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The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

wsj.com

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Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#31

Post by preommr »

worik wrote: post #24

The Chinese are going to clean this market up. The British made the same mistake back in the day with motorcycles. "Who cares about the market for 125 cc machines?" they said. The Japanese did, and now they have the market, the British used to have, for luxury and high powered motor cycles. As well as most of the 125cc market

> The Chinese are going to clean this market up.

Not if our governments start putting tariffs on everything.

I am Canadian, but it also applies to other governments (including the US). The politicians know that it's not going to be easy to do the actual right thing and build up a competitive industry. Instead, it's much easier to just slap some tariffs and make lagging productivity the next generation's problem.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#32

Post by 015a »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #4

Something has to disconnect here. Everyone complains that everything costs so much, but the average Americans' paycheck is not rising the same way, so they can try all they want to sell $95k electric vehicles because of thin margins for cheaper products, but if purchasing power doesn't rise with inflation, then that market that "sucks" is going to be the only real market one day...

I think the disconnect is maybe just in the title: Lucid is obviously just trying to be the next Mercedes. Duh, of course they don't make a cheap car (how much did Lucid pay for this ad in the WSJ?); but their competitors kind of do. Tesla literally told their shareholders during the most recent earnings call that "more affordable models are coming in the first half of 2025". Jim Farley has spoken on how one of the reasons Ford's EVs are still rather expensive is because they clean-roomed much of the assembly for them to better compete with Tesla, so while ICE cars have a century of process optimization behind them, their EVs aren't at that same level... yet.

Its just clickbait paid by Lucid to make their $90,000 cars seem reasonable because, well geeze, no one is making cheap EVs anyone. Wrong: Everyone is trying to, and its very obvious that this is direction the market needs to go in (just look at the depreciation on modern Teslas, new cars cannot compete with what is happening in the used market).

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#33

Post by adamc »

worik wrote: post #24

The Chinese are going to clean this market up. The British made the same mistake back in the day with motorcycles. "Who cares about the market for 125 cc machines?" they said. The Japanese did, and now they have the market, the British used to have, for luxury and high powered motor cycles. As well as most of the 125cc market

There are some externalities that may prevent that, such as large tariffs. Countries are wary of the effects on employment.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#34

Post by warner25 »

bluedino wrote: post #13
AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If even ICE cars are now super expensive, why isn’t this a screaming opportunity for some auto manufacturer to target the low end of the market? I’ve never spent more than 20k for a car. With prices like this, I’m just going to keep my old one as long as I can.

Kia sells quite a few cars that start at $20k, like the Soul and Forte

The Nissan Versa currently starts around $17k, and I see a lot of those on the road. The Mitsubishi Mirage is similarly priced but I don't think I've ever seen one in the wild. I rented a Kia Soul a few years ago and thought it was perfectly fine.

But with so few options, like the parent, I'm planning to keep my current car (a 2008 Prius) indefinitely, just paying for repairs as needed until parts are unavailable or nobody is willing to do the work.

My worry is that US automakers have all but abandoned the compact and midsize economy car segments, and I don't know what tariffs will mean for the Japanese and Korean automakers that do cover these segments. But see my other comment about the pendulum swinging back and forth.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#35

Post by mjamesaustin »

Swizec wrote: post #25
jopsen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most people, their daily trips are well within the range of what an EV can do. And most people don't do long trips every week. Personally, I try to optimize my life to avoid spending a considerable part of it in a car. With charging at home EVs are just easy. For long trips charging every 2-3 hours isn't too bad (most humans benefit from a break anyways).

> And most people don't do long trips every week Most people don’t own multiple cars and wouldn’t rent a car for those rare use-cases when they already own a perfectly fine car. It may be overall cheaper to do that, but people don’t think that way. One or two annual holiday roadtrips to go see the family and oops that EV starts looking like an annoying option. Every friend I have who doesn’t own a house and bought an…

I enjoy road trips far more since getting an EV. It's nice paying half as much or less in fuel costs.

Tesla's charging network is excellent, and I'm glad it's opening to all EVs on the market. I used a third party charger once and the horrible user experience made sure I never will again.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#36

Post by 015a »

worik wrote: post #22

> “I think having a regular $25,000 model is pointless,” Musk said a few weeks ago. “It would be silly.” ROTFLMAO! Says the richest person in existence. What an entitled nasty person.

