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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

#591

Post by bloomingeek »

uxp100 wrote: post #424
bloomingeek wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely! The biggest problem is the average American allows themselves to be duped and challenged by advertising. New tech in cars is great, but spending $40K and up is stupid. I've said it before: my $27K base model Ram truck will go from point A to point B just as well as a $70K(!) model. Is it just as shiny? No, but the money I didn't spend on all that shine won't be wasted on depreciation. My credit union rece…

Is there a $27k base model ram truck? Seems like the base model on the ram website is $38k and when I tried to price a regular cab one from stellantis fleet those were like $46k, but I could have made a mistake on that site.

Sorry, no mistake on your part. I bought the Ram new in 2021. I live in the Tulsa, OK area, where prices are a little more reachable because of so many different dealerships.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#592

Post by bloomingeek »

ComSubVie wrote: post #312
bloomingeek wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely! The biggest problem is the average American allows themselves to be duped and challenged by advertising. New tech in cars is great, but spending $40K and up is stupid. I've said it before: my $27K base model Ram truck will go from point A to point B just as well as a $70K(!) model. Is it just as shiny? No, but the money I didn't spend on all that shine won't be wasted on depreciation. My credit union rece…

And American prices are already insanely low. If I want to buy a RAM in Austria for $30k I get a used car with 150.000km. If I want a new one it's (much) over $100k.

Wow, is that because of tariffs or shipping costs from the US?

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#593

Post by joyeuse6701 »

FactKnower69 wrote: post #574
bane wrote: post #434

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 m…

If you're an American wondering why you're forced to buy shitty overpriced Teslas instead of those $15k BYD Dolphins, here's Janet Yellen screeching about how unfair it is that China uses its labor force to manufacture consumer goods instead of creating millions of bullshit make-work financialization jobs like good liberal democracies https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/yellen-intends-warn-...

I have a feeling that if BYD was a Taiwanese company it’d be fine, could there be a concern with the Xi government’s bellicosity?

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#594

Post by bloomingeek »

ndileas wrote: post #417
bloomingeek wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely! The biggest problem is the average American allows themselves to be duped and challenged by advertising. New tech in cars is great, but spending $40K and up is stupid. I've said it before: my $27K base model Ram truck will go from point A to point B just as well as a $70K(!) model. Is it just as shiny? No, but the money I didn't spend on all that shine won't be wasted on depreciation. My credit union rece…

I was nodding along with your post until you brought out your numbers (I agree fully with the broader point). For me, any car above 15k or so is very expensive - I've always bought used and drove them into the ground. I'd love an electric car but it's not in the cards for my family until the total cost of ownership gets down to 2-3k a year or so. This is something I've always found fascinating about materialism (I ca…

Your points are well taken. I only bought the Ram because I had to for personal reasons. It's the first new car/truck I've ever owned and I will drive it till it's worn out. I've always bought used/low mileage vehicles to avoid depreciation and the headache of the warranty period.

Car makers make a lot of money based on our egos to one up-our neighbors. Car salesmen are trained to create a competitive atmosphere at the dealership by exposing our vanity and it works!

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#595

Post by sn0wf1re »

eddd-ddde wrote: post #589
bluGill wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some Americans. The average car in the US is 12 years old. I just checked my local craigslist, most cars of that age are under 10k, and almost none are more than 20k. Since that is average we can assume cars of that age will run (with maintenance) for another decade and so shouldn't be very expensive. Of course at that age almost nothing is electric.

The average car in the US? Or the average daily driver car? Cars just don't disappear, so all vehicles would "polute" the statistics right?

From what I have gathered, I assume average age of registered vehicles. I would also assume that collector cars would "pollute" the statistics, unless they are filtered out -- the details of the research are not stated.

https://www.spglobal.com/mobility/en/research-analysis/avera...

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#596

Post by aoanevdus »

f1refly wrote: post #156
vundercind wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe because PHEV are a really dumb idea? You're lugging around two complete powertrains the whole time, a massive waste of energy!

Pure EVs also waste tons of energy, because they lug around a huge battery that you barely use for most trips.

The battery pack in a Model Y weighs 1700 lbs and provides 330 miles of range. A RAV4 Prime (PHEV) has a 14.5 gallon gas tank, which provides 500 miles of range from 90 lbs of gas - in addition to the smaller 300 lb battery pack providing 42 miles range. The additional weight of the drivetrain components offsets the savings from not lugging around a huge battery. Overall, the vehicles end up with similar weight, but the RAV4 has much longer range. By default, the RAV4 prime runs on EV mode until the battery runs down. With both vehicles, you’re taking an efficiency hit on the average drive for having the option of taking longer trips.

Of course, both vehicles are a big environmental win over old ICE cars, because they will move you more miles per carbon emitted. Which one works better for you depends on your use-case. If you want to lower the environmental impact if you commute even more, ride a bicycle or something.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#597

Post by aiforecastthway »

acdha wrote: post #535
wannacboatmovie wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> coworker of mine just spent $100k on a regular old pickup truck > It gets like 11 mpg and uses the 92 octane fuel. I understand hating on pickup trucks is an easy way to farm upvotes on HN, but there is no 'regular pickup truck' in existence that gets 11 mpg. The closest that comes to that is the F-150 Raptor with turbocharged V8 which is a preposterous performance vehicle with a racing engine. It is a luxury item.…

> there is no 'regular pickup truck' in existence that gets 11 mpg Point but e.g. the 2024 Silverado gets 12mpg in city driving. Go to any office parking lot here and you’ll see a lot of that size truck which have clearly never been used harder than going to Costco - and even the better ones are barely approaching ⅔ of the mpg of the pickup my grandparents bought in the 1980s. I do agree that from a pollution standpo…

I'd bet the Tundras get similar in practice. They're rated higher but the turbo is practically always-on in stop and go traffic.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#598

Post by JKCalhoun »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #264
JKCalhoun wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first to fill these niches with affordable models... And is not tariffed to the point they are not competitive. I'm on the fence as to whether tariffs are good or bad, but I do wonder if an external player might not be able to come in and shake up the US auto industry. I feel like the working class in the U.S. are paying way too much for what amounts to a necessity for their livelihood: the automobile. We'd all…

Economics is not my field, but I’d reason that tariffs can be useful if they’re used as a scalpel instead of as a sledgehammer. So for example, if the goal is to stimulate domestic automakers to be more competitive without unnecessarily risking killing them off entirely, a moderate tariff that pushes the price of ultra cheap foreign cars up to a level that’s reasonably achievable by the domestic automakers but still…

Then perhaps we lift tariffs on sub-$20K cars. Let the Big-3 sell luxury cars to the wealthy.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#599

Post by 015a »

drawkward wrote: post #555
015a wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon did not say that. Tesla The Company said that. Ask yourself this: I bet you a thousand dollars that Tesla will release either a lower cost model or a lower cost trim of an existing model before the end of 2026. Would you take the other side of that bet? That's directionality. Deadlines might get missed. I'm talking about directionality.

You are now changing your claim; you originally said or quoted lower cost models. Yes, I'd take that bet.

[flagged]

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#600

Post by itsoktocry »

bane wrote: post #434

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 m…

City dwellers will spend $2500 a month for 400 sq feet of rented living space and laugh at people paying $50k for a car.
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