The $25k car is going extinct?
media.hubspot.com
media.hubspot.com
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.
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.
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)
Cars are a depreciating asset. It usually does not make sense to go into debt to get one
Most other debts people incur personally are to buy things they could save for, which go down in value. Like cars.
But in general, and in the larger suburbs yes you would be pretty inconvenienced without a car. But that is true of suburbs everywhere.
I’ve heard Philly and SF as well, but have never been.
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.
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.
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.
Has relocating an old house even been done? (Assuming the house wasn't built to be movable.)
See https://patch.com/massachusetts/lexington/historic-house-mov... as an example
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!
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?
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.
How does it not bother you? :)
10 grand it seems? That's pretty rough, especially with that mileage
10 grand feels steep, but for a solid car that'll easily last another ten years with minimal maintenance, good fuel economy, I don't know that you can do much better these days, and it doesn't feel unreasonable.
It's pretty unreasonable as a class of "starter car" though
I can't imagine many teens working a min wage job for a summer and having a car afterwards if they cost like this
I had to get my own job and save to buy my own first car. It was 2k
If it had been 10k it would have taken forever to afford on part time minimum wage
My parents definitely did not have a spare 10k laying around to buy me a car. And if a family has more than one child, then what?
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
Before C4C garbage cars that ran but probably needed something were "I want it gone, $500". After C4C the same vehicles sold at the C4C price and the price point has more or less stuck. It completely turned the beater car market upside down.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
Sure, more expensive buying a new car. But I was going to get a new car anyways, the question is loan or no loan.
I don't care too much about depreciation. It'll probably be in my garage for a decade or more so that's just paper losses today, and once again I was going to buy new anyways.
Your work requires expensive gear - maybe it's a car, or smartphone, or computer, or ebike, or HVAC tools, or camera, or musical instrument - why not pay for them over time as they help generate income?
For example a doctor or a waiter doesn't need a car to do their job, once they're at their workplace.
The US is basically forcing everyone to commute by car, except for select and limited geographies.
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.
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.
Yes, maybe you have to renovate the interiors, such as new floors, new electrical/hydraulic, new heating system, etc., but that is usually a small expense in contrast with the price of building an house from scratch.
Meanwhile new house is cool in summer and warm in winter. It’s silent with spacious rooms. It is also not affordable for most people too. Old house is a middle ground when one doesn’t have enough money. There is no way to upgrade in sane way old house to modern standards.
The only thing stopping depreciation is regular maintenance which costs money.
Every new edition of the IBC makes my hovel worth more relatively because the cost to create an alternate just keeps on going up.
To me buying new cars is just throwing away money, simply because at the moment you brought the car out from the dealer the car just is worth 3/4 of the price you payed it, and when you have to resell it in 10 years it is worth almost nothing.
Imagine you get your first car, it’s used and a bit run down but you’re paying $250/month on a modest loan. Nothing crazy but you needed a loan and a car that was modestly reliable.
You get a couple of small raises, eventually the car is in the shop more and you feel you deserve a better car because of the hard work and long hours. You see ads for a new car at just another $100 per month on TV. $350/month would be tight, but you feel you’ve earned it.
You go to the dealership only to find the car you really want is closer to $500/month which you can’t afford.
The salesman says “let me see what i can do,” comes back from the finance office, and voila! Got the payment down to $375/month. It’s more than you initially expected but maybe you just don’t go out to eat as much. You’re sick of your old rust box, always in the shop. And you’ll probably get a raise soon too. So you sign.
And bam, you got a 6, 7, or even 9 year car loan. You don’t realize how much insurance will increase. You haven’t had a new car yet so you didn’t even think excise tax would be that much (for the first year of a new car its typically a lot) and now you’re struggling in debt with a new car that lost 20-35% of it’s value right off the lot, so you’re underwater on the loan.
Long winded story to say for many people a car is an emotional extension of themselves. Identity even, and it’s difficult to break that into a more utilitarian mindset. Thus justifying the high cost and debt is easier than if you were looking at it as just a way to get to point A and B
Why should a car manufacturer care about your preferences if you're never going to buy new from them?
It's annoying but people like us who care about things like TCO are probably never going to buy new cars under any circumstances, so our concerns about electronic components don't motivate designers.
Even if we might help residual values of leases and buy used parts, our influence over car companies is radically lower than new car buyers.
And a lot of time it isnt. Not everyone wants too or can afford to take that gamble. Sure, i've had luck with it, but that's because I can perform my own work upto and including dropping and replacing an engine if I need too.
On the other hand i've seen people who could least afford it end up with total stinkers that drained their wallets.
sure, but you'll quickly make up the difference in repair costs when the bucket of bolts you paid ~1k for starts breaking down every 3-4 months.
And, of course, you'll have to make arrangements to get to work to pay for those repairs while the car is in the shop. Which may have it's own associated costs if you're using uber or a taxi or whatever.
Better hope little Timmy has a way to get to soccer practice as well. And hopefully there's no other appointments that have to be accommodated for. It was pretty difficult getting time off to get that bum tooth checked out...
A lack of adequate maintenance and a failure to identify lemon patterns when choosing the vehicle is always something that can be trivially avoidable.
I’ve had vehicles for over a decade where the repairs on it amounted to a hundred or so a year, at most. Right now I’m swapping out a CV shaft on a 2001 Mazda 626 that has seen ZERO major work done on it in its entire life.
Do the oil changes at twice the recommended cadence, keep on top of every tiny problem, and any vehicle whose entire model line has never demonstrated systemic issues will continue to be highly reliable and low cost to operate. For example, many years of the Crown Victoria fall into this category. The 1997 and 2007 models, in particular, were absolutely bulletproof if maintained correctly.
Even when purchasing a used vehicle, there are many vloggers out there that can help you avoid lemon lines - entire model years that should be avoided - in favour of vehicles that will stand the test of time. Car Wizard is one of my more favourite ones, despite disagreeing with some of his more blanket opinions (European cars, for example).
Then they shouldn’t get a new car, full stop. Older used cars can be perfectly serviceable with some research into lemon patterns and a pre-purchase inspection by a trusted mechanic. I have found the vlogger Car Wizard to be particularly accurate in his assessments of which used vehicles are great buys and which ones you need to stay the hell away from.
None of my cars are less than two decades old, and none of them cost me more than a new one would, even after the purchase price and all repairs, maintenance, and fuel are added up. If you manage to choose wisely, it is unlikely that you would ever pay more on a used vehicle, even over literal decades, than you would with a new car.
Now sure, you will never be able to own a new shiny. You will never be able to peacock around in a brand-new vehicle. But trying to impress people via copious displays of wealth is a fool’s errand. Intentional attempts at external validation always are.
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.
Your loan is exceedingly abnormal or from a past time as the average loan % in the US is much higher on that time scale.
On the loan rate: yes, fully agreed, this was an unusually good rate, and that makes the arrangement much more attractive.
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.
It's not like that in all of Europe either, the further you go from Western Europe, the worse the public transit gets. The Balkans are probably the worst, you need a car if you live outside a city as rail and even busses are slow, unreliable, or just not an option in your place.
It's not really an East-West thing. Downtown Sofia for example has much better public transportation than many 'secondary' and rural towns in Germany and France.
And sure taking a train sure is faster/nicer for long travel, but in practice what matters the most for the economy and people's life/health is the daily commute which mostly happens inside cities.
But you don't quite get how it is in the US (and Canada). In the US it is "if you live *inside* a city" you need a car*, no matter if small, large, or metropolis.
* Except for a few metro areas
Well, some countries are far more centralized than others. The daily commute to/from cities is a huge problem where I live, to the point that cities are flooded mostly with outside commuters. Trains and busses could solve that very elegantly, but nobody’s investing in that.
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.
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
All the newer cars feel like iPods with wheels and the driving experience is horrible. I am not interested in them.
I do have some beef with the prices of these electronic gadgets in the car. 300€ price for a new sensor or something similar? Sensor costs are usually a single digit or below. Somehow vendors found a way to inflate that price and this is destroying the repairability.
-replace cabin air filter -check for even tread wear -top up the wiper fluid -replace the windshield wipers -take off a wheel and look for tears in rubber bushings or grease leaking from seals. -replace anything broken like switches, trim pieces, etc.
Assuming it’s a gas car: -replace engine air filter -inspect spark plugs -check fluid levels: brake fluid, engine oil, coolant -check 12V battery voltage with the engine off and also running -change the oil
I'm an early(ish) Millennial woman from the suburbs, from a family with no meaningful mechanical knowledge or training of any kind, and I've done most of these things.
I would have considered myself pretty ignorant about cars prior to reading your comment. Thanks for shifting my perspective to seeing myself as having at least a useful basic familiarity with things!
ICE's are conceptually pretty simple. Anyone who has built a computer should be able to do basic car maintenance if they want to. The electronics is what makes newer cars more complicated, and I assume EVs even more so.
A lot of Americans become very low IQ in the context of any car related financial decisions. Off loading their vehicles is one of the classic examples of this. Do NOT sell to your dealer. Carvana is the only exception and only because you can easily offload messed up cars to them without disclosing it.
The other thing is that it's not always low IQ, but many people value simplicity. Do I want to show a car, deal with cashiers check fraud, flakey people, etc... or do I want money literally right now? I've sold cars to CarMax and I've sold cars and boats privately. The private price I think I can get has to be considerably more than what I can get with zero hassle.
It’s ridiculously easy to look up a part number, order it online from wherever is most convenient, and follow the steps in the manual to replace it.
Most parts could only come from Tesla, including the Bilstein struts (a part number Bilstein refuses to sell to anyone but Tesla). $900 per corner.
USB port between the console? $400. I found a used one on eBay, fortunately.
When the wheel rotation sensor receiver went bad, it cost $2500 for them to install and reprogram the replacement, because they "upgraded" to a different mfr. When that one started to go bad (water ingress, which wasn't cured by the new part), I sold the car and said good riddance.
and add an LS drivetrain.
> All Caterham models are imported as rolling chassis. They are street legal in the U.S. under EPA kit-car regulations and can be registered through processes specific to individual states.
source https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/2015-caterham-seven-360-sta...
I wonder if there's a market for building something purely utilitarian, like a little hatchback or something, as a kit vehicle - with the express purpose of learning a lot of automotive principles along the way.
Your friend is right IMO. Do something simple first. Like a broken piece of trim, replace a light bulb, change the wiper blades yourself and build yourself up. I had repaired bicycles/motorcycles before hand.
Past that. I literally go on YouTube and watch someone do the task I intend on doing. I have the service manual downloaded for the car (people dump scans of the manuals online as PDFs) and a Haynes Manual (about £20).
Over the last 6 months. I've gone from barely being able to change the wiper blades to replacing a turbo.
I bought an older vehicle(s) that have a good aftermarket parts market and are known to be easy to work on. The simpler / less refined the car is the easier it is to work on.
The YT video for changing my cars' front light bulbs was less than two minutes. After half an hour and a lot of scratches / bruises, I thought I got it done. Started the car, checked the light goes on and off. Scrub hands from dust and dirt, be happy.
Mandatory inspection two months later found out that it was pointing so badly off that their targeting device could not even get a reading. In other words, I had been blinding oncoming traffic. Car didn't pass inspection, I was defeated, and took it to the mechanic.
He also spent twenty to thirty minutes on readjusting the bulb, before it was done and up to spec. It costed only 15 euro, though, as they also expected it to be a 30 second operation.
I guess my point is, don't get discouraged when things don't work immediately, or don't work exactly like a manual / video makes you think. Often it's a learning experience, and while those can be fun, they also sometimes are very much not.
(I'm also a complete novice, and not particularly enjoying the experience, just not affluent enough to pay for all of the maintenance work.)
The main problem I ran into was
- Parts that were marked as compatible that were absolute rubbish. You would there is little difference between one brand of wiper arm and another. Apparently not!
- It takes 2 days to order a part from the internet. The nearest part supplier is a 30-40 mile drive. So if you forget to order a part you are either waiting another 2 days or you have a 2 hour drive.
As a result. I ended up rebuying all the parts about 2 times and I should have gone to a local parts dealer where they give you either Genuine, OEM or quality aftermarket. The thing is that I compared the genuine parts that did work with the ones I bought from ebay and visually there is little difference. So now I only buy Genuine, OEM or quality aftermarket.
It is all part of the learning experience. Even though at the time it was frustrating.
Most modern cars blind oncoming traffic anyway. Either that or 20%+ of morons riding around with high beams and blue/purple LED retrofits.
You may have been defeated by the inspection, but the battle for headlight brightness/alignment was lost years ago.
Or maybe their "alignment" tool was a scam you got robbed of 15 euros?
With any DIY car repair, you always run the risk of things like this, where you don't-know-what-you-don't-know. But it's still worth the ride and the lesson, imo.
When I was first driving I went through how to change a wheel with my dad and also brake blocks, oil changes that kind of thing. Even my dad who has rebuilt engines from scratch normally goes to the mechanic for everything now.
YouTube is kind of shit for diagnosis, though. Most of the videos just gloss over it. “Hey guys! So, my fuel pump is dead, so here’s a video on how to replace it!” Ok, thanks, but how did you figure out it was the fuel pump? Not a lot of YouTube content along those lines.
Their videos are between 20-60 minutes and run through the general process of going from no-crank-no-start to running, which is basically the same for all gas-powered cars. Diesels are a little different.
To save you all the trouble of all I went through, it was fun debugging mechanical stuff, but ultimately there is no "self-reliant car owner"
It all comes down to tools and parts. You need easy access to a lot of both or else you are limited to extremely ugly temporary fixes which amount to super gluing your engine back together.
On our overland trip, when we had an issue, it turned out impossible to fix without a massive lift and air tools, so all my years prep was essentially reduced to having a few extra words I could tell the actual mechanic capable of performing the fix.
If you still want to go down this route I recommend the book "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" and have 4 Saabs you can have lol. I'll even throw in the clutch kit you can't install without a custom Saab tool.
That is valuable as well, in some places car mechanics could be eager to let's say make repairs more costly than needed
I imagine a car is x100 worse
My current toolbox for the car is:
- Socket set (£50 halfords)
- Spanners (I already had these I guess £20-30)
- Allen Keys (£5)
- Several different types of Cir-clip pliers (£20-40)
- A battery powered soldering iron (£50-100). I have no mains power where I work on the vehicle.
- A lighter (£1)
- Mole-grips (£10-15)
- Axel Stands (£50)
- A Jack. (£100)
- Fuse Pullers (£3)
- Tub of Grease / Copper Grease (£15)
- Toolbox (£10)
- Stubby Screwdrivers (£10)
Changing any of the bearings
Tuning the spokes on the wheels
Changing the cog
All require special tools that cost more than 45 pounds
Only the several wrenches, Allen keys (because none are the same size), chain break and tire-changing plungers cost less
Every nut and every screw has a different size. It's madness
We are rare, but we exist. Prior to moving on from it due to an unrelated injury, for the decade prior I did all my own work including numerous engine swaps on my vehicles.
However, this is because as noted, I had the tools and parts. I had all the spanners and sockets I needed, easy access to parts via wreckers and parts networks, and had my own engine crane and stands. My vehicle of choice for most of that time was 2x 1987 Toyota MR2 AW11's.
I mostly got into it because it was my "non computing" hobby for the most part. And for the time I spent engaged in it, I really enjoyed it.
With a lot of swearing and heaps of scrap metal to find the right sized scrap you can will power it out I promise.
All you really need is the internet. China tools via Amazon are "fine".
I needed safety wire pliers to assemble some brake rotors. The metal in the ones I got on Amazon was softer than the metal wire they came with such that the cutting edges got little wire-sized dents in them and increasingly useless the farther I got along in the job.
Returned those afterward. Junk.
But there’s other stuff I’ve gotten from RANDOMLETTERS Amazon that’s actually holding up “ok.”
Also, Harbor Freight is a better source of ok/fine tools where you don’t need quotes around those words.
Repairing a car these days is not the same as it used to be but I would start with the basics: maintenance items. As you mentioned, changing a tire is a good first step as it will teach you how to secure and jack up a car *safely*. You should also get familiar with tire pressure, acceptable tread wear and tire rotation. Once the tire is off you'll see the brakes and the suspension components. Disc brake pads are simple to change and a good next step: two bolts, caliper slides off, pop out pads, compress piston, insert new pads, slide and bolt back on, done. Under the hood, there are a few educational and simple maintenance items like checking and changing your: air filter, oil and oil filter, brake fluid reservoir, coolant level, and power steering fluid. The above items are like 90%+ of all garage visits.
These items are all part of various subsystems which make up a car so as you work your way through you will get a feel of what things do. With experience you'll be comfortable with popping the hood and getting your hands greasy. I also want to mention that you can and will get hurt, scrapes, small cuts and bruises are not uncommon, it's rough work at times. Take your time, be safe, wear ppe, and work with someone if you can.
Get to understand the internals and then dive into specifics...
Scanning for codes is useful too, every manufacturer has their own scan tool. For example BMW has ISTA+, Ford has Forscan.
I think that as right to repair laws become more prevalent, there will be more information generally available.
You might not know about Harbor Freight jackstands being far overrated and thus kill yourself by assuming that they will hold their rated load.
You almost certainly cannot find more than some youtube videos about how to do things on your post 2015 vehicle. Haines and other repair manual companies don't exist or on life support and haven't made a new guide since 2020 at the latest.
The average entry level talent, i.e. the folks at Jiffy Lube/Vavoline, are often doing things so wrong that it'd be better to never try to "learn" in an environment where they will impact and strip your oil plug, up-sell grandmas with fake dirty filters and "blinker fluid" stories, etc.
If you don't have an actual experienced mechanic to learn from (i.e. someone who can strip and put back together an engine and it runs perfectly) - don't even bother! I'm not joking and I'm exactly like you in that I want to learn to work on cars! But I've learned that the tactics that allow you to get to making 300K a year in tech without much of being taught by other people do NOT work with cars. You WILL need to socialize with a master mechanic. There's no other way.
oh btw - most of the stuff like oil and car related gunk that will touch you when you work on cars is TOXIC AS HELL. Same with what you will breathe (most people don't mask when they should in a garage and they often don't ventilate too).
Aside from that, get a clunker or, even better, a motorcycle to work on (if they float your boat, of course). Motorcycles are wonderful because everything is easy to reach, light and usually kinda sexy for the year and price.
