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The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

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Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#431

Post by fsckboy »

mediaman wrote: post #420
fsckboy wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you need to read up on the economics of "public goods", other people have thought this through before you. In a nutshell, police and fire protection benefit everyone, because if your neighbor has low crime or low chance of fire spreading, that also benefits you, so it makes sense to include everyone in the plan. But while the $7500 was paid for by everybody else, the only person with the $0 electric bill is GP, which…

The subsidy was to incentivize adoption of technology to fight climate change. As a result, he took actions that reduced CO2 emissions, which everyone benefits from.

"we" overpaid for the climate benefit you want, can't you see that? We could have got the climate benefit cheaper, which would give us a bigger budget for more climate benefits.

Instead of him saying "for net zero cost, I've reduced my carbon footprint, which is great!" he's crowing about "I don't pay anything any more!" That is a private benefit that he loves, that we paid for, and we do not benefit from.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#432

Post by kjkjadksj »

FergusArgyll wrote: post #377
jogjayr wrote: post #5

Money quote: “As automakers were profit maximizing during the supply chain crisis era, you are going to prioritize the bigger vehicles, the more expensive vehicles with their higher margins,” Tyson Jominy, vice president of data and analytics at J.D. Power, told me. “Now we just don’t have” these cheaper models.

Why did they just start "maximizing profit" recently? Did all the bad bad no good CEO's just read The Prince or something?

Look at fords lineup now. No sedan. Its straight up embarrasing if you are the first lemming to start burning furniture to save on heat. But if the entire industry has been doing just this since 2008 then you are the fool for not playing the game your investors expect from you. Never mind how you might fare 10 years from now. Quarterly thinking dominates.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#433

Post by Dracophoenix »

knowitnone wrote: post #378

After reading some of the comments, the next questions, why are automakers not building plants in Africa? Cheap labor force, cheap land, probably needs education and training. China is courting Africa, is the US?

Firstly, Africa is a continent, not a sovereign nation or a monolithic politico-economic bloc. Cars aren't manufactured in every country in Asia, but primarily East and Southeast Asia. Asia proper extends from Anatolia to the Bering Strait, where many countries in between have no automobile industry whether domestic or foreign.

Secondly, there are plenty of reasons to avoid doing business in the many African countries, not the least of which are political instability, low literacy rates of the native populations, unfavorable and inconsistent economic policies (tariffs, board membership requirements, etc.), as well as inefficient and corrupt bureaucracies. That last one can create legal issues for you if you run a business incorporated in the US.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#434

Post by bane »

I can't believe that the average price of a car in the U.S. is almost $50k. For rapidly depreciating assets.

Here I am working out TCO costs for a range of mid-sized cars for my next purchase, and trying to decide if the extra $2k for a Prius Prime over a Prius will beat the differential in fuel costs for my driving situation. I feel like a chump, but I know it's the smarter thing to do with my money.

I coworker of mine just spent $100k on a regular old pickup truck that is planned to spend less than 5% of the time doing anything other than commuting him back and forth to work. It doesn't fit in any of the parking garages around here, or in his garage -- he has to park it at the other side of a surface lot because it doesn't fit in the normal spots. It gets like 11 mpg and uses the 92 octane fuel.

Americans won't buy cheap cars, they won't buy upmarket small cars, but they'll burn their children's college fund into the ground for a 2 second gain on 0-60 and bad ergonomics.

I can afford the fancy car, but I'd rather turn $100k into $200k in my index funds and buy an entire apartment in Spain overlooking the Mediterranean with the gains.

We can have nice things, but this is why we can't have affordable things.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#435

Post by tuatoru »

jebarker wrote: post #358
asciimov wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We need both. There's plenty of wealthy people that can afford to go solar and could arguably have a bigger environmental impact if they did since they often also have large homes, big cars etc. If they don't feel strongly about doing it for altruistic reasons then subsidies are a useful tool to get them to take the plunge. Without subsidies there's really no economic argument for them to do it since the break even t…

> There's plenty of wealthy people that can afford to go solar ... subsidies are a useful tool to get them to take the plunge.

So you are in favour of taking taxes from the poor to give to the rich. Good to know.

Wealthy people's impact disproportionately comes from plane travel. That is highly polluting but nothing is being done about that.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#436

Post by kjkjadksj »

engineer_22 wrote: post #266
mobilene wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Yep, automakers have deliberately gone after higher profit margins per vehicle. Huge-volume, lower-cost cars are slowly going away. Get one while you can, if that's your thing.

US Congress has mandated a growing list of advanced features, leading to complex vehicles, complex supply chains, and higher sticker prices.

Nissan has figured out how to comply and sell a Versa for just $17k like its 15 years ago still.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#437

Post by kylehotchkiss »

knowitnone wrote: post #378

After reading some of the comments, the next questions, why are automakers not building plants in Africa? Cheap labor force, cheap land, probably needs education and training. China is courting Africa, is the US?

Of all the places in the world to build factories, you choose Africa? Not India, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia? Nothing personal against Africa but there are just a lot of options that aren't china with better industrial policy and want to build stuff to export.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#438

Post by fsckboy »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #404
fsckboy wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you need to read up on the economics of "public goods", other people have thought this through before you. In a nutshell, police and fire protection benefit everyone, because if your neighbor has low crime or low chance of fire spreading, that also benefits you, so it makes sense to include everyone in the plan. But while the $7500 was paid for by everybody else, the only person with the $0 electric bill is GP, which…

The police force in the next city doesn't really benefit me, so F them, right? Reducing greenhouse gases and the price of electricity (such as from super cheap customer provided solar power on the grid during the day) actually does benefit me and every other electricity consumer. Some conservatives are really stuck on the $7500 rebate, they are so excited to maintain our existing industrial base. They are in extreme…

you're just angry, and anger makes people incoherent. You do benefit from the police in the next town, and turns out, you don't pay for it, so I have no idea what you are talking about.

liberals should be stuck on the $7500 rebate, read my separate response about achieving even more climate benefit.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#439

Post by mrguyorama »

robertlagrant wrote: post #293
mrguyorama wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Prius gets up to 50 mpg on the highway too, much better than ICE cousins.

How is that possible? What's it doing that ICE cars can't do on a highway?

The ICE engine in a Prius is a special branch of tech that is more efficient at the cost of basically kneecapped performance. Americans cannot stand needing a full ten seconds to get onto the highway, because we all drive like a bunch of roided up chimps who refuse to move over to give the merging onramp any room.

For two decades there has been a roughly free 5% or so in fuel economy available to any ICE car if only we could manage to be slightly more patient drivers, but American car buyers would literally rather spend twice the cost on a V8, gasoline truck, that gets worse fuel economy than it's $8k more expensive diesel variant, worse performance, and often a less reliable engine.

Americans will swear that a ten cent increase in gas prices will drive them to financial ruin, and then choose to buy the SUV made out of a terrible truck chassis that gets 20mpg. They did this despite having to learn the hard way back in 2008 what it actually meant for gas to be expensive.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#440

Post by kjkjadksj »

knowitnone wrote: post #378

After reading some of the comments, the next questions, why are automakers not building plants in Africa? Cheap labor force, cheap land, probably needs education and training. China is courting Africa, is the US?

US automarket is not a free market is why. Protective tariffs and other taxes or else we’d already be driving something hammered out of bangladesh as of decades ago.
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