While he did say that, its worth pointing out that Tesla also said that more affordable options will be available in 2025H1 [1]. Given Musk's statement, what I think Tesla means by this is more affordable trims of existing models.

I don't think its reasonable to read Musk's statement as "the Model 2 isn't happening". Its more accurate to read it as "it might cost more than $25,000".

[1] https://fortune.com/2024/10/24/tesla-model-2-affordable-car-...

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#37

Post by cosmic_cheese »

wlesieutre wrote: post #29
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Midrange-to-expensive EVs have been around for long enough that pretty much everybody in those market segments who are currently interested have already bought one. Additionally, the segment has been flooded with midsize SUVs, with the odd midsize sedan — variety is sorely lacking. Between these two, quite a considerable market is being left unaddressed. The first to fill these niches with affordable models that…

I'm hoping for manufacturers to pull back on the "all controls are via touchscreen" and "you can't have carplay because we want to charge you our own monthly fees" trends. Taking Chevy for example, they have physical HVAC controls, but they're counting on the average consumer being too clueless to realize they only have Google Maps in their car because it came with a free OnStar trial. Eventually people are going to…

The trend to exclude CarPlay and/or Android Auto really is awful.

Not only is there a high risk of notoriously underpowered head units becoming increasingly laggy over time with updates, there’s also the risk of the automaker deciding that shipping new updates for your only slightly old EV is too much of a cost to bear and dropping support, making the head unit slowly become more and more useless over time as apps stop running.

CarPlay/Android Auto is an excellent hedge against both of those scenarios, even if one prefers the onboard experience. It never hurts to have an escape hatch.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#38

Post by lmm »

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #9
bartvk wrote: post #2

https://archive.ph/9oIT4 I wish it would have adjusted for inflation. One quote: "The average transaction price for a new vehicle sold in the U.S. last month was $48,623, according to Kelley Blue Book, roughly $10,000 higher than in 2019, before the pandemic." However, about 9200 euros of that is due to inflation according to this calculator: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ That's a nitpick though. All in all,…

If even ICE cars are now super expensive, why isn’t this a screaming opportunity for some auto manufacturer to target the low end of the market? I’ve never spent more than 20k for a car. With prices like this, I’m just going to keep my old one as long as I can.

IIRC the US has some ass-backwards fuel economy laws that mean it's essentially illegal to produce small cars.

Also there's enough demand for high-margin cars to max out available production capacity, and would you want to be making major investments in ICE car production right now?

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#39

Post by fragmede »

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #9
bartvk wrote: post #2

https://archive.ph/9oIT4 I wish it would have adjusted for inflation. One quote: "The average transaction price for a new vehicle sold in the U.S. last month was $48,623, according to Kelley Blue Book, roughly $10,000 higher than in 2019, before the pandemic." However, about 9200 euros of that is due to inflation according to this calculator: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ That's a nitpick though. All in all,…

If even ICE cars are now super expensive, why isn’t this a screaming opportunity for some auto manufacturer to target the low end of the market? I’ve never spent more than 20k for a car. With prices like this, I’m just going to keep my old one as long as I can.

Because there's no incentive to. The invisible hand of the free market only encourages a race to the bottom when the incentives are aligned. With the ridiculously high capex required to become an automaker these days, why would someone come in, just to make $3,000 per car, in a saturated market, chock full of regulations, to make money on the bottom end of a market where existing manufacturers can easily just undercut you the second you get any traction in the market.

Manufacturers make more money off selling luxury cars. The poors can just buy used luxury cars for all they care. We see the same problem with housing and luxury vs spartan options. The spartan option exists, but only begrudgingly so.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#40

Post by tagami »

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #9
bartvk wrote: post #2

https://archive.ph/9oIT4 I wish it would have adjusted for inflation. One quote: "The average transaction price for a new vehicle sold in the U.S. last month was $48,623, according to Kelley Blue Book, roughly $10,000 higher than in 2019, before the pandemic." However, about 9200 euros of that is due to inflation according to this calculator: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ That's a nitpick though. All in all,…

If even ICE cars are now super expensive, why isn’t this a screaming opportunity for some auto manufacturer to target the low end of the market? I’ve never spent more than 20k for a car. With prices like this, I’m just going to keep my old one as long as I can.

A 2025 Toyota Corolla hybrid is ~ $25k
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