Again, don't worry too much. You can rebuild an engine if you have the tools and follow the manual. It's all just following steps. Just don't get clever if you're lacking a tool or something. Take a break, get what you need, don't start doing "clever" things because you feel like it's life and death to finish something right this moment, and you'll be good.
Edit: Oh yeah, and a welding course is probably a good idea down the road. I keep delaying it, but it'd be useful, and it'll also surely be kind of fun.
After that, look up your maintenance schedule, pick a job, then go figure out if you can.
When you get into bigger jobs, have a tow company and shop ready in case you run into problems. Mobile mechanics may also be an option.
And in all this useless things that they put in a car, they no longer provide you with a spare tire, just an useless repair kit...
I do not agree with your point. I do understand it, don't agree.
In theory, we could use a dipstick in our fuel tank but most of us prefer an automated gage.
I had a rental Mercedes with a leak in a tire recently... a tire was at something like 15psi but looked visually the same as the other tires. I absolutely do a walk around on all of my rentals and take pictures, but I would have had no clue if it weren't for TPMS. I would have driven it until it failed.
A sensor you were paired to disappears. Now a new sensor is showing up, and it sticks with you for an entire hour.
Sounds pretty easy for a computer to figure that puzzle out.
Every time a TPMS battery dies in these circumstances, the vehicle shouldn't pair with random TPMS sensors around it. Especially when we're talking about logic of a regulated safety system. It's a little better that it is deterministic, and follows an explicit pairing process.
How big is the range on one of these?
> Every time a TPMS battery dies in these circumstances, the vehicle shouldn't pair with random TPMS sensors around it.
Random sensors around it that aren't already paired to their own car.
Also it could wait for you to complete an entire trip or two.
> Especially when we're talking about logic of a regulated safety system.
"Safety" in the sense that the little warning light usually gets you to do something about it eventually? Is this data going into anything where the correctness is a big deal?
As always with RF propagation, it depends. They're frequently in the 315Mhz band, so should be roughly similar to garage door openers, remote controls, etc.
> Random sensors around it that aren't already paired to their own car.
There's no handshake -- TPMS sensors are generally unencrypted broadcast devices. A car will see a lot of sensors. (and you can set up an antenna and track cars driving down your street) The "pairing" is simply the vehicle remembering which ones is theirs.
> Also it could wait for you to complete an entire trip or two.
It could. Now add the complication of: spare tires. And also, some but not all vehicles store the positionality of the sensor, so they can tell you which tire is low.
But if you're going to give the system so much hysteresis, you might as well just save the money and use the ABS-sensor based system that other vehicles use. These don't require any additional sensors or programming, but they are slower to react and don't provide pressure readings. The reason automakers use direct sensor systems is to provide a more direct and immediate reading.
> "Safety" in the sense that the little warning light usually gets you to do something about it eventually? Is this data going into anything where the correctness is a big deal?
It is a big enough deal that the reason many cars have them is to comply with the legal requirement that they have them. Before the light (and better cars have textual warnings), you'd have to manually check your tire pressure to identify an underinflated tire, leading to many people driving on them for extended periods of time and experiencing rapid unscheduled failures.
... Or you could just have the manufacturer spend $30 to embed this into the car's dash.
For similar reasons, your car also comes with a fuel gauge, and doesn't require hand-cranking to start.
If you really want car prices to come down, have the manufacturers fire most of their workers and replace them with robots (I'm not sure if the robots will make for a good consumer base, but that's someone else' problem.)
Look at a BYD car factory versus any one ran by the American auto dinosaurs, and that's where you'll find the price delta.
What does increase safety is better driver training. This has be ubiquitously proven BTW.
Where is the ubiquitously proven support for the assertion that backup cameras don't increase safety?
I've read several of your replies towards me and I can tell that you either unable or unwilling see my point of view. So there is no point in having a discussion with you.
I guess they shouldn't have assumed you were speaking from experience, but I don't think that's a big deal. That's not forcing you to accept any conclusion. If it happens "often" you should have examples and/or data. If you don't then maybe you should reconsider if it actually is "often".
And they directly asked for data that it doesn't increase safety.
That's not unwillingness to see your point of view. If you provide quality evidence, you can win them over.
Not being snarky, just pointing out we’re often guilty of picking and choosing rather than applying first principles.
I am specifically talking about things that take over control of the vehicle.
I've had lane assist fight me when trying to move lanes. I apparently wasn't turning the wheel enough and it thought I was drifting (I wasn't).
I've had another hire car refuse to move backwards without me putting it into reverse. It had anti-rollback measures. I didn't know what was going on. All my other cars would rollback (I drive manuals). Now I know technically you shouldn't coast backwards but it was maybe a foot.
Sure it does. You can tune it to get better performance or fuel economy. (Tbf, you can do the same by fuel mapping your injectors, but it would probably void any warranty).
What you seem to be alluding to is that the automated features give you different performance than what you were expecting and you have little recourse. The same could be said for your fuel injectors.
You're telling on yourself here. Use your turn signal and lane assist won't fight you.
Oh, wait. That’s what regulators are for :-)
Do you blindly assume that regulators are right 100% of the time? If they aren't , then by virtue of regulation being never removed in the long run, you will end up with inflated regulation for which some of it is done for no good reason.
Is there a particular regulation you would prefer to remove? If you list something specific, let's talk about other alternatives to removing the regulation that could cause better outcomes without reducing supply in that market.
Save perhaps rarely if ever used seating positions (middle rear of the super stripped down V6 Mustang they make like 10 of so they can advertise a starting MSRP or some other comparable niche) I don't think seatbelts are going away anywhere they matter.
Ditto with headlights and tail lights, drivers find them useful. Perhaps we'd see a delete option used by fleet buyers who intend to equip the vehicles with alternative lighting.
There is an old and tired cabal of manufacturers wanting to generate a moat and push prices up high.
There are politicians and activists that have been pushing for lower car ownership and they do it openly. Motivations for this vary.
> There is an old and tired cabal of manufacturers wanting to generate a moat and push prices up high.
Two things can be true at once.
It isn't unheard of that business will collude with government to "pull the ladder up behind them". I've worked in companies where that has been their stated strategy.
if i am a hardcore environmentalist, i throw regulations at homebuilding to make housebuilding excruciating. homeowner voters are thrilled by the ensuing valuations
see: california
I agree. It is also frustrating when people don't recognize or cry foul when their personal beliefs are restated within homotopy equivalence, perhaps (I speculate) because they think it weakens an already weak argument. Perhaps even moreso for those stating the equivalence because there is not argumentative advantage to be gained by expressing said frustration regarding said response.
Or at least it could be. I'm actually feeling indifferent on the topic.
> There are politicians and activists that have been pushing for lower car ownership and they do it openly.
Words are cheap, words and rallys and activist productions moreso, show the policy that impacts national and international production.
How does this square with your theory that cars are becoming 'more disposable'? They seem to be running longer than ever before.
Repairability becomes somewhat less relevant when reliability is better out-of-the-box.
[1] A decade ago it was 11 years.
Also, unlike with money and wealth and other metrics where averages aren't very useful, the distribution of car ages does not have a tail of incredible outliers. There aren't a lot of billion-year-old cars driving that average away from the median.
Look, it's entirely possible that 'this time it'll be different', and we'll regress on this metric, but at the moment the data does not support it.
It’s required because it’s a safety issue. I think that’s the intent behind almost all mandatory sensors. That’s why the post put “useless” in quotes. I’m highlighting just that it may be required because it’s needed for safety.
However, many motorcycles have ABS as optional equipment and many people (non-stunters) don’t opt in for it. Meaning, many people don’t recognize (or don’t care enough to pay) the safety aspect.
Looking up some data, it was about 75% of cars and rising in 2007, so not as high as I expected but still pretty high. There's some circularity but I'd say it's mostly not circular.
Yes you did.
How can I make it clearer that I disagree.
> That is a circular rationale because it’s still pointing to a legally mandated sensor.
It's circular if the legal mandate is why those sensors are installed. If they'd be installed anyway then it's not circular.
Ie there wouldn’t be a legal reason if it weren’t for the safety reason. So pointing to the safety is why it’s a circular argument.
It’s like disagreeing that smoke detectors are because they are legally required in homes because people want them anyway for safety reasons. Both can be true at the same time because they both are related to the same risk mitigation.
In any event, the OP was that some people don’t want those sensors, my point is they aren’t optional.
You're confusing me. How about I explain my understanding of what makes things circular.
Generic hypothetical: Regulation requires a part. Cars put the part in because of regulation. Later, people amending the regulations consider something else that requires that part, and they justify it as having negligible cost because that part is already in cars. Because that part is there from regulation, it's to a strong extent regulation justifying itself, and it's circular.
Does your understanding of circularity differ from that?
Now, consider a variant: Regulation requires a part. But it doesn't matter because cars have that part anyway. Later, people amending the regulations consider something else that requires that part, and they justify it as having negligible cost because that part is already in cars. Because that part is not there from regulation, it's not regulation justifying itself, and it's not circular.
Does that make sense? You could imagine the part is "wheels" for the variant. Regulations that imply wheels are not using circular arguments when they say 'cars have wheels anyway, that's not a cost of this regulation'.
“I don’t need regulated sensors installed because I have a regulated sensor installed” is a circular argument.
Now much of what you bring up is tangential. But one thing I think we think differently about is that each of the premises you laid out starts with regulation. I differ because i see regulation as a response to a prior underlying risk. In other words, the risk exists before the regulation. So I don’t view regulation as a “self-licking ice cream cone”, or excusing for its own sake, but rather a risk mitigation. That’s why an ABS sensor can be used for monitoring pressure: it’s not the sensor that matters but whether the risk os appropriately mitigated.
In this case there's a risk. By my argument applies to regulations that involve risk and it also applies to regulations that don't involve risk.
> “I don’t need regulated sensors installed because I have a regulated sensor installed” is a circular argument.
I almost agree, but I think the motivation matters.
"I don’t need regulated sensors installed because I have those sensors already to follow regulations" is a circular argument.
"I don’t need regulated sensors installed because I have those sensors already for reasons unrelated to regulations" is not a circular argument. If no regulations existed already, it's not circular. If they did exist but they didn't change your behavior then it's not circular.
Which are those? Because so far, this conversation has been about TPMS and ABS regulation. I’m beginning to think the discussion is more about dogmatic feelings about regulation than the topic at hand.
Again, your argument is based on following regulations for the sake of regulation and I don’t agree that’s why regulations exist. I believe they exist to mitigate risk. Sometimes they can be poorly executed, and sometimes they can be for a risk you aren’t acutely aware of or one you don’t care about, but that doesn’t mean the risk is non-existent.
Well like I mentioned earlier, there's a regulation that cars have wheels, right? That's not a risk thing.
> I’m beginning to think the discussion is more about dogmatic feelings about regulation than the topic at hand.
No, it's just explaining my logic. Using a more abstract example makes it easier to focus on the logic.
> Again, your argument is based on following regulations for the sake of regulation
No it's not.
> and I don’t agree that’s why regulations exist.
I never said that's why regulations exist.
I never said anything about why regulations exist.
I'm so confused.
I'm just talking about whether a certain kind of rule is circular or not...
It's not a very important point, to be fair. But you seem to think I'm making some wildly different points from what I intend, and I'm not sure why there's such a communication breakdown.
I thankfully was wearing riding gloves, helmet, and boots; the pavement wore through several layers of the leather, my hands would have been shredded like my knee, or worse.
I agree with having simpler SKUs, but rearview camera is not where to start
> When averaged between the 2 automakers, effects were significantly larger for drivers 70 and older (38% reduction) than for drivers younger than 70 (1% increase); effects were significant for older but not younger drivers.
A big SUV is probably an exacerbating factor, though.
Also, for any kind of car, rear cameras and sensors decrease impacts while parallel parking. I see far fewer damaged bumpers on newer cars these days.
Front visibility is famously poor on SUVs and trucks, and even aside from pedestrians, I suspect there are a lot of small but very expensive bumper taps because you mis-judged the distance to the crap at the back wall of your garage.
There was a woman who backed over her own kid in the driveway. For some reason, she was not imprisoned for vehicular manslaughter. So instead of not being in prison, she spent the next half decade lobbying congress to make backup cameras mandatory. And it happened. So now everyone's car costs $3k more.
It would have been cheaper to put her imprison than impose a $3k cost per every car sold in America since 2018.
Lots more people need to be imprisoned for manslaughter, and lots of people need their license taken away for "backing crashes".
> A 2012 Harris poll suggests that the public agress with the mandate despite the technology’s costs. NHTSA says adding a backup camera to a car without an existing display screen will cost around $159 to $203 per vehicle, shrinking to between $58 and $88 for vehicles that already use display screens. The Harris poll found that consumers care more about safety features like backup cameras than they do about multimedia systems.
I'm not sure where you're getting your $3k backup cameras from; the camera is a $30 part, and pretty much every new car has a screen in it already.
$3000 for a backup camera, okay.
There's no reason for the screen other than the camera, therefore the camera is $3k
And taking away licenses is acting too late.
Besides backup cameras have use beyond just making sure a child is not behind you, such as assisting with parking, or seeing if there is oncoming traffic when there is a larger vehicle parked next to you.
However the backup camera being required by law is absolutely ridiculous. You can just either use the mirrors or turn your head.
I can see quite a lot in my backup cam that is in a visual blind spot in both of my cars.
Unless you really struggle with object permanence, a child somehow ending up in front of you without you seeing them is not a frequent occurrence, compared to one ending up behind you.
But yes, American cars are stupid big and should be smaller.
If the US weren't so obsessed with enormous cars with terrible visibility, I think this would be a different conversation.
Which is the work product of the 2000s era of "legislate to make cars better" advocacy.
90s SUVs rolled a lot, so they changed the rules to require them be strong, Strong made them hard to see out of in reverse so they added cameras. Now because both are regulatory required, at substantial cost, you can't even make a small vehicle that doesn't have both.
It's not like the Subarus and Volvo wagons of the 00s were lacking in rollover strength or rear visibility, but now that you have to have the features by law and when all the dust of engineering tradeoffs settles the modern analogues wind up just as bad to see out of as everything else, because why wouldn't you if you're required to have the mitigation technology. No reason for 2020s Subaru shove that stupid steel bar in the pillar (at great expense) to keep it sleek and skinny when they have to have the fat pillar mitigation tech installed by law.
How many times we gonna run laps of this feedback loop before we decide the problem is systemic?
The reason this law exists is because small children (e.g 3ft tall) were getting run over.
Seriously, go put a large suitcase immediately behind your rear bumper and try to see it without a camera. You can't.
Typically when you are reversing and there is likely to be something sat behind your vehicle (like a child or a pet). You are parked. You can you know look before you get in the car.
If you have parking sensors it will alert you to something walking behind you anyway.
The point being made is there are way to deal with this without the need for a rear camera.
This is why we have seat belts instead of telling people "you idiot you should have used the brakes!"
The point being made is that many of these things can be mitigated by better driver training or driver aids which are much simpler & cheaper (I am likely to fit parking sensors in my older cars, kits are cheap).
Oh, well, if it's that easy! Just retrain 1.2 billion people, some of whom still don't know how to tie a shoelace reliably.
They have been mandating that in most UK countries for decades and it is definitely one of the reasons why roads are safer now.
> Some of whom still don't know how to tie a shoelace reliably
Your true colours finally show. All the people are too stupid to learn how to do anything. BTW this is called the "Bigotry of low expectations".
All? No. Some? Absolutely. Five minutes on the road demonstrates it.
If you find out a way to retrain everyone on the road more cost-effectively than a $30 backup camera, do implement it. (Don't forget figuring out how to get people to maintain those skills.)
Until then, I'm glad my car has some safety features that protect me when I get rear-ended in stopped traffic by someone who wasn't paying attention.
So you accept that better driving training would be better.
> If you find out a way to retrain everyone on the road more cost-effectively than a $30 backup camera, do implement it. (Don't forget figuring out how to get people to maintain those skills.)
As time goes on, older people stop driving either they stop driving (they realise they are too old to drive) or they die.
If you implement better driver training. Then newer driver have to do that training. So over the overall minimum standard improves.
A $30 camera is something that doesn't improve the overall minimum driving standard. It is a band-aid over a bigger problem.
> Until then, I'm glad my car has some safety features that protect me when I get rear-ended in stopped traffic by someone who wasn't paying attention.
Crumple zones have been standard in cars for like 30 years now. That rear camera isn't going to help you.
Oh, certainly! But it needn't be exclusive. (And "teach people better" is a lot harder than running a wire to a $30 camera.)
> As time goes on, older people stop driving either they stop driving (they realise they are too old to drive) or they.
They drive far, far too long on average. I'd love to see an annual requirement to pass a driving test over 60, but… old people vote.
> A $30 camera is something that doesn't improve the overall minimum driving standard.
Sure. It improves the "backing up" bit only.
> Crumple zones have been standard in cars for like 30 years now. That rear camera isn't going to help you.
Both are safety mitigations, for different aspects of driving.
I'm glad I can both survive a rear-end crash and being reversed over by someone driving a Hummer with a six foot high blind spot in the back. I don't have to pick one improvement, which is great.
But earlier you were pretending that it was the case. Interesting.
Do you not remember?
> I'm glad I can both survive a rear-end crash and being reversed over by someone driving a Hummer with a six foot high blind spot in the back. I don't have to pick one improvement, which is great.
Are you saying the mandated camera doesn't stop someone from reversing over you or that the hummer doesn't have the camera, but won't kill you because the camera is mandated by law in other vehicles?
I am not sure what to make of this statement.
Hardly. Just that "teach people" is tough, expensive, and time consuming. "Install a $30 device" is not. (In your now flagged last-last-last reply to me, you advocated for PSAs. As we all know, they worked great to stop texting while driving!)
> Are you saying the mandated camera doesn't stop someone from reversing over you or that the hummer doesn't have the camera and the hummer won't kill you because the camera is mandated by law.
I'm saying I'm glad the Hummers now have backup cameras, because they sure as shit can't see me with the windows/mirrors.
You can.
And then the kid/pet moves. They do that.
Also just because there is a camera and a screen doesn't mean people will look!
Yes, like a backup camera.
> Also just because there is a camera and a screen doesn't mean people will look!
The number who will is well above zero.
(This critique also applies to your proposed mitigations, yes?)
