of your life.
The main point here is that it sounds a lot like a zero sum game, people are struggling to catch a bigger share of a limited "safety" pie while manufacturers instigating the mass war are watching their profits increase.
It's not clear at all to me how a crash involving two SUVs is much safer than, say, a 2 bike crash, and in fact there is a particular type of accident (front-overs of children) than trucks are strongly susceptible to and would never happen with lower mass / shorter vehicles. This all points towards a runaway tragedy of the commons that can be solved by limiting vehicle mass.
The situation reminds of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
This is true. On the other hand, if you get killed in a car accident... You also feel shit the rest of your life.
But at least you didn't waste $ on a big car.
If you had spent it, you might still be alive, and if you aren't, it's hardly wasted, since you no longer need it.
Jokes aside, I live in the UK, and occasionality I see vehicles here that are entirely too big and unnecessary for our roads.
There was a lady driving what I think was a Defender 130 (I don't know modern LRs too well), it was far too big for the parking spaces in the tiny car park we were in, she could only just see over the steering wheel, and she had no chance of seeing my 5yo child I was walking back to my car with; who's quite tall for 5 but didn't reach over the height of the bonnet.
I’m not sure, a lot of people seem quick to blame children for “darting” in to the road instead of accepting responsibility for operating a dangerous machine.
They are disappearing in europe too. Emissions and other required by law equipment costs just as much on cheap car as it does on expensive one. At some point, cheap cars stop beinf cheap, just a bit cheaper but with way worse quality, so they stop making sense.
It's true that affordable European models are disappearing. The average mid-range offering from, say, Volkswagen, has become quite surprisingly expensive.
But this is why Chinese cars are taking over in Europe. Half the new cars I see are from Geely, BYD, Chery, etc. These average about 20,000-25,000 EUR new.
My own opinion, having looked into the matter a bit, is that you'd have to be insane to buy a Volkswagen or BMW at 2-3x the price. If I were in the market for a new car, I wouldn't consider anything but a Chinese car.
Just because they are not heavily advertised, doesnt mean they don't exist.
Dacia Sandero/Duster/Spring exist. (Renault)
Citroen C1, Toyota Aygo, Peugeot 108, (VW up!.)
Considering Volkswagen Group:
With a choice of Skoda Fabia/Seat Ibiza/VW Polo you would go for Skoda or Seat, not the VW brand itself if you dont care about marque but price.
But prestige is a huge factor still, so people would still go for an overpriced Golf for no apparent other reason
Also 20k-equivalent from 2015-2019 is already above 25k just by inflation. Car manufactures have strong unions so that stuff comes around fast.
So you simply can't expect the old sub 20k cars anymore, that's 25k now.
> so 20k-equivalent from 2015-2019 is already above 25k just by inflation.
Its not inflation alone ... The same brand/car type, tends to have seen a 75% price increase over the mentioned periode.
Something that used to cost 20k euro in the 2015 periode, is now around 35k euro. That is not "inflation". An we are talking same trim, same electronics, same gasoline engines.
Cars beyond a few items (as long as we do not talk about jump from gas to electric) have really not changed that much. There was a big jump from the 90's to the 2000, in terms of electronics (and sensors that are the bane for most car mechanics).
Prices have gone up so much, that it resulted in my 15 year old second hand car, being sold now for more, then when i bought it (and that inc the increased km's driven and age). That is not a normal market and is not explained by simple "inflation".
Its part inflation, a large part greed, and do not forget the consolidation / lack of competition over the year. People overlook how many car brands are now part of the same group. This resulted in less competition because multiple "brands" increased prices over the same period, when its really the same company, using parts in between each other, and your mostly paying for a different shell and "brand name / past reputation".
That is why Chinese car makers are able to enter the EU market so easily, despite the market protection with import taxations.
If you can offer a true hybrid with all the trims like solar roof, full electronics, the works at 36k, and the next EU competitor for the same options is 48k (and a less efficient hybrid aka, electronic boost only)... And that included the import taxation.
Its ironic that we need to do market protection because our own brands got caught sleeping at the wheel.
I’d actually argue that it’s not the cost of Chinese cars but their actual offerings. Compared to the state of Chinese cars a decade ago their current product products are really interesting and offer features that European, American and other Asian models don’t. There’s a great channel called wheels boy on YouTube that’s worth checking out.
There are cheaper European cars than VW (and why compare with their 'average mid-range offering'?).
The new (and widely liked) Renault 5 EV starts at around €21K, for instance. Probably a bit smaller than something made in China for the same money, but not worlds apart. https://www.renault.fr/vehicules-electriques/r5-e-tech-elect...
> why compare with their 'average mid-range offering'?
Because when it comes to features and trim, the average Geely or BYD is essentially on that level (or better). They tend to be quite large and very polished.
It's certainly true that Renault has some inexpensive models -- the Clio is another one that can be had for ~20k EUR -- but they are indeed small.
Yes, you can buy a Dacia for below 20kEur, but even those have gotten far more expensive lately. It used to be that around 10 years ago, a Dacia Logan (typical station wagon family car) could be had for 11kEur. Nowadays the comparable Dacia Duster (SUV instead of station wagon, but somewhat similar slightly smaller internal space) will set you back 18kEur. Most of this price hike is claimed to come from mandatory electronics like eCall, collision avoidance, fatigue sensors, more complex bodywork due to crash requirements, as well as more complex engines due to emission controls.
With your quoted Renault EV models, you really have to be careful, often they don't give the full price but just the price without battery. The battery has to be bought or rented separately.
> It used to be that around 10 years ago...
10 years ago, a Doener Kebab was also only half the price it is today though ;)
> If I were in the market for a new car, I wouldn't consider anything but a Chinese car.
The problem with these are a few things:
1. service network. When something goes kaput with a VW, BMW, Mercedes, Ford, GM, Toyota and even Tesla, there's ample service stations available to get the car back up and running. With a Chinese manufacturer no one but car nerds has heard about? Good luck finding anyone willing to even touch the thing, much less have that specific manufacturer's tooling to deal with computer problems.
2. spare parts logistics. Even the richest and most successful of the last 20 years worth of automotive startups has serious trouble getting spare parts to broken cars. Why should some random Chinese brand be any better than that?
3. Crash safety. "Chinesium" alloy is a meme at this point, but one based on truth. Who guarantees that the manufacturer didn't cheap out on production runs after the review/crashtest rating units went out?
4. Battery safety. Batteries are already hard enough to pull off at scale without sending an armada of tiny little bomblets around the planet... who guarantees that there is no supply chain fuckery going on?
Your understanding of what’s happened with Chinese cars is 15 years out of date. They’re really good now, even better in some ways.
These are quite laughable, even disingenuous-seeming, objections.
- Everywhere they're sold there is a service center and parts are cheap. As for "Chinese manufacturer no one but car nerds has heard about":
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automotive_manufacture...
- The "chinesium" meme thing is a joke, you realize that, right? This is not a serious objection. Even the original greentext from ~2013 was really dumb, with the purchaser not running adequate tests.
- CATL is pretty much the undisputed champion of making high-end batteries.
These regulations are probably used for protectionism. The consumer has to pay for that though. I don't think the market for new cars within the EU can exist for very long with these rules in place.
They partially demand systems that aren't fully developed yet, it is a completely insane thing to do. I guess other manufacturers pushed the EU to install the requirements to protect the dwindling domestic market.
> like a Renault Clio or Skoda Fabia
Few caveats:
- those are generally promotional prices
- those prices are generally tied to financing (you really can't buy it cash at those prices, you need to finance it through them at crazy 7/8%+ rates)
- you can wait for the car even 10 months
> those prices are generally tied to financing (you really can't buy it cash at those prices, you need to finance it through them at crazy 7/8%+ rates)
I can't talk for the rest of the continent, but in the UK we've got "price on the road" advertising laws here. So if you turn up to a dealership with £20k and ask for a new car that's advertised at £20k, you'll be sold a car for £20k in cash. The dealer might try to up-sell you for financing, but you can just say "I'm paying in cash, and I don't want any extras", and they'll complete the payment & paperwork in record time so that they're able to move onto a more profitable financed sale elsewhere.
This depends on the EU country, I've just checked official Skoda site for our country and I found brand new 157 Skoda Fabia models available for the same day pickup below 20k without any special financing (from these 85 below 18k, and 22 below 16k)
Looking up the Clio and it's $31,500 / €27,000, but that's partly due to the taxes on cars where. I'd guess however that you almost can't buy it.
The pricing is meant to hit a price point, in this case just below 200.000DKK. That's a promotional price, chance are that very few cars, if any, with that base package, have ever been made or imported. You can probably get it, but you'd have to wait a few months for it.
Don't forget about Dacia, which is Renault's cheaper brand. You can even buy a Spring EV for under 20k - quality is what you'd expect, but for many people it is not an issue.
Not really, there's 43 brand new Clios available for pickup in Romania right now, starts at €17100, with the full hybrid €21000 before incentives.
14 Skoda Fabias in stock starting at €17625; €20500 if you want a few options and an automatic gearbox.
> (you really can't buy it cash at those prices, you need to finance it through them at crazy 7/8%+ rates)
Often the case, but then you can get the loan and pay it off immediately for a fee.
Or get a new simple Kei car in Japan for $9500
Spot on. most cars sold in the US are actually light trucks.
Not to mention that those subcompacts of today are as large as a compact car of 30 years ago.
You mean 23k usd? Corolla is 22k msrp i.e under 20k euro. Nissan versa is 20k msrp. Then account for the fact that Americans have higher income than Europeans.
Small cars are disappearing in the EU as well. E.g. Audi will discontinue (or have already discontinued) their A1 model (and it was the perfect little car).
VAG cars are weird, I've had both an Audi A1 and a VW Up (short lease for work); they are basically the same car, both had a 3 cylinder, 1 liter engine, similar interiors, etc. But the A1 had the sports look package and generally a fancier feel to it. But VAG uses the same base for a lot of models and brands (VW, Audi, Skoda, SEAT); quality wise there's not much difference between them, but price wise they are, with Skoda being the 'budget' brand and Audi the premium. They also own Porsche but I don't know if they use the same base, I presume not... even though with the amount of Cayennes you see on the road here they sell Porsches at similar rates as upmarket VW / Audi cars.
The Cayenne is a Touareg with Porsche bits and special options. Particularly the rear doors of the second gen of both models are interchangeable.
Yep. I think SEAT are the pick of the VAG brands. Their marketing isn't about being cheap, but they're aimed at the youngest market segment, who also have the least money, so in my experience have the best prices.
Pre-COVID we got a new Leon ST — essentially a Golf estate/station wagon — for about a third off the list price: £13K instead of £20K (I know: those prices sound semi-mythical now).
On the other end you have Audi, whose premise seems to be: "So you want a VW, but you want to pay hugely over the odds for it? Certainly sir, step right this way."
That's the VAG marketing strategy. Share most parts, have the customer pay for the brand.
With VAG, at least everyone knows the deal.
E.g. Mercedes uses Renault engines in the less-fancy models, but most customers are kept in the dark about that.
Wait till you hear about the parts on a lamborghini
Renault at least are keeping the small car flame alive with the 5 and a new version of the Twingo. Audi's product strategy at the moment seems to be "try everything and pivot" so they might even end up relauching the A2 by accident.
The smallest class like the Daihatsu Cuore are already gone. The small cars that are left are significantly larger than the former version that shared the same nameplate. For example the Yaris is a SUV now. Can't really blame the manufacturers. The EU requires so much equipment on cars that you can't really turn a profit on a $10k car (like the Aygo/C1/107 was ~10 years ago). So if your car is going to cost $20k because of all the stuff it has to have it might as well be a bit bigger.
I’m not quite sure the safety equipment is to blame. Modern cars coming out of China go well beyond regulations, while still having great a price/features ratio.
Even very cheap cars like the “Dongfeng Box” have multiple airbags, emergency braking, lane keeping, etc, and safe to assume a lot of the components VW/Toyota use for these come from the same chinese suppliers.
> You can still buy a new subcompact car (like a Renault Clio or Skoda Fabia) in Europe for under 20k EUR.
They're also on their out around these parts, very unfortunately.
Isn’t your argument basically saying that people choose to buy larger cars when the government doesn’t step in and penalize people for doing so? European regulators basically just forcing people to buy smaller cars is what that sounds like.
Also Europeans make less money, pay more taxes, and have less access to credit, so they can’t afford more expensive cars like many Americans. Hence the market catering more to people less willing to spend a lot of money on a car.
The poorest American state, Mississippi, is richer per-capita than most European countries, including France.
> The poorest American state, Mississippi, is richer per-capita than most European countries, including France.
The state, maybe. The missisipian, not so much - considering their Human Development Index is right in between that of Hungary and Bulgaria, at the very bottom of the EU. How great is it to be able to buy expansive cars if you can't get access to education, healthcare, retirement, and will find yourself in the street if you lose your job.
> expansive cars
Probably a typo, but accurate. Gotta have my truck.
Mississippi, like all US states, has free K12 education. It also offers free college education at public universities to anyone who scores well on college admittance tests. (In many countries, people can't access college at all if they didn't perform academically.)
About 25% of Mississippians are on free government healthcare (Medicaid/CHIP). About 21% are on very-cheap government healthcare (Medicare.) Additionally, many hospital systems in the state are owned by state and local governments, and offer free services (roundaboutly) to residents.
Mississippians, like others Americans, are eligible for Social Security in retirement, and have access to unemployment insurance.
Of course Mississippi is not some sort of welfare state paradise, but it's tiresome polemic and exaggeration to claim that people "can't get access to education, healthcare, retirement, and will find [themselves] out on the street if [they] lose [their] job."
