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Some car companies are operating without regard for a declining customer base

wardsauto.com

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Re: Some car companies are operating without regard for a declining customer base

#81

Post by pmontra »

anon7000 wrote: post #60
echelon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only grievance They're ripping up lanes of traffic in my city and replacing them with bike lanes that nobody uses. The busy intersection next to my home used to take all of 15 seconds to turn at, now I get stuck for five to six minutes at a time because they now forbid right turns on red and stuck left turners in front of right turners. Meanwhile, nobody is using the bike lanes. The bike lanes are gender and age in…

No turn on red is a pedestrian safety issue. Many intersections don’t have adequate visibility, and right on red is very frequently dicey. So I’m glad that my city (Seattle) is banning it. That’s different for small-town low-traffic areas. On bike lanes, it takes up such a tiny amount of space relative to cars. The real problem is that they are not put in with much thought, not made very safe and are ultimately not v…

> That’s different for small-town low-traffic areas.

The two towns close to my home (10k and 5k people each) have 3 and 2 traffic lights. It's a different world with different problems and different solutions than the ones of the cities with 1M people one hour away. It could be a different country with different legislation.

Re: Some car companies are operating without regard for a declining customer base

#82

Post by win311fwg »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #70
win311fwg wrote: post #32

Some car companies are purposefully positioning themselves to have fewer customers as they've learned that they are much more profitable selling a small number of high margin vehicles to a few people instead of a large number of low margin vehicles to a lot of people.

It used to be that they were happy to sell small cheap cars to new buyers because it would build brand loyalty. I'm not sure people are so wedded to car companies now though, especially so when so many brands are owned by a handful of companies. Small cheap cars have been disappearing from the ranges of most manufacturers.

Manufacturers were also in competition with the used market. A small, cheap car was there to try and attract budget-conscious buyers towards something new instead of something used. But then COVID shutdowns interrupted the supply of cars. At one point, used cars were selling for more than equivalent new models. That allowed manufacturers to crank up the price of new vehicles, which has had the knock-on effect of reducing how many vehicles make it onto the used market even now that production capacity is back to normal, which continues to allow these escalated prices. Lather, rinse, repeat. Auto executives have not been shy about proclaiming that they have no interest in returning to a volume-based business.

They eventually might have no choice, especially with Chinese manufacturers starting to make inroads, but for now they do believe they are better off with higher margins and fewer customers. As long as the USA remains the car bread and butter with a political climate that keeps out the competition they can hold out for a while. The risk of not offering a small, cheap car now is not buyers going to another brand, but buyers giving up on the idea of car ownership entirely and finding an alternative. Once they've become accustomed to other modes of transportation, they aren't apt to come back to owning a car. That is going to be a harsh realization when manufacturers are forced to compete on volume again. But, hey, current executives will have moved on by that point and the next guy can take the blame.

Re: Some car companies are operating without regard for a declining customer base

#83

Post by pmontra »

jjav wrote: post #66
imtringued wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right turn on red is an insane idea that any sane person would heavily disagree with. Only North Americans are crazy enough to believe that a red light should mean go. >The bike lanes are gender and age inequitable, How? Everyone can ride a bicycle, even kids and seniors, meanwhile cars are locked behind expensive driving lessons, licenses and exams. Not to mention car ownership is inherently expensive due to fuel, m…

> Right turn on red is an insane idea that any sane person would heavily disagree with. Obviously not since it is so widely adopted. Right on red is an extremely useful optimization so you don't sit waiting for nothing when it is clearly safe to turn.

In any city I saw there are people crossing the road with a green light in front of cars that would have turned right on red so those cars wouldn't go anywhere until they get a green. In areas with little pedestrians, maybe it's OK. Anyway, the general rule of precedence in my country is cars yield to pedestrians and I think it's the same in all of Europe.

Re: Some car companies are operating without regard for a declining customer base

#84

Post by xtiansimon »

echelon wrote: post #33
pmontra wrote: post #25

You sell less to people living in the cities but maybe you sell more to the operators of fleets of rental cars, even self driving if that really becomes mainstream. Not enough to match the decrease of sales. You keep selling to people living in countryside, where you don't go anywhere without a car and where fleets of cars would have to be very large to be able to cover the territory in a meaningful way. There will b…

People in cities decided they wanted less car-centric infrastructure. People in cities demanded EVs, yet didn't show up to keep buying them. People in cities apparently know best what car companies should build, yet they don't buy the cars. Car companies build for suburbanites. Suburbanites buy cars.