Well you've just twisted what I said because you are getting angry. So we will leave it there.
Which is easier, installing them in new vehicles, or making a billion drivers undertake remedial training in basic safety?
> you are getting angry
If you say so. I've gotten angry on here, but it takes a lot more than someone who thinks they can see through their bumper.
You knew I was referring to other methods mitigation the risk and decided to get a quick jab in at me. That was disingenuous. I don't appreciate it.
> Which is easier, installing them in new vehicles, or making a billion drivers undertake remedial training in basic safety?
Driver awareness can be done through other means than re-training.
> If you say so. I've gotten angry on here, but it takes a lot more than someone who thinks they can see through their bumper.
I never said that and obviously don't believe that. Funny how at the start of this reply you were pretending you weren't engaging in that behaviour. I wouldn't bother replying, you won't get another one.
Yes, I do. And I'm wondering why this one doesn't count.
> Driver awareness can be done through other means that re-training.
Such as?
(Ironically, the serious answer to this is "stuff like backup cameras". Which improve driver awareness when backing.)
> I never said that and obviously don't believe that.
You: "However the backup camera being required by law is absolutely ridiculous. You can just either use the mirrors or turn your head."
How do you use those two techniques to see things in the blind spot behind the bumper without its being transparent?
Solve the problem completely or else admit that it's just for twits who can't parallel park.
That's just simply not how safety engineering works. Safety features mitigate risk, none of them solve it.
Partial safety mitigation isn't so much how safety engineering works; it's how it ducks out of working due to non-engineering reasons. If any safety issue remains, that means engineering was not done in that regard: the safety engineers were excused from the requirement to design anything for that risk.
I go to South America a lot to visit family and for business and the cars by and large are much more maneuverable, small and nimble, and you can actually see most things around you.
But then every time I get back on my first car ride I'm greeted with an absolute monstrosity of a vehicle. Even the average sedan feels gargantuan. Due to this people can't realistically see very well behind them. Never mind the fact that most cars the rear windshield isn't even that large anymore, and in some vehicles head checks don't even work well because the columns are right in your view.
I understand some of this is in the name of "safety", but realistically it feels like it trading one safety measure - safety for the people inside the vehicle - at the expense of another - those outside the vehicle.
- Gas mileage (pollution)
- Tire wear (pollution)
- Handling (safety)
Yes, I will force you to have automatic emergency breaking in your Model T hotrod. Yes, you will be mad. Yes, the road will be a lot safer. No I don't care about your boomer rage about technology. No you don't want to live with India tier road laws/standards - even if - and especially if - you think you do!
Even consumers voted with their pocketbooks in favor of this towards the end given the failure of the Nissa Versa and the Toyota Yaris in the American and Canadian market.
Also, there's a reason those $15K Toyotas, Suzukis, and Mitsubishis are sold in Thailand and India, and not in Japan - they don't even meet safety standards in their home country (and it's Toyota, Suzuki, and Mitsubishi that essentially sets standards for all of Japan).
Automotive companies like Toyota create different platforms based on the kind of market. All emerging markets use the IMV [0] platform except China, which has it's own separate platform because of China's JV and ToT requirement.
Ofc, HN skews towards gearheads and people who seem to have been born in the 1960s-80s, so it won't have great reception.
Believe it or not, there were a lot of good arguments against seatbelts. And they were genuinely believed. And they were popular. And, they are now well past extinct.
I would rather live with India tier roads than <wherever you're from> tier opinions.
I love my camera but I've noticed that I tend to look around less, which is bad because a camera doesn't cover everything.
ABS is a no brainer. So is ASR.
TPMS is awesome coz face it, I have never and will never regularly check my tire pressure. Remember how they taught you to check the oil regularly? Who ever did that?
I want real knobs so I don't have to look away from the road and do climate controls and radio by feel on the side. Much safer.
But automatic braking is another one of those two edged swords. I almost had a car behind me crash into me recently because the car in front of me decided to abruptly slow down and turn left. I reacted and went slightly to the right to get around and the car in front of me was turning further away as well. But then the dang emergency breaking system hit the brakes and startled me. For a second I couldn't do anything then I hit the brakes too until a second later I realized it was BS and the car behind me was getting awfully close real fast and I instead hit the gas.
These systems are still quite bad in judging objects that go left-right or opposite. The cruise control slows down immensely for a car on front of me taking an exit for no reason. And on the other hand it reacts way too late if another car suddenly switches into your lane when you're about to overtake them. And that's for different cars from different manufacturers and different model years so I doubt it's a unique experience.
It's insane how normalized terrible driving is. I don't even mean following the law at this point. It's much more basic than that and applies to every vehicle in every context. You must drive in such a way to be able to stop in time if the vehicle in front of you decides to apply max braking. This is dictated by the laws of the universe we exist in, not by some rule arbitrarily decided by humans.
Fantasy cope, you can't even force emissions testing in most counties.
Paying for vehicle repair labor is basically a tax. They're making it harder and harder to fix your own car. I spent the afternoon yesterday trying to find headlight assemblies that didn't need to be coded to work correctly. Headlights.
All the outrage about right-to-repair around here, and nobody realizes the frog is almost boiled around repairing cars.
>I can put it one that is better than the factory one for a cheaper price
As someone who used to be involved in the car audio competition scene, those days are long gone. Modern sounds systems are great, and tightly integrated into the A/V system.
>the sensor that tells you if you have a flat tire
The sensor will tell you when there's a rapid drop in pressure. You won't notice the flat until you're near driving on the rim.
>the emergency call button (while everyone has a mobile phone these days), automatic regulating seats (pulling a lever is too much difficult), dual zone clima control (it's the same space in the same car, why I would want to set 2 different temperatures?)
Old man yells at great features.
>they no longer provide you with a spare tire, just an useless repair kit...
Yeah, they provide roadside assistance. Because changing your tire on the side of the road is dangerous (as is driving on the donut).
Plenty of used jalopies out there for you.
As is waiting on the side of the highway for an hour (possibly in the winter, possibly in the dark) until AAA arrives. Also, allowing you to pay for roadside assistance isn't the same as "providing" it.
I recently pulled out of a business and the "low tire pressure light" turned on right away. "Hmm?" My next stop was 1/4 mile away, and it still felt okay. At the next parking lot I checked all the tires with my gauge and found one was 10psi low. On closer inspection the nail was right on top. Sure enough I'd picked up a little nail. It was a slow leak, and I wouldn't have heard the hiss. If not for the sensor I might not have noticed I'd gotten a flat until I got on the freeway.
PSA: Check your spare's air pressure. Mine was supposed to be 60psi. It had 40psi, which was good enough to get me to the tire store. I checked the spare when I got home - the tire repair crew had bumped it up to 55psi.
My dad was leaving on a trip recently. Because 'spare tire psi' was on my mind I checked his spare - it was only 25psi.
Here's my more recent fixes:
-----------------------------------
1. The fuel pipe saga.
Fuel pipe from pump (tank) to engine is a single, molded, hard-plastic and inflexible pipe. Connecting it to new quick release attachments on either end requires a heat gun. At the factory they can heat-shrink the connectors onto the pipes as there is no fuel in the car.
When my quick-release snapped off[1] while I was replacing the fuel pump, dealer quoted my ZAR17,500 for a replacement pipe. To actually install it would require removing everything under the car because it is inflexible and molded to the shape of the car.
Older cars had less efficient (i.e. thicker OD pipes with the same ID) fuel pipes, but they were flexible and easy to route. They used standard clamps which are available for cents right now. The advantage of the newer pipes is that:
a) Cheaper to install (done by robots), and
b) With the quick release joiner, easy for a robot to snap on the connections on either end.
With the older, cheaper and repairable flexible pipes, the manufacturing process required a human. The more expensive pipes result in a cheaper-to-assemble car, even if the BOM is higher.
-----------------------------------
2. Heater blower motor refusing to come on. The AC units (including heater and blower motor) are controlled by low-current signals. This lets the unit have a rotary encoder when the human wants to adjust blower speed manually while still allowing the microcontroller to adjust blower speed when the user simply sets a target temperature.
This requires an additional current-splitter to limit the current to the blower motor (controlling the speed) while maintaining the voltage. When the blower is spinning at a low speed current is dumped into a heat sink and the blower gets very little current. At high speed no current needs to be dumped and the blower can spin at full speed.
My current limiter melted. This required a manufacturer-only replacement, as the digital signals controlling it are completely opaque to the technician (me) fixing the car.[2] Older cars without the rotary encoder had physical switches that switched the blower motor between one of 5 output speeds. Anything in the older system that broke can be replaced by standard switches and relays.
Anything, even the smallest component, in the newer HVAC system that breaks means you have to hope like hell that the manufacturer is still making parts for the car.
In this scenario, a 1995 mid-range car is going to outlive a 2025 mid-range sedan.
-----------------------------------
3. Engine and transmissions!
This is the big one: a 2015 car that, after 20 years, has a worn out slushbox, might have to be thrown away! Why? Because if you are unable to replace the clutches and springs and other parts inside the slushbox due to lack of parts availability, you can't simply swap in a new one, or replace it with a manual - the car is going to throw up a dozen diagnostic codes and probably won't even start.
That 1995 mid-range car? The engine and transmission are not coded to work with each other only. Swap in a Toyota v6 engine+transmission into a broke-ass Ford? Sure, why not?
Same with the radio. In older cars the radio was a swappable unit with standard sizes. In new cars the infotainment system is rarely a regular shape, and in those cars where it is nothing but a screen, it's still hooked into the CAN bus to deliver warnings!
You can upgrade your 1995 mid-range car to use the latest in infotainment technology (maps, voice commands, etc) by simply buying a head unit off Amazon. You cannot upgrade your top-off-the-range Range Rover, Mercedes Benz or Audi just 4 years after purchase!
-----------------------------------
My point is this: the older cars can, with simple mechanical and electro-mechanical non-manufacturer parts, effectively run until humanity just doesn't have fuel anymore. The newer cars will, once the manufacturer stops producing parts for them, have to be scrapped.
There is little incentive for the manufacturer to continue producing parts for a 10-year old car, and that gets even smaller as the car ages.
In fact, I completely expect, as time goes on, that manufacturers would (if they haven't started already) code each component to the VIN or secret key so that parts from a breakers yard won't run in any other car even if it's the same model.
Their preference is: When the radio breaks, it's time to buy a new car or live without a radio.
--------------------
[1] Plastic that over time got brittle.
[2] With a lot of work and lugging my ancient 'scope to the car, I could have worked out what signals were being sent (if digital; analogue would have been easier of course, requiring only a multimeter), designed a circuit around a MOSFET or similar and used a tiny microcontroller to read the signals and control the current.
Everything else is super basic. There's a reason some of the earliest vehicles were EVs.
What should it do when the throttle pedal goes from 0 to 99 percent? That's likely an electrical issue, not a driver command to plow through the school zone. I could probably think of a dozen such scenarios, and the true number is probably in the hundreds. They all have to be proofed mathematically. With redundancy.
Out of eye, out of mind.
> What should it do when the throttle pedal goes from 0 to 99 percent?
How fast? 0->99% in 1 second is likely the user gunning it. 0 to 99 percent in a millisecond is likely a fault. In either case, the simplest solution is a capacitor in-between the signal and throttle. Doesn't need to be particularly beefy to get the job done.
The problem is you are thinking about this as a software problem when it's an electrical problem. There are a lot of electrical components that have instantaneous response times, well known curves, and perform exactly the jobs you'd want faster than what you can do with software.
You want to minimize the amount of software between the accelerator and the motor precisely because you want to make the car as responsive as possible. Putting software in the middle creates delays and needs for very complex real time software and more expensive components.
The gas pedal on an EV isn't connected to a passive rheostat gating the entire power output of the vehicle.
It's a low-voltage sensor. A capacitor can swallow a transient of a 0.1v signal bursting to 5v for ten milliseconds, and then software converts it into whatever "sport mode acceleration curve" the marketing department calls for.
I can't find the actual circuitry, but I'd not be surprised if that was what the EV1 did in the 90s.
Software adds flexibility, it isn't a necessity.
> There is fundamentally no difference between a golf car and an electric car other than a higher top speed and more powerful motor.
What's the fundamentally different principle that the battery operates on?
Rather than just say "nuh uh". Educate me and other commenters on where the differences lay.
Because honestly, I think you're the ignorant one. You think because they are a different shape they have different operating principles.
There are differences, obviously, a golf carts doesn't need airbags, HVAC, or crumple zones. However, when it comes to the drive train, about the only fundamental difference is that BEVs have bigger motors and bigger batteries.
There's a reason average people have been able to convert their ICE vehicles into BEVs. It's that the most complex part is storing the batteries and attaching the motor.
But, my argument is that EVs aren't complex. I could even grant your 2x number for safety measure and you'd still end up with a much simpler device than you can pull off with a comparable ICE engine.
I'd also point out that a lot of the parts are already "off the shelf".
There's a reason we saw a slew of pop-up BEV manufacturers all at once. It's because the manufacturing complexity is simply a lot lower than it is for an ICE line. There are far fewer parts, far less complex parts, and the parts are more readily available.
I drove a 2002 diesel Jetta for a few years. $80 for all four glow plugs. It’s a no brainer to do them all. This was probably ~2015, it was old when it was written off.
This year, the cheapest I could find one (yes, just one) for my 2013 was $135 online. Cheaper online than a mechanic friend of mine could get it through any of his sources.
There is a compression sensor in there now adding cost, apparently.
But I looked it up and for the benefit of anyone else who's never worked on diesel, it's part of the diesel ignition cycle it seems. TIL!
Diesel being injected into the engine isn't ignited by a spark, but spontaneously by compression. This can't happen if the temperature in the cylinder is too low.
Having your fuel being ignited by the engine running, as opposed to something like a spark plug, has interesting side effects like dieseling and runaway.
I think a large part of the problem is that a sort of very scientific "modify a single variable at a time" type of engineering culture permeated academia a couple decades ago and now we're reaping what we sow.
The sort of practical "I snipped this corner so now they pack neatly four to a box from the supplier and I altered that curve so now there's clearance for more types of wrenches around the bolt head and I smoothed out the rib shape for die longevity and in doing all that I reduced the mass by 6.5%" type stuff that engineering culture used to look up to has been replaced with KPI chasing "You told me to reduce mass by 6% and I reduced mass by 7%, 2nd and 3rd order consequences be damned" engineering culture that used to be fairly confined to the rich half of a certain continent is now what is worshipped.
And likewise you get spiraling complexity because the only thing holding it back is the bean counters (when doing so is a priority) whereas before there was kind of natural restraint keeping it back on both sides. So as they go around updating platforms and models and sub-assemblies as whatnot the compliance ratchets up, unless the mandate at the time is to reduce it.
If you were to take an older, simple to understand car, and add all of the modern features through aftermarket addons, you would end up with a car that is no longer simple to understand. They were simple to understand, because the feature set was simple compared to a modern car. (And I miss them dearly - can't wait to retire to find the time to find that love again!)
But it's worth noting that modern traction-control makes life wildly safer for the average driver up north. I was driving an icy Vermont ski road with winter tires, but (because I hadn't yet fixed the sensor) no traction control. There were 2 pretty terrifying moments and I'm an experienced driver. Your average American can't even drive manual, there's no way they're compensating for low-traction winter mountain roads properly in all cases. I'd rank it more critical than any of the backup camera, TPMS or FCW features, and maybe on par with ABS for those of us in cold areas.
Now if I lived in LA, I'd just hold down the "DTC" button to disable traction control on bootup and forget about it.
It's really easy to have a sensor failure that indicates a major repair is needed, when the actual issue is the $1 sensor.
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.
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.
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."
E.g. Mercedes uses Renault engines in the less-fancy models, but most customers are kept in the dark about that.
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.
Only if you crash right after you bought the car ...
Ignoring extremists is easier than preventing (or reducing to a point that you stop complaining) these accidents at the limit, so that's what society does. Tough luck.
Slow reaction times, of the kind that could be easily corrected by more strict laws around who and how licenses are given, are easily the #1 reason for preventable pedestrian deaths from cars.
This is a solvable problem and the Euros have far less of these stupid kinds of situations for a reason. I WILL blame most drivers who "kill children" for their laxidazy assumption that they can reduce their idle concentration just because "it hasn't happened to them".
Also all of this discourse is really arguments for requiring all cars to have active automatic emergency braking for pedestrians and other cars.
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.
While I'm sure there is some amount of the affect you're describing the lion's share of it is likely CAFE rules favoring larger footprint vehicles effectively discounting SUVs causing them to be a better bang for your buck.
>It's not clear at all to me how a crash involving two SUVs is much safer than,
It is by the simple physics of having more distance to dissipate force over and less distance between the occupants and stuff in the cabin.
> This all points towards a runaway tragedy of the commons that can be solved by limiting vehicle mass.
Which will never happen because the same exact upper middle class demographics that screech all over the internet about safety are the exact same people who would see their buying choices degrade as a result of such.
Is this a personal theory, a hunch, or do you have data or citations?
> of having more distance to dissipate force over and less distance between the occupants and stuff in the cabin.
So what we need are bigger vehicles made out of lighter materials, to increase the distance and reduce the forces, perhaps some comically large Styrofoam bumpers protecting our bikes? Now, I can get behind that.
> safety is only a "nice to have"
Buyers are a diverse group, you know. There is a substantial segment that rates safety as a the top priority, and there is very little doubt the SUV mass race is strongly related to the "perception of safety" larger vehicles provide, of course not to the actual safety reality and externalities they incur to the rest of society.
Another substantial segment is driven by the "perception of masculinity" their large vehicles provides. You couldn't make up this level of lameness.
Find any "professional" talking on record about small car safety and they will lament the reduced space for crumple zones, reduced distance from head to structure, etc.
>Another substantial segment is driven by the "perception of masculinity" their large vehicles provides. You couldn't make up this level of lameness.
I suspect the number of people who see a big truck as projecting masculinity is in fact smaller than the people who enjoy that other people will assume they bought the truck for that reason and dislike or be offended by it.
I suspect there is a correlation between people who choose big cars, and empathy levels below yours.
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.
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%.
GDP and its consequences has been a disaster for the human race
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.
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."
Probably a typo, but accurate. Gotta have my truck.
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.
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.
Income would include the money being immediately spent to cover debt (be it student loans, mortgage, medical, car).