No, US also has rules for cars. It just has much more stringent rules for smaller cars, so SUVs and trucks have an unfair advantage.
It's like if smaller cars are taxed at 30% and larger cars at 10%, of course there are going to be more large cars compared to a place that taxes both at 30% or 10%.
> The poorest American state, Mississippi, is richer per-capita than most European countries, including France.
GDP and its consequences has been a disaster for the human race
Ah this old Chestnut whereby agitators use the comparable GDPs of Bavaria and Mississippi as a KPI indicating Europe's lack of economic prowess.
In fact, it's just a scathing indictment of wealth inequality in Mississippi where life expectancy is 10 years less and infant mortality 400% higher than in Bavaria, despite their similar GDPs.
For better or worse the EU is run as a Society whereby the US is run as an Economy, a fact conveniently forgotten in these apples/oranges comparisons.
> Also Europeans make less money, pay more taxes, and have less access to credit, so they can’t afford more expensive cars like many Americans
Funnily your last point invalidates your first. Most Americans are loaded on debt, which impacts how much actual money they have left over at the end of the month. How many Americans can't stomach a $1000 surprise bill again?
> Isn’t your argument basically saying that people choose to buy larger cars when the government doesn’t step in and penalize people for doing so? European regulators basically just forcing people to buy smaller cars is what that sounds like.
No, you're looking at this the wrong way. US regulators make bigger cars more lucrative for manufacturers, so they only do that. EU regulators mostly focus on safety and emissions, which also slightly favours bigger cars (whose bigger price absorbs the safety features better), but not nearly to the same extent. Two of the biggest EU car groups (Stellanti and Renault) both are publicly asking to reduce some of the burden for smaller cars to be able to make cheaper small cars. On the other hand, US manufacturers (even Stellantis' Jeep, Dodge, Ram) don't mind just churning oversized monstrosities.
> The poorest American state, Mississippi, is richer per-capita than most European countries, including France.
GDP per capita doesn't mean what you think it does. Everything being overpriced in the US, and everything needing to have a middleman inflates GDP figures. Take health insurance, Americans pay multiple times what Europeans pay, to stuff the pockets of multiple for profit institutions and middlemen. GDP figures look better in the US, but really, which way is more efficient? Health outcomes are better across the EU, and the amount of medical bankruptcies is also telling.
> GDP per capita doesn't mean what you think it does. Everything being overpriced in the US, and everything needing to have a middleman inflates GDP figures. Take health insurance, Americans pay multiple times what Europeans pay, to stuff the pockets of multiple for profit institutions and middlemen. GDP figures look better in the US, but really, which way is more efficient? Health outcomes are better across the EU, and the amount of medical bankruptcies is also telling.
Healthcare is a particularly _atypical_ example to choose, and the particularly poor health outcomes of MS are only partly explicable by healthcare cost/access: it's also cultural and lifestyle issues. So it's rather disingenuous to say "take health insurance", as though it can be used by analogy to comprehensively explain other aspects of American finance.
You don't need recourse to GDP, you can just look at household income which really is higher. Most things do _not_ actually have inflated prices relative to European countries.
Would I rather live in Mississippi than France? Are Mississipians living better lives than French people? I mean it depends on where specifically, but almost certainly no. Of course having more money doesn't necessarily make a place better to live in.
But that doesn't invalidate "people have more money available to spend on cars and easier access to credit to finance that purchase over five years at favorable interest rates" as part of the reason why Americans choose to spend more money on cars.
You really don't have to take every point of discussion of difference between the US and European countries as an obligation to rant about how much better Europe is on tangential topics.
Because a big part of owning a vehicle is summer roadtrips, ski vacations, visiting family, moving stuff. An SUV is simply more convenient. I've also found road maintenance is getting worse where I live, it's almost necessary having an SUV or truck just to navigate the suburbs.
Also the (semi) compact crossover has kind of killed the compact car. You get more space, better ground clearance, for a decent price.
What you don’t mention are the increased negative externalities of your larger vehicle, including a higher chance of killing people, more road space used for parking, worse visibility for others, etc.
But mentioned: the increased road damage by heavier vehicles.
The Forth Power Law. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
> I've also found road maintenance is getting worse where I live
Well, bigger cars are a factor that makes the roads degrade faster.
I think that's more relevant with really large vehicles. An SUV is generally somewhere in the range of 1.5-3 tons whereas a loaded semi truck can weigh up to 40 tons. If a road is designed to handle 40 ton vehicles then i have a hard time believing that 2-3 ton vehicles make much of a difference compared to a 1.5 ton vehicle.
A semi truck with a trailer will distribute those 40 tons over a larger area due to more and larger tires, but I am assuming that it still impacts a larger ground pressure on the road than a personal car - at least when loaded.
That's a big part of it for you perhaps, but not for everyone?
IME it's a big part of it for a lot of people. People don't buy a car for what they do with it every day, they buy it for what they do with it a few times a year. If you have a boat on a trailer, you buy a vehicle that can pull the trailer. If you drive to the mountains in winter a few times a year, you buy a higher clearance AWD vehicle so that you can skip chain control.
You might say that this irrational and that people might be better off renting something on the occasion that they need to tow something, or go on a long road trip, or fit more than five people in their car. But people are irrational and they really do make these choices!
In addition, renting a large car for a few days is really expensive. If you have to do this 5-10 times a year, over 10 years of ownership, I'm not so sure that buying small and renting large make sense financially. Not to mention the inconvenience and loss of flexibility from having to collect and drop off a rental car, which typically isn't exactly right around the corner, especially in rural areas.
I don't know why inflation is dismissed so quickly. The article lists the industry average price increase as 29.2% and the inflation value I got out of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator[1] was 26.2%. So sure, "this isn’t just a case of inflation affecting the entire vehicle market" [emphasis mine], but it is mostly that.
Retail inflation is based on the prices of goods, including new cars.
So it's pointless to compare car prices to inflation because they are part of the basis of the measure. Hence why they track closely.
Saying you can't compare car prices to inflation because cars are in the CPI... We're really doing this?
New cars make up about 4% of the CPI, and used cars around 3%, so together they’re only a small part of the inflation basket. If new car prices doubled tomorrow and nothing else changed, headline inflation would rise by about 4%, but car prices would have increased 92% relative to inflation.
Inflation measures the decline in the value of money over time. If car prices rise significantly more or less than that decline can explain, that’s meaningful. If they don't... that's not.
Then it’s pointless to compare nearly anything to inflation, which means inflation isn’t very useful. You can still find many product categories increasing in price more slowly than inflation. Some much higher than inflation. So it is useful to compare inflation
But the question we're asking is why the price of cars went up. "Inflation" isn't an answer. Inflation is what we call the price of cars going up. It still happens for a reason...
If the cars prices simply follow inflation, then there is no point in writing an article about why car prices in particular have gone up. Just write about inflation in general.
Energy costs going up, raw materials costs going up, employees asking for raises because of the higher cost of living... And you have an explanation not just for cars but all industries.
Except that inflation isn't just the price of cars. The fact that car prices have gone up faster than "overall" inflation is significant.
cars inflating faster than overall/average inflation of the economy is significant.
I suspect the reason is that a car's parts are numerous, and because specific inflation affects different components, there's a good chance that a car's component has more inflation than other products in the economy.
And because inflation has an expectation driven aspect, suppliers that know inflation is happening is going to raise their prices more to combat it pre-emtively. This happens throughout the entire supply chain.
Thus, the end result is that a car's inflationary pressure is higher.
But that's just a theory - an inflation theory...
Inflation is a result of too much money being created than what is needed by the growth of the economy. Average price increase that we use to estimate it is just a useful proxy.
Inflation is always the main contribution to price increase. It only makes sense to compare price raise above or below inflation if you want to unearth factors specific to any given product or industry.
This can quickly turn into a philosophical debate rather than an economic one. Which value went up first, the chicken or the egg?
Personally, I think the way it makes the most sense is thinking of inflation as the change in the value of money rather than the change in the cost of goods, in large part because costs rise for non-goods too. For example, my employer pays me more today than they did in 2019 despite my employer not selling any goods or buying many goods outside of laptops for their employees and they obviously don't care about my personal expenses when determining annual raises.
> So it's pointless to compare car prices to inflation because they are part of the basis of the measure. Hence why they track closely.
What? So how do you use the CPI? To measure things no one ever buys?
For affordability the real question is median or mode wage inflation or deflation.
Nobody else has said it so I guess I will.
The reason the US car industry does not want a $25k car is that the financing opportunities are crap for a car of this low cost.
In the same way that airlines exist to offer you a miles based credit card, the US car dealerships survive by offering you a loan for the car. Or perhaps, a car to go with your structured finance opportunity.
It was a funny experience going to buy a used car with my partner a few years ago. Being a little naive I'd assumed being a cash buyer was a plus as they'd guarantee a quick sale, but as soon as the salesman realised he wasn't going to be signing a finance deal you could see him lose interest entirely. kinda funny to think they're in the business of selling loans rather than cars.
unless there's illegal collusion, someone will see a market opporunity and step in to fill it.
That said, a quick search for new cars under $25k: Chevrolet Trax $20.5k, Nissan Versa $17.2k, Hyundai Venue $20.5k, Kia Soul $20.5k, and Nissan Kicks $22k. Other options include the Toyota Corolla $22.3k, Hyundai Elantra $22.1k, and Volkswagen Jetta $22.5k
I think maybe the article is BS?
There is market opportunity, China has found it, but the US won't allow them to be imported because it undercuts everyone else so thoroughly. The US automotive market is extremely far from being a free and open market. You can't just build a car to a set of standards and automatically be allowed to sell them, there are substantial legal and political barriers that cost tons of money to overcome, which doesn't make financial sense to anyone with that amount of money to just sell low margin vehicles.
I strongly agree with a generalization of the article - that cars have increased in price relative to their quality and value to the point that it's nationally problematic. There's a whole pile of cars that have gone from sub $20k to the high $20ks and above. Most of the cars you list will also have essentially non-optional packages, delivery charges, and more costs rolled into their price. At the same time it's not easy to find used cars that don't cost nearly as much as new cars unless they're pretty old and high mileage.
And it seems clear there's no rational reason that cars should subject to a higher rate of inflation than any other good.
It seems very clear that somehow the market is broken. Whether it's because new competition is impossible because only the established can achieve the necessary economies of scale, protectionist regulation,the dealership model, or something else, it's pretty clear something is broken. Just like with much of the rest of things in the US and maybe the world.
> unless there's illegal collusion
Illegal collusion is not the only thing that can prevent a competitive market. Large barriers to entry and imperfect information are two other textbook examples.
Buy the best used car you can afford for cash and forget all that dealership nonsense
Unfortunately, the decrease in supply of budget cars hurts people buying used cars as well for two reasons:
1. With less people able to afford new cars it increases demand for used cars, which pushes up the price
2. There will be less budget cars that eventually end up in the used car market, and the increased price of new cars will trickle through to used cars
The small and quasi-loophole to getting a good used car deal is buying a hail damage car. I genuinely don't understand why cars were made to have shiny paint. Cars drive on dirty roads with insects and pebbles abound. Paint doesn't matter. Car washes are crazy, except to abait rust
It’s a lot easier to clean a shiny surface than a matt one.
Try clean a house ceiling versus a house wall - though anyone sane wouldn’t paint a ceiling matt, or for that matter, even contemplate painting a ceiling.
Get a painter to paint it semi-gloss.
Confirmation bias but a very good friend did this: bought back the hail damaged car from the insurer in preference to keeping the undamaged VW Beetle, sold the beetle, has been driving the hail damaged car with the minimum legal insurance to third parties for 15 years since. She's streets ahead in costs of car ownership and drives long and short distance, urban and country.
People are rarely this pragmatic but I agree! Slightly beat up cars for the win!
The issue you'll face is when you go to sell it – any noticeable hail damage means you are getting 1/2 the resale value if you can even find an interested buyer.
Ideally you should be driving the car until the wheels fall off anyways. Faffing about selling cars and buying newer ones is a waste of money.
Driving a car until the wheels fall off generally doesn't make financial sense. Keeping an old car on the road gets really expensive unless you have the space, time and skills to do all the work yourself. Then there is the opportunity cost of not having access to your car for days/weeks at a time while it is being repaired. Finally you have the stress of not being quite sure if your car will start when you turn the key or get you where you want to go.
From both an economic and quality of life point of view, you are better driving your car until it starts to get slightly unreliable and then quickly trade it in for a slightly newer used car. Buy a 5-10 year old car, drive it for 5-10 years, then trade it in for a 5-10 years old car is probably pretty close to an optimal strategy.
Does a Toyota Corolla ever get unreliable or uneconomic to repair?
Same with technology. If you aren't rich, selling around the time the next model comes out is actually a great way to avoid paying full price for your modern tech.
With Apple stuff, waiting more than 1-2 cycles means you've missed the ability to recoup most of your costs AND you got to use an old device for an extra year... yay?
> Faffing about selling cars and buying newer ones is a waste of money.
Depends. No reason to pour money into a depreciating asset that you trust your life with.
I saw an early 2000s small car get into a ~30mph collision recently and ... I wouldn't drive an early 2000s car after that. A lot of people do, and they probably should try to get something with more modern safety equipment.
That's accounted for at the time they bought it since it was already hail damaged.
Is it savings if you buy an item worth less and you pay less? You're just buying a damaged item at that point ... which is worth less to everyone
That isn't getting "deal" unless you plan to never liquidate... cars generally don't get used up like a can of soda, so the dent actually matters when you go to sell it.
Yes, but you also paid half the cost to acquire the car. You're just paying less in depreciation for the time you use it.
