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The $25k car is going extinct?

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Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#381

Post by mschuster91 »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #328
whatevaa wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are disappearing in europe too. Emissions and other required by law equipment costs just as much on cheap car as it does on expensive one. At some point, cheap cars stop beinf cheap, just a bit cheaper but with way worse quality, so they stop making sense.

It's true that affordable European models are disappearing. The average mid-range offering from, say, Volkswagen, has become quite surprisingly expensive. But this is why Chinese cars are taking over in Europe. Half the new cars I see are from Geely, BYD, Chery, etc. These average about 20,000-25,000 EUR new. My own opinion, having looked into the matter a bit, is that you'd have to be insane to buy a Volkswagen or B…

> If I were in the market for a new car, I wouldn't consider anything but a Chinese car.

The problem with these are a few things:

1. service network. When something goes kaput with a VW, BMW, Mercedes, Ford, GM, Toyota and even Tesla, there's ample service stations available to get the car back up and running. With a Chinese manufacturer no one but car nerds has heard about? Good luck finding anyone willing to even touch the thing, much less have that specific manufacturer's tooling to deal with computer problems.

2. spare parts logistics. Even the richest and most successful of the last 20 years worth of automotive startups has serious trouble getting spare parts to broken cars. Why should some random Chinese brand be any better than that?

3. Crash safety. "Chinesium" alloy is a meme at this point, but one based on truth. Who guarantees that the manufacturer didn't cheap out on production runs after the review/crashtest rating units went out?

4. Battery safety. Batteries are already hard enough to pull off at scale without sending an armada of tiny little bomblets around the planet... who guarantees that there is no supply chain fuckery going on?

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#382

Post by BanterTrouble »

I work on my own cars now (as a hobby really) and one of the reasons the new cars are so expensive is they are much more complicated. A lot of this seems to be over-engineering IMO. This is alluded to in the article, but not explicitly stated.

The cars I work on are from the early 90s and everything is very simple to understand.

e.g. Electronics are normally simple circuits that aren't much more complicated than what you would find in a door bell and finding faults is normally just tracing wires and using a multi-meter. I had issues with the brake lights / reverse lights not working, the issue turned out that the spade like connector in the fuse box was pushed through and was making partial contact. Price to fix this was £0.

EDIT: Just remembered this isn't accurate. I had to buy a new reverse light. The entire reverse light assembly was ~£20. So the price to fix was about £20. The light assembly itself was like a big bicycle light.

My newer car needs a OB-II scanner to diagnose anything with a phone app. While this is arguably quicker it can be misleading. Sometimes it will be telling you that something is malfunctioning but it is really the sensor itself. These sensors are £200-£300 a piece. Replacing 4 glow plug sensors cost me £800. I was paying essentially to make the "you must service your engine" light to go away. There was nothing wrong with engine itself.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#383

Post by Amezarak »

oreilles wrote: post #342
Dig1t wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t your argument basically saying that people choose to buy larger cars when the government doesn’t step in and penalize people for doing so? European regulators basically just forcing people to buy smaller cars is what that sounds like. Also Europeans make less money, pay more taxes, and have less access to credit, so they can’t afford more expensive cars like many Americans. Hence the market catering more to peo…

> The poorest American state, Mississippi, is richer per-capita than most European countries, including France. The state, maybe. The missisipian, not so much - considering their Human Development Index is right in between that of Hungary and Bulgaria, at the very bottom of the EU. How great is it to be able to buy expansive cars if you can't get access to education, healthcare, retirement, and will find yourself in…

Mississippi, like all US states, has free K12 education. It also offers free college education at public universities to anyone who scores well on college admittance tests. (In many countries, people can't access college at all if they didn't perform academically.)

About 25% of Mississippians are on free government healthcare (Medicaid/CHIP). About 21% are on very-cheap government healthcare (Medicare.) Additionally, many hospital systems in the state are owned by state and local governments, and offer free services (roundaboutly) to residents.

Mississippians, like others Americans, are eligible for Social Security in retirement, and have access to unemployment insurance.

Of course Mississippi is not some sort of welfare state paradise, but it's tiresome polemic and exaggeration to claim that people "can't get access to education, healthcare, retirement, and will find [themselves] out on the street if [they] lose [their] job."

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#384

Post by askl »

dismalaf wrote: post #319
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…

Because a big part of owning a vehicle is summer roadtrips, ski vacations, visiting family, moving stuff. An SUV is simply more convenient. I've also found road maintenance is getting worse where I live, it's almost necessary having an SUV or truck just to navigate the suburbs. Also the (semi) compact crossover has kind of killed the compact car. You get more space, better ground clearance, for a decent price.