> Most things do _not_ actually have inflated prices relative to European countries
I'm struggling to think of things which aren't inflated. Only one I can come up with is gas/petrol/fuel, because there are much less taxes on it. Everything else I can think of is more expensive in the US - healthcare, transportation, food (groceries, and absurdly so for restaurants, for worse quality at that), various types of recreation (cinema, theatre, netflix and co, cable, watching live sports, concerts) internet, phone bills. Electricity is way too location dependent so I'll skip that one.
> 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.
Are interest rates favourable? There are multiple concerning trends (like car payments being one of the top household expenses and people struggling with that, people owing more on car loans than what the vehicle is worth, etc. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/15/american-consumers-are-incre... )
> 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.
I'm not ranting, I'm correcting a wrong comparison using a wrong metric incorrectly. I don't know what is it with Americans reassuring themselves with GDP metrics, but it's very confusing why anyone would throw in GDP numbers when talking about disposable income and the car market.
Standard plan is £5.99 in UK, €7.99 in france, $7.99 in the US. So the US is the cheapest of those after currency conversion
> cinema
US median price in 2022: $10.53. In the UK, £7.69 == $10.54 (uncanny tbh)
> groceries
https://www.lovemoney.com/gallerylist/360768/what-a-basket-o... puts the US at $52.80, France at $51.08.
I'm genuinely struggling to understand where you are pulling these conclusions from because they don't fit the trivially searchable data, nor do they fit the anecdotal conclusions that I think most people would make from spending time in these places.
> Are interest rates favourable? There are multiple concerning trends (like car payments being one of the top household expenses and people struggling with that, people owing more on car loans than what the vehicle is worth, etc. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/15/american-consumers-are-incre... )
Yes, they're more favorable. The interest rates available to US consumers on auto purchases are lower than those available to UK consumers. And again, it's a case where your need to moralize is getting in the way of the topic: I'm saying that easier access to credit is a contributor to Americans spending more on cars. You are saying "oh, but Americans then struggle with auto loans". Yes! These are not conflicting statements. You seem to be attaching a value judgement that isn't there to the statement that "Americans are able to spend more on cars". It doesn't have to be a good thing, but that doesn't necessarily make it untrue.
> I'm not ranting, I'm correcting a wrong comparison using a wrong metric incorrectly. I don't know what is it with Americans reassuring themselves with GDP metrics, but it's very confusing why anyone would throw in GDP numbers when talking about disposable income and the car market.
You were the first person in this thread to bring up GDP per capita! The person you are replying to said "richer". You're the one interpreting this to be a GDP reference, but it doesn't need to be since it's also true with regards to disposable income.
I also don't understand why you think it's people "reassuring themselves". I don't need reassuring of anything on this topic, and I'm not sure why you think you know what beliefs I might hold about the relative merits of living in MS versus various European countries. I think it's a pretty basic ability to be able to decouple the question of "is the median american is willing and able to spend more money on a car than the median german?" from "which country has an overall higher standard of living?".
Standard with ads, which is distorting because ads have a different cost and benefit (more expensive and lucrative in the US). Standard Standard is 14.99€ in France, £12.99 in the UK, $17.99 in the US.
> US median price in 2022: $10.53. In the UK, £7.69 == $10.54 (uncanny tbh)
2022 is distorted due to Covid.
> > groceries
> https://www.lovemoney.com/gallerylist/360768/what-a-basket-o... puts the US at $52.80, France at $51.08.
I like how you picked France, not Poland at $27, Spain at $35, UK at $35, Ireland at $39, Belgium at $42, Italy at $44, Germany at $46, etc.
> I'm genuinely struggling to understand where you are pulling these conclusions from because they don't fit the trivially searchable data, nor do they fit the anecdotal conclusions that I think most people would make from spending time in these places.
From visiting the US multiple times over relatively extended periods (few weeks at a time) over the past few years, while living and travelling extensively over the EU. Plus anecdotes from the internet. A lot of things are more expensive, when you count everything (tax, tips, etc).
> Yes, they're more favorable
You said they're favourable, not more favourable than e.g. in the UK. What's the average APR?
> You were the first person in this thread to bring up GDP per capita! The person you are replying to said "richer".
The only metric by which Mississipi is "richer" than France is GDP/GDP per capita.
so it's 30 cents cheaper per month on that basis. that doesn't really support the claim.
> I like how you picked France, not Poland at $27, Spain at $35, UK at $35, Ireland at $39, Belgium at $42, Italy at $44, Germany at $46, etc.
I picked France because I had specifically mentioned France previously. I'm aiming to be consistent.
> Plus anecdotes from the internet.
It all becomes clearer.
> You said they're favourable, not more favourable than e.g. in the UK. What's the average APR?
I said "better access to favorable rates", not that every person is getting good rates. For what it's worth I would say that any interest rate that's below the expected return on money in the SP500 is quite favorable.
> The only metric by which Mississipi is "richer" than France is GDP/GDP per capita.
Clearly untrue: it has higher household disposable income, almost certainly the most relevant statistic.
I really don't think you're sincerely interested in this topic, you just want to dunk on America.
Where in Europe are you? Because I've always found food ridiculously cheap in the US compared to the Europeans countries I've lived in or visited for an extended enough period of time that I had to regularly go food shopping (Scandinavia, UK, Germany, Switzerland). You can get 3 chickens, each 3 times the size of the chickens I'm used to, for what I pay for 2 chicken breasts. Many restaurants will give you a serving that could feed a family of 4 for what I might pay for starter back home.
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.
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
Often the case, but then you can get the loan and pay it off immediately for a fee.
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.
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.
14 Skoda Fabias in stock starting at €17625; €20500 if you want a few options and an automatic gearbox.
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.
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...
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.
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.
10 years ago, a Doener Kebab was also only half the price it is today though ;)
The Renault 5 prices in gmac's link is with battery.
Still a €25k car, but that's still a $29k car.
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.
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.
Are we sure that inflation numbers have not been underreported ?
That's partly explained by inflation, but also by the massive amounts of extra safety equipment mandated by the General Safety Regulation. The bill of materials for cheap cars has increased by thousands of euros, because they're legally required to have cameras and radar.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/plmrep/COM...
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?
- 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.
So why not skip the middleman and go directly to the source? The only annoyance for me is the ridiculous white labeling. Most no-name brands are seemingly coming from the same factories / same designs, so it’s often impossible to find quality reviews. Probably partly Bezos fault because Amazons review system are less trustworthy than a used car dealership. So I’d rather pay more for known flaws than the hit-or-miss gamble of no-name brands with fake reviews. I hope Chinese merchants catch up, because they’re losing customers for no particularly good reason. I just want the reviews, warts and all.
I have been putting my trust in these. (Also looking for 3+ years of manufacturer warranty, guarantees of 10ish years for replaceable parts, high reparability scores...)
Hopefully, they won't let me down.
(Also, never buying on Amazon. Had to break that rule a few times of course over the past decade, but only for <100€ items.)
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.
Also the (semi) compact crossover has kind of killed the compact car. You get more space, better ground clearance, for a decent price.
The Forth Power Law. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
In a world where ~half of all SUVs are some poof-ed up variant of a compact car a nuance free opinion like yours is just insufferable.
And yes, your mother is more likely to kill someone in a larger, heavier, vehicle. I don’t see how anything you said refutes that.
We all spend the 2000s listening to the "they're less safe because they roll over more" screeching broken record and while statistically that was true to an extent nothing really came of it, everyone decided that yeah they do but they like the tradeoff. You just sound like a 2020s cover of that. Why ought I to take your hand wringing seriously?
These typical crossovers that most people buy are more or less a direct replacement for the sedans they used to buy. Sure they're probably statistically worse at the margin but people derive a bunch more utility out of them than the sedans they replaced, which is why the form factor is carried over as best they can to the compact and subcompact hatches (impreza, c-max, etc). You have every right to tell people they ought not to be doing what benefits them because of some nebulous change at the margin that's only visible once you apply a bunch of statistics, and I have every right to call you a moron over it. But what do I know, I drive a minivan.
Keep in mind nowadays most SUVs aren't trucks with the cab extending to the rear instead of a bed. They're cars that are slightly lifted with a taller profile. As an example, I have a Hyundai Elantra, which is longer than the equivalent Hyundai SUV (Tucsan)...
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!
Well, bigger cars are a factor that makes the roads degrade faster.
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.
You can think of roads as basically retaining walls as they're a hard compacted mass of stuff "floating" in otherwise fairly fluid ground. Sure, high point loads can damage the top surface (not really a problem since anything on tires is fairly low point load) but it's the overall weight you're asking it to bear that causes the pressure to just kinda mush the wall over.
But the driver would have to sit lower in a minivan. Which is what SUVs are really about, the ego boost one gets from sitting higher up (and the associated feelings with being able to not have to settle for a minivan, and being able to waste a little money).
The form factor of a typical SUV, such as an X7 or Land Cruiser or Explorer or Suburban, is inherently more wasteful than a minivan. The only thing those offer 99% of people is that they allow the driver to sit higher up, and be able to say they are not driving a minivan. Otherwise, the minivan provides more utility in every way.
>summer roadtrips, ski vacations, visiting family, moving stuff.
All of this stuff (in the manner 99% of people use their vehicle, i.e. not climbing rocky terrain like in the commercials) is easier to do in a minivan than an SUV. And I'm sure an electric minivan would be better than an electric SUV, except at signaling you can afford to forego the extra utility.
And I'm old enough that I used to do everything with a beater compact car (Saab 900 Turbo, was lots of fun) when I was young, it was fine, ish. Now I have a family, and if I want to bring along the in-laws as well it's more efficient and generally easier to bring 1 large vehicle versus 2 small ones.
They're also on their out around these parts, very unfortunately.
I still don't understand the urge in the US to own a Truck at any cost
Prior to the pandemic's impact on prices, trucks generally offered better TCO. I struggle to imagine that still holds true in the current landscape, but the shift has happened recently enough that we don't really have a good picture of what the total cost is over a sufficiently long period in light of how the world has changed.
So, right now, amid many unknowns, people are gambling on the past being indicative of the future. They might get burned hard, or they might come out smiling in the end. Time will tell. When it does, and assuming it shows that the TCO benefit is no longer there, you will start to see movement away from them. People aren't completely irrational – but they are slow.
Ford's linup is a great example how you people harping on SUVs actively detract from the discussion. What you call the Flex, the Ecosport and the C-max doesn't really matter. They're obviously by virtue of their attributes much closer to a "car" than they are to a traditional truck-ish SUV.
Every OEM's lineup has examples of this (Honda Crosstour anyone?).
The OEMs could make these things very cheaply if they wanted, look at the Maverick, a brand new model debuting at 25k. But they don't, why?
How is this car not considered a massive SUV?
Like you say, the term itself is meaningless but it does encompass the current class of vehicles that are needlessly big, heavy, and so high of the ground that some tanks literally have better forward vision than those SUVs.
I don't really care what Americans drove 50 years ago, I care that most cars sold here (EU) are way oversized for practically no reason that the consumer cares about.
This has become the irrelevant part because "does it have an electric motor in the powertrain" has become more important to fuel economy than vehicle size. There are hybrid SUVs that get better MPG than non-hybrid sedans, to say nothing of the full electric ones.
Which is another reason the average price is increasing. Hybrids have a lower TCO even though they have a higher initial purchase price. People who can do the math realize that paying more up front for a hybrid or full electric is paying less long-term. But then the market for lower priced new cars declines, because the people who can afford a new car can afford to pay a little extra for long-term savings and most of the people who can't afford to do that were buying used to begin with.
Can they? In long term maintainability decides. And hybrids usually has it with maintainability pretty bad. Large area of potential breaking, expansive spare parts usually with strong vendor-lock.
Hybrids are very costly in maintainability, even if you are privileged elite that buys hybrid and in two years resell it and buy brand new car, even then hybrids looses comparatively big percent of its original cost.
So people that buys hybrids, usually CAN NOT do the math.
Electric motors outlast the vehicle, and significant battery degradation only results in slightly worse fuel economy.
- No engine belts
- No starter
- No alternator
- No transmission(1)
- No torque converter
- No turbochargers
- Regenerative braking can significantly reduce brake pad wear
Edit: - AWD is an electric motor on the rear axle. No driveshaft or transfer case required.
As long as you drive it regularly and keep up with scheduled maintenance, you don't have to do anything for well over 100,000 miles.
Replacing the traction battery after 10~15 years is cheaper than the additional maintenance required for regular cars.
1: Yes, it has an “e-CVT”. Which is just a set of fixed planetary gears. All “shifting” is done through varying the power output of two electric motor-generators.
The electric motors are the limiting factor when it comes to continuous performance. You really don’t want to tow anything heavy with a hybrid.
If you need to tow things a lot, get a pickup truck or a heavy-duty SUV with a gas engine.
I’m not super convinced that accessory belts are a major cause of maintenance. I only recall having to do that once at around 120k miles.
I think there is a good argument to be made that implementations like Toyotas HSD are more reliable than plain ICE, but you’re not making it here.
The gas engine has a timing chain and chain-driven oil pump. Everything else runs off the DC-DC converter.
The transmission is two motor-generators and an ICE directly connected by fixed gearing. This is used to start the engine.
The ICE in a hybrid doesn’t need any accessories beyond what the electric drivetrain already provides. Therefore, it does not have a starter or alternator.
There are a lot fewer moving parts that can break or wear out.
It’s a pretty elegant system that bolts a bare ICE to what is otherwise an electric car.
Is this conclusion based just on fuel consumption? From a relatability standpoint, it doesn’t make sense at first blush because you have to have both ICE and EV parts in series in the drivetrain; the total reliability can’t be higher than the individual components of they’re in series.
And then you're also keeping the moving parts more in their happy zone of temperature, speed, and load instead of needing them to operate in as wide of conditions.
A hybrid, by definition, combines an ICE and electric drivetrain. While I understand it could be designed for a more efficient range of operation* how could it negate the downsides of an ICE-only design if it requires an ICE? (Are we conflating EV and hybrid?)
* This also means each segment is less globally efficient, meaning the system is less efficient if it has to limp along if one part is inoperable
The pure ICE engine and transmission has to deal with some of the most stressful times the motor can handle, extremely high torque demands coming from a stop. Its far less stressful for an electric motor to generate good torque at such low RPMs.
Just two quick examples.
A key part of my original statement.
A series hybrid or parallel series hybrid will often have a far simpler transmission in terms of moving parts and what not. You're right, they'll use the gas motor for power going highway speeds, but they're still a lot simpler. Many hybrids effectively only have a single speed for the ICE motor in their "transmission", some have 2-4, compared to modern ICE transmissions which are like 7+ gears.
Note, I do agree, there are some hybrid drive trains that are more complicated than their ICE counterparts, but it is not a given. Many hybrids are a good bit simpler in the end.
One example of a simpler setup would be Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive. e-CVT's can be radically simpler mechanically.
The math is clear: in series, the system reliability cannot be greater than any single part.
So if the claim is that hybrids are more reliable than ICE, there needs to be some sort of discussion about why you think the ICE is more reliable. You keep bringing up transmissions when the main point is related to the ICE.
As to in series being more complicated, starter/alternator + battery already has all the mechanical complexity of a barebones series hybrid. You could technically take a standard ICE car change only electronics and get some of the benefits of a hybrid. Obviously for reliability you’d want beefier electric motors, and … before you know it you’re building a more robust system than a pure ICE.
Ok, let's say you go stupid simple for the transmission and have a super basic classic four-speed manual.
Right off the bat, you've got clutch wear. In that e-CVT, there are no sliding clutches. Everything is connected all the time. Immediately, we see a wear component that will eventually need replacing. Not might need replacing, will need replacing. It is a consumable part, designed to wear.
You now have cable assemblies which will eventually stretch over the life of the car. Those will eventually need adjustment. Once again, these just don't exist at all with the e-CVT system.
Now you have a shifter and gear selector. This will need to slip in and out of other gears. Often this is not a perfect shift, imparting wear on the transmission components. Once again, you don't have a gear selector in an e-CVT, this wear never happens. This wear can cause premature failure of the transmission. This is largely controlled by the skill of the operator, sure.
Just a few quick examples. But this is then also an incredibly basic manual transmission, you won't find such a thing on pretty much any recent mass market car. These days you'll see complicated automatics with servos and what not to control the gear ratios, massively more gear ratios, rely on fluid channels to push things around inside, rely on computers to operate them effectively, etc.
And as Retric mentioned, there are analoges for most of the hybrid components in a pure-ICE car. You already have a DC motor set to drive the car in the starter motor. You already have an inverter, the alternator. You're not really adding a ton of new things, you're just massively upsizing some of the things you already have and massively simplifying a lot of the other components.
The error in this is in assuming the analogs have equivalent reliability or cost in each system.* (The original point is about cost of ownership). They don’t. So, while both have batteries, the reliability and cost of each is very different. Same with the ICE component etc. My issue is broad generalizations about reliability without speaking to the nuance.
I’m not set against the idea of a hybrid being more reliable or cheaper, but more against the superficial generalization.
* also the analogs miss some of the complexity. Yes, both have a battery, but a hybrid requires high voltage and auxiliary batteries, meaning the battery system is by definition more complex.
The majority of my comment points out how the equivalent analoge on the pure ICE is massively less reliable than the hybrid. Who is ignoring the reliability of the different components here again?
Sure, there is a HV and a LV battery. They're both solid state devices and thus generally pretty reliable when it comes to cars. The LV battery faces far less wear. The overall system is considerably more reliable in the hybrid than the same in the ICE. It's near impossible to generally talk about the prices of something like the HV battery, it varies greatly based on what models you're talking about. One car might have a replacement used battery that's good for many years be $700, another might be extremely bespoke and rare and be $10k. If I were to judge prices of pure ICE transmissions based on extremely rare hyper cars I might say an ICE transmission replacement costs $20k or more. The details matter greatly when judging TCO on potentially low market cars.
He can’t speak to the last 2%, but I doubt your in the market for a hyper car and really this concerned about TCO.
Where is your 98% claim coming from? The other poster made no such claim.
The irony is there is published info on TCO from companies like Edmunds and Kelly Blue Book. We can take umbrage with some of the factors or weighting, but it’s a better starting point in real data than anything bright up so far. A claim could easily be crafted using such information that addresses everything I’ve raised (maintenance, depreciation, different designs, etc). Yet the discussion seems almost wholly based on vibes and near-ideological bias. It reads to me as conclusions searching for data instead of the other way around.