My last car got minor hail damage across many panels, it was a difficult PDR for some reason - when I traded it in it was worth 1/4 what KBB would have been for a similar year and mileage without dents
Even trying to sell it myself for around 1/3 KBB "good" value took 2 months because the next buyer can't get financing on a car worth very little, so you have to find a cash buyer who doesn't care how their new ride looks. It's rare for anything other than $2,500 cars
It depends. It doesn’t make sense to not get a car you can afford for 0% interest. I could have outright paid for my current vehicle but over the 3 years at 0% interest I earn 6% to make a few thousand over the lifetime of the loan.
> It doesn’t make sense to not get a car you can afford for 0% interest.
The loan might be 0% interest, but you're still using that loan to pay way too much money for a depreciating asset.
I assume the comment you quoted means “a car you could afford to pay cash for, but will instead invent the total cost while making payments on the 0% interest loan.”
I think the problem here is "you can afford" vs "you can pay for"
if you're willing to spend the time and effort doing interest rate arbitrage for a few hundred dollars, maybe you can pay for a certain car, but i'm really not sure you should be
Could this be stated as perverse incentives as a result of attempts to differentiate from cookie-cutter-identical competitors?
Whereby the profit shifts from the product itself to the differentiating value-add.
proud owner of a financed 2024 manual nissan versa here :) but yeah the dealership made almost no money and I put down a deposit when it was a couple months from coming in at a location far from where I live. it's a $20k car though.
There was a finance charge on your loan that was probably around $1k so that's 5% the dealer made right there instantly for no work
It's pretty simple (in the US, can't speak for elsewhere).
There are 2 big factors at play:
1. Margins. Manufacturers make huge margins on expensive vehicles and very slim margins on cheap vehicles. The numbers differ, but I think even in the lead up to the 2008 crisis automakers had to sell 5-10 "econobox" cars to make the profit they made on one luxury car, SUV, or truck.
2. Normalization of debt. For many Americans, having a monthly car payment in perpetuity is considered acceptable. Car loans have their place and can be used responsibly, but due to marketing, sales tactics, and cultural sensibilities what often ends up happening is that people start from a monthly dollar amount and then work forwards to buy the most expensive vehicle they can, even if it means taking the loan term out to 72 or 84 months. It's also very normal for people to never pay off their car, instead trading in the vehicle after 3-5 years and rolling equity in the loan over to their next car. Obviously, this consumer habit is great for dealers, manufacturers, creditors and buyers of consumer debt, as well as the US Government and investors -- it's just not ideal for the consumers themselves if they're trying to preserve wealth and build savings.
These two factors create an environment increasingly hostile to the cheap entry level car. Consumer demand is low since most don't spend responsibly, and automakers don't really want to make or sell them because the margins are so slim.
My reptilian-brain logic prevents me from even considering getting a loan for car. Houses increase in value, therefore it makes a certain amount of sense to get a loan / mortgage for the purchase of a house (but mainly because no-one - in the world in which I live - can afford to buy one cash).
Cars decrease in value, very quickly. Getting a loan for a car is throwing more money away than buying a car in the first place.
Having said that, I'm immune to a lot of 'social norms' so I've been fine driving my tired-looking 20-year old Outlander soccer mum car or our 10+ year old grannymobile Nissan Leaf.
There are situations in which a loan for a car may be necessary, but I'd have to be a really tight spot to consider it, and I'd be absolutely minimising the size / length of it.
It's not merely an issue of obtaining materially desirable consumer goods though; lots of folks get car loans because they can't afford to buy a car, even a cheap car, without one. So it's either, don't get a car and give up a lot of opportunities or hope you live in a place with decent public transit (which is not a given in many places in the US)
I think as a proportion of the total amount loaned, the people using car loans to bu 10-15k used Toyotas because they have to is quite low :(
Getting a loan for a car seems quite natural to me. A car provides service flows over a long period, so why not pay for it over a similarly long period? In the first year or two the car's value is probably below the outstanding loan amount, but beyond that it's likely to rise above it, so you're free to sell and walk away from the arrangement.
Granted, high interest rates might make this a bad deal, but the principle seems sound. I bought my previous car on a 7-year bank loan at 2.5% and didn't regret it.
I think the way most people rationalise it, it's a pre-requisite for having a job. So it's income-generating and therefore morally ok to take out a loan for it.
Which is just so many degrees of insane that it's even hard to list all of them.
Houses do not increase in value. Land property does (usually). Houses decrease.
> Houses do not increase in value.
They do, by a lot, if they're in desirable cities. Probably what's really increasing in value is the grandfathered permission to have built a house, but there's no way to separate that from the house.
Every part of the house depreciates without maintenance. At some point the house will depreciate and the lot will be worth less than it would be if the house was already demolished.
> Every part of the house depreciates without maintenance. At some point the house will depreciate and the lot will be worth less than it would be if the house was already demolished.
That really depends on the market. There are areas near me where property prices have increased so rapidly they outpace any losses from depreciation. Not necessarily a good thing of course as it does lead to very expensive houses and difficulty with people trying to buy their first house.
Depends. My (UK) house is 125 years old. Its depreciating days are well behind it.
How can a house stop depreciating if every part of it and everything in it becomes older as time passes?
The only thing stopping depreciation is regular maintenance which costs money.
The best kind of correct.
You don't sell the house without land anyway. What matters is that the set of land+house increases in value.
The cash is fungible, so for a fixed amount of money and interest rate it really doesn’t matter if the thing you’re buying depreciates or not (assuming you’re buying both things anyway).
Lots of loan rates out there for <1% APR. Easy to get savings accounts at 4%+ these days.
I could pay off my car tomorrow. But I'll have more money in the end keeping that cash in the bank. Why would I pay it off early?
Your logic works out fine if you don't mind a dash of risk (e.g. from a job loss). But when I ran the numbers from my perspective it didn't seem worth it. (I might be doing my math wrong).
Let's say I get a car that costs $30k, I put $10k down, and I take a loan out using the numbers above rounded up just for napkin math (1% APR, 4% savings account).
After one year:
```
$30,000 x 0.04 = $1,200 from savings account interest
$1,200 x 0.33 = $396 in TAXES from the interest (assuming you earn over $145k/year in California)
$30,000 x 0.01 = $300 in loan interest
Total earned = $1,200 - $396 - $300 = $696
```
Don't get me wrong, $696 isn't _nothing_ but I personally would rather have the feeling of not owing people money then an extra $696 at the end of the year. Add in depreciation from getting a new car and it's almost a wash.
>> I could pay off my car tomorrow. But I'll have more money in the end keeping that cash in the bank. Why would I pay it off early?
> Your logic works out fine if you don't mind a dash of risk (e.g. from a job loss).
I notice that no part of your comment actually describes this risk. What is it? Assuming you have the cash in hand, and it's earning more interest than the interest on your car financing, how would losing your job affect the situation?
The only effect I see is that it will dramatically increase the amount of that extra interest you actually collect, by lowering your tax rate.
Is the negotiation of these loans separate from the negotiation of the car price? If not I suspect the margin is just being shifted to the asset price
I thought this was the main reason to take the loan given an opportunity. The longer the money is with me, I could use it as an investment(mostly S&P 500)
I think the cost of a car is a huge drag on the upward mobility on the lower income earners in the U.S.
100%. And it doesn’t help that large cars as a cultural touchstone/status symbol really took off. Even if a $25k car existed most people wouldn’t buy it(even if they “should”).
The base Ford Maverick just edged over $25K for 2024. Now it's $26K. It's not a "real truck" but considerably larger than any econobox.
Maybe it's the exception that proves the rule?
Article suggests the Maverick was selling quite well when it was below $25K. Dealers marked it up.
It’s still selling quite well.
I'll have my 2020 Subaru Impreza paid off in a couple months. That was just under $24k. I don't think the price has gone up much on the Impreza in the last 5 years.
So do the cost of cigarettes and alcohol. Things they burn a larger proportion of their money on than higher earners.
False equivalence. You can do without cigarettes and alcohol, but not without cars in majority of the United States. Only about 10% of the adults smoke vs car ownership in American households is 90% with almost 40% owning more than one car. Comparing what you necessity with a discretionary expense isn’t fair.
Comparing what you necessity with a discretionary expense isn’t fair.
A car might be necessity, but spending more than say $15-20k max on a (second hand) car is a discretionary expenses for the vast majority of people doing so.
Because they are buying new and financing it
Well, the used car market has also been decimated
Cash For Clunkers took a ton of used vehicles off the market
Stricter environmental standards have also taken otherwise working cars off the market, by preventing used dealerships from selling them in general, and making it more difficult/more expensive to insure them
The days of buying a used car for 2 grand are long gone
Also many used cars end up in eg Guatemala where the lower cost of labor means that fixing cars is cheaper.
New car prices affect used car prices. I've been in the market for a used car for my daughter, and the prices on used are crazy as well.
I mean what's a 10-year-old Prius in passable condition cost? It can't be that bad, surely?
https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/prius/2015/
10 grand it seems? That's pretty rough, especially with that mileage
I think the bigger issue is the need for a car. In most of the US, everything is built with the assumption you'll be driving to it (workplaces, stores, facilities, etc).
So everyone has to have a car. So your social mobility is limited by the fact that you need to have the money for the expenses that go with it in the first place.
3-4 cities with decent to good transit are the exception, but the fact that they're so desirable and with such high housing prices means that they aren't really accessible either.
In Europe, the average age for buying a new car is 50. This means that most of the cars sold are second-hand. Most people think that the car is a luxury and prefer to focus on their home first, then their family, and after that, their car.
I am from Brazil and although most cities are 100% built around cars, public transportation IS an option and mostly works and is (somewhat) affordable.
Unlike the US, if a place is 1km away as the eagle flies you can get there by walking ~1.5km max. And there are bus services and although often overcrowded or with low service, they do run and you can plan your life around them.
Yet everyone still buys a car as soon as they can afford one (or often if they can't). And they use it for commuting to work every day.
To get to the point that Europe is in where even rich people don't want cars or if they have one it is for weekend trips. You need to do a lot better than this.
Unfortunately getting the US to be like Europe in this regard is not really viable, but it could get to the point where Brazil is where the poorer people can afford to not own a car.
In some big cities in Brazil they do a lot of low-cost things like dedicated bus-lanes that actually make some high-demand trips shorter by bus. Progress in this area needs to be incremental, there is little point in investing crazy amounts of money in one big project. Instead the investing should be lower and constant.
sometimes one big project can make a big difference, like a new rail-bridge or metro. But in general getting people into busses is more efficient even if that means rich people still won't want to get into that bus.
The solution to number one is more competition: a new company willing to take smaller margins to gain market share.
Economies of scale says before you can build a cheap car you must first be a large company
Seems like all the new entrants would rather compete at the high end.
>having a monthly car payment in perpetuity is considered acceptable.
I think that really depends on what part of America. At least where I grew up around a bunch of middle class conservatives listening to eg Dave Ramsey (who has other problems IMO) most people think of you as reckless/irresponsible for doing that sort of thing.
> I think that really depends on what part of America.
And the age of the cohort... Millennials (1980 to '95-ish) have had student loans since as far back as they can remember. What's _another_ never-ending monthly payment?
My wife and I are millennials and we paid off our student loans within a couple years once I started my career. I don’t even remember if it was before or after we got married and we’ve been married for over a decade now. Maybe we’re fortunate but I can’t imagine still having a monthly student loan payment.
Of course I also absolutely hated being in debt and having a monthly payment to begin with so I made it a priority to solve that problem asap. Likewise, I have always paid cash for every car I’ve bought. My only never-ending monthly payment is my mortgage and the alternative to that is paying rent which I like even less.
Fundamentally it’s a mindset thing. I also don’t buy taxi rides for my Chipotle orders.
I have a very similar mindset, but, man, mortgages hurt. At least when paying rent the money goes towards a real person. With a mortgage such a big chunk of the payment is the interest that just goes to this faceless entity that is the bank.
How does it not bother you? :)
Dave Ramsey is perfect for the type of people who need Dave Ramsey. If you’re a standard deviation or two above the median person in terms of having your shit together and being smart about personal finance you can do a few things more optimally than he would recommend, but the advice that works for that person could easily ruin most people.
I grew up around a bunch of middle class conservatives in the Southern USA and almost all of them were into debt on house, car, often even taking loans to pay for kids private school.
And you'd never know until the family divorced and their lifestyle drastically decreases.
Dave Ramsey has to be relatively new because debt was extremely extremely common among conservatives in the US (no idea about liberals didn't live among them)
Houses are debt, but are generally and appreciating asset
Cars are a depreciating asset. It usually does not make sense to go into debt to get one
Houses are a depreciating asset. They require constant maintenance expenses just to hold their value. It's the land under the house that's the appreciating asset.
Sort of. In a lot of areas, the cost of the house has skyrocketed in the last few decades. One factor is that you can’t buy an empty lot and then build a 20 year old $250k house on it in most markets. If you want to build a house, that house will be new (obviously — relocating an old house is a real pain), and the costs of construction are silly. This effect inflates the value of old houses in a lot of markets.
Of course, in markets that don’t have plenty of inventory of both empty lots and lots with old houses, it can be hard to value the house by itself.
> relocating an old house is a real pain
Has relocating an old house even been done? (Assuming the house wasn't built to be movable.)
As the other comments note, yep, it's been done.
It seems there's a whole spectrum from lifting houses to put a new first floor below them, to moving them a bit, to moving them several blocks in a city. (to big building projects too, historically)
I saw a house in progress being moved, 30 years ago. Great thing to take a kid to see!
Somewhat recently in SF. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/23/san-francisc...
It is done, albeit rarely due to how expensive and complex an operation it is. My friend's mother moved her house a few kilometers across some farmland. It was a rather large 2 story tall house, with a basement. It had to be moved to a plot that had a similar foundation and basement prepared for it.
