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The $25k car is going extinct?

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Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#211

Post by Sweepi »

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…

>EU offers up to 10k EUR subvention for electric cars and with that in mind you can get something like BYD Dolphin for slighly less than 20k EUR.

"The EU" does not offer subsidies for any car, some member states do (And I have never heard of a subsidy of 10k per car). On the contrary, Chinese cars are strongly tariffed by the EU.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, however, until someone provides a link, I label this post "hyperbullshit".

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#212

Post by leviathant »

tacticalturtle wrote: post #156
darth_avocado wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are a necessity in pretty much most of the country. Even in areas with good public transit, people who are most likely to go into debt to buy a car are also more likely to live further away from public transit and commute for work. Outside of New York, I can’t think of another city where living without a car is really an option.

Boston. DC. Chicago. I’ve heard Philly and SF as well, but have never been.

Philly's transit access can be hit or miss, but when transit lines up, it's transformative. I moved from central PA to a Philadelphia suburb in 2006, a three minute walk to a regional rail station. It was an hour fifteen into the city (most of the time), and I'll take 1:15 on the train over 0:45 of driving every time. After a few months of figuring things out, we dropped from two cars to one.

Now I own a rowhome in the historic district of the city, we're opening the first floor as a museum within the next year, and I walk everywhere. All forms of transit (bus, trolley, trackless trolley, subway, light rapid transit, train, ferry) take contactless payment (finally) and these days, rideshare fills in the gaps.

Wages are higher in the suburbs, but I can get to a sizable international airport in 15 minutes by car, to the Amtrak station in 20 minutes via $3 subway, and I can walk to grocery/hardware/bakery as well as bars/restaurants/galleries/venues/museums/etc.

A car used to be a very, very important part of my life, and now it's more of a luxurious convenience.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#213

Post by darth_avocado »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #197
darth_avocado wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bay Area (including SF) public transportation is generally terrible, definitely not at all a great option for people who can’t even live in SF but have to commute to SF because of how expensive it is.

San Francisco is in the top 10 cities in the US for public transit usage. You can see the stats here: https://www.sf.gov/data--vision-zero-benchmarking-commute-me... If you are forced to commute into SF for your job, then make living close to BART a top priority. (Many years ago, I met many people who suffered through that daily commute, but refused to make living near BART a priority. It was dumb to watch.) BART is…

Just because it’s in top 10 within the country doesn’t mean it is great and that people don’t need to rely on cars most of the times. “Just live near BART” is a laughable proposition since half the BART stations outside of SF do not have enough housing around them and the ones that do, have high density luxury apartments that aren’t exactly affordable to people outside tech and other high paying careers. Then there’s the question of “do I also work near BART?”, “buy groceries near bus stations?” Or “go to the hospital only near public transit?”. Answer to all of those questions is “No and I still need a car”.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#214

Post by nubinetwork »

Glawen wrote: post #24

Aka how to shoot yourself in the foot and hand over the market to Chinese manufacturer. In Europe, only Renault created a low cost brand (Dacia). Once chinese brands become commonplace everywhere, tradional carmakers will have a hard time taking back market share. In Europe they closed or are closing the last HCOL factories, killing any remaining brand loyalty.

You can't buy a BYD in Canada, and all the current EVs are too expensive. It's better to keep buying old clunkers.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#215

Post by harvey9 »

leakycap wrote: post #165
financypants wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The small and quasi-loophole to getting a good used car deal is buying a hail damage car. I genuinely don't understand why cars were made to have shiny paint. Cars drive on dirty roads with insects and pebbles abound. Paint doesn't matter. Car washes are crazy, except to abait rust

The issue you'll face is when you go to sell it – any noticeable hail damage means you are getting 1/2 the resale value if you can even find an interested buyer.

That's accounted for at the time they bought it since it was already hail damaged.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#216

Post by Marsymars »

chasd00 wrote: post #53

The sweet spot has always been a 1 year old used car with low miles. There’s lots of those for less than or about $25k. Honda, Toyota, and Mazda have models in those ranges that will easily last a decade.