The best I can tell from that information, TCO is largely a wash. For comparable manufacturers/designs, TCO over the first 5-10 years seems to be about the same. You can pick some designs that favor one side or the other, but in general they are roughly within 10% (usually considerably less) of one another. Given the uncertainty due to the variables in question, it seems reasonable to conclude there aren’t strong conclusions on TCO differences between them.
I’ve already looked at that those real work TCO numbers for a bunch of cars, that’s part of why I’m saying they’re reliable and lower TCO.
But there’s a big difference between saying that on average these things break down less across all hybrids and saying every single hybrid model is more reliable.
Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, Toyota Highlander Hybrid, Toyota Prius, Toyota Camry Hybrid, Honda CR-V Hybrid, Ford Escape Hybrid, Ford Fusion Hybrid, and Honda Accord Hybrid which have a lower TCO than their gas’s equivalents.
I don’t think we need to consider low production edge cases, to make a statement about the general case.
18-inch wheels Heated front seats Heated steering wheel Partial vinyl and cloth upholstery 13.2-inch infotainment touchscreen Navigation system Adaptive cruise control (adjusts speed to maintain a constant distance between the Escape and the car in front) Lane keeping system (makes minor steering corrections to help keep the vehicle centered in its lane) Evasive steering assistance (enhances the forward collision mitigation system with steering-based collision avoidance) Rear parking sensors (alert you to obstacles that may not be visible behind the vehicle when parking)
If I had to guess, you may be getting numbers from a high fuel cost locale. In the end, I don’t think the conclusion that it’s largely a wash is unreasonable. There will be areas with higher cost and those with lower cost.
That's the thing though, you're lumping all hybrid drivetrains in together and assuming they're all equally reliable and equally have the same TCO math, as if "hybrid" means only one thing. I've been trying to tell you, "hybrid" means a lot of different things and really shouldn't be seen as one technology, "depending on drive trains compared" and all. Which is why I made a big point of mentioning my usage of "series", which flew right over your head.
When I'm talking about a bespke battery on a low-market car, I'm not talking about some hybrid supercar. I'm talking more about the hybrid compliance car trim levels that are only really sold in small numbers in some markets, like the Ford Explorer Hybrid. You practically won't find them in most states, they were essentially only delivered to a few markets in very small numbers. Its components are far more bespoke and thus expensive to find replacements. Pretty much nobody makes remanufactured batteries for this car. It's a parallel hybrid, so it still has all the complexity and reliability of the traditional ICE drive train. This is pretty much true of a lot of "the same ICE car, but now hybrid!" They're often going to be low production models, bespoke batteries, and probably a parallel hybrid. And I agree, good chance the TCO won't work out in the hybrid's favor in the end.
Compared to something like the Prius or Maverick Hybrid or the new RAV4, which are extremely mass market. These have a much different drive train than that Explorer Hybrid, being e-CVTs. There's a big market for remanufactured batteries since there are so many more out there. Parts are considerably cheaper, and thus they have (or will probably have, the new RAV4s are still new) low TCO.
Its not fair to group the Explorer Hybrid and the Maverick together as one category of "hybrid", since they're such different designs on how they operate leading to radically different outcomes on TCO.
I’m not though, you’re just making that assumption. For example, as “comparable manufacturers” if I select Toyota (because it has a reputation for reliability) I can compare the Prius to the Corolla (because they’re both at a similar price point in their respective categories). This “should” favor the Prius because the Corolla has a CVT (which is known to be less reliable) but TCO comes out about 8% lower for the Corolla. I’m not lumping all together, I’m deliberately trying to make reasonable comparisons.
Now I could also pick and choose to go the other way with a similar comparison. The end result seems to be that there is a distribution of differences that are reasonably close, but with enough variance to say it looks like a wash in TCO. Point being, strong conclusions may not be warranted.
>Which is why I made a big point of mentioning my usage of "series", which flew right over your head.
It did not go over my head. In fact, I brought it up in the very first post before you responded. [1] I even reminded you of that [2]. This is why I’m saying it seems like you are reflexively responding without actually reading for comprehension or clarity.
That’s not a direct comparison. Toyota sells hybrid and non hybrid corolla’s and the hybrids are cheaper to own @ 5 years here.
https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/corolla/2024/cost-to-own/
https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/corolla-hybrid/2024/cost-to-o...
Also, the payback for a more expensive upfront car at year 5 on a car likely to last ~26 years doesn’t mean they are also equal for the next 21 years.
I’m not sure I would use the 25+ life because that doesn’t reflect how long a person will keep it. The depreciation captured by the TCO is a better representation of that effect.
Suppose I’m paying cash and it’s an extra 2,000$ by my TCO drops by 0.1% over 5 years is that a worthwhile investment? Without knowing what the car costs you can’t tell.
What matters is the difference in cost vs the difference in TCO. You’re buying a car either way.
That’s a more nuanced take by adjusting the assumptions. Sometimes adjusting them is warranted, and sometimes it’s just to game the outcome you wanted.
The cash on hand bit isn’t the only take, but if you’re comparing 5 year loans and only keeping the car for 5 years then you can ignore time value of money. Suppose the monthly payment is 50$ more and you save 60$ a month, sure it’s only saving 10$/month but that’s essentially free money.
> They still may be, but nobody has shown good, generalizable data to that point.
The general case of someone keeping a vehicle for 8 years and driving 15k miles per year isn’t close, as long as we’re keeping everything else the same. EX: A 2025 Ford Escape ST-Line Elite has a hybrid option for an extra 1,205$. If the base price is significantly higher than 2,000$ you’re not comparing drive trains but options.
Plug in Hybrids are a separate category dependent on your local electric prices.
> Ah, ok. I didn’t realize “series” is a specific term of art in the EV space.
You acknowledged you did not originally understand what "series" meant when I was talking about a "series hybrid". And your "reminding me" is you continuing to show you were not aware of what my usage of the word "series" meant in terms of hybrid drivetrains and instead "using it in the pure reliability domain sense". And your first comment points out you didn't get the idea that a series hybrid doesn't have a lot of the same ICE components, instead it seems you had a parallel hybrid design in mind.
> but TCO comes out about 8% lower for the Corolla
In what timeframe comparison, 5-year? How many miles? Which gas markets, is gas $3/gal or $5? What does a 10-year comparison look like? Are you including residual value on the cars after that 5-year period to see a total cost after depreciation? What does a used comparison look like? And yes, why not compare the Corolla ICE vs Corolla Hybrid, wouldn't that be a more apt comparison? One is a sedan and one is a hatch, they're different cars with different branding presence.
Looking at the numbers, drawing that out from a 5-year comparison to a 10-year comparison (or more) would probably tilt the math towards the Prius being cheaper in the end, and I'd imagine even more so at a 15-year point. But we don't actually have these numbers, and these are projections of what these cars might have in terms of TCO, not any detailed study of actual TCO.
The numbers come from the Edmunds site. Eg fuel cost by locality, 15k miles a year etc. You can look at the site for all their assumptions, but some of it is proprietary.
>But we don’t actually have these [TCO] numbers
Exactly! So why are you making strong conclusions in the absence of data?! This is why it comes across as if you are an ideological argument instead of a data-literate one.
“I don’t have any data, but it just makes sense to me” is not the type of curious discussion I was after.
I'm not even making that strong of a conclusion. I'm saying "depends" and what not, because I agree it can be fuzzy and not a hard 100% rule that hybrids are cheaper TCO. But I can make some amount of conclusion because I can look at a trend line and extrapolate especially when equipped with extra knowledge about how these systems work and doing my own projections on potential repair costs at a longer interval.
A 5-year TCO evaluation on a new car generally isn't going to figure in the differences between a motor failure or a transmission failure. They won't include a HV battery failure. Depending on fuel price differences it may not even cover initial pricing disparities but could come close. But I can see a rebuilt transmission can often be $2k or more with a lot of labor, and a rebuilt transmission can still be a roll of the dice. A remanufactured battery is easier to test pack health and know the state of the device and can often be only a few hundred dollars and easy to replace.
As you mentioned, the average ownership period of a car is a little over 8 years. The average life of a car far longer than that. Three years more of gas savings on that average first owner, considerably more over the life of the car. And someone especially concerned with TCO will probably be more interested in buying used and paying cash, not having to deal with as much depreciation and finance charges, and probably have their car longer than average.
> I don’t have any data
We do have some data, we have knowledge of how these systems work, we can see trends in component prices and more can make overall projections from it. Following the trend lines from the data we have, the hybrids do usually pay off in TCO. Am I a bit just taking a gut estimate for a general state of things? Sure. But I think I've sure shared a lot of logic as to why that would probably be that way. It is not just some completely empty guess with nothing backing it at all as you seem to suggest.
The argument goes like this,
ICE cars have an alternator (electric motor 1), starter (electric motor 2), battery, and transmission. A beefier alternator (generator) + starter (electric motor driving the car) + battery adds less complexity than a transmission. That’s the simplest EV design where the engine only ever charges the battery. It’s perfectly viable for a long range plug in hybrid that only ever uses the engine on long trips.
The downside is batteries have conversion losses, so most hybrids have various ways of directly using engine power which then adds complexity. But ultimately hybrids are more complicated than EV’s but very much can be simpler than modern ICE cars.
PS: Technically some old ICE designs like dynastart used to do the same as hybrids where the same electric motor acted as a starter and alternator but in modern ICE vehicles the tradeoff around now little time the starter is needed and how little power the alternator needs to generate means it’s more efficient to separate it out. http://www.isettadoc.com/files/dynastart.pdf
A couple caveats:
1) most modern hybrids use the ICE at higher speeds for efficiency, right? What does that mean in terms of added complexity and reliability?
2) somewhat of a tangent, but in the original post was regarding cost of ownership, and reliability was brought into the discussion because cost is a function of reliability. But the alternator vs electric motor aspect misses the original point about cost, considering the motor may cost 8x-10x to replace.
All that to say, reliability and cost of ownership is complicated. I was pushing back on the overly simplistic takes and appreciate you adding some nuance.
There’s a lot of tradeoffs involved which I’m not an expert on. However, ICE cars need an engine capable of low end torque and a good efficiency across a huge RPM range, hybrids can use a much simpler engine design optimized for where the engine operates best because the EV side handles the low end just fine.
A hybrid engine is also used for fewer hours of operation over its lifespan so in general (because exceptions exist) the gas engine in an hybrid is more reliable than the gas engine in an equivalent ICE. That said, car manufacturers can use up that margin to save weight etc so it’s not a guarantee.
In the end it’s a huge design space, saying something is a hybrid doesn’t actually tell you much about what’s under the hood.
It really depends on the type of hybrid in question. Those are series, series-parallel, or parallel. Some hybrids essentially just use an electric motor to assist in a traditional ICE-like drivetrain (parallel). This is the kind of setup you'll see in something like the Ford Explorer Hybrid or most of Honda's hybrid systems. In these cases, the electric motor just sits in the regular ICE drive train and supplies additional power especially in low efficiency ranges along with regenerative braking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Motor_Assist
In an e-CVT setup (series-parallel) like what you would find in a Ford Escape Hybrid or most Toyotas using a Toyota Hybrid System or Hybrid Synergy Drive, the overall mechanical complexity of the system is considerably less.
A typical ICE is most efficient when running at moderate load and somewhere between 1800 and 3000 RPM. That's what happens naturally at highway speeds, which is why traditional ICE cars get better MPG on the highway than in the city, and why hybrids run the engine on the highway.
Hybrids gain a large advantage in stop and go traffic because then they can recover energy through regenerative braking and contribute it back when accelerating, which allows the ICE to either run within its peak efficiency range or not run at all.
So on the highway a hybrid is basically doing the same thing as a normal car. It might eek out a little more efficiency by using electric boost when going up hill and regen when going down hill to keep the engine load more consistent, but it's nearly the same. But highway miles are what put the least amount of wear on a car.
It's stop and go traffic that causes the most wear because then you're putting high loads on the engine during acceleration (and using lower gears which require more engine revolutions per distance traveled) and burning through brake pads during deceleration. Which is the thing hybrids avoid doing by using the electric motor.
> But the alternator vs electric motor aspect misses the original point about cost, considering the motor may cost 8x-10x to replace.
When alternators or starter motors go bad it's commonly the components like brushes in DC alternator/generators or the clutch pulley or solenoid that hybrid motors don't have to begin with because hybrids typically use AC motors permanently connected to the drive shaft. AC motors are extremely reliable and will typically outlast the rest of the vehicle.
I didn't limit the original discussion to just an ICE motor versus an entire hybrid power train, I explicitly stated, "Depending on the _drive trains_ being compared, the hybrid _drivetrain_...". In the end people don't give a shit about if the motor is reliable, they care about if the car is reliable. The car, which includes a transmission and a heck of a lot more stuff in it. In the end the reliability of the drivetrain is more important, as that includes the reliability of the ICE and all the other stuff needed to make the car go.
If you want to focus on just the ICE part, then sure mechanically the ICE motor in a hybrid drivetrain will be similarly designed to an ICE-only drivetrain. But an ICE car is more than just an ICE motor. And to have that ICE motor actually be useful, it needs to be paired with other components. As you've aptly stated, the reliability of the system overall is extremely related to the reliability of all the components. Namely, having more complicated and less reliable components anywhere in the system makes the whole system less reliable. Having to have an incredibly complicated transmission with tons of friction points and sliding parts and fluid channels relying on specific viscosities of oil is massively more complicated mechanically than a few fixed-ratio planetary gearsets.
But guess what, even if you ignore the rest of the hybrid drive train and focus on just comparing the ICE motors, the ICE in a hybrid will probably outlive the ICE on a similar ICE-only car experiencing a similar usage pattern. The ICE in the hybrid with an e-CVT or similar will pretty much only exclusively operate in its most efficient and lowest stress ranges, while that pure-ICE vehicle needs that gas motor to work in every condition even if it is high stress.
> there needs to be some sort of discussion about why you think the ICE is more reliable
I don't think the ICE is more reliable than the hybrid. I've been arguing the opposite. The gas motor may be similarly reliable in a full ICE, but a lot of the other stuff around it becomes less reliable.
Even then thinking about things like water pumps and AC compressors and what not, a lot of that gets to be more reliable working with their own extremely reliable DC motors going exactly the speed they want to go at instead of having to be tied to engine RPMs and belts and clutches and what not wherever they want to be instead of needing to be in the path of the belt. You don't have a wimpy barely sized alternator, you have a much more reliable AC motor/generator along with an inverter and well-sized battery supplying plenty of electrical power to the system which then has a much more stable voltage for your 12V system. You don't have to put nearly as much CCA load on your 12V battery, you won't run it down as much, it stays in its optimal voltage more often, etc.
>having more complicated and less reliable components anywhere in the system makes the whole system less reliable.
This is my entire point, because the hybrid has many of the same components. Yet you get focused on individual components like transmissions instead of elaborating on the system reliability. I’ll concede that the hybrid ICE may be more reliable (that’s what I meant by asking you to provide details why the ICE is more reliable). But my point is that a more complicated system in series requires all components to be substantially more reliable to have an overall equivalent system reliability.
Consider the life of a traditional ICE engine is about the same as the batteries of a hybrid. Even if the hybrid ICE has a life 30% longer, it doesn’t make the overall system last longer. For round numbers, say the traditional ICE and hybrid batteries have a 200k mile median life (50% reliability).
That means the combined (series) R(hybrid ICE) * R(planetary gears) * R(hybrid electric motors) has to be greater than R(traditional transmission). Maybe that’s the case, and I’m asking for details and specifics.
Now obviously, it’s more complicated because there are other failure modes in each system and cost differentials as well. From the get-go, you seemed focused on individual component reliability. But unless you’re talking specifics about the system reliability you’re tilting at windmills.
So we both agree, a hybrid and a full-ICE will have many of the same components overall. They both need a battery. They both need some kind of transmission. They both need some kind of inverter. They will both have some kind of electric motor in them. In terms of actual number of components, the hybrid and the ICE are actually pretty similar.
But then we both agree, some of those components in the pure ICE are far more mechanically complicated. Higher mechanical complexity, more moving parts, etc generally means less reliability, agree? And one part of that system being radically less reliable makes the whole system less reliable, correct?
> That means the combined (series) R(hybrid ICE) * R(planetary gears) * R(hybrid electric motors) has to be greater than R(traditional transmission).
No, your math would that for the pure ICE would be R(gas ICE) * R(traditional transmission). Your ICE car isn't going to go very far without a motor to spin the transmission. And that traditional transmission is far less reliable than the fixed planetary gears. Comparatively, electric motors are extremely reliable, and chances are your hybrid gas motor will be more reliable for the same kind of required output. So, R(hybrid ICE) > R(gas ICE).
So yes, generally speaking R(hybrid ICE) * R(planetary gears) * R(hybrid electric motors) > R(gas ICE) * R(traditional transmission). Largely because that R(traditional transmission) is so absolutely terrible in comparison to R(planetary gears) * R(hybrid electric motor). Which is why I'm talking about the transmissions so much, and yet you're continuing to ignore it.
No, that was already baked in. I purposefully linked the R(gas ICE) = R(hybrid batteries). Note they were both dropped out of their respective calculation. Just like a hybrid isn’t going to go very far without batteries, but you left that reliability out of your hybrid equation. It seems you’re more interested in arguing that reading posts in good faith, so I don’t think it’s productive to continue the discussion.
> The math is clear: in series, the system reliability cannot be greater than any single part.
We both agree with this statement. The system reliability cannot be greater than any single part. In a traditional ICE, there are multiple systems which are radically less reliable than a hybrid with an e-CVT, while generally untrue of the reverse. So, with "the system reliability cannot be greater than any single part", and we can see there are parts of one system that are less reliable, which system is then logically the less reliable one? Not looking at cost at the moment, just reliability.
That is purely talking about e-CVTs and reliability of specific designs, and not necessarily reliability of all hybrids. In the end, the reliability of "a hybrid" can vary wildly. Is it a pure series hybrid we're talking about? A series-parallel e-CVT? A different kind of series-parallel? A parallel? A parallel hybrid is an example of a hybrid that probably does have worse reliability overall, as you still have all the complexity of a traditional ICE but then adding additional systems adding further complication. You're not trading away the complexity of the traditional ICE in this setup, just adding to it. All different reliability metrics on just the basic design concepts, not even then thinking about differences in reliability in manufacturing and what not across different car makers. Some car manufacturers tend to have more mistakes in actually producing things, and a good design might not actually hit planned reliability if they're not actually making the things right.