Yeah, it's a thing for a certain type of historic building.
See https://patch.com/massachusetts/lexington/historic-house-mov... as an example
Is there really a meaningful difference when you’re not able to buy one without buying the other?
Maybe - we’re trying to sell a deceased family member’s block of land that might be worth more in the market if we demoed the building because it’s unliveable.
Cars are a necessity in pretty much most of the country. Even in areas with good public transit, people who are most likely to go into debt to buy a car are also more likely to live further away from public transit and commute for work. Outside of New York, I can’t think of another city where living without a car is really an option.
Chicago. Probably a few other big cities.
Yes, but you have to live in the City. The suburbs are impossible without a car.
Boston. DC. Chicago.
I’ve heard Philly and SF as well, but have never been.
Philly's transit access can be hit or miss, but when transit lines up, it's transformative. I moved from central PA to a Philadelphia suburb in 2006, a three minute walk to a regional rail station. It was an hour fifteen into the city (most of the time), and I'll take 1:15 on the train over 0:45 of driving every time. After a few months of figuring things out, we dropped from two cars to one.
Now I own a rowhome in the historic district of the city, we're opening the first floor as a museum within the next year, and I walk everywhere. All forms of transit (bus, trolley, trackless trolley, subway, light rapid transit, train, ferry) take contactless payment (finally) and these days, rideshare fills in the gaps.
Wages are higher in the suburbs, but I can get to a sizable international airport in 15 minutes by car, to the Amtrak station in 20 minutes via $3 subway, and I can walk to grocery/hardware/bakery as well as bars/restaurants/galleries/venues/museums/etc.
A car used to be a very, very important part of my life, and now it's more of a luxurious convenience.
Bay Area (including SF) public transportation is generally terrible, definitely not at all a great option for people who can’t even live in SF but have to commute to SF because of how expensive it is.
San Francisco is in the top 10 cities in the US for public transit usage. You can see the stats here: https://www.sf.gov/data--vision-zero-benchmarking-commute-me...
If you are forced to commute into SF for your job, then make living close to BART a top priority. (Many years ago, I met many people who suffered through that daily commute, but refused to make living near BART a priority. It was dumb to watch.) BART is a miracle train system (hybrid commuter rail/metro/subway), even if the coverage isn't great.
Just because it’s in top 10 within the country doesn’t mean it is great and that people don’t need to rely on cars most of the times. “Just live near BART” is a laughable proposition since half the BART stations outside of SF do not have enough housing around them and the ones that do, have high density luxury apartments that aren’t exactly affordable to people outside tech and other high paying careers. Then there’s the question of “do I also work near BART?”, “buy groceries near bus stations?” Or “go to the hospital only near public transit?”. Answer to all of those questions is “No and I still need a car”.
It’s interesting how the language allows a weird cognitive out. It’s not debt, it’s a mortgage and they ‘own’ the home.
It's not a weird cognitive out, there are major differences, legal and financial between say credit card debt and a mortgage on a house.
Nobody said it isn't debt. The difference is that it is debt that makes sense: you can't realistically buy land without it, and houses tend to appreciate so the interest costs are less of a problem - they just represent the time value of money.
Most other debts people incur personally are to buy things they could save for, which go down in value. Like cars.
A good portion of them did get a mortgage. To my knowledge none of them have car payments, most drive used beaters like I do.
Ramsey is very niche. People who are good with money will find his advice some combination of obvious and bad. People who are bad with money will tend to either not want his advice, or have a hard time following it. A few people are in a sweet spot where they’ll actually follow it.
the interest on those loans is maddening
Why? Auto loan interest rates are currently below the historical average.
Last year we bought a car.
While not being a petrol head I was still living in a lala land where you could buy a brand new car for 10k EUR. Nothing fancy, just "a car". Obviously it turned out to be not true.
After some digging it turned out that in the last 10 years the price of cars went double. Literally double. Same car, like Fiat Panda, with the same engine and configuration, that ten years was worth one potato is now worth exactly two potato.
Long story short, the entry level car now costs close to 25k EUR. [1]
But here's the kicker.
While subvenstions seem to fail in most cases for regular people - like gvt giving people money to buy apartements equals to apartments being equally more expensive - it seems to work wonders for automotive thanks to Chinese.
EU offers up to 10k EUR subvention for electric cars and with that in mind you can get something like BYD Dolphin for slighly less than 20k EUR. Which is mind blowing. The car is comparable to Volvo XC40. Of course this is just an example and there is plentiful of other options.
[1] If you're not familiar or comfortable with EUR just think 1 EUR is 1 USD and you'll be fine.
> EU offers up to 10k EUR subvention for electric cars and with that in mind you can get something like BYD Dolphin for slighly less than 20k EUR. Which is mind blowing.
BYD Dolphin? MSRP for that car where I am is at 2.99m JPY(17k EUR, 20k USD). You guys are getting screwed.
Higher transport costs, plus very large tariffs on Chinese electric cars. The EU believes (quite accurately), that there wouldn't be much of a EV industry if they let the real prices stand on their own. So there's the big tariff, and a rebate that blanks it, but also subsidizes the EU competitor.
> Long story short, the entry level car now costs close to 25k EUR. [1]
Just this February I bought brand new 2024 Clio for ~17k EUR, gas+LPG. At least until July it was super easy to get even better deals on small/compact cars with ICE engine. Hybrid engines are closer to 25k EUR.
The UK discontinued EV direct subsidy, and the Dolphin is still only £17k. Chinese economics is just built different. I am extremely tempted to try one.
>EU offers up to 10k EUR subvention for electric cars and with that in mind you can get something like BYD Dolphin for slighly less than 20k EUR.
"The EU" does not offer subsidies for any car, some member states do (And I have never heard of a subsidy of 10k per car). On the contrary, Chinese cars are strongly tariffed by the EU.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, however, until someone provides a link, I label this post "hyperbullshit".
Chinese EVs are certainly strongly tariffed. The below Reuters article highlights how BYD are apparently shifting to plug-in hybrid sales to avoid the 27% tariff the EU imposes on its pure battery electric vehicles (plug-in hybrids attract a reduced 10% tariff).
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/chines...
It's just a comment generated by some trash AI
Yeah. It was only just pre covid, 2019 you could get a new panda for ~10k eur. I think a lot is the push to go electric.
Governments want manufacturers to sell like 25%+ electric cars and customer won't buy so many if they can get a 10k petrol instead.
I'd never seen the word "subvention" before. Today I learned it's another way to say "subsidy".
It's a europeanism. In both French and German (and probably other EU languages) the word for "subsidy" is something like "subvention" so native speakers of these language often reach for an unnatural word in English.
Btw other examples include "actually" which is used to mean "currently", and "eventually" which is used to mean "maybe".
Personally I'm torn whether to consider this incorrect use of the language as it is quite widespread. Maybe it would be better to consider this as the emergence of a new dialect.
You are correct.
I actually double checked the word "subvention" on google to see if I'm not misspelling it and the results said I was correct. But yes, I used that word because it was direct translation from my language.
Other examples you gave are also correct.
Engrish is hard.
EDIT: as a kicker I will add that while working for BigCo I was resposible for taking care of colleages coming from abroad and the very first thing I was telling them after saying "hello" was "do not ever ask anyone how are you". ;)
One thing that throws me off even after a decade in Finland is people saying “we are ready” or “you are ready” when they mean “done”.
Dinner is ready when it is done. I'm sure there are others in English as well.
Yeah, a thing can be ready to be used/eaten/etc. What confuses me sometimes is, for example, a doctor writing some notes on their computer and then saying to me "now you are ready", meaning that we're done and I can go.
Interestingly, it has kind of spread into standard Irish English now, as well. Used very frequently when talking about government subsidies.
Some already consider this a new dialect. It's called Euro English[1]. There are some more examples in that wikipedia article. Not just synonyms, but grammar as well.
"Eventually" is the worst false friend I think. Because in english it implies certainty while in latin languages it only implies possibility. But since the meanings are so close, it looks legit in context 90% of the time.
"Actually" does look out of place when used in english with the latin meaning so it's safer.
> the word for "subsidy" is something like "subvention" so native speakers of these language often reach for an unnatural word in English.
A Google search for subvention turns up government publications from UK, India and South Africa.
Yeah it's a real word but it's not commonly used by native speakers.
It's probably a new dialect if speakers of it understand each other, and also understand when usages of their dialect are wrong.
European flavored English has existed for a while though since the existence of the EU as an institution has required a lot of English learning and writing as one of its official languages.
English being just one of the official EU languages would not have mattered much. No one is picking up Portuguese or Polish, even though they are also official languages and have been for a long time.
The important fact is that English is the lingua franca of both trade and administration in the EU. People sometimes still learn some French and German, but the vast majority of international EU discussions are in English, both in the EU bureaucracy and in business circles.
Yep it’s “subvención” in Spanish.
oh, and to add to your vocabulary - the word pathetic, especially around Elbonia, can be used with the intention of saying something is full of "pathos".
Are we just lying for fun now?
No it's only HNers and their lack of humour. It's a joke and the hint is "Elbonia".
I'm really sorry, engrish is really hard
On the other hand you could have bought a mint condition E30 late model for $10k euro.
Yes, but repair costs haven't gone down and the E30 will need maintenance and repair at $10k euro. Time without a car or an unreliable car also doesn't work for most working people these days.
Have a car that's effectively uninsurable and then spend months sourcing parts that are not chinesium whenever something breaks? For the same 10k you can get F30 which is not even in the same league as a daily people mover and is actually repairable.
A car without isofix, adaptive cruise and worse crash safety.
One fact not mentioned in the article - Americans now owe $1.64 trillion in auto loans, and cars make up 9% of all consumer debt in the country. In fact we now owe more on cars than student loans. The average loan term is rising - almost 6 years now. 60-day delinquency on auto loans is at 6.6%, the highest ever recorded, and is as high as 9% in some states.
So while car prices keep going up, people also keep going deeper into debt to buy one they can't afford.
You can blame manufacturers or banks, but ultimately the problem is unchecked consumerism and treating cars as a status symbol, which is sadly pervasive in this country.
When, as the article says, the $25k car is going extinct, I do blame manufacturers and banks (and the dealerships).
Almost all cars have turbos, all have abs/airbags/cameras... even counting the seat foam & covers, wheels, door cars... how cheap do you think a vehicle safe and comfortable for humans can be?
The average car has tons of moving parts that have to be weatherproof, shakeproof, pothole-ready... stuff consumer tech doesn't dream of. It also has to be repairable, be engineered to meet all the regulations in various countries so the manufacturer doesn't make 15 versions for different countries...
A lot of things are overpriced in the world; I'm not sure cars in general are high on this list. If you want a car similar to a high end 2015 car, the 2025 Jetta has more than anything you could have gotten in 2015 and I'd say with inflation the price is lower today when you account for inflation.
I had a Jetta as a service loaner recently and it drove great. $25k cars are still out there, you just can't get a $25k 4Runner.
Almost all cars have turbos since that's about the only way to get similar performance out a sub-1L three-cylinder engine that you could get from a cheap, naturally aspirated 1.6L iron block back in the 90's. Emission and safety standards are nice, but the customer pays for it.
> cheap, naturally aspirated 1.6L iron block back in the 90's
VW sold the 2.0L naturally aspirated engine that made about 115 horsies and got a whopping low-30s mpg on the highway until 2015 in the base model US Jetta.
The same engine I had in my 1993 Jetta. Legitimately available since the 70s.
Thank goodness regulations forced that engine off the market. The only upside was it had decent torque... it wasn't even reliable after all those years!
Occasionally see pizza delivery signs atop super duty trucks where I live.
In the rural midwest, it's extremely common to see dumpy trailers with one or two 75k new super duties parked outside.
I don't get it at all, and thought "well, maybe they didn't have a choice and needed it for work?" before realizing any old used truck would probably work as well(if not better).
I have to say it's a status symbol, a weird one at that. I'm more in awe of rat rods and fixed up old trucks than brand new ones, YMMV I guess.
There's a rural mindset some have that looks outside at the world not inside at the house.
A dumpy trailer where you sleep is fine as long as you have .. a good horse, freedom to roam, a powerful truck to tow horses, .. etc.
eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHJFfSmnCnY prefer the sky and land to a good house in the city.
Sure, status is a factor. But for people who do a lot of driving, having a nice car really benefits their quality of life. No one wants to spend hours every day in a miserable little penalty box.
This is very subjective. The cars people today call a "little penalty box" are easily equivalent or better to many of the luxury cars of the 1990s. Bluetooth, AC, ABS, backup camera. There's almost nothing that isn't required / standard. Plus they tend to be the efficient 35+ mpg cars.
Plenty of tech, but are the seats as comfortable?
I disagree relatively wholeheartedly. Beyond some absolute basic comforts (that I would argue have been well catered to in the last 25-odd years), it's mindset. Unfortunately mindset has a fair percentage of 'status' wrapped up in it.
Price of vehicle seems to have little bearing on the comfort of driving anymore, other than if you're tall and being shoved into something small like a Yaris (although at 6'4" my Saturn S-series wasn't bad at all). Cars seem to keep getting more aggravating to sit in, not less, and doubly so for "premium" stuff people like to buy. Manufacturers keep jamming what feel like racing seats into everything (everything has to have "racing" parts) and other things that make no sense at all for the task at hand, like enormous wheels with rubber band tires. It was way easier and more comfortable to log huge miles on older stuff like 90s and early 00's Chevy trucks (even the S10s) or a regular old Impala or Saturn as they were way, way more comfortable and not a persistent bloated irritation to drive.
