Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The $25k car is going extinct?

media.hubspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 1001 posts

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#171

Post by vel0city »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #133
snovymgodym wrote: post #7

It's pretty simple (in the US, can't speak for elsewhere). There are 2 big factors at play: 1. Margins. Manufacturers make huge margins on expensive vehicles and very slim margins on cheap vehicles. The numbers differ, but I think even in the lead up to the 2008 crisis automakers had to sell 5-10 "econobox" cars to make the profit they made on one luxury car, SUV, or truck. 2. Normalization of debt. For many American…

My reptilian-brain logic prevents me from even considering getting a loan for car. Houses increase in value, therefore it makes a certain amount of sense to get a loan / mortgage for the purchase of a house (but mainly because no-one - in the world in which I live - can afford to buy one cash). Cars decrease in value, very quickly. Getting a loan for a car is throwing more money away than buying a car in the first pl…

Lots of loan rates out there for I could pay off my car tomorrow. But I'll have more money in the end keeping that cash in the bank. Why would I pay it off early?

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#172

Post by redwall_hp »

jccalhoun wrote: post #95

in 2021 my beloved Honda Fit got totaled. I bought it new in 09 and only had 80K miles on it. They don't sell new ones in North America any more. So I bought a Kia Rio. They don't make those any more. I don't really like it but with the current chaos in the economy I'm not trading it in any time soon. I was in the UK for the first time last month and was struck by how many hatchbacks and sedans they have that we don'…

The closest Honda is probably what I replaced my 2007 Fit with: the hatchback Civic. It's a little longer, and has less usable cargo height, but otherwise is similar enough. (It tolerates my height better too.) Also available in fun, fast versions.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#173

Post by leakycap »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #115
paxys wrote: post #38

One fact not mentioned in the article - Americans now owe $1.64 trillion in auto loans, and cars make up 9% of all consumer debt in the country. In fact we now owe more on cars than student loans. The average loan term is rising - almost 6 years now. 60-day delinquency on auto loans is at 6.6%, the highest ever recorded, and is as high as 9% in some states. So while car prices keep going up, people also keep going de…

> problem is unchecked consumerism Problem is if the US consumer had the “moral awakening” you propose (and to be clear you are claiming that basically we are in this situation due to the weak moral character of the average American) then coincidentally our entire economy would begin to crumble. It’s not just car loans, our entire economy works because of debt, and has for at least the last 20 years. The idea that ne…

Well said, but I would add that it seems reasonable if we take debt too far, it will indeed crumble.

I'm not sure we didn't pass that point before the pandemic, and decision-making since has not helped.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#174

Post by Dylan16807 »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #154
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, not a gigantic truck, and no infotainment (or even powered windows!) It'd be a manual transmission if it wasn't an EV.

> or even powered windows! An exclamation mark for lacking powered windows? Oh the humanity! I'm starting to see the problem.

An exclamation mark because the feature is cheap and omnipresent, not because of... impact, or whatever you're reading into it.

It's surprising. An exclamation mark makes sense.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#175

Post by xyzzy123 »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #133
snovymgodym wrote: post #7

It's pretty simple (in the US, can't speak for elsewhere). There are 2 big factors at play: 1. Margins. Manufacturers make huge margins on expensive vehicles and very slim margins on cheap vehicles. The numbers differ, but I think even in the lead up to the 2008 crisis automakers had to sell 5-10 "econobox" cars to make the profit they made on one luxury car, SUV, or truck. 2. Normalization of debt. For many American…

My reptilian-brain logic prevents me from even considering getting a loan for car. Houses increase in value, therefore it makes a certain amount of sense to get a loan / mortgage for the purchase of a house (but mainly because no-one - in the world in which I live - can afford to buy one cash). Cars decrease in value, very quickly. Getting a loan for a car is throwing more money away than buying a car in the first pl…

I think the way most people rationalise it, it's a pre-requisite for having a job. So it's income-generating and therefore morally ok to take out a loan for it.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#176

Post by BLKNSLVR »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #174
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or even powered windows! An exclamation mark for lacking powered windows? Oh the humanity! I'm starting to see the problem.

An exclamation mark because the feature is cheap and omnipresent, not because of... impact, or whatever you're reading into it. It's surprising. An exclamation mark makes sense.

Fair cop. I'll take that.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#177

Post by amluto »

nradov wrote: post #120
SJC_Hacker wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Houses are debt, but are generally and appreciating asset Cars are a depreciating asset. It usually does not make sense to go into debt to get one

Houses are a depreciating asset. They require constant maintenance expenses just to hold their value. It's the land under the house that's the appreciating asset.

Sort of. In a lot of areas, the cost of the house has skyrocketed in the last few decades. One factor is that you can’t buy an empty lot and then build a 20 year old $250k house on it in most markets. If you want to build a house, that house will be new (obviously — relocating an old house is a real pain), and the costs of construction are silly. This effect inflates the value of old houses in a lot of markets.

Of course, in markets that don’t have plenty of inventory of both empty lots and lots with old houses, it can be hard to value the house by itself.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#178

Post by zoklet-enjoyer »

roxolotl wrote: post #75
JKCalhoun wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the cost of a car is a huge drag on the upward mobility on the lower income earners in the U.S.

100%. And it doesn’t help that large cars as a cultural touchstone/status symbol really took off. Even if a $25k car existed most people wouldn’t buy it(even if they “should”).

I'll have my 2020 Subaru Impreza paid off in a couple months. That was just under $24k. I don't think the price has gone up much on the Impreza in the last 5 years.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#179

Post by ml_basics »

tricolon wrote: post #130
zeroq wrote: post #124

Last year we bought a car. While not being a petrol head I was still living in a lala land where you could buy a brand new car for 10k EUR. Nothing fancy, just "a car". Obviously it turned out to be not true. After some digging it turned out that in the last 10 years the price of cars went double. Literally double. Same car, like Fiat Panda, with the same engine and configuration, that ten years was worth one potato…

I'd never seen the word "subvention" before. Today I learned it's another way to say "subsidy".

It's a europeanism. In both French and German (and probably other EU languages) the word for "subsidy" is something like "subvention" so native speakers of these language often reach for an unnatural word in English.

Btw other examples include "actually" which is used to mean "currently", and "eventually" which is used to mean "maybe".

Personally I'm torn whether to consider this incorrect use of the language as it is quite widespread. Maybe it would be better to consider this as the emergence of a new dialect.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#180

Post by AdieuToLogic »

standardUser wrote: post #87

Americans like to upgrade their cars, not unlike their cell phones, and they often have a monthly car payment (or two) that never permanently goes away. That makes some sense to me, but if the goal is to always have a nice car, doesn't it makes much more sense to lease? The monthly payments will be a few hundred bucks less and you can upgrade every 2-3 years. And from what I understand, leasing agents like to give in…

> ... but if the goal is to always have a nice car, doesn't it makes much more sense to lease? The monthly payments will be a few hundred bucks less and you can upgrade every 2-3 years.

Leasing a car always includes an initial payment (in the several thousands) and typically have severe penalties for exceeding allotted mileage, any damage (even if only cosmetic), and/or if mandatory dealer maintenance is not adhered.

The monthly payments are not as disparate as one might think when the initial payment is amortized over the course of the lease along with dealer maintenance expenditures.

Post reply on HN