On top of that, when comparing TCO you'll see differences based on production volumes of that car. A hybrid that was only a compliance car trim level sold in only California in low volumes for a couple of model years with a bespoke battery is probably stupid expensive ($3000+) for a replacement battery after a decade. A hybrid that was mass market with many hundreds of thousands produced with long generations will have tons of used/remanufactured/aftermarket batteries on the market and might only cost $800. A lot of hybrids from the past tend to fall into the first category and not the second and were made as parallel drivetrains with notable exceptions being things like the Prius which routinely is listed as one of the lowest TCO cars out there.
Just asking for a TCO comparison of "a hybrid" compared to "a traditional ICE" is massively oversimplifying and misunderstanding the complexity of that question. Theoretically, one couldn't even say "what is the TCO of a traditional ICE vehicle?" Are we talking an F-250 Superduty or a Kia Rio or a Ferrari F40? Ignoring purchase price, each of these have radically different operating costs per mile. Which vehicle are we talking about?
This is why my original comment started off with "Depending on the drive trains being compared..." I'm not saying every hybrid will always be more reliable than every traditional ICE. It depends on which cars you're comparing.
Many series hybrids do have a way to power the wheels directly with the engine at highway speeds but it's generally much simpler than a full transmission. Most Honda hybrids for instance have a single clutch that connects the ICE to a "6th" gear.
> You keep bringing up transmissions when the main point is related to the ICE.
less parts -> more reliability
>less parts -> more reliability
This is the general heuristic but only true if the components in each system are equally reliable (and specific to the original claim about cost of ownership, equal in cost). I don’t think that’s true, and am asking for a nuanced breakdown.
For example, the hybrid ICE may be more reliable for good reasons (eg consistent RPM). Or the traditional battery may have half the reliability, but 1/50th the cost. All of that factors into cost of ownership.
In my experience this kind of nuanced info is unfortunately pretty hard to come by. MFGs know it but have no interest in sharing it. Same for taxi operators (though the number of hybrids in taxi fleets is pretty staggering). Fleet operators usually only look at the first 5 years so longer term maintenance and repairs aren't studied all that rigorously. That said, here's a 5-year fleet TCO analysis where HEVs on average were 6k cheaper than ICE: https://www.afla.org/news/692431/The-Hybrid-Value-Propositio...
Also, here is an analysis from 2016 showing that the 2005 Prius had the lowest 10 year maintenance cost of any model. Toyota had only been making hybrids for 7 years at that point. That level of reliability for a new technology is pretty impressive: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1104478_toyota-prius-hy...
> (and specific to the original claim about cost of ownership, equal in cost).
speaking to this piece, it can be hard to gauge because its not all that common for companies to sell very similar trims in hybrid and non-hybrid. The two PSD hybrid examples off the dome are the corolla which is +$1500 for hybrid and the first-gen maverick which was -$1100 for the hybrid (before Ford knew the hybrid would sell like hotcakes, then they cranked the price up).
Perhaps Ford just wanted to burn cash but imo PSD hybrids are likely very competitive in terms of per unit cost, which would hopefully translate into lower repair costs. Toyota has also just switched to hybrid only for the Rav4, which is one of the best selling models on the planet. That would be a pretty bold move if they weren't very confident about the reliability and TCO (basically their entire brand value) or their ability to make money selling them (cost vs consumer value prop).
- pure ICE needs mechanical gears or a belt-style CVT. a HV power source and 2 electric motors enable the use of a dead simple planetary gear set to change the ratio between ICE and the wheels.
- ICE needs a starter and an alternator. psd hybrids use the existing electric motors and a dc-dc converter to do those jobs
- belt powered components (e.g. A/C, power steering) are replaced by more reliable electric versions powered by the high voltage battery
- ICE needs small displacement, high compression, turbo'd engines to meet power and efficiency targets. Hybrids can get away with wheezy but efficient and reliable low-compression engines because the electric motors make performance acceptable
- ICE cars need to run their engine anytime they are moving. Hybrids will have 20+% lower runtime and that runtime will be spent at optimal RPMs and with minimal stress as bursts in acceleration are assisted by the electric motor.
If you drive a lot, different story.
It’s better in other regions, but you couldn’t pay me to buy a Toyota.
not sure about this; hybrids require maintaining both an ICE and a electric motor/battery
The Prius may be an exception but that model has been around for a very long time.
A lot depends on gas prices, of course.
With inflation pressures, layoffs, and other downward pricing pressures, we should expect consumer preferences to change, but I also expect that the global vehicle fleet will continue to age (especially as most vehicles are of sufficient quality that they needn't be replaced).
Reality check:
- In 2025, there are 12 new car models available under $25,000
- In 2005, there were around 10 new models under $15,000 (25k adjusted by inflation)
So the premise that “cars used to be much more affordable” is not true. This article is full of misleading or outdated information that distorts the real trend.
HN deserves better data-driven discussions.
Implying that OP is "Assuming an agenda" appears to break the HN guidelines [1]
[0] - https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=25000&year1=20...
While flight travel has got cheaper by making seats more compact and planes more efficient, the cars go the opposite direction - drive luxuriously like kings and burn the planet with bigger and bigger gas guzzlers...
Unfortunately those are often not on the list of mandatory features.
Electronic stability control doesn't sound like it adds any meaningful costs over ABS. Backup cameras are a cost but not a huge one. What else is there?
Pretty much every AWD car can do "dumb" ABS that uses pedal pressure to run with just the sensors the AWD system uses (front axle speed and rear axle speed) but you need an expensive ABS system with a pump and a throttle by wire system if you want to be able to have the system do stuff when no foot is on the brake.
Is throttle control a mandatory part?
Throttle control is necessary because you need to lock the driver out of the throttle for ESC. Think of ESC as basically preventing soccer moms from mashing the pedal and getting sideways unnecessarily. Depending on how sideways they get initially the ESC programming is going to want to drag certain brakes to help get everything good again and that requires a pump since the driver's foot isn't there to give pressure (it might still be on the gas).
Issue was every manufacturer slashed production during the pandemic either intentionally or due to parts shortages, so cars built during the pandemic years are abnormally scarce.
Add in that used car loans always have higher interest rates than new car loans, if you're buying with anything other than cash there still isn't that much of a discount on gently used/certified vs new.
You have to really go back a few years or get a relatively high mileage before you start finding cheap options again.
You'll need to provide hard evidence for this. I was pretty young in 2005 but $15.000 would get you a decent car (though not a pickup). That being said, it is possible we have more models now under 25.000 but what $15/25k used to buy you (segment wise) has downgraded.
Now inflation adjusted that is supposedly just shy of $22k. But it’s not the full story. That car was actually very nice for the time and to get an equivalently nice car today it’s not going to be a bare bones Nissan Versa or something like that.
I'll say that the two things I'm used to having in a car that this one doesn't (since it's such a base trim) is automatic seat adjustment (not a big deal, I kind of prefer it since the automatic seats on my last vehicle died) and no remote start.
All that to say that I think that inflation adjusted measure can still get you a fine car. As for the argument about income vs inflation in GP, I have no idea.
In other words, if your salary in 2005 was $50k when Mazda was $13k; then your salary should be $82k for a $22k Mazda3 to be the same price. Currently, a Mazda3 starts at $24k and will probably run at $26-27k: https://www.mazdausa.com/vehicles/mazda3-sedan
> All that to say that I think that inflation adjusted measure can still get you a fine car. As for the argument about income vs inflation in GP, I have no idea.
Kind of. But my understanding is that most salaries haven't caught up to inflation especially in the last few years when the US economy had the worst inflation.
The median American household and American has gotten significantly richer than in 2005, but in the 2020-23 period, income growth slowed due to the pandemic and the subsequent slow restart of the economy.
The last time we saw similar retractions were during recessions like the 1990-93 recession, the Dot Com Bust, and the Great Recession. Turns out the "vibe check" in the early 2020s were right.
Tl;dr - the median American feels poorer in the early 2020s than they did in 2019, but they have much more earning power than they ever did before 2018. I would not be surprised if this played an outsized role in voter dynamics in the 2024 election
Also, as at this point 1980 is 45 years ago - almost 2 generations, almost like using the 1960s as a frame of reference in 2005.
At this point we've been a country of dual earners in a household for 2 generations now. It's best to assume that is the default given the overlap.
Those are all things that were only available on luxury cars, if at all, in 2005.
In 2025 the base option package would have been a five figure option package in 2005.
This current period of inflation is caused by the dollar losing its value due to massive over printing by the Federal Reserve. People should feel ripped off, but I think you're directing your anger at the wrong target.
Car of 2025 has lots of features even in basic trims.
My first car had no ac, no power steering, no power window, etc. And I'm not that old...
For me, most of the differences between a GX and a Sport GT, other than the transmission, are about as relevant as the paint colour, so telling me that they’re not comparable is like saying that I can’t compare two cars because the manual version is only available with an expensive quad-coat matte paint job. To me, that fancy paint job isn’t relevant - what’s relevant is that the manual transmission costs $10k more.
A base model Ford Ranger would have done it!
https://www.toyota.co.th/en/model/hilux_champ?tab=commercial...
A lot of safety features such as around crumple zones or even airbags (in the case of the Toyota Champ) don't exist in the IMV platform.
Australia allows them (excluding the Champ), but they watered down their car safety standards in order to seal FTAs with ASEAN (2009), China (2015), and India (2022), leading to the last Australian automotive factory shutting down in 2017.
Once you start adding those safety features (and build the associated testing infra), costs end up comparable to those in Central Europe - as can be seen with the domestic and international prices of Western-oriented export models from China (Zeekr X/Volvo XC30) or India (Toyota Hyryder/Toyota Urban Cruiser).
This requires posting related info-graphic. Cheers.
They still make the Land Cruiser more or less in that shape and configuration: https://media.cdntoyota.co.za/toyotacms23/attachments/clz2ej...
Still funny.
https://acoup.blog/2025/05/23/collections-the-logistics-of-r...
That said, we picked up one of the cars on this list for well under $15,000 in 2010. (And it's still going strong! Never needed a major repair.) Which doesn't really mean anything, just throwing out yet another anecdote to highlight that nobody's presented any information that actually supports or contradicts the major premise that cars are getting less affordable. Segmenting your data by picking arbitrary cutoffs (like $25,000) has its own chapter in the classic book How to Lie With Statistics.
I need a source for the year 2005 not 2025. Of course, it is easier to have a source for 2025.
- Chevrolet Aveo – Starting at $9,455
- Kia Rio – Starting at $10,570
- Hyundai Accent – Starting at $10,999
- Toyota Echo – Starting at $11,110
- Ford Focus ZX3 – Starting at $13,365
- Chevrolet Cavalier – Starting at $13,405
- Chrysler PT Cruiser – Starting at $13,995
- Dodge Neon SXT – Starting at $14,195
- Pontiac Sunfire – Starting at $14,200 see: https://www.kbb.com/pontiac/sunfire/2005
-Saturn Ion – Starting at $14,430 - see https://www.kbb.com/saturn/ion/2005
It is based on this links: https://www.edmunds.com/car-reviews/top-10/top-10-cars-under... This is article from 2005 (at least metadata says that). The prices are verified via kbb.com which has original MSRP for all used cars.
It's not all cars under $15k, just the best 10 among the multitude.
I’m just saying that I 100% understand that you think it was “cheaper before” but there is no data to show that. I honestly feel the same. Toyota Corolla was 13k in 2000: https://www.kbb.com/toyota/corolla/2000 - 25 years ago.
The core of my argument is this: today’s news manipulates perception by playing on emotions, which ultimately distorts the truth.
This article isn’t overly political, which makes it easier for us to debate without resorting to calling each other Nazis or communists. But when it comes to politics, distortion of truth happens all the time.
Your claim of "only 10 models under $15k in 2005" is patently false, based on logic where the "Forbes 30 under 30" list is evidence that only 30 people exist younger than 30.
So yeah I guess your core argument is true, but you demonstrated by perpetuating it...
And I also made the mistake with the list for 2025: there are 20 cars less than 25k in 2025.
See? You found problem with 2005 but you happily ignored that fact that I missed cars from 2025.
Why? Because it fits your world view. And that is how marketing works: you are convinced that cars are getting more expensive and no amount of data will change your view.
And posts on hubspot like this are paid by companies not making sub-$25k cars.
Sure you were. You already found a single one and discussed it just above.
Let me quote your own link back to you: https://www.kbb.com/toyota/corolla/2005/
A Toyota Corolla MSRP'd for $14,220 in 2005.
We haven't even started discussing your 2025 list, I'm just criticizing that you used a "top 10" list as a source saying "there were only 10 vehicles that existed meeting this criteria".
Meanwhile, if you look at your other sources, the Pontiac Sunfire link you posted shows that one did MSRP just over $15k, despite it being on your "top 10" list.
You really are in no position to criticize other people for "no amount of data will change your position", when all the data that you have presented so far is some combination of misleading, incorrect, or hallucinated.
$15k would buy you a base-trim 2005 Corolla with an automatic or one level up with a manual.
In 2025, you can buy the LE or SE trim Corolla for under $25k, either of which are vastly better cars than the 2005 in any dimension you wish to measure. Safety, technology, comfort, performance. All improved.
You are correct.
So the affordability crisis completely disappears once you adjust for the #1 thing that's been making things unaffordable.
FRED figures show wages slightly outpaced inflation: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q (unless I'm reading the chart incorrectly)
- people who are looking for affordable cars buy used. That market has evaporated. I remember in the late 90s-2000s the newspaper had a junker section where you could get cars (that started) for $100. Imagine what you could get for $2000
- when inflation goes up you lose savings and don’t necessarily get a corresponding wage increase. So just saying it’s equal according to inflation does not mean it’s equal in terms of work hours or job training requirements
As an example, any vehicle with less than 4 places is a toy car. And anything as uncomfortable as a Toyota Prius is a stupid toy car.
Where's the data?
Plainly, prices have risen faster than pay.
Avg. new-car price: $23,017 in 2005 -> $47,465 in 2024 (+32% after inflation).
Median household income: $46,242 in 2005 -> $80,610 in 2023 (+12% after inflation).
You need car interest rates to understand actual "car affordability" at any particular time. ZIRP era was far cheaper than right now where most new cars are 6% for highly qualified buyers (800+ credit rating)
Also, cars today last longer, have more features for your dollar, and are significantly safer and in many cases (i.e. toyota small cars like the corolla) can get 50+ mpg without the anemic and underpowered engines of the past.
MSRP of one model is also not perfect, but it's another data point.
But I mostly referred on class in general: 2005 accord was basic appliance economy car, while 2025 accord has many more accura like luxury features besides drivetrain.
> MSRP of one model is also not perfect, but it's another data point.
I do not know if this is true.
- Cheapest Honda Accord in 2005 was $17,510 (that is $28,895 in today's money) - https://www.kbb.com/honda/accord/2005/
- Cheapest Honda Accord in 2025 is $28,295 (https://automobiles.honda.com/accord-sedan).
So the price is really the same.
So I’m not saying that things are not expensive now: but not having cheap cars is not the reason for that. And that is what the article is saying.
The car market is highly manipulated between financing, the literal laws protecting dealership monopolies, insurance, etc.
No simple analysis on a handful of metrics will show the full picture
You will NEVER get a type R from the dealer at this price
A first ballpark figure would be calculating how much that pricebracket of car would be as a fraction of a median persons income or better even: how many hours they needed to work to get it – if you want to know if something is harder to get, this is the crucial info.
Just adjusting inflation like that is doing exactly what you critique others for only from the other direction..
Um... Looking at videos of crashing old cars into new cars, the old cars DO NOT hold up to new cars in terms of breaking. The only difference is in old cars the engine would stay intact and the occupants not, while in the new cars its the opposite.
But you are right that a lot of the price increases relatively track inflation. It may just be that cars going up at the rate of inflation and used cars depreciating less, combined with uneven wage growth and high maintenance and repair costs is leaving a lot of consumers feeling pressured.
Though it's hard to track this down in a way that seems accurate, cars that are under 10 years old and 100k miles always seem remarkably close to MSRP to me, while those that are over those thresholds often seem massively depreciated, but that's anecdote and I haven't done a study. Interest rates me be another piece of the story. When I last bought a car they were basically zero or 1% I think. It gave the latitude to use debt w/o much thought. Very different now.
Which is to say, I do think it's plausible that it's true that some segment of the car market is tracking inflation, and that cars aren't affordable any more.
If that's the case, there's probably more going on, and it may not all be on the cars. Once again, venturing into anecdote, I know multiple people who've had significant wage increases since prepandemic, don't have much if any lifestyle inflation, and somehow seem to be in the position of finding cars and homes less affordable despite making quite significantly more. I'm not really sure exactly what's going on, but the way people are feeling doesn't match the numbers for a fair number of folks with above average incomes, and I can only imagine it must be a lot worse for those w/ less.
> knocked off - the Rio,
> the Prius C, the Fiesta..
You are incorrect. Prius C in 2005 was $21,510 (not really "less expensive") and that is about $34,827.67 in 2025. (See: https://www.kbb.com/toyota/prius/2005/)
And in 2025 Prius starts from $28,350 (see: https://www.toyota.com/prius/)
So this narrative that there are no more cheap cars is incorrect.
You are confusing vehicles.
Example 1: The article claims that the affordable Nissan Versa Note cost $16,545 in 2019 and was discontinued. But not saying that this would be $21,168 in today’s dollars and they leave out an important detail: Nissan still sells the Versa in the US, just not the Note hatchback version. The current Nissan Versa starts at $17,190 according to Nissan’s own website: https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/cars/versa-sedan.html
That’s actually about 20% less expensive than the inflation-adjusted number from 2019.
Example 2: And then they claim that price increase is: 29.2% - just 3% more than inflation (but they did not want to mention total PCI). But even that number of 29.2% cannot be verified on BLS.gov nor fred.stlouisfed.org . I uploaded FRED and BLS data to chatgpt o3 and it says that new vehicle prices increased 22% from 2019 to 2025 - actually less then inflation:
2019: 146.220
2020: 149.091
2021: 166.653
2022: 176.463
2023: 178.269
2024: 177.552 fred.stlouisfed.org (slight dip from 2023)
2025: ~178.7 (May 2025)
Overall, from 2019 to mid-2025 the index increased from ~146 to ~179, amounting to about a 22% cumulative rise in new vehicle prices.