Cars must be the textbook case of Stockholm syndrome. People keep buying Audi/BMW/Mercedes and European cars in general for god knows what reason (even though when they inevitably need service, it is always an expensive nightmare, among other big problems), they buy stuff that is functionally useless and stupid looking like CUVs (many of which which have less interior room than a Camry, burn more fuel and still ride and drive like ass), and have caused the market for full size body on frame trucks to turn completely on its head (hard to find anything other than pavement queen king ranch doodoo trucks that will cost you at least your first born son). This whole "it's shit if I don't pay a huge premium, and it's shit if it's not huge and loaded to the gills with useless shit you're never actually going to miss or use but will cost a small country's GDP to even flash to pair up when you need to R&R" is something that's probably one of life's great mysteries to me.
> problem is unchecked consumerism
Problem is if the US consumer had the “moral awakening” you propose (and to be clear you are claiming that basically we are in this situation due to the weak moral character of the average American) then coincidentally our entire economy would begin to crumble. It’s not just car loans, our entire economy works because of debt, and has for at least the last 20 years. The idea that nearly every one benefits financially from this behavior and yet we see this behavior at scale solely and coincidentally because of a sudden mass moral failing is a bit hard to believe.
Well said, but I would add that it seems reasonable if we take debt too far, it will indeed crumble.
I'm not sure we didn't pass that point before the pandemic, and decision-making since has not helped.
As if the car was ever only a utilitarian commodity at any point in its history. The car has always been a status symbol.
Electric vehicles eliminated the need for manufacturers to sell (usually small and cheap) efficient ICE cars in the US.
For years, CAFE regulations have meant that manufacturers must meet minimum fleet fuel economy averages or else pay fines. In order to sell more profitable but less fuel-efficient F-150s, Ford also needed to sell little Fiestas or Focuses. In order to sell Suburbans, Chevy also needed to sell Cavaliers or Sonics. But now that Ford can sell Mustang Mach-Es and Chevy can sell Blazer EVs for 50 or 60 grand AND get credit for something like 100 MPG equivalent, there's no longer any incentive for them to spend huge sums developing cheap cars that will net tiny profits (if any).
if you don't believe in market regulations, this is confirming evidence of the distortions of trying to regulate an open market.
If you believe in climate change, this is evidence of how the vested interest behind profit in cars manipulates the intent of the regulations, to continue to get what they want.
It's a bit fish/bicycle, but the point is, we wanted more people to drive smaller, cheaper, less polluting cars. We didn't want the car manufacturers to find ways of maximising sell, including boosting F150 and F250 class truck sales to mummies on the kindy run.
Sounds like something a functional Congress could address after the flaws in the legislation became evident. Then, they keep revising it as manufactures try to do anything but comply. If it costs the manufacturers engineering money to try to circumvent the intent of the regulation, they learn to follow the intent instead. It's not so much an argument against regulation as it is against a dysfunctional Congress. I don't think anyone was rooting for that anyway.
> It's a bit fish/bicycle, but the point is, we wanted more people to drive smaller, cheaper, less polluting cars. We didn't want the car manufacturers to find ways of maximising sell, including boosting F150 and F250 class truck sales to mummies on the kindy run.
Unfortunately, the whole thing wasn't built right for the goal. Setting the mpg bar lower for bigger footprint vehicles is on the one side realistic, but on the other side made it hard to build compliant small vehicles. Small trucks in particular disappeared; some say the market wasn't there, but annual sales of the Ford Ranger were pretty decent in 2005-2010 [1]. 2005 was more than the rest, but there were a couple facelifts, and the Chevy S-10 ended production in 2004, so there was probably some spillover from that. (The 2005-2012 Chevy Colorado isn't significantly bigger than the S-10 though). Post the mid 2010s, small trucks basically don't exist, even when small truck names are used. Supposedly Toyota and Subaru are going to bring one back, but we'll see if it happens.
Some sort of special small car class, with benefits, would be needed. Like the kei cars in Japan. Maybe not that small, and maybe not that small of an engine, but that idea of a smaller than normal footprint, but still highway capable, if only just. There is a federal 'low speed vehicle' thing, but the restriction to streets with speed limits 35 mph or less makes it hard to go anywhere in a lot of places. It's not a reasonable alternative to a regular car for most. There's also some recent push to formalize legal use of kei cars in many US states, but federal import restrictions mean they do have to be fairly old (or have expensive and destructive testing), which further restricts the market.
[1] https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/ford-ranger-sales-figures/
$25k ?!
The last car I bought cost just less than $12k USD new ( on the road including all taxes and fees) around 5 years ago.
I know inflation's been high, but not it's not been that high.
The US seems insulated from the downward pricing pressure of Chinese cars. In most of the rest of the world, you can get a Chinese car ~30% (by my estimate) cheaper than a European or American one. It'll probably have more options and additions, too. I'm not sure how they'd do on reliability or safety, but it's generally hard to compete with them. Some of them offer 1M kilometer 10-year warranties.
They don't mention the amount of mandatory additions to the car from government regulations. Obviously not the only factor but it's certainly a factor. Cars now have 6 to 8 airbags, backup cameras, more high strength steel, automatic breaking systems etc etc. I love the safety that those all bring, but it's not free.
> automatic breaking systems
Literal planned obsolescence!
Or just being BMW. They also break automatically. No need for government mandated feature.
Also a lot more complexity under the hood to meet mileage standards - CVT or 8 speed automatic transmissions, turbo chargers, stop-start tech, etc...
I cannot reply to each comment which mention "EU" or "Europe", so I write this one.
Why do you speak about EU/Europe as a whole? There is no such thing. I thought it is, but, now, when I moved to "Europe", I see that ti was illusion.
Prices are different across countries. Do you think Poland, Portugal and the Netherlands have same prices? HA! Compare prices in the Netherlands and its neighbor Belgium. I didn't compare prices for (new) cars, but I did for new motorcycles. Difference can be up to 20%. And it is two of three countries which are known as "Benelux", not two countries on different edges of EU.
Choice is difference between countries too, there are models which are present in one country and not in the orthers. Heck, even selection of a food is drastically different in two Lidls (two supermarkets of same chain) on different sides of Netherlands/Germany border in 10km vicinity!
Many people say that they see that almost all new cars they see are BYD & others — there is no BYD in Netherlands, for example. There is Lynk & Co (which is Volvo / Geely / Zeekr), and it's all of Chinese brands.
There is no such single entity as "Europe" or "EU". Different countries are very different in available goods, prices, taxes and regulations. Yes, there are global things, like GDPR or emission regulations (Euro 5/Euro 6), but still there are a plenty room for difference.
And even "single economic area" is illusion: you cannot simply register car or motorcycle bought in Portugal or Belgium in the Netherlands, you need to pay local VAT, local ecological taxes, etc. So no, there is no "lifehack to buy car or motorcycle in Belgium and save 20%.
This is all part of the continuing trend toward luxury - brands are abandoning the middle class and below, focusing on higher margins and lower volume - brands make more money, engage with easier buyers and have to work less. I don’t know how all this works in the end but it does seem to be a real trend.
Spending $25k on a car (if they exist) is just an insane thing to do in my opinion. In the UK we are quite lucky in that the used car market is very good. I always just buy a ~£1,000 diesel and run it into the ground, then rinse and repeat.
I think in 17 years of motoring I've spent around £5,500 in total on cars.
It is a shame people run them into the ground. If looked after and a bit of money (not a lot of money) spent they would work well for another decade or two.
Its more expensive with the cost of labour in the UK to keep a car going, especially once it starts needing welding. We apply a lot of salt to the roads in the winter so after 20 years most cars will need welding work.
Second hand cars are also cheaper in the UK compared to other countries because we're right hand drive so there aren't as many markets that they can be exported to second hand.
I live in the UK. Cars aren't that cheap (at least for something half decent), labour costs are dependant on what is being done. While the roads do get salted, rust is more dependant on the vehicle model. Also there are preventative measures you can take that aren't that expensive again rust.
I found this video informative about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjMyx24pxTo
He's a second hand car dealer in Derbyshire and has experience of selling cars in Spain and in California.
Aka how to shoot yourself in the foot and hand over the market to Chinese manufacturer. In Europe, only Renault created a low cost brand (Dacia).
Once chinese brands become commonplace everywhere, tradional carmakers will have a hard time taking back market share. In Europe they closed or are closing the last HCOL factories, killing any remaining brand loyalty.
Yeah, a better title for the article is how western automakers are going to go extinct. Sure the US might decide to block Chinese cars (apparently the EU isn't), but they can't force the rest of the world to buy $65,000 American built cars when the alternatives are less than 1/3rd of that price.
A larger question is how much the cheap Chinese cars are dependent on a long chain of government subsidies from the mines to the local infrastructure and what happens when China's investment driven growth cycle comes to an end. If the solar panels are any comparison, the Chinese automakers are losing a lot of money despite grandiose subsidies.
The answer to your question is less and less every year with only sales tax exemption remaining as the greatest support provided.
That support did total some US $231 billion over 14 years from 2009 through until 2023.
You can see more at: https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/chinese-ev-dil... (June 2024)
There are at least two different ways to interpret the data on industrial policy support for EV makers.
China’s trading partners could point to 15 years of sustained regulatory and financial support for domestic producers, which has fundamentally altered the playing field to make it much harder for others to compete in China or anywhere else where Chinese EVs are sold.
By contrast, defenders of China could point out that the data show that subsidies as a percentage of total sales have declined substantially, from over 40% in the early years to only 11.4% in 2023, which reflects a pattern in line with heavier support for infant industries, then a gradual reduction as they mature.
In addition, they could note that the average support per vehicle has fallen from $13,860 in 2018 to just under $4,800 in 2023, which is less than the $7,500 credit that goes to buyers of qualifying vehicles as part of the U.S.’s Inflation Reduction Act.
> These estimates reflect the combination of five kinds of support: nationally approved buyer rebates, exemption from the 10% sales tax, government funding for infrastructure (primarily charging poles), R&D programs for EV makers, and government procurement of EVs.
The first two (and maybe part of the fourth) I can understand, but the rest are too much of a strech to count as a government subsidy. Every government builds roads and other car-related infrastructure. Every government purchases vehicles for its own use. Every government subsidizes R&D in new fields.
There are a growing number of electrical cars priced below 25K euro in the EU and a few below 20K even. I mention electrical cars because that's where all the growth is. Electrical cars are now becoming cheaper than the cheapest ICE cars. You mentioned Dacia. VW is bringing out the ID2 next year. There's a few Stellantis models from e.g. Citroen. And of course BYD is now selling cheap cars in the EU as well. And those are just the vaguely European cars (lots of Chinese components involved). Japanese, Korean, and Chinese manufacturers are also growing their EV market here. Notably absent (except for a handful of Ford compliance cars and Tesla) are US manufacturers.
The article is specifically about the US market, which because of the tariff situation is becoming highly distorted. The local producers are making what are increasingly US only models that can't really compete internationally. This excludes mass produced small cars because they can't do them competitively any more as that would require high volumes and export markets. But mostly US car makers are struggling with export markets. There are a few exceptions to this of course.
In China, the competition is pretty brutal right now and it's starting to spill over to other markets. That's all about budget cars and redefining what a budget car actually is. Any export markets where US manufacturers still have any ambitions are being affected by this. BYD and other Chinese manufacturers are gaining market share (at the cost of other manufacturers) all over Asia, Central and South America, Australia, Africa, Europe, etc. Even Mexico and Canada are not off limits and these are the primary export markets for GM and Ford.
Small cars are booming everywhere. Except the US.
> In Europe, only Renault created a low cost brand (Dacia).
Dacia did force other european auto makers to maintain at least one low cost ish model. Not an entire brand but still. Sometimes just for the eastern european market. Skoda Rapid comes to mind.
But even Dacia is succumbing to the auto manufacturer mindset. Every year the models get larger, more default features are added and the cars get more expensive.
You can't buy a BYD in Canada, and all the current EVs are too expensive. It's better to keep buying old clunkers.
The sad thing is it'll be a slow death. As American / German / Japanese still hold cultural cachet over Chinese/ Vietnamese cars, the companies will delude themselves into going off a cliff till a new gen comes and doesn't care about that cachet and just cares about price
I don't know. Lately the basic expectation even for Temu Chinesium it to work and work well. So I have been taking chances on bigger and bigger ticket items that are made in china and are of good quality for a fraction of the price of the western things. Made in China doesn't carry such big stigma lately. So I don't think that the headwinds toward them (unlike everything изделано в СССР) are that strong. I mean can't be worse than a Renault.
Another financial point with impact on birth rates and demographics.
It is now very difficult (I can count with my fingers) to find a <100k car that can have 3 child seats in a row. Or that can sit 7 people that is not a SUV pedestrian child killer.
welp, guess my corolla needs to last until I die. I spent about $9k usd (in australia though) on it second hand pre covid and I'm just gobsmacked at the prices of vehciles now even years post covid. I make good coin and I just can't see how non-"enthusiasts" can justify spending so much money on their vehicle. there are houses in my suburb with 3-4 of these expensive, new model cars out front.
Cars are the worst spending many, perhaps most people make.
It's remarkable in Australia how many people are borrowing and paying much more for them as well.
Driving a Corolla, Mazda 2, Kia Rio or something can save so much money.
These days these are remarkably good cars too.
One downside in the US of driving a small car now is considerably more lethal in a crash with larger vehicles.
I drive a Mazda 3 and sometimes it feels like a bicycle compared to some of the enormous SUV and overdone trucks.
If Australia is like the US, all those cars are leases or debt-financed
It is. From Australia's largest Toyota dealer I know that ~70% of new car sales are financed. A proportion of the rest would be funded by home equity but that is harder to measure.
An interesting trend that I've heard from multiple dealership (friends and family) - the number of people being rejected for financing has dramatically increased in the past 12 months. There are some dealership areas now where a third of applicants are being turned down.