> “Suburbanites buy cars”

True for Long Island, NY. Can’t go to to the store 0.3 miles away without driving your cage. Kids take the bus to school in even the best weather, that is if their parents don’t drive them.

Re: Some car companies are operating without regard for a declining customer base

#85

Post by ExoticPearTree »

vrganj wrote: post #21
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the thesis is "cars will approach 50% or greater utilization" then car numbers must drop barring a massive increase in road capacity for which the land does not exist. You can build stacked roads a few levels up. Capacity doubles or triples without any significant land use.

That sounds like an absolute dystopian nightmare. Can we instead just design cities so they don't depend on cars as much? Visit Amsterdam, then visit LA. Tell me which place is more pleasant to be in.

You are comparing apples to oranges.

Amsterdam is very dense because historic reasons. Streets are narrow and houses are the same.

Los Angeles on the other hand was built on virtually unlimited land and could expand a lot. I could say LA County is bigger than the whole of the Netherlands.

Both have their charm, but LA is so much better than Amsterdam.

Yeah, the 405 might suck, but at least the weather is better.

Re: Some car companies are operating without regard for a declining customer base

#86

Post by bryanlarsen »

Will robotaxis actually reduce demand? A taxi that does 10X as many passenger miles a day as a normal car may theoretically replace 10 cars but because of dead heading might be traveling more than 10X as many miles.

Cars today have an approximate lifespan of 200,000 miles. It might take a set of conventional owners 20 years to hit that, or a taxi company 2, but either way it's getting replaced after 200,000 miles. The taxi might be in slightly better shape, but taxi customers have higher expectations than buyers of 15 year old cars.

Replacing 1/10 the number of cars 10x as often is the same demand.

With EV technology it should be possible to design a million mile car. Electric motors can easily do that, and LFP batteries can get close. But interiors and suspensions still cannot do a million.

When we see interiors made out of the same materials as subway cars, that might be a sign of future lowered demand.

Re: Some car companies are operating without regard for a declining customer base

#87

Post by up2isomorphism »

echelon wrote: post #33
pmontra wrote: post #25

You sell less to people living in the cities but maybe you sell more to the operators of fleets of rental cars, even self driving if that really becomes mainstream. Not enough to match the decrease of sales. You keep selling to people living in countryside, where you don't go anywhere without a car and where fleets of cars would have to be very large to be able to cover the territory in a meaningful way. There will b…

People in cities decided they wanted less car-centric infrastructure. People in cities demanded EVs, yet didn't show up to keep buying them. People in cities apparently know best what car companies should build, yet they don't buy the cars. Car companies build for suburbanites. Suburbanites buy cars.

Coming from a country where almost everybody rides a bike. I would say US is the worst place to ride a bike. Also the utilization is inherently low due the city layout and weather is bad in winter in most US cities. It would be much more efficient to use the space for bike lanes for better pubic transport.

Re: Some car companies are operating without regard for a declining customer base

#88

Post by bryanlarsen »

autoexec wrote: post #43

> Because a single autonomous vehicle operating in a shared fleet can replace multiple privately owned cars, the widespread adoption of this technology can’t help but reduce new-car sales volumes. The idea that that a huge number of people will give up their private cars for robot-taxis in the next 20 years is laughable. They don't even exist in the vast majority of the country, and it's not even clear that they can…

The article isn't talking about total number of cars in America, which likely won't go down substantially. It's taking about new car sales. If people start using robotaxis more, the car in their driveway gets used less and replaced less often. Old people own as many cars as young people, but drive less so replace less frequently.

Re: Some car companies are operating without regard for a declining customer base

#90

Post by rjrjrjrj »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #53
vrganj wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the dumbest possible approach. We don't need fleets of autonomous vehicles, each carrying two tons of metal for transporting a person or two and clogging up cities. We just need a train network that doesn't suck.

One of the most important ways to make a train network that doesn't suck is to aggressively police the sorts of antisocial behavior on public transit committed by the most marginalized people in society. There are a lot of political barriers to actually doing this, not the least of which is that it necessarily involves incarcerating more marginalized people, using more police violence against marginalized people, and…

Could maybe have fewer marginalized people? Or be better at helping at them?

US already has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world; far higher than that of many countries with train networks that don't suck.

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