(https://www.bls.gov/cpi/data.htm - code CUUR0000SETA01).
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.
Whereby the profit shifts from the product itself to the differentiating value-add.
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 it mattered already when you bought it!
In other words, the dents were already priced in when you paid for it, so you paid less. They'll like be priced even lower when you sell it after 5 years of usage.
You cannot generally get a loan on a car with much hail damage. Buyer pool now significantly smaller = less value, must sell for less to attract one of the few potential buyers.
This means for most people trying to unload their hail damaged car, they get to sell to dealer at auction pricing (aka rock bottom prices, penny on the dollar value), sell it to an auction yourself, or hope someone on CraigsList is desperate for a car enough they don't care it's a golf ball.
It's interesting how something like this might be hard to understand if you haven't been through it. Previously working in the car industry, not understanding this is actually common among car buyers and a source of frustration for people who get stuck in their low-value, hail damaged cars.
Think about something other than a car: If I buy something that is normally worth X, but it is damaged and is now worth 0.3X and there I pay 0.3X I did not save 0.7X off what I got... I got something worth what I paid.
You cannot extract value from a deal where you were paying less because you received less (aka damaged and less valuable property with less market value).
------------------------------------------------
I get all that (and will address specific comments below), but first, look at it this way:
1. The selling price of the car without hail damage at 3 years old is `$X`.
2. The selling price of the car with hail damage at 3 years old is `$X - $Y`, where `-$Y` is the value of the hail damage (hence it is negative).
3. The selling price of the car with hail damage at 9 years old is `$X - $Y - $Z`, where `-$Z` is the value of the depreciation (also why it is negative).
Since the car selling price never gets to zero or below AND $Z flattens out over time, $Y must also flatten out over time! IOW it is also asymptotic.
This means that the discount of buying a hail-damaged car (the `-$Y`) is large for a new car and small for an old car.
In practical terms, in the context of buying, using and then selling a hail-damaged car:
1. You buy a $30k car and get a discount of (say) $10k due to hail damage.
2. Six years and many miles later that car, which might have sold for $10k without hail damage, will now sell for only $7k.
You got a discount of $10k and only gave a discount of $3k. You're $7k up.
> If I buy something that is normally worth X, but it is damaged and is now worth 0.3X and there I pay 0.3X I did not save 0.7X off what I got... I got something worth what I paid.
You are conflating `value in market` and `value of utility`. Whatever you are paying for a product, you pay that only because the value you get from the that product is greater than the amount of money you are paying.
Hail damage does not reduce the utility value of a car by even a single cent. It will transport your cargo and passengers exactly the same and with exactly the same levels of safety, comfort and reliability that its non-hail-damaged counterpart would.
The utility of a hail-damaged car is exactly the same as the utility of its undamaged counterpart. The difference in price between a hail damaged car and its undamaged counterpart is the exact monetary value placed by the market on "how pretty is it?"
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.
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?
If the phone only lasted 1 more year, then the resale price of the phone would reflect that. Either the collective market of buyers lacks the information to evaluate this (doubt), or you got lucky finding the one buyer willing to overpay.
You also always pay full price, because when you buy a new phone (or anything), you always have the option to buy the used or keep using the old one. Cost is opportunity cost, which is defined as your choice minus your second best choice.
While this is true, desirability in the used market doesn't work linearly. Apple devices fall off quickly in value after 2 years. If you buy early in the product cycle, selling as soon as you can buy the next year's model has proven to be the most economic way, because resale on last year's model is still great but 2 years ago is in the tank.
I've been upgrading yearly since 2007 and my spouse waits 3-5 years between phones. Doing the math, over the years I've spent less overall because of the value of sales when I trade up vs. their phone was worth sub-$200 when I sold it recently, because it was older than a few years.
Prices are all jacked up vs what you get because a historical surplus of very well kept cars on the used market has lead to every idiot on the internet being told they're somehow magical.
A badge on the grill doesn't make 100k the of uber miles that the 3rd owner put on or being habitually driven low on some key fluid by the 4th owner any less destructive.
After 3 months it was going ok so took it to a mechanic. They repaired it, said ‘don’t do that’ and it carried on for another 5 years before I sold it.
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.
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
The idea is to be the next buyer who is paying very little because of the hail damage.
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.
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 loan might be 0% interest, but you're still using that loan to pay way too much money for a depreciating asset.
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
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?
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.
The market has changed and we are judging it with the old values.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/12/auto-industry.as...
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.
Totally. Cars are there available. The thing is consumers don't want small cheap basic cars.
They once offered me more than double the rate of my bank and for 2.5 times the term length. I'm sure that $150/mo or whatever payment for the rest of our life is attractive to someone but I just laughed. They really don't like people who are looking to minimize total interest paid.
(This is kinda like the Costco model where they aim to break even on all sales with profit only being the membership fees).
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
I'm not sure we didn't pass that point before the pandemic, and decision-making since has not helped.
I can't speak for every car. I test drove a Civic and did not find it comfortable (way back in ~2007) and that was mostly due to my own dimensions, but I found the 2007/2008 Honda Fit seats great, as well as the 2014 Mazda 3 I had owned.
As comfortable as an $80K car? In some cases, no, but often more comfortable than the luxury cars of a few decades ago. Hardly a penalty box!
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.
Transit ridership in the US was higher in the 1950s than it is today and it was the automakers that killed public transit. They literally bought up popular and profitable public transit companies just to shut them down so people would be forced to drive.
The problem isn't "Consumerism" it's a culture of car dependency that's largely the result of intentional action on the part of the automakers to grow and protect their profits.
The reason there's so much auto loan debt in the US is people literally HAVE TO OWN a car just to get to work to support their families in the vast majority of US towns and cities. People don't want to go into debt just so they can buy some shitty fucking KIA so they can sit in traffic for two+ hours a day so they can get to one of their three minimum wage jobs, but when the alternative is being unemployed and homeless, a lot of folks will do what they have to do to provide for themselves and their families.
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.
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...
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.
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.
Money supply always changes. But yes, inflation is possible without changing money supply, if for example economy shrinks or there's some process that reactivated dormant capital that people had just sitting around and not being used by the economy.
In the end it's always the same thing. More money than it should be. It's just that "should be" is very complex and "more money" only a little bit simpler.
So even though inflation may feed into that stuff, there's plenty of causality to inspect. Why aren't there cheaper cars? Not because there's more money, but because nobody decided to make and sell a cheaper car. That's the stuff that we should be asking about. Not waving our hands and saying 'sucks, inflation'. The inflation happens at the speed it does because of things like this.
The reason may well be: who would sell a car, or a car part, or their labor, for less when there's so much money going around? But we can still ask plenty of questions about that. Cause I'm pretty damn sure the labor isn't raking in the difference at a rate matching inflation. And it sure seems like there's plenty of room to compete on price, so if no one's doing that effectively, why not?
Yes. But the most common reason for setting up higher price is because you can, because there's more money flowing in the economy than it should be. Going into details is in the grand scheme of things about as useful as rearranging chairs on the Titanic.
> Why aren't there cheaper cars? Not because there's more money, but because nobody decided to make and sell a cheaper car. That's the stuff that we should be asking about.
Yes. But we should be asking why cars are 3% more expensive, because their prices rose by 29% while the inflation is "only" 26% (don't remember exact numbers), not why car prices rose 29%. If you don't deduct inflation you are interested in wrong things because large numbers make you think there's a drastic reason.
Does 3% even deserve and explanation? Isn't it fully explained by toxic advertising making consumer want heavier car year after year, that naturally cost more?
It is fundamentally different to ask whether cars cost more because money is worth less, or whether cars cost more because we are making them less efficiently.
The ancestor comment points out that most of the change can be attributed to the former and as cars are only a small percentage of the inflation basket then it is reasonable to conclude that this is indeed the prime reason for the price rise.
The fundamentals of civilization would be a lot clearer if we measured the value of things in energy instead of a floating currency.
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.
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.
What? So how do you use the CPI? To measure things no one ever buys?
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.
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.
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". ;)
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.
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.
Dinner being ready, my car being ready (at a mechanic), things like that have proper context that being ready means being done.
I'm an English as single language pleb though
A Google search for subvention turns up government publications from UK, India and South Africa.
"Actually" does look out of place when used in english with the latin meaning so it's safer.
sympathetic - pleasent
pathetic - exalted
eventually - alternatively
actually - currently
lecture - reading
fabric - factory[0] https://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/partgrp?id=1113-USA-04-1991...
"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".
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/chines...
BYD Dolphin? MSRP for that car where I am is at 2.99m JPY(17k EUR, 20k USD). You guys are getting screwed.
Governments want manufacturers to sell like 25%+ electric cars and customer won't buy so many if they can get a 10k petrol instead.
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.
You communicated the concept perfectly. Anyone holding onto a pile of say 10k cash in 2015 have exactly 5k cash value in 2025. But here's a hidden kicker. Storing any functional vehicle in cheap storage is turning out to be a sold form of investing.
A used car is completely different can of worms.
https://gmauthority.com/blog/2024/08/2025-byd-seagull-ev-sta...
Beyond that, the chinese EV brands are in market capture mode right now. The competition is cut throat and the margins are extremely thin.
It‘s a market skimming strategy that will presumably be a last man standing scenario. If the winner(s) are decided, prices will definitely not remain as low as they are right now in some places.
BYD is profitable. Admittedly that's more of an exception than a rule for Chinese EV brands, but BYD is also the most important.
> It‘s a market skimming strategy that will presumably be a last man standing scenario. If the winner(s) are decided, prices will definitely not remain as low as they are right now in some places.
Even if most of the brands disappear we're very unlikely to get to an n=1 monopoly scenario. Even a couple dozen or so companies competing in the EV space should prevent margins from getting too high.
In the olden days the ICE industry was at times run by fewer than 10 companies per country, that was enough competition to prevent consumers getting too screwed by pricing.
Yes but also heavily indebted:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-19/byd-s-sup...
If Americans can't get a new car for under $25,000 but Southeast Asia can get them for under $10K, something is wrong. If the entry level car is 2.5x more expensive in America it means Americans are getting fleeced. I haven't lived in America for a long time and I feel like this makes it very obvious to me when the BS machine over there is in full spew. Free markets drive consumer prices down to the cost of production.
I don't know the auto industry in detail but it is an extensively documented fact that America has few free markets left, and they've been replaced by cartels - each industry has a couple of crooks at the top who rotate between private and public jobs. On the public side they come up with excuses to not enforce the anti-trust laws that are on the books, and they add regulations that raise the cost of business. On the private side they come up with ways to improve margins which usually involve fucking consumers.
Let's not make excuses for the criminals. America needs free markets and cheaper cars. Elite lawlessness is the cause of increased costs in America.
so the American customer is getting fleeced on SUVs much worse than on sedan, because SUV margins are higher (and thats why OEMs are switching to SUVs)
All Asian/European carmakers have tons of options available everywhere else they could bring here but they don't cos people just don't buy them. Even sedans are harder to sell today, the US is its own cosmos and trying to coerce it into "small family car" when all the ads are about being a rugged f150 driver is very hard.
Look at how people talk about minivans here, all about "the emasculation of men". It would require a lot of leadership to change the market perspective on these cars or americans getting very poor for it to work. It is also incredibly convenient, I myself drive a large SUV that's larger than the average WW2 tank and its insanely convenient to have that much space for a family of 6.
Up until 2024 there were no restrictions on cheap Chinese EVs that didn't apply to any other car. The cheap ~$10k Chinese EVs simply don't meet US safety standards.
There have been Chinese-built EVs sold in the US: https://www.polestar-forum.com/attachments/1000009812-jpg.27...
Further up this thread the discussion was about Asian market cars that are still sub $10k. There are both gasoline and EV vehicles that exist in this price range, but they are very different than the types of cars sold in the US market. They're more similar to off-road low-speed utility vehicles (and some are literally sold for this purpose in the US).
If you look at the western markets where there are Chinese EVs, higher safety standards, and higher buyer expectations, you'll see that they're very closely priced.
e.g.:
https://www.byd.com/uk/order-sealion-7
https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/modely/design#overview
The idea that other countries have equivalent cars that are cheaper just doesn't hold water. Asia has cars that are cheaper because you get less car.
As another example here, the cheapest BYD sold in the UK is the Dolphin Surf starting at $25,614 (18,650 GBP). Even if it doesn't require any changes to meet US regulations (which many cars do), I don't think many Americans are going to run out to buy what is considered a microcar here, just to save $2500 over a Leaf, that Americans already don't buy. It certainly isn't going to compete with the Corolla or Corolla Hybrid which starts at $22,325/$23,825 respectively.
If they were perfectly interchangeable, sure. But if nothing else, lets look at safety and emissions regulations -- different regulatory regimes will absolutely put different requirements onto the build and components. Not an expert in automotive regulation in SEA vs. US, but I'd buy this argument more if the comparison was between, say, Europe and the US.
There's also likely a bunch of soft cost differences -- dealership dynamics, etc. that add a fair amount to the sticker price, and those probably do have some merit to your case.
Seems fine to leave something like that unmentioned, as a quick check reveals it not to be true at all.
So if you saw the pretax figures it'd probably be true
But why would I look at the pretax figures? Who would look at that, unless you're doing a business purchase? It basically has no meaning for the average person since they'll never buy anything without the taxes anyways.
Apples to Oranges
You might as well add in the lifetime maintenance costs while you're at it (would be very useful to know technically ... Maybe BYD makes it up on repairs or something)
How do you know that? Neither the submission article (hubspot) or the article referenced by the parent comment (gmauthority) mentions anything about the figures being pretax or posttax, why would they default to talking a price no one else would use?
> You might as well add in the lifetime maintenance costs while you're at it
If that's something you have to pay up front to get the car, then yeah, add it to whatever figures you reference. But I don't think that's how it works normally, so how is that the same thing at all?
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/car-sales-t...
Americans paid $25k for $18k sticker price vehicles a decade ago. Now they're paying $32k for $25k vehicles. People I talk to who have new cars say their payments are from $500-800/mo, often for longer than 60 months.
If my 20 year old Toyota ever quits, I'll probably build what amounts to a street legal go-kart and invest in another, larger cooler and freezer.
Some places that is the price of the car.
People have been known to cross state lines to purchase cars, to save a few hundred dollars on the purchase. In any case, a $10k vehicle is not going to cost over $11k post-tax in any state.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/car-sales-t...
Otherwise, feel free to adjust $10k -> $12.5k or whatever the VAT is in your region.
The footer mentions the PVP (recommended pricing) is 11.780€, which is after the government MOVES III rebate which removes 7K, which would explain the difference.
Chinese manufacturers have come a long way and I wish I could buy one in the US but they are also pricing at razor thin margins to starve out competition.
Even in Vietnam the Dolphin is $25k
Federal, things like a the chicken tax which imposes import taxes in categories like small trucks.
Easy top of mind ones.
Other nations aren’t at risk of losing their auto industries domestically because of either.
But the evidence is other countries aren’t complaining that Ohio offering tax credits to get a a Ford plant to go there instead of Pennsylvania is gutting their automotive industry. Which is exactly the issue we’re discussing.
Any such tax credits are simply American states competing against other American states, and have little to no ramification on the overall cost of an automobile, even domestically, let alone globally.
Meanwhile, China is doing loads of very well documented things that would make the automotive industry impossible for anyone outside of China if not for protectionist policies. Many other countries (basically any that make automobiles) are instituting tariffs as a result.
Fair enough—China’s not losing sleep over whether Ford picks Ohio or Pennsylvania. But that doesn’t change the fact that state-level tax breaks are still subsidies. Public money influencing private decisions is the definition, whether it’s across borders or state lines.
And just to be clear, I never said they were globally material—you did. I asked for evidence on your claim that they don’t exist in any meaningful sense and leave an equally unbacked claim as you did. Funny how that upsets you so much.
Tariffs on trucks ensured that there is a substantial number of manufacturers here in the US.
So, can you provide any info on the subsidies?
Actual subsidies? -Federal: ATVM loans (e.g., Tesla, Ford), $7.5K EV tax credits.
-State: Georgia gave Rivian $1.5B. Tennessee handed VW ~$500M. Michigan’s tossed cash at GM like it’s confetti.
So yeah, no subsidies at all, just billions in “non-subsidy” market distortion to keep the hometown heroes afloat.
So, can you provide any substance to the conversation?
A country's government sees an opportunity to invest into a promising new technology that could reap tremendous economic benefits. Such benefits include new jobs, new income, the ability to increase social/political capital worldwide, and help usher in a world that is that much less reliant on oil.
That's what countries in the first world are supposed to do.
Foresight is required when dealing with such entities, not hindsight.
If my electric car comes in at 1/4th the price of an American built one, so be it. The tradeoff here is that in countries that aren't engulfed by rent-seeking capitalists who only answer to themselves, countries like China have a policy goal and will make sure the state utilizes the private sector to meet the goal.
For example, Mr. Musk could easily take some of that $450 billion net worth of his and make his cars considerably cheaper. He has taken enormous subsidies and kept his cars expensive. In China, the state would not let someone with that amount of capital take subsidies, and most certainly wouldn't allow them to bribe the government with the government's money.
We've (the west) effectively encouraged this sort of behavior. OUTSOURCE IT ALL TO CHINA! Our corporations and shareholders have most certainly reaped the benefits from this. Our politicians have made a lot of money this way, too. Lots of people have deliberately turned a blind eye to this sort of behavior and didn't think about the long term ramifications of pushing everything to be built in China.
Call it cartel like behavior, fine.
China is merely playing the hand it has been dealt and looking out for itself and the survival of its economy and political apparatus. Trade is one way to do so, another is technological progress.
We've subsidized capitalists taking the risk to develop this tech. China has bypassed the ownership class and gone straight to the manufacturers. Some of those capitalists have enriched themselves when they should have passed those costs off to make their products cheaper to stay competitive - that's the whole point of subsidies. Instead, one of those capitalists chose to instead take the subsidies, keep his cars expensive, and make himself the wealthiest person on earth.
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
And yeah, we subsidized Musk, dumb move but the answer isn’t to copy a system where the state decides who wins, loses, and what the price tag is. That’s not market efficiency, it’s command capitalism with a smile.