Gotta spend all that FIFO money on something, and a new car makes them feel good about their shitty FIFO situation.
in 2021 my beloved Honda Fit got totaled. I bought it new in 09 and only had 80K miles on it. They don't sell new ones in North America any more. So I bought a Kia Rio. They don't make those any more. I don't really like it but with the current chaos in the economy I'm not trading it in any time soon.
I was in the UK for the first time last month and was struck by how many hatchbacks and sedans they have that we don't in North America.
The dwindling of small hatchbacks in the US is so disappointing it’s difficult to put into words. They were the perfect little suburb grocery grabbers, and now you can’t buy them without overpaying for a used one. The next best thing is a sedan that’s longer and harder to maneuver and park despite having markedly worse cargo space and utility, and to get a hatch (not just a liftback) you’re forced into crossovers/SUVs which carry a chunky price premium.
What I wouldn’t do to bring the Fit and Yaris hatch back to the US market.
If you want AWD a crosstrek or impreza are good little hatchbacks, ignore the "cross" in the name, its much more hatchback than it is a mini-SUV. It is sad that so many of the other little hatchbacks are gone (ex. fit, vibe, etc).
You can buy a Subaru Impreza hatchback.
the impreza's feels long enough that it is more of a "wagon" than a "hatchback"
The UK is heading down the same path, the best selling car used to be the Ford Fiesta but it has been discontinued now. VW have dropped the Up. Skoda aren't replacing the current Fabia. The general trend is towards bigger SUV's.
The second hand market isn't great because we stopped making cars during Covid so there is a dearth of four/five year old models.
The only light at the end of the tunnel is EV's are now comparable to their ICE equivalents price wise.
There's a load of really good deals on EVs at the moment from what I've seen, I'm guessing cars coming off corporate lease.
From https://www.cinch.co.uk/used-cars/electric-fuel-type?fromYea... there seems to be quite a lot of 2022+ EVs available for ~£10k with relatively low mileages.
So if you've got space for a home charger, those could be pretty good deals.
And it's even more ridiculous because we don't even have the space for these things. People driving round in these monstrosities, struggling down narrow lanes or into parking spaces. Is nobody able to see further than their nose? What are you going to do when everyone has one? I suppose demand bigger roads, more parking etc. And who's going to pay for that? A classic tragedy of the commons.
The closest Honda is probably what I replaced my 2007 Fit with: the hatchback Civic. It's a little longer, and has less usable cargo height, but otherwise is similar enough. (It tolerates my height better too.) Also available in fun, fast versions.
The biggest flaw of Civics (even the latest model) is the lack of height adjustment for the front passenger seat.
The closest thing to affordable and comfortable I could find this past year after maintenance costs pilling up on my ‘15 Ford Fiesta (that I got for a staggering $14k post college) was a Honda HRV Sport. Has all the basics, incredible sensing system, lots of space decent gas mileage and drives well at around 28k in Ohio. My partner has an Accord and honestly its a better car. Incredibly good gas mileage, reliable, perfect for an A to B person that doesnt want to worry about their car.
Car manufacturers that cannot build affordable cars are going extinct. 12000$ for a new electric car in China. That is the real competition.
I don't care about the prestige of owning a car, it is a utility for me that will never be worth 60000$. You can pay me 500000$ yearly and I would reconsider.
> 12000$ for a new electric car in China. That is the real competition.
And then people cry when their entire industry is moved overseas...
I get that they dump loans and the government allows for subsidies. But on the other hand car manufacturers already outsourced everything they could to other countries for larger profit margins anyway.
They act no different than companies like Apple or Google. So at least as a customer I need to profit from that too, I have no interest of paying large margins for nothing.
Why should only companies profit from cheap labor?
Dont know if this is available in US and Europe markets but I would consider Mahindra XEV 9e, BE 6E and BE 9E to be in the $25k segment and afaik, they are the best in the class for that price point ( in terms of looks and maybe even features ). I dont know if these are being exported out of India right now, but they definitely should be hitting the US and UK markets sometime soon.
In 2004 my parents bought a brand new Skoda Fabia with 40kW engine (around 50hp). The car was pretty basic (no AC, no display etc.) and small, but it served our family of 4 for long time (still does!). The cost was 12.000 Euros. Nowadays the same car starts at 20.000 Euros.
To be fair that's with 20 years of inflation (roughly 1.55x since 2004, €18,600 today), and that car today would have 90+bhp. I'm ignoring things like head unit/ac because they're things you'd probably rather not have and not pay for by the sounds of it.
I wonder if there's a business model in leasing cars from Mexico to Americans and swapping around once a year to get around the problem of having Mexican plates. Then you can get Chinese cars into America.
This made me laugh out loud thank you. They will clamp down on this so fast though. If its something that will help the average joe it will never get done but something like this threatens leadership so it will get shut down in record time.
If theres any Chinese entrepreneurs that have a line into their EV companies reading this, use some of that China speed and get on this now. You might as well squeeze out a little profit before they clamp it down! :D
With rebates a 20,000 truck. Who knows what it will cost when it actually comes out. But I love the concept.
A car like this in China would cost $12k
No rebates
US automakers are so ridiculously far behind
it’s a shame that they’re spending so much of their capital on manufacturer side customizability. An electric vehicle is a firmware update away from being a stick welder already; make the truck one way and ship it with a pair of jumper cables, a box of 6011, and a pallet of tube steel.
Outside of having what amounts to a couple of shells and removable seats that can be mounted to the box (and a removable rear panel from the cab to join them to create a single 'interior' when using them), the majority of their BTO options are really basic module swaps where most of the complexity comes from managing inventory of the various SKUs than anything else.
As somebody with a '99 Ford Ranger, the Slate is incredibly appealing as nearly every other manufacturer has completely abandoned the compact pickup market; although it has the same issue that the Ford Maverick and Honda Ridgeline do, it's a unibody design. If they actually launch I may end up getting one if they release some BTO options to slot a double-din mount and door-mounted speakers in to handle runs to the hardware store and towing lighter loads on paved roads, but I really wish somebody would do a compact frame-on-body pickup again for those of us that drive poorly maintained dirt roads in forested/mountainous terrain where some body damage (and thus, the cheaper repair costs associated with body-on-frame designs are nice to have) is always lurking around the corner.
[Seriously, I understand the difficulties of batteries and such with EV's and that's likely part of why the Slate is designed this way. But, for people like me who actually need a pickup to do pickup things, not haul groceries, it's frustrating when you're accustomed to being able to replace a side-panel on the box for less than your insurance deductible if something falls on it. And that's without even bringing up the obvious disadvantages when it comes to towing and payload capacity.]
> Seriously, I understand the difficulties of batteries and such with EV's and that's likely part of why the Slate is designed this way.
In 2000, Ford had an EV Ranger, and Chevy had an EV S-10. Neither with great range, of course. It should be easier to do with modern batteries. Attach the batteries to the frame under the bed, put the bed on top, all engineering problems solved.
Huh? I thought the Slate body panels are fiber reinforced Polypropylene, basically a cheaper somewhat less intense performance sibling of that ultra tough fiber reinforced nylon that power tools are made of since about that battery tool manufacturer war really took off?
Yeah, there's a frame underneath, but the panel itself shouldn't even really care about tanking a shopping card, it's main weakness is how soft the PP is to sharp objects...
Also, not a gigantic truck, and no infotainment (or even powered windows!) It'd be a manual transmission if it wasn't an EV.
> or even powered windows!
An exclamation mark for lacking powered windows? Oh the humanity!
I'm starting to see the problem.
An exclamation mark because the feature is cheap and omnipresent, not because of... impact, or whatever you're reading into it.
It's surprising. An exclamation mark makes sense.
It’s one more thing I’d have to spend an afternoon fixing eventually.
Fair cop. I'll take that.
Note that those rebates would be entirely killed under the current Trump budget bill [1], so we'll see what happens.
I also love the concept, it's a bunch of things I've been looking for but unable to find in the US market. The final price/availability as well as repairability are going to be the dealmakers.
[1] https://electrek.co/2025/06/28/republicans-are-trying-kill-7...
The sweet spot has always been a 1 year old used car with low miles. There’s lots of those for less than or about $25k. Honda, Toyota, and Mazda have models in those ranges that will easily last a decade.
If you don’t drive much yourself, “low miles” after a couple years doesn’t matter quite as much. e.g. I bought my car at a couple years old with 40k miles already, but in the following twelve years I’ve only run it up to about 115k miles, so I’ve turned it from a “high-mileage two-year-old car” into a “low-mileage 14-year-old car”.
Even better, a 3 year old used car with low miles.
In 2016 I picked up a 2013 320i Sport w/ 22k miles on the clock for $18.5k. The sticker on the car was just over $36k. I did have to fly to a relatively remote town (Ogden Utah) and drive it home to San Diego, so that was an extra $320 for the plane ticket/shuttle/gas and 14 hours out of a saturday.
It was almost out of warranty, so pre-purchase I paid a local shop $110 to do a similar inspection to what BMW does for CPO and it only needed brake pads. Aside from the brake pads and scheduled maintenance, eventually replaced the tires, so about $2000 in maintenance over that period. Sold it for $14.5k w/ 50k on the clock 6 years later.
Could have held onto it much longer but was eager to do the nomad thing as covid was clearing up.
I looked into that when I was buying a car in 2020 and I found the price discount wasnt nearly as big as I thought it was going to be plus the car was out of warranty plus all the parts now had 10k miles of wear on them. A new set of tires is like $1200. I was able to spend a few grand more for a brand new car of the same model.
Used car prices went through the roof in 2020-2022 for pandemic-related reasons, so trying to take any lesson from that era is unhelpful.
It can also depend on the popularity of a given car in a particular area. In 2012 we wanted to buy a lightly used Honda Fit, which were quite popular in our city. But, possibly because of that popularity, the prices of used Fits weren't that much less than a new one, so we ended up getting a new one instead.
It might be a German car thing, as the value drops precipitously once it's close to out of warranty. There were barely any savings on cars that were within a year old, whereas I was able to get something for half sticker that was nearly the same vehicle.
I've bought a couple of those and never again. They're usually former rental cars and people best the shit out of them. I've had so many stupid things break
I bought a 1 year old used model and it's worked for me for 10 years now. Ymmv. Maybe worth getting a mechanic to look before buying
1 year old used cars are inevitably going to get more expensive as new cars get more expensive (or cheaper new cars cease being made)
Why would anyone sell a good car with one year old and low mileage? It's a lottery ticket: it could go well, or the car might be already damaged. I personally know a bunch of people that bought second hand and are "my car is only a couple of years old, and I found the engine / gearbox / frame is damaged. Lets repair it barely and sell it ASAP to recover some money". But weirdly, they go to the second hand market again, thinking they are the only smart ones doing that. They all know a mechanic that ensures the car is OK, just like they did with the first one.
I was very disappointed when searching the used car market for cars with low mileage, only to found they are almost as pricey as new but I don't know how they have been taken care of. A lot of them come from the rental business. I paid a bit premium (2K or so) for my new-zero-kilometer car, and after 6 years is as good as new, as it is cared like a baby.
We don't want affordable Chinese EVs.
That's the answer here. They can build cars better, cheaper, faster than we can.
Instead Ford wants to sell a 80k SUPER F-250 BIG MANN TRUCK. All for what, you to drive 10 minutes to Walmart, buy groceries and drive back.
The best car is the one you don't own. No payments, insurance, parking tickets.
Unfortunately most American cities are centered around driving. So much money , and space wasted on these multi ton metal boxes. In many places most(much) of the city is literally just parking spaces.
We do want affordable Chinese EVs, the same way we want Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Kia, Hyundai, Subaru (all among the best selling auto manufacturers in the USA every year). You can't buy them because the government and domestic car companies don't want you to.
I have never seen the bed of a Cybertruck.
Not a dig at the vehicle; that's a different thing. Rather, I notice that this truck doesn't seem to spend much time as a, ya know, truck.
With other trucks it's less obvious because they don't have a built in bed cover. I suspect many of them also spent very little time trucking, at least here in this suburb. Perhaps it's different in more agricultural areas.
I'm in an agricultural area, have been in and around agriculture and mining for many decades, I can't see anyone buying a cybertruck for any practical reason.
I've seen the offroad performance videos, the cybertruck isn't anything to write home about wrt to either ground clearance or scrabble factor (broken road hill climbing, etc).
Other cheaper vehicles perform as well or better.
The tray area is a nightmare, three side access to tools is good, totally flat tray backs are good, side rails for tie downs are good, ability to custom fit racks for carrying stuff (long lumber, or glass and or panels, etc), etc. are all the kinds of practical choices that dictate a practical utility purchase .. none of these are things at which the cybertruck shines.
An intelligent flatbed setup (what I think the Australians call "trays") is usually way better than a regular bed (barring maybe aerodynamics). A good Bradford or Circle D flatbed (as examples) can take way, way more punishment than a regular bed, and it's real easy to bring a forklift up and load pallets on the side, add boxes or tie downs, etc. One major reason you don't see a lot of them in the states is that many insurers (if you tell them you've put an flatbed on -- even a pretty aluminum one on a mini truck) will automatically assume the truck is being used in some sort of revenue service, and charge you significantly more expensive commercial rates no matter what you tell them.
One of our favourite bits of kit is a twin axle trailer my father built back in the 1970s.
It's got slaved brakes (electrical now, once hydraulic), Hayman-Reese family anti sway bars, uprights and rings on the tow arms to hold gas bottles and spare tyres, and a flat bed.
The smart setup there is removable side and back walls to convert between flat tray and shallow box with sides, and a removable hood with three gull wing doors (so that the tray is a lockable and weather proof space (useful for camping). It's easy to change configuration between the three states.