If you don’t drive much yourself, “low miles” after a couple years doesn’t matter quite as much. e.g. I bought my car at a couple years old with 40k miles already, but in the following twelve years I’ve only run it up to about 115k miles, so I’ve turned it from a “high-mileage two-year-old car” into a “low-mileage 14-year-old car”.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#217

Post by gertlex »

LoganDark wrote: post #182
amluto wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

> relocating an old house is a real pain Has relocating an old house even been done? (Assuming the house wasn't built to be movable.)

As the other comments note, yep, it's been done.

It seems there's a whole spectrum from lifting houses to put a new first floor below them, to moving them a bit, to moving them several blocks in a city. (to big building projects too, historically)

I saw a house in progress being moved, 30 years ago. Great thing to take a kid to see!

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#218

Post by wombatpm »

SoftTalker wrote: post #137
darth_avocado wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are a necessity in pretty much most of the country. Even in areas with good public transit, people who are most likely to go into debt to buy a car are also more likely to live further away from public transit and commute for work. Outside of New York, I can’t think of another city where living without a car is really an option.

Chicago. Probably a few other big cities.

Yes, but you have to live in the City. The suburbs are impossible without a car.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#219

Post by dluan »

caleblloyd wrote: post #52
999900000999 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to justify your personal situation to me. If you feel like buying a 80k truck, that's cool. The issue with America is the vast majority of truck buyers really can't afford an 80k truck. This isn't the best source, but it says here the average truck buyer is only making 82k or so. https://www.myautoconcepts.com/blogdetails?id=4049 From experience talking to friends and sales people plenty of folks with…

Another (possibly bigger) reason cars are cheaper in China is because their government subsidizes the heck out of BYD and the likes. It would be like if Tesla didn’t have to pay anything to build their factories.

Not sure if this is a tongue in cheek joke, but Tesla has benefited massively from federal subsidies as well as local dog and pony shows of small municipal factory sites.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#220

Post by toast0 »

ggm-at-algebras wrote: post #162
lastofthemojito wrote: post #153

Electric vehicles eliminated the need for manufacturers to sell (usually small and cheap) efficient ICE cars in the US. For years, CAFE regulations have meant that manufacturers must meet minimum fleet fuel economy averages or else pay fines. In order to sell more profitable but less fuel-efficient F-150s, Ford also needed to sell little Fiestas or Focuses. In order to sell Suburbans, Chevy also needed to sell Cavali…

if you don't believe in market regulations, this is confirming evidence of the distortions of trying to regulate an open market. If you believe in climate change, this is evidence of how the vested interest behind profit in cars manipulates the intent of the regulations, to continue to get what they want. It's a bit fish/bicycle, but the point is, we wanted more people to drive smaller, cheaper, less polluting cars.…

> It's a bit fish/bicycle, but the point is, we wanted more people to drive smaller, cheaper, less polluting cars. We didn't want the car manufacturers to find ways of maximising sell, including boosting F150 and F250 class truck sales to mummies on the kindy run.

Unfortunately, the whole thing wasn't built right for the goal. Setting the mpg bar lower for bigger footprint vehicles is on the one side realistic, but on the other side made it hard to build compliant small vehicles. Small trucks in particular disappeared; some say the market wasn't there, but annual sales of the Ford Ranger were pretty decent in 2005-2010 [1]. 2005 was more than the rest, but there were a couple facelifts, and the Chevy S-10 ended production in 2004, so there was probably some spillover from that. (The 2005-2012 Chevy Colorado isn't significantly bigger than the S-10 though). Post the mid 2010s, small trucks basically don't exist, even when small truck names are used. Supposedly Toyota and Subaru are going to bring one back, but we'll see if it happens.

Some sort of special small car class, with benefits, would be needed. Like the kei cars in Japan. Maybe not that small, and maybe not that small of an engine, but that idea of a smaller than normal footprint, but still highway capable, if only just. There is a federal 'low speed vehicle' thing, but the restriction to streets with speed limits 35 mph or less makes it hard to go anywhere in a lot of places. It's not a reasonable alternative to a regular car for most. There's also some recent push to formalize legal use of kei cars in many US states, but federal import restrictions mean they do have to be fairly old (or have expensive and destructive testing), which further restricts the market.

[1] https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/ford-ranger-sales-figures/

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