Don’t hate the game? Buddy, the game is rigged. China just rigged it better.
This has already happened to consumer electronics, power tools, manufacturing equipment, solar panels, and batteries.
The strategy is especially effective on products with a high startup cost in markets that have to deal with high amounts of regulation and labor unions because being government-owned means you get to skip all that. There's no reason to expect that cars won't be next.
Where did you get that information? There were previous investigations by the EU Commission about Chinese government subsides, and "tax reductions or interest-free business loans" were the main allegations.
If a government believes in the potential and promise of a given technology and wants to dominate in that sector, it should be allowed to. That's the premise of worldwide capitalism and markets. Capital is allocated to where the owners of said capital wish to allocate it to, and that's the free market at work.
Is it an unfair advantage? Define "fair".
Do we want to get to a point where every industry is completely run by whichever country is willing to throw the most money at it?
The whole point of specialization of industry is that yes, we absolutely should be OK with that. If that's where China wants to specialize and deploy resources, let them.
However, we've chased cost-cutting measure after cost-cutting measure in order to please the shareholder class at the expense of the working class, and this is the result. We shouldn't be surprised.
The fact still stands, very rarely are Chinese EVs priced like that and it’s really only for the bare bones budget ones that barely meet local safety standards. I think about VF in Vietnam they have a 2 door 4 seater that’s $12k. Only a single airbag and I doubt any real modern crash standards built in. Works great for that market but not for the US.
Some western countries allow Chinese evs without extra tariffs (Australia and the UK) but in general larger Chinese cars seem to sell better.
Some examples include:
* Politicians often give automakers often receive state and local tax breaks in exchange for constructing plants in their jurisdictions
* Federal grants and incentives for clean energy initiatives
* The infamous 2008 bailouts, where for example, the US Treasury bought enough GM shares that they became the controlling shareholder, effectively nationalizing the automaker.
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 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.
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/
- 2025 Nissan Versa – Starting at $18,330
- 2025 Hyundai Venue – Starting at $21,395
- 2025 Kia Soul – Starting at $20,490
- 2025 Nissan Sentra – Starting at $21,590
- 2025 Nissan Kicks – Starting at $21,830
- 2025 Hyundai Elantra – Starting at $22,125 Ok - 2025 Kia K4 – Starting at $21,990
- 2025 Toyota Corolla – Starting at $22,325
- 2025 Chevrolet Trailblazer – Starting at $23,100
- 2025 Subaru Impreza – Starting at $23,495
- 2025 Buick Envista – Starting at $23,800
- 2025 Toyota Corolla Hybrid – Starting at $23,825
-2025 Chevrolet Trax - Starting at $20,500
- Volkswagen Jetta - starting at $22,495
- Volkswagen Taos - starting at $24,995
- Hyundai Kona - staring at $24,550
- Honda Civic - starting at $24,250
Which raises the bigger issue at hand.
Corollas in a High Cost-of-Living Area (HCOLA) that are ~3 years old, and under 30K miles, and all under $20,000. So... 20% or more off MSRP?
(The SE starts above $24k, the LE is a bit cheaper.)
I picked a hard example, but I bet for any car less popular and in demand than a Corolla (and in more normal areas), you can readily find them for 20% off MSRP at the 2-3 year old, 20-30k mark.
Literal planned obsolescence!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Problem is, we'll probably never let Chinese vehicles in as it is an existential threat to the US auto industry. It's odd because we allow Japanese, Korean, etc. but we have political beef with China as a global power rivaling ours.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I drive a Mazda 3 and sometimes it feels like a bicycle compared to some of the enormous SUV and overdone trucks.
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.
What I wouldn’t do to bring the Fit and Yaris hatch back to the US market.
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.
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.
With rebates a 20,000 truck. Who knows what it will cost when it actually comes out. But I love the concept.
An exclamation mark for lacking powered windows? Oh the humanity!
I'm starting to see the problem.
It's surprising. An exclamation mark makes sense.
And a fixed window is just dire.
No rebates
US automakers are so ridiculously far behind
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...
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.]
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.
The F-150 Lightning is body-on-frame, so I know it's entirely feasible, but the same reasons Ford went with a unibody for the Maverick are probably doubly relevant for something like the Slate (cost and weight). I'm going to quietly hope they succeed with this and somebody (Slate or otherwise) makes a proper compact EV pickup designed to get dirty. If not, maybe the market for EV conversion kits will further develop and I'll just yank the V6 out of my Ranger and slap an electric drivetrain in it.
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...
Like I said, my Ranger is not a grocery carrier, the 2015 Impala I drive day-to-day handles those tasks. The pickup gets used, towing my ATV and jon boat, hauling stuff around for camping trips, carrying firewood around, and generally getting rough and dirty away from civilized society. That's why, at best, the Slate is appealing to at least handle hardware store runs or hauling my boat (trailer and the boat are easily within the 1,000 lb towing limit on it) to the lake; but it's still not a replacement for what I have. Also really need e-AWD from an EV pickup to get over (or out of) some things, the Maverick is also a flop here because it only has AWD (which an EV can get away with because of the insane torque electric motors can provide, but an ICE or hybrid pickup without 4L is going to get stuck somewhere).
Yeah, a "mid-sized" pickup would check all of those, but even relatively compact ones like my step-mothers GMC Canyon have a notably larger turning diameter, which is why I want a proper compact pickup (another area the Maverick fails miserably, 40 foot turning circle for something that small is...words fail me.)
As an aside, the other downside to unibody pickups is their towing capacity, but with a new option package added to the current model year even the Ford Maverick can match the 2 ton capacity of my Ranger (although Ford saw fit to derate mine to 1 ton because it's a 5-speed; it's fully capable of towing 4,000 lbs, albeit not very fast, if you know how not to burn up a clutch.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Suppliers suffer from a constant flood and drought of contracts. Crisis -> We need so save money -> Supplier contracts are frozen or cancelled -> "Oh, we can't do stuff ourselves/We need help" -> Supplier had to let go experienced staff, hire cheap/unexperienced replacements/outsource -> Quality suffers and costs explode -> Repeat. Also not paying/delaying payments drives more suppliers out of business.
You also better promise the impossible because the cheapest offer wins. One time I got a PowerPoint as the technical drawings for electric charger test station. Just some black boxes, lines and names. That was the documentation. I should help the project management with documentation of the current state, but had to provide quite a bit of engineering in addition. Also had to talk to the Chinese supplier directly (nobody in the team spoke Mandarin). What a joy.
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.
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.
RAM is apparently going to use plastic control arms in it's new vehicles.
Though car driving and ownership are a big cultural phenomenon, especially among men 18-50.
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.
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 does seem to work.
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
The interchange has a four level car park that fills up to about three quarters full by 8am-ish. A secondary car park was just finished maybe a couple of years ago, with an additional ~50% capacity.
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.
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.
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.
Anyway the density doesn’t feel high here and maybe that’s the more relevant bit
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.
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.
A lot of people barely make enough to pay rent before factoring in a car.
Your options end up being iffy used cars or financing. The used car market is a nightmare, you can easily end up with a lemon, but legally you have no real recourse.
If Bob sells Bill a used car, and the engine explodes 2 days later Bob owes Bill nothing.
This doesn't always happen, but it's a concern.
Finance a car and you'll probably spend a significant portion of your income just commuting.
Vs living in a transit centric city where bus/metro fair is a nominal cost
Yesterday I was delighted to see a nice new piano in its place.
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.
> 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?
If that was true it wouldn't be illegal to sell them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Prior to that comment, you hadn't said anything indicating you personally partook in that antisocial behavior.
Well if they're so fucking social, they should start with rich who waste and pollute way way more and buy governments outright.
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.
Please cut out swipes like this in HN comments, it's against the guidelines.
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.
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 $%&#, I am saying you are wrong and giving evidence as to why.
We subsidize our auto industry too.
Imagine if we let in the Chinese EVs stacked with the tax credit, you could get a car for 5000$ or less.
The 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.
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!
That's a little more than the average American drives per year.
> 2-4 months a year visiting loved ones and just decompressing
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'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.
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 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.
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.
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.
The US wants them so much that it requires 100% tariffs to keep them off the market.
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.
A one way ticket from San Diego to Vegas was $180, and a 2 hour shuttle from there to St. George (mistakenly said Odgen above) was only $20. The salesperson from the dealership picked me up from the bus station and after a brief test drive and some paperwork I got on the road for the 450 mile drive back. I left home on the train to the airport at 9am, and was back at home with my new to me car at 11pm that night.
Considering we're on "Hacker" News, it's very much a worthwhile process to hack considering the cost savings vs. actual effort.
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.
I think in 17 years of motoring I've spent around £5,500 in total on cars.
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.
He's a second hand car dealer in Stockport and has experience of selling cars in Spain and in California.
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
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.
They apparently optimized for cost and molecularity, most notably by removing the infotainment system, which apparently is the biggest warranty / "feature" cost center.
That being said the car looks sweet. I hope we have more startups making retro-vibe electric cars since the barrier to entry is much lower than with combustion engines.
This is why nobody sells small pickup trucks here. It is a lot easier for Ford to produce F150s that get 25-30ish mpg then it is to produce small trucks that get 40-50.
The Maverick is the only exception and it isn't really that small and it is also a hybrid.
Essentially the Federal government made selling small cheap cars infeasible in this country.
Also because vehicles last a lot longer thrifty Americans avoid buying new vehicles. They would rather buy a used one and let somebody else absorb the depreciation hit.
And when buying a used car most people are going to want a used mid-ranger or higher end car then buying a used economy car.
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.
And then people cry when their entire industry is moved overseas...
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?
The other problem is that if there is a war, a pandemic or anything impacting production and/or deliveries your country is now alone. If 80% of your economy is based on tourism and other services but what you now need are cars, masks or weapon parts you're in for a bad time
> I get that they dump loans and the government allows for subsidies.
It's the same in the US/EU, all these companies would have died long ago if they were not propped up now and then
As a consumer I just want to have the cheap prices now too because outsourcing is a fait acompli.
I don't want all the damn gadgets, those things inevitably break and then cost thousands to fix.
I have a small horse farm and drive a 2010 F-150. I haul horses, 900lb. hay bales, feed, lumber for repairing fences and building shelters, etc.
If my truck breaks down I am going to have to scrape through used inventory to find something that fits my needs. I don’t need leather, 16 cameras, seat warmers, and a high end sound system. I need a truck that can get done everything I need around the farm, and I need it to be cheap enough that I’m not worried about it getting scratched.
All cars seem to be luxury vehicles now, I don’t know what folks are doing the just need something more utilitarian.
Look at something like the Dolphin from China - it’s going for $8K–$9K USD over there. Ship a whole fleet of them and you’re still well under $25K. And we’re not talking junkers either - these are electric, decent build quality, ~300km range. Like... what exactly are we protecting here?
Feels like we’re pricing affordability out of the market on purpose.
Govt is intentionally trying to cause at least 2% inflation. If you assume only 2% average over 50 years. A $25,000 car then is only about $9000 today; an untenable proposition. Lets be realistic, do you genuinely think no government in 50 years will exceed 2%?
The $25k car is extinct.
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.
- to have people use public transit, it has to provide enough routes and drive often enough to be at least remotely comparable to driving yourself
- to do that, a lot of funding is required
- to get that funding, people have to use and pay for the transit (fares)
You can get some of that in with taxes, like many places already do, but there's only so much you can afford on taxes alone.
But there is also a Greed side to this story. Automakers have hiked prices, customers have kept buying and we finally (i hope) reached a breaking point. Jeep prices were apparently too high and sales plunged.
All of this makes me actually quite happy for the arrival of Chinese manufacturers. The price/quality ratio is extremely good and when i see the price i finally feel that it's a good deal. It makes me want to buy that car, while with most European manufacturers i'm just thinking of being scammed!
Yes, public transit is not a necessity here like in the States, but it's a nice convenience to have, and plenty of people are wealthy enough to pay for it.
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 article is specifically about the price increase in the last 6 years.
My point is that six years ago the cheapest new cars cost less, in many cases a lot less, than $25k. The article itself lists several examples.
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.
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.
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.
Of course in the article, I see the Mirage is noted as discontinued. How frustrating.
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).
My previous car was a 2015 Mazda 3 Grand Touring bought with 8,000 miles on it for $20k (about $26-27k MSRP new). All the luxuries and bells and whistles!
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.
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.
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%.
For the rest of the EU, you can buy a Polish car, and register it in Germany for a few hundred euro's.
And FYI: The united states is the same. You can not just move cars across states if you live in a different state. It requires local registration per state (with different requirements), and local number plates.
Second: Yes, prices can differ for the same car, in different countries. And manufactures deliberately make it harder to price compare cars by changing the trim on each car / region. So the same car in Germany may have more features that are not present on the same car in Poland. And yet, again, in the States prices often differ per state. For the same reason why a Polish car can be trimmed down to be cheaper, vs a German version of the car: Not every state has the same medium income. So car manufacture / dealers, price match the cars and options, according to the local demographic.
The rest is a useless discussion as this is regional food, vs regional companies. You may discover that in the US, despite the same global brandnames, there are often large differences between stores, based upon the regional eating habits, and local food producers. Yes, there is more standardization because of the global monopoly level of food production but regional is still a major thing.
> There is no such single entity as "Europe" or "EU". Different countries are very different in available goods, prices, taxes and regulations.
First off, its EU, not Europe. People simply associate the EU with Europe. That is a common issue and not something to nitpick about.
You may be surprised how much we already standardized across the EU. Have you ever left the Netherlands? I mean, not just cross border travel but actual work / live? If you did that now, 10 years ago, or 20 years ago, each time the difference are huge (as in easier and easier). A lot of laws and rules are now standardized across the EU. Hell, i remember the days that getting a piece of paper involved notarization and legalization, now its just a quick call to the ambt and you get a EU version of the paperwork. Valid in all EU states.
> Have you ever left the Netherlands?
Rather no, as I'd moved to the Netherlands 2.5 years ago from outside of EU and don't have any rights to work outside the Netherlands :-)
It is not strict "No" because I've spent a lot of time (like, more than a yer on the span of 10 years, so more than month per year) in Germany on my previous work (in "business trips") and can compare everyday/household activities, but not bureaucratic or legal side of life, of course.
What I could compare is my experience as immigrant in the Netherlands with experience of my friends with same background as immigrants in Germany (lot of my friends had moved to Munich and Berlin same time I'd moved to Amsterdam). And difference is striking (in favor of the Netherlands). My experience with banks, IND (immigration department), Gemeente (municipality) and now even with mortgage (Which is cheaper than rent!) is much, much smoother that same experience of all my friends who choose Germany. Mortgage especially: no friends of mine could get approve for mortgage in Germany, even some of them who have salary significantly large than mine (like, x1.5 larger).
It wasn't always like this. It used to be that price hikes were met with consumer backlash, media attention, and people simply not buying that thing which forced companies to correct their pricing.
The fact that most people will happily pay any price they can afford (on credit, when) seems to be the main thing contributing to high food, car, and housing prices, which negatively impacts the poor and those who bust their ass to be frugal.
But hey, I guess it's a great time to be a VC.
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.
Most brands have cost cut the crap out of their vehicles to the point where many used models seem to be better vehicles especially when talking interior quality.
One example that was striking to me was the interior quality of the MK4 Volkswagen Jetta compared to later models of Jetta and Golf.
My current vehicle has CarPlay/Android Auto, a “dumb” infotainment system with no ability to phone home or snitch on me to insurance companies, and it has physical controls for everything.
When it comes time to replace my vehicle, what am I going to find on the market that’s actually better than that? I’m going to be stuck with a gigantic touch screen and a bunch of glitchy safety suites that are beeping at me constantly.
The crappy experience I had with my last vehicle (~8 years ago):
1. Shop for rates on auto loans
2. Shop for particular brand/model of vehicle (online)
3. Once decided on brand/model, go to local "{{ random entity }} of {{ manufacture }}" dealership
4. Test drive the model you are interested in
5. Once decided you will continue with purchase, then you "start talking numbers"
6. Initial sales guy will always say something like "oh, this is the lowest we can go" (it was something like $5000 over MSRP for the model + options)
7. Then counter with some offer ("$500 + MSRP")
8. Sales guy does some pitch and tries to get you to budge. If you stand your ground here, he/she will "begrudgingly" go back to their manager to get approval
9. You may get approved, or not. But occasionally they will counter. Repeat 6-8 until settled on sales price (including tax, title fees). Known as the "out the door" price. One time I did have to "walk out" when sales person wouldn’t agree on price. Also they will employ as many high pressure sales tactics here as possible. Also best to keep your cards close to your chest, they will try to get you to use their in-house finance (big kickbacks for them). Have had success getting near MSRP by leading them on to thinking I would use their in-house financing.
10. They will now refer you to their finance guy to finish and finalize the paperwork. But it doesn’t stop there. That finance guy will try to load you up on as many unneeded services to pump the sales price. I’m talking extended warranty, gap insurance, paint protectors at significant dealership markup. Usually the GAP insurance isn’t too bad but have to go through process of hearing the pitch and declining each service. Then there is the junk fees such as "document fees" that range from $100-300.
11. Finally, after declining and accepting additional services. You come to the actual payment decision : in house or external financing? Usually, the sales guy would have already run your information through their financing backend to determine creditworthiness prior to financing guy so they have an idea where they can lose out on initial purchase price and recoup on kickback. Occasionally, the rates are better than what you can secure from your bank or credit union. But it’s very rare. It’s in their interest to get you to agree to an higher APR than what you really deserve. At this point, pop out the preapproval letter and compare the offers.
12. On rare occasion, they will try to pull back the deal but at this point it’s better to close and increase sales for month rather than dwell about one barely profitable transaction. Finally, the paperwork is signed.
All of this unnecessary back and forth when it can just be boiled down to a few steps at most.
1. Go to showroom (or online)
2. Browse basic models
3. Decide on options and put downpayment on car
4. (In 3-4 weeks) Deliver vehicle to home or preferred destination. Have it quickly inspected for any defects in transportation. Then deliver final payment and get your new car
Its HubSpot Marketing that is the winner here.
Add electrics with thousand lbs of batteries, and you've got today's 4000-6000 lb SUVs, all costing an arm and a leg.
My 12 year old entry level sedan does all of that no problem.