Our prefered vehicle of choice is a four door family sedan with boot, the trailer can be added for those odd two tonne loads of manure, gravel, straw, sand, etc that get carted about.
Everything else starts getting into dedicated task vehicles - tractors, harveters, chase trucks, etc. The last thing we acquired was an ex military twelve tonne truck with shoulder high tyres on it and enough clearance for pre schoolers to walk under .. it can climb hills, waddle across gullies, and carry 5 tonne of water for fire control (the reason for purchase and fitting).
I live in suburbs between San Jose and. San Francisco and see a few Cybertrucks in single family home driveways and apartment parking lots - it feels more like a status symbol of some kind, see a lot more of other pickup trucks, though more common in less affluent areas.
I've only ever seen one in that mocking picture of trying to fit a motorcycle in it vs. a Kei truck. I still reserve my full judgment though for if I ever get to have extended personal time with one, though I have been soured on the whole thing. The concept was cooler than the final product for sure.
I go back and forth on how much weight to give the "not being used for truck stuff" criticism. (Maybe because I own a small 2006 Ranger that, while sometimes being used for truck stuff, is mostly used for stuff any vehicle can do. I also put on a cheap bed cover for the first time last week...) I think I'm more partial to the "not ever used for truck stuff" criticism -- that makes it more similar to buying powerful PC hardware. If you aren't ever making use of it, what's the point? But if you only use it from time to time, that seems totally fine. Optionality is generally good, especially when you actually use the options, but of course there's a cost-benefit analysis people don't seem to make with modern car financing.
I'd like to see a cybertruck towing a camper in the wild, as that seems to be a thing some of my older relatives do with their big trucks.
I saw both a Rivian and a Cybertruck at an RV park just a month ago. No idea what kind of range they get towing but I was impressed someone was actually using them as real trucks. The vast majority of vehicles were three-quarter-ton or better trucks.
Usually I would consider such a large truck to be wasteful, but because it's electric you aren't really burning up a ton of extra fuel.
This is such an odd statement. Just because it's electric doesn't mean there's no concept of efficiency.
Large EVs are pretty silly for exactly that efficiency reason - they may have "400" miles of range, but they do so by packing the biggest possible battery which weighs a ton, wasting even more range per kilowatt-hour beyond the worse aerodynamics.
And then because the battery is so massive, it takes way longer to charge for the same range, so now you need a higher current charger at home and maybe even need to upgrade your home electric service instead of just using a standard 15A circuit to top up a small EV every night enough for a typical day's commute.
It's not that there is no concept of efficiency, it's that an electric car gets a free 2x reduction in emissions.
And sure you can't use a normal plug very well, whatever. Even without any amp increase, going up to 240 volts will let you charge up that commute and more.
We drive an F250, and live in San Francisco.
We hardly put any miles on it (maybe 15k a year). To get around locally we ride our bikes mostly here in the city.
We do use it for our small business (essential) and also to to a large RV trailer which we use to live in 2-4 months a year visiting loved ones and just decompressing.
The things people don't usually talk about is the total cost of ownership.
One can buy a new F250 diesel for $80k, drive it for 6 years towing heavy loads and working hard. And sellnit for more than half what they paid for it. During that time the only costs are routine maintenance, no major repair bills.
One can also buy a luxury car or SUV, say a BMW, for the same price and 6 years later it is most certainly not worth half what they paid for it, and they typically paid tens of thousands in repair costs.
The next argument people make is that a big truck is inefficient. The simple fact is my F250 diesel gets the same as your BMW M3. But it can be used for work, and is.
Financially, I would argue that it makes no sense to buy a new vehicle above $50k that isn't a diesel pickup.
You don't have to justify your personal situation to me.
If you feel like buying a 80k truck, that's cool.
The issue with America is the vast majority of truck buyers really can't afford an 80k truck.
This isn't the best source, but it says here the average truck buyer is only making 82k or so.
https://www.myautoconcepts.com/blogdetails?id=4049
From experience talking to friends and sales people plenty of folks with 60 to 80k incomes find themselves in 50k plus vehicles.
I suspect for the majority of truck buyers, if credit wasn't as easily available, they'd find alternatives.
The only reason the typical person can buy an 80k truck is they can get a loan.
Let's say their was a hypothetical car loan limit of 1/4th of your annual income. A lot of people would find out really fast they don't need a massive truck.
Manufacturers would in turn adjust accordingly. A 15k car, maybe without a bunch of touch screens, is possible.
This is probably why cars are cheaper in China, credit isn't as available.
> Let's say their was a hypothetical car loan limit of 1/4th of your annual income. A lot of people would find out really fast they don't need a massive truck.
So much this. Similar "unbounded" pressure on student loans / tuition. It keeps going up because students are able to get loans.
Comparing the average income around here to MSRP of vehicles I see around here and it's clear that a lot of people are driving around in something that approximates a second mortgage!
Another (possibly bigger) reason cars are cheaper in China is because their government subsidizes the heck out of BYD and the likes. It would be like if Tesla didn’t have to pay anything to build their factories.
Not sure if this is a tongue in cheek joke, but Tesla has benefited massively from federal subsidies as well as local dog and pony shows of small municipal factory sites.
It wasn’t a joke, but I do see your point. US subsidies for EVs are massive as well. I guess I just hadn’t dug into the numbers. Now I’m not sure who gives more subsidies, the US or China.
The federal tax credit in the US is much higher than the Chinese equivalent it appears. But the factory and R&D subsidies are much harder to compute.
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/podcast/knowledge-at-wha...
We subsidize our auto industry too.
Imagine if we let in the Chinese EVs stacked with the tax credit, you could get a car for 5000$ or less.
>>"The issue with America is the vast majority of truck buyers really can't afford an 80k truck."
I would say that's not what matters in this discussion (comparing trucks vs cars).
I would also say the same sentence is true for cars, most Americans can't afford 80k cars.
What I am saying is you are not accurate. Most trucks in the US are not 80k trucks bought by suburban folks to buy groceries in. Most trucks are bought by fleets, by small businesses, etc. They're the standard white fleet specs, not the high end trucks. They're bought by farmers, ranchers and drywallers. Most.
Just because you don't hang around in those circles and only see your suburban neighbors and their trucks doesn't mean that's the overall trend.
Everything you highlight here is also true for cars, and worse even.
I'm not justifying anything, I don't owe you $%&#, I am saying you are wrong and giving evidence as to why.
> We hardly put any miles on it (maybe 15k a year)
That's a little more than the average American drives per year.
[flagged]
> "absolutely prat"
Please cut out swipes like this in HN comments, it's against the guidelines.
>>"absolutely prat"
Why the personal insult? Mods is this ok per HN policy?
I use and need it for work, yes big heavy things also need to be done in cities too. I noted this in my original comment. It's very tacky to personally insult a working person for the tools of their trade. You don't like the fact that a plumber needs a plumbing truck? How would a window installer get the windows to the jobsite? How do you bring diesel engines to install in their final locations?
And you are absolutely wrong on the repair of BMWs and especially Audis. Just look at used cars for those brands from a few years ago. You are right on maintenance, but I'm talking about repairs. Things breaking and needing replacement or repair. Anyone who has owned those brands will tell you. Also part prices are a big difference.
If you want a small car buy a Carolla, Camry or a Lexus. I'm not saying buy a big truck.
I'm saying it makes no sense to buy a vehicle over $50k that isn't a diesel pickup, except for "comfort" or "status".
If you don't need one for work, then buy a Camry. They're really nice.
They weren't personally insulting you, they were describing antisocial behavior generally, and reasons why people might be prejudiced against drivers of large trucks.
Prior to that comment, you hadn't said anything indicating you personally partook in that antisocial behavior.
>"they were describing antisocial behavior generally"
Well if they're so fucking social, they should start with rich who waste and pollute way way more and buy governments outright.
You know what, I was out of line with that language. My apologies.
Others are right, I intended to imply "the vibe of the person" you expect when you see an F-250 in a city where even Civic park up on the curb to avoid being clipped. And that being a social cost that any Joe/Jane/Jordan pays in that situation.
Regardless, I'm not really trying to defend myself, just apologize. It was wrong of me and that choice of language was dumb, careless, inflammatory, and just plain rude.
> 2-4 months a year visiting loved ones and just decompressing
Although I agree that Trucks are not needed by majority of the people that buy them in the US. The reason for high truck prices is 25% tariff on imported trucks for the last 50 years ie lack of competition.
Cars are a reflection of ones personality here in the Midwest. Some grow out of it or never subscribe to the mentality. It's certainly cheaper to bicycle, weather and health permitting.
Though car driving and ownership are a big cultural phenomenon, especially among men 18-50.
>Weather and health permitting
Environment as well. In terms of "safety" it is unfortunately very risky to bike (or even walk) in my area due to the sprawling roads everywhere. Drivers don't look out for anything other than large boxes, and I've quickly had way too many close calls to consider it useful.
Depends on the man, I’ll admit in my early twenties I meet a few partners by being car free.
I legit took a girl home after I asked her if she knew why the train was late.
In Amsterdam at least one of the train stations has a piano. It becomes a 3rd place were people can make friends and socialize.
We don’t have many 3rd places in the US where you can exist without spending money.
A couple months ago I was sad to see the piano in Hilversum station had been badly vandalized. I assumed that was the end of that.
Yesterday I was delighted to see a nice new piano in its place.
Public transportation is seen as only a thing for children and/or the poor, at least in too many of my circles.
Politicians and the public don't seem willing to invest to overcome the chicken and egg problem. Doesn't help that the legacy transport we do have is neglected, further harming it's reputation.
It is very interesting to read these threads as someone who doesn't live in the states.
Do you have example of places with density similar to US where public transport works well? Australia has some in urban centres, but otherwise car centric. Same in NZ. Elecric bus to my place costs 8x more than driving EV (before it was taxed)
The density issue isn't country wide, but about metro areas. See Spain: If you look at the entire country and divide by population, it looks like the one of the least dense countries in Europe. But what if instead we look at where people live? Get the population density of the square kilometer where each person lives, and divide by number of people, so completely empty space doesn't count for anything. Then you see Spaniards live in areas denser than Liechtenstein. And guess what? Spain has top notch public transport, including high speed rail, because every endpoint is dense. I am right now sitting in a town, population around 100k, with higher population density than New York's Upper East side. We don't even have that much public transport, because only the elderly and the disabled need it, given that I can be on any given edge of town by walking 2 kms. In your typical US suburb, that gets you nowhere.
So it's not country density, but population center density. Single family homes with yards and individual garages make public transport pretty bad, as the catchment rates of each stop just don't have enough people. Just put the people closer together, and have more farmland/forest around the town.
California has only a slightly lower population density than France. France has 27,000km of operating passenger rail tracks, California 2,600km (similar to Ireland, a country of 5 million people not noted for its public transport, with a lower population density than California).
This is a weird form of American exceptionalism where people insist that the US can't have the nice things that all other rich countries have, because Density. And this might even be true if you're talking about, say, Wyoming. But it absolutely isn't an excuse for places like California or Florida.
It’s not public transport but I live in a single family home in a town of 60,000 people and 70% of trips are made by bikes.
900 or so people per square km.
To give a random comparison (because I know it well) Sacramento has a density of 2000 per square km and far, far worse transportation.
Whilst I can spiel off complaints, public transport in Australia gets my kid to and from school everyday, and myself to and from work in two different cities, everyday, without being late. (When the union isn't striking).
It does seem to work.
How do you get to train station?
Not to whom you're directing your question, but I drive the short distance to the car park at the interchange/station, then catch the bus the long distance to the city.
It's a great setup, and/but the very specific infrastructure[0] that I use only services maybe a quarter of the city's mid-suburbia. There's other public transport that services plenty of the rest though.
Doxxing myself here, but anyway: [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-Bahn_Busway
We have these around Auckland. Parking fills up 100% before 7AM.
Australia kind of gives you the choice. The inner city areas have great PT, great public spaces and some awesome outdoor walkable retail/food streets. But then you've also got the outer suburbs which is a hellscape similar to the US.
It's also not that expensive to rent inner city or buy an apartment. The outer suburbs mostly exist because people have a mentality of invest in land at any cost, even if it means living in a wasteland and commuting 3 hours a day.
ChatGPT says it's either only 5.6% or 27% (which is pretty good) for Sydney.
Which tells you that ChatGPT is essentially useless.
Like, why post this? The difference between the two figures is so vast as to be pointless, and it likely just made them up anyway. This is something that you can actually look up.
I can hear street racing noises from a highway three miles away! I used to think it was just a few blocks away because I could hear it but I looked at a map. A few people install aftermarket exhausts/noise makers critics call "fart cans." After a recent police crackdown the amount of racing noise at night decreased greatly.
I make pretty good tech money and I can’t imagine spending that much on a car. It would be cheaper to uber everywhere I went.
Likewise - it's funny to me that $25,000 is cited as an "affordable" price for a car, when that's almost double what I spent on the most expensive car I've ever owned (a Land Rover Discovery II, which was a lovely machine). I cannot imagine what it would feel like to look at a $60,000 price tag and think, "yes, this would be a sensible use of money".
Weren't they almost 60k in 2025 dollars when they were new?
I suppose they were, but mine was a 2001 model and I bought it in 2007.
i am still fine in my used 2012 12k prius.
Man I felt bad spending $5k to swap out my used corolla for a used highlander.
$60,000 is a sensible use of money because the car company investors want their ever-increasing profits.
I've done the math a few times and it just makes no sense to own a car for me. Public transport is the fastest way to get to work, and for everything else I can uber every time PT isn't the best option and still come out cheaper than buying the most budget new car.