> I've also found road maintenance is getting worse where I live

Well, bigger cars are a factor that makes the roads degrade faster.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#385

Post by flohofwoe »

holowoodman wrote: post #364
gmac wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are cheaper European cars than VW (and why compare with their 'average mid-range offering'?). The new (and widely liked) Renault 5 EV starts at around €21K, for instance. Probably a bit smaller than something made in China for the same money, but not worlds apart. https://www.renault.fr/vehicules-electriques/r5-e-tech-elect...

Yes, you can buy a Dacia for below 20kEur, but even those have gotten far more expensive lately. It used to be that around 10 years ago, a Dacia Logan (typical station wagon family car) could be had for 11kEur. Nowadays the comparable Dacia Duster (SUV instead of station wagon, but somewhat similar slightly smaller internal space) will set you back 18kEur. Most of this price hike is claimed to come from mandatory ele…

> It used to be that around 10 years ago...

10 years ago, a Doener Kebab was also only half the price it is today though ;)

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#386

Post by namdnay »

tshaddox wrote: post #325
namdnay wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I assume the comment you quoted means “a car you could afford to pay cash for, but will instead invent the total cost while making payments on the 0% interest loan.”

I think the problem here is "you can afford" vs "you can pay for"

if you're willing to spend the time and effort doing interest rate arbitrage for a few hundred dollars, maybe you can pay for a certain car, but i'm really not sure you should be

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#387

Post by caleblloyd »

dluan wrote: post #219
caleblloyd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It wasn’t a joke, but I do see your point. US subsidies for EVs are massive as well. I guess I just hadn’t dug into the numbers. Now I’m not sure who gives more subsidies, the US or China.

The federal tax credit in the US is much higher than the Chinese equivalent it appears. But the factory and R&D subsidies are much harder to compute.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#388

Post by matthewowen »

sofixa wrote: post #354
Dig1t wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t your argument basically saying that people choose to buy larger cars when the government doesn’t step in and penalize people for doing so? European regulators basically just forcing people to buy smaller cars is what that sounds like. Also Europeans make less money, pay more taxes, and have less access to credit, so they can’t afford more expensive cars like many Americans. Hence the market catering more to peo…

> Also Europeans make less money, pay more taxes, and have less access to credit, so they can’t afford more expensive cars like many Americans Funnily your last point invalidates your first. Most Americans are loaded on debt, which impacts how much actual money they have left over at the end of the month. How many Americans can't stomach a $1000 surprise bill again? > Isn’t your argument basically saying that people…

> GDP per capita doesn't mean what you think it does. Everything being overpriced in the US, and everything needing to have a middleman inflates GDP figures. Take health insurance, Americans pay multiple times what Europeans pay, to stuff the pockets of multiple for profit institutions and middlemen. GDP figures look better in the US, but really, which way is more efficient? Health outcomes are better across the EU, and the amount of medical bankruptcies is also telling.

Healthcare is a particularly _atypical_ example to choose, and the particularly poor health outcomes of MS are only partly explicable by healthcare cost/access: it's also cultural and lifestyle issues. So it's rather disingenuous to say "take health insurance", as though it can be used by analogy to comprehensively explain other aspects of American finance.

You don't need recourse to GDP, you can just look at household income which really is higher. Most things do _not_ actually have inflated prices relative to European countries.

Would I rather live in Mississippi than France? Are Mississipians living better lives than French people? I mean it depends on where specifically, but almost certainly no. Of course having more money doesn't necessarily make a place better to live in.

But that doesn't invalidate "people have more money available to spend on cars and easier access to credit to finance that purchase over five years at favorable interest rates" as part of the reason why Americans choose to spend more money on cars.

You really don't have to take every point of discussion of difference between the US and European countries as an obligation to rant about how much better Europe is on tangential topics.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#389

Post by medion »

This is all part of the continuing trend toward luxury - brands are abandoning the middle class and below, focusing on higher margins and lower volume - brands make more money, engage with easier buyers and have to work less. I don’t know how all this works in the end but it does seem to be a real trend.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#390

Post by lostlogin »

oreilles wrote: post #342
Dig1t wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t your argument basically saying that people choose to buy larger cars when the government doesn’t step in and penalize people for doing so? European regulators basically just forcing people to buy smaller cars is what that sounds like. Also Europeans make less money, pay more taxes, and have less access to credit, so they can’t afford more expensive cars like many Americans. Hence the market catering more to peo…

> The poorest American state, Mississippi, is richer per-capita than most European countries, including France. The state, maybe. The missisipian, not so much - considering their Human Development Index is right in between that of Hungary and Bulgaria, at the very bottom of the EU. How great is it to be able to buy expansive cars if you can't get access to education, healthcare, retirement, and will find yourself in…

> expansive cars

Probably a typo, but accurate. Gotta have my truck.

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