331–340 of 780 posts
I would love a 10-15K BYD. I was told recently desiring a BYD is un-American when I can spend 3 times the price on a Tesla. No thanks! I’ll hold out for something truly cheap. Cars in America are insanely priced.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, there's also the 4.3 million US autoworkers who'd ultimately be the ones to get shafted. I don't think we can keep killing off entire industries and expect it to work out in the long run. At some point, what's left? WalMart?
Congrats! You discovered the Broken Window Fallacy. There are 300 million Americans. Why should ~1% get to hold the remaining 99% hostage?
Electric cars will not "save the environment". Their purpose is to "save the US automotive industry". The idea that billionaires and car manufacturers would be motivated by anything else is laughable. Support public transportation.
This is an all-hands-on-deck situation where we need to pursue all options simultaneously. And there are huge swathes of our country that we will not be able to transition out of suburban sprawl into transit-friendly planning in the necessary amount of time.
So in 2050, there will still be cars, and we can not build enough public transportation in time to solve climate change (and in fact we won't transition to EVs fast enough to solve climate change, if we rely on EVs alone either...)
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40 years ago, the Yugo was sold in the U. S. for $4500. I’m not questioning the truth of your story, but I think it a poor basis for arguing that cars should be $10K today. The dealer obviously was willing to take a loss to get those Chevys off the lot.
MSRP in 2010 (first I could easily find from around the same period—this was a couple years later) for the worst Chevy Aveo was under $5,000, and MSRP was rather more aspirational (bullshitty) then than it seems to be now, as far as what cars actually sell for. This wasn't even that big a mark-down from MSRP.
This page from KBB says that the 2008 Chevy Aveo "had a starting MSRP of $10,610 when new." https://www.kbb.com/chevrolet/aveo/2008/
However, KBB's page for the 2008 Versa also says that it "had a starting MSRP of $14,025 when new" so maybe you're right? Maybe they're adjusting for inflation? It was a crazy time, obviously, with deflation so maybe there were huge discounts.
Electric cars will not "save the environment". Their purpose is to "save the US automotive industry". The idea that billionaires and car manufacturers would be motivated by anything else is laughable. Support public transportation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's never been illegal to produce small cars in the US. It's a tragedy of the commons that the more over-sized cars on the road the more intimidated the average driver and the more compensation in the sizes of other cars to "keep up". Over-sized SUVs and trucks aren't penalized enough for their domination and essentially destruction of the commons space. That's also what fuels some of the demand for high-margin cars…
> It's never been illegal to produce small cars in the US I think they're referring to the practice of making cars larger to pass as trucks so they are faced with more lax fuel-efficiency standards.
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> the EV car market is lacking demand There is scant evidence for this. Every time prices improve, sales surge. Sounds like the demand is there, but price matters. As it always has.
I can't make great use of a full EV but would love more AWD PHEV options, of which there are currently few and they're mostly very expensive. A PHEV can be my everything-car that runs entirely on electricity for 90% of trips. I assume there's some reason they're not a more widely-supported option, but damn, I wish they were more common.
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,…
And of course the EV market is still actually growing in the US. It's just that companies like Tesla, Kia/Hyundai, and other foreign companies with factories in the US are picking up the slack left by the likes of GM, Ford, Stellantis, etc.
Protectionism in the form of tariffs and incentives is making things worse. It's temporarily succeeding at keeping competition out of the door but it's failing at making local industry more competitive. Especially in the international market where US companies enjoy neither the benefits of import tariffs nor incentives. They have to compete on merit with the likes of BYD there. And that's obviously going to cause some issues.
Dropping incentives and tariffs would obviously be short term disruptive but I don't think it changes the outcome long term. Which is that GM either catches up or falls over (wouldn't be the first time). Either way, them delaying investments in EVs is not a sign of them adapting. Same for Ford, which has the same problem and is doing the same. Same for Stellantis. They are favoring short term profits over a long term plan. That's because protectionism is temporarily excusing them from having to compete.
That's not something they can dodge long term. Somebody will step up if it is not them.
I took advantage of the IRA solar power and $7500 EV credit, now I have an off grid home all electric appliances and excess power for hot tubs and EV's. The Ford Lightning acts as a generator. This was the greatest most life changing and impactful legistlation ever: I've had $0 (ZERO!) in gasoline, LP, and electric utility bills since installation last year.
It's too bad that the only people benefiting from all green power subsidies are the people that least need them. We should be investing solar in lower income communities, as those people could really use cheaper utilities, and any saving they get would immediately go back into their communities.
Good news, these are called "community solar gardens" and they exist all around the USA, here's a large one based in Minneapolis: https://www.cooperativeenergyfutures.com/