I've been watching WheelsBoy youtube channel a lot, he covers Chinese cars in China: https://www.youtube.com/@Wheelsboy - I don't know if this is the best source, but it's been eye opening to watch.
F-450 King Ranch Super Deluxe.. all made from plastic and guaranteed not to last longer than 8 years. Most engines of new vehicles are sleeved and cannot be rebuilt in the spirit of designed for manufacturing and profits > designed for durability.
Yep. Then add in all the regulatory systems. DEF, EGR, Catalytic Converter, Turbo, 10 speed transmissions. They're all fragile and fall out of warranty coverage easily.
RAM is apparently going to use plastic control arms in it's new vehicles.
> We don't want affordable Chinese EVs.
The US wants them so much that it requires 100% tariffs to keep them off the market.
I do want cheap Chinese EVs. I can't buy them because of government regulation.
I'd prefer to have cheap U.S. cars ... but I suspect we won't seem them until the threat of cheap Chinese cars becomes a reality.
there are companies like slate auto trying this model in the USA, but who knows how that will play out.
You're not wrong, but I think there's another factor, too. (And I drive a 2017 F150)
I would love to sell my truck and get something smaller. But I just got a repair estimate of almost $2500 to replace the from facing camera in my wife's Odyssey, and the Bluetooth stack in my truck has never really worked properly for phone calls. With cars becoming increasingly. "Software defined vehicles" I don't feel comfortable purchasing a $50k+ car that might have software bugs, or may not be supported for over 5-10yrs. I'm currently thinking very seriously that the best options are either to buy used or to lease.
Moreover, I'm thinking the overall percentage of private vehicles that are leased is going to continue to increase as time moves on, until the big mfrs are essentially acting as huge rental fleet operators.
2016 F-150 here…just keep it. At this point I’m going to run mine into the ground. No way I would spend whatever Ford is asking for nowadays for a new one.
I’ve got a used lightning, with a 1500 ram and a 1500 gmc before that. The Ford is by far the best truck we’ve owned.
In fact, the other two were so unreliable and underpowered that I’ll never buy a GM or Stellantis (chrysler/dodge/ram/fiat) product again.
Anyway, definitely hold onto the 2016/17 Fords vs switching brands. I’ve driven lower trim line Fords slightly older than that, and they were also way ahead of the newer GM and Ram trucks that we had.
I'm always a little surprised anyone buys American cars at all. For a while they used to make larger trucks than anyone else did but even that's not really the case anymore, it's all just overpriced garbage with a popular brand.
> comment about how a non-american country has a better approach
> male ego/phalus comment
> car-centric cities
> "N-ton metal box"
I'm 1 square away from a Strong Towns reader bingo. Do you happen to know who invented the concept of jaywalking?
[dead]
> We don't want affordable Chinese EVs.
If that was true it wouldn't be illegal to sell them.
Regulations prevent the sale of small, cheap trucks in the US. I'm so sick of "BIG MANN TRUCK" being blamed on ego. The kind small basic of truck you used to be able to buy just doesn't exist any more and it's been regulated out of existence. The Maverick doesn't even stand-in very well for this and Ford can barely keep up with the demand.
The article compares 2025 prices to 2019 prices. We've had high inflation building upon high inflation for the past several years, so I'm not shocked that prices are higher. We might as well ask where the $1 menu went at fast food restaurants. Yesterday's prices are long gone.
In 2014 I got a very nice and very basic brand new sedan for about $14k. That's not so long ago, but the car market in the US seems to get worse every year. (cost, newer models are bloated and overly-expensive, etc.) My only advice would be to buy now (ideally something used) since I can only imagine things will be even worse in a few years.
Yup, we bought a new base model Corolla in 2016 and there’s no sensible way to upgrade or get something nicer. We put 70k miles on it in 9 years. We’ve looked into upgrading more than once, we could easily afford it, but anything that would be a true upgrade (bigger and nicer) is just such a ridiculous waste of money given how inflated car prices have been since Covid. Add to that that the nicer car will then also be much more expensive to keep on the road…and it just makes no sense.
I am pretty sure these cars still exist in Japan at roughly the same price point. I'm not talking about kei cars, either.
I was in the market looking for a used SUV for my wife to haul around our kids last year. Dealing with dealers who wouldn't budge even a few hundred off the inflated listing prices, the interest rates on financing and then the insane insurance costs was not pleasant. I have an old Subaru beater that I was also thinking about upgrading but after this whole fiasco I decided to spend some money to fix body and small mechanical issues myself and drive this thing another 10 years hopefully. It's just not worth it.
Yeah, haggling over used cars is dead and buried. The market doesn't accommodate it in a world where there's more demand for used than ever.
1. More people got priced out of new cars.
2. More people are driving their cars longer.
3. Caravana and other online predatory loan machines are outpaying dealerships for cars, and flipping them for nearly credit card level interest rates.
Also, us millennials don't want to deal with that shit anyway. List the price, keep it near KBB value and you have a deal.
Subaru's have an increasingly good reputation for long-term reliability. Stick with and love the beater.
I find a certain liberation in not caring too much about risks of car park dents and "curb rash" and other surface-only non-mechanical auto-maladies.
You obviously have not been following Subaru, while what you are saying was once true, it has not been true for several years now.
Google "Subaru battery", read about all of the additional electrical problems that are the result of Subaru being unwilling to fix a problem that is the end result of them selling your data.
Subaru stopped making reliable cars somewhere around 2014.
Free yourself from the worry of shopping cart dings today! My solution was buying a hail damage car.
Everything in here matches with my experience in the auto industry, but I don't think it gets the whole truth. Car companies, particularly the American and German brands, make the vast majority of their money from new car buyers and leasers, not the used car market. Over the past few decades, OEMs have focused almost exclusively on serving those customers, to the detriment of virtually everyone else. Those are very different customers than the people who want to buy $25k cars. Worse, even if you do sell that kind of vehicle, it depreciates and goes right back into circulation on the used market competing against the new cars because the customers are ultimately very utilitarian and lack brand loyalty, unlike the higher end customers. You can't even count on those higher end customers to reliably purchase the higher trim models because of the "status" aspects of a cheap car.
It's a tough market that OEMs don't want to be in, so they cede it almost entirely to foreign OEMs that haven't moved upmarket yet. Foreign OEMs are structurally incapable of selling cars at those prices (by design), so the bottom end of the market gets hollowed out to nothing but a few "loss leader" vehicles.
Spending $25,000 for a car sounds insane to me.
Is anyone else thinking of buying a used panel van instead of a pickup now that they’re so tall you need a ladder to climb into the bed?
I have one and it’s awesome. You also don’t have to worry about someone snatching items out of the bed.
The biggest downsides are (1) I’m reluctant to put anything gross back there (vs throwing a trash bag in the bed like I used to with my truck), and (2) people see a van, assume you’ll drive obnoxiously slowly, and preemptively cut you off in traffic lest they get stuck behind you.
Overall, the pros outweigh those 2 cons for me.
Against 2, speed flames could help? Though they may have net-negative effect on safety for obvious reasons.
It's hard to compete with the used car market. Aptera's Solar EV start at $26,800 (allegedly).
You guys get cars for under six figures? Haha nice, cries in Singapore
But why do you need a car in Singapore? I can't take my kid to school or buy groceries without a car here, it is a basic necessity and I hate it. But you have amazing transit and high density.
Problem is a 40k car interior feels worse than a 15k Chinese car. The Koreans are trying, but like Samsung, not too hard.
It’s mass affluence. People are just willing to pay $30k+ new now - something that was a lot rarer even 10 years ago.
Americans like to upgrade their cars, not unlike their cell phones, and they often have a monthly car payment (or two) that never permanently goes away.
That makes some sense to me, but if the goal is to always have a nice car, doesn't it makes much more sense to lease? The monthly payments will be a few hundred bucks less and you can upgrade every 2-3 years. And from what I understand, leasing agents like to give incentives after your first lease to keep you in the cycle.
Personally, if I were aiming for the most economical option, I'd lease a Nissan Leaf for ~$300/mo.
> ... but if the goal is to always have a nice car, doesn't it makes much more sense to lease? The monthly payments will be a few hundred bucks less and you can upgrade every 2-3 years.
Leasing a car always includes an initial payment (in the several thousands) and typically have severe penalties for exceeding allotted mileage, any damage (even if only cosmetic), and/or if mandatory dealer maintenance is not adhered.
The monthly payments are not as disparate as one might think when the initial payment is amortized over the course of the lease along with dealer maintenance expenditures.
Read that lease contract carefully. It's meant for a very narrow segment of drivers.
IIRC, at one point Ford priced the Model T (which ultimately became the Ford Taurus decades later) to be at or near the US individual average annual income and maintained this price structure throughout.
With last year's lowest (by state) average annual income being Mississippi at $45k, there is little reason for any car manufacturer to produce a $25k MSRP vehicle.
Daydream: For types of cars/trucks which are generally unavailable on the American market, tariffs and import restrictions are keep rather modest.
Would make sense - why protect a market that no US manufacturer seems to want to support!
Of course the US manufacturers are hoping that you'll just take out a loan, preferably with them (this is how they make their profit - financing and servicing) and buy something far more expensive than you want/need.
Last time I bought a car, my family kept pushing me to buy new, avoid used.
All new cars were crap and expensive. People wanted me to buy a Hyundai HB20 with a crappy engine that couldn't climb the hill where my house was located.
I ended buying a used Mitsubishi Lancer GT, the thing had same engine as Evo (minus the turbo), leather seats, roof window, rear camera and so on. For half of the price of the HB20.
Sadly Mitsubishi discontinued those and went on to join the SUVmania where your cheapest car is a big as a SUV externally, but that has cramped interior and none of SUV features.
277+ comment on this thread when we all know the answer - cars are deliberately over priced, at full price level, so the monthly finance payments relative to depreciation forecasts look good to the buyers (renters) and there is a room for negotiations and offers.
Its HubSpot Marketing that is the winner here.
The Subaru Impreza starts just under $25k, and comes standard with their EyeSight system for adaptive cruise control, automatic braking, etc.
$25k car is a used car. It’s not even endangered.
Dealership near me has got some 2024-25 model Mitsubishis for like 19k new. They look pretty sweet.
I'm assuming this is the Mirage, which is one of the cars we own for the family (the other is an old Odyssey to fit all the kids). The Mirage is an absolute joy to own: its simple 3cyl engine gets 50mpg if I'm careful. We live in a very rural area (i.e. walking and biking for a big family is impossible and dangerous), so having something economical to drive is a huge help. We drive it any time we aren't taking the whole family somewhere!
Of course in the article, I see the Mirage is noted as discontinued. How frustrating.
Chevrolet Trax can be found between $20-21k USD but... when I look at inventory, nothing within ~75 miles is under $25k.
Not a horrible vehicle for the price.
Mazda 3 used to be a $20k car (and even less before that) but now starts just over $24k (sedan) / $25k (hatchback).
TBF even at $25k the Mazda 3 is probably “nicer” than anything else you can get for that price.
In 2080, Apple introduced the Macbook Air. The first version was a mixed bag. The 2010 revision was a game-changer. Competitors just couldn't compete with the hardware you got for $1200 (13"). It was an excellentcompromise between power, weight, efficiency and price. This lasted years. After awhile, 4GB of RAM was light and a non-Retina display was somewhat lacking but it was still good. A $1000 laptop is almost disposable compared to a $3000+ laptop.
But this created a problem for Apple: it was too cheap. About a decade ago, the cult of thinness took over. The Air was replaced by the 12" Macbook that was too underpowered. It only had 1 port, which doubled as a power connector. We got the (awful) butterfly keyboard. And of course we got the Touch Bar. Rumor has it that this all happened because Johnny Ive no longer had Steve Jobs pushing back against him.
All of these things only existed to increase the ASP (average selling price) of Macbooks. There's no other reason.
My point here is that companies don't want to produce cheap, quality, commoditized goods. They want high prices (because that means high profits). Apple didn't want cheap Macbooks. Car manufacturers don't want cheap cars. This is how capitalism works.
Worse though is that these high prices are used as a weapon to drive down wages. These auto makers will say "our labor costs are too high" and try and reduce wages and/or remove benefits, often under the threat of moving jobs overseas. Then you dig a little deeper and find out that about 5% of a car's sticker price is labor costs.
The chase for ever-increasing profits ultimately means cutting costs and increasing prices. Always.
> But this created a problem for Apple: it was too cheap. About a decade ago, the cult of thinness took over. The Air was replaced by the 12" Macbook that was too underpowered. It only had 1 port, which doubled as a power connector.
The 12" MacBook did _not_ replace the Air; it was a niche within a niche. The Air continues to be Apple's best-selling laptop, and starts at $999 (the $1200 price you give in 2010 is equivalent to about $1800 adjusted for inflation).
(In retrospect the 12" MacBook seems like a clear mistake, but at the time there was a bit of a bubble in subnotebooks, and Intel was making lavish promises for its ultra-low-power chip lines which turned out to be nonsense.)
> We got the (awful) butterfly keyboard. And of course we got the Touch Bar.
Only in the expensive laptops; the Air continued to be the cheap option.
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There are few cars I would want to buy in today's market. Cost cutting and price engineering is pervasive, even in extremely high-end cars.
People like cars that can go 80-90 mph for hundreds and hundreds of miles while carrying 4 people. With crash protection.
Add electrics with thousand lbs of batteries, and you've got today's 4000-6000 lb SUVs, all costing an arm and a leg.
People like cars that can go 80-90 mph for hundreds and hundreds of miles while carrying 4 people. With crash protection.
My 12 year old entry level sedan does all of that no problem.
Focusing just on gas cars: People wanted that ten years ago too (and twenty and thirty), so what changed?