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The $25k car is going extinct?

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Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#281

Post by eloisant »

ajkjk wrote: post #244
anon7000 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it’s pointless to compare nearly anything to inflation, which means inflation isn’t very useful. You can still find many product categories increasing in price more slowly than inflation. Some much higher than inflation. So it is useful to compare inflation

But the question we're asking is why the price of cars went up. "Inflation" isn't an answer. Inflation is what we call the price of cars going up. It still happens for a reason...

If the cars prices simply follow inflation, then there is no point in writing an article about why car prices in particular have gone up. Just write about inflation in general.

Energy costs going up, raw materials costs going up, employees asking for raises because of the higher cost of living... And you have an explanation not just for cars but all industries.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#282

Post by AngryData »

socalgal2 wrote: post #260
aorloff wrote: post #74

Nobody else has said it so I guess I will. The reason the US car industry does not want a $25k car is that the financing opportunities are crap for a car of this low cost. In the same way that airlines exist to offer you a miles based credit card, the US car dealerships survive by offering you a loan for the car. Or perhaps, a car to go with your structured finance opportunity.

unless there's illegal collusion, someone will see a market opporunity and step in to fill it. That said, a quick search for new cars under $25k: Chevrolet Trax $20.5k, Nissan Versa $17.2k, Hyundai Venue $20.5k, Kia Soul $20.5k, and Nissan Kicks $22k. Other options include the Toyota Corolla $22.3k, Hyundai Elantra $22.1k, and Volkswagen Jetta $22.5k I think maybe the article is BS?

There is market opportunity, China has found it, but the US won't allow them to be imported because it undercuts everyone else so thoroughly. The US automotive market is extremely far from being a free and open market. You can't just build a car to a set of standards and automatically be allowed to sell them, there are substantial legal and political barriers that cost tons of money to overcome, which doesn't make financial sense to anyone with that amount of money to just sell low margin vehicles.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#283

Post by thaumasiotes »

zeroq wrote: post #195
ml_basics wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

oh, and to add to your vocabulary - the word pathetic, especially around Elbonia, can be used with the intention of saying something is full of "pathos".

Are we just lying for fun now?

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#285

Post by scotty79 »

ajkjk wrote: post #244
anon7000 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it’s pointless to compare nearly anything to inflation, which means inflation isn’t very useful. You can still find many product categories increasing in price more slowly than inflation. Some much higher than inflation. So it is useful to compare inflation

But the question we're asking is why the price of cars went up. "Inflation" isn't an answer. Inflation is what we call the price of cars going up. It still happens for a reason...

Inflation is a result of too much money being created than what is needed by the growth of the economy. Average price increase that we use to estimate it is just a useful proxy.

Inflation is always the main contribution to price increase. It only makes sense to compare price raise above or below inflation if you want to unearth factors specific to any given product or industry.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#286

Post by v5v3 »

277+ comment on this thread when we all know the answer - cars are deliberately over priced, at full price level, so the monthly finance payments relative to depreciation forecasts look good to the buyers (renters) and there is a room for negotiations and offers.

Its HubSpot Marketing that is the winner here.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#287

Post by radicaldreamer »

puzzlingcaptcha wrote: post #261

You can still buy a new subcompact car (like a Renault Clio or Skoda Fabia) in Europe for under 20k EUR. The more interesting question is why these cars disappeared in the US. And while many of the factors discussed here are true for both EU and US (inflation, interest rates, manufacturer profit margins etc) I am surprised no one mentioned the 'SUV loophole' of US regulations that effectively boosted the SUVs (off-ro…

Spot on. most cars sold in the US are actually light trucks.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#288

Post by namdnay »

dyauspitr wrote: post #233
SoftTalker wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy the best used car you can afford for cash and forget all that dealership nonsense

It depends. It doesn’t make sense to not get a car you can afford for 0% interest. I could have outright paid for my current vehicle but over the 3 years at 0% interest I earn 6% to make a few thousand over the lifetime of the loan.

> It doesn’t make sense to not get a car you can afford for 0% interest.

The loan might be 0% interest, but you're still using that loan to pay way too much money for a depreciating asset.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#289

Post by askl »

Sweepi wrote: post #211
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 pos…

It's just a comment generated by some trash AI

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#290

Post by namdnay »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #275
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not merely an issue of obtaining materially desirable consumer goods though; lots of folks get car loans because they can't afford to buy a car, even a cheap car, without one. So it's either, don't get a car and give up a lot of opportunities or hope you live in a place with decent public transit (which is not a given in many places in the US)

I think as a proportion of the total amount loaned, the people using car loans to bu 10-15k used Toyotas because they have to is quite low :(
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