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A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

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Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

#431

Post by alistairSH »

neogodless wrote: post #414
alistairSH wrote: post #172

~$30k for a manual-window, slow-charging truck? Will anybody in the US actually want one? It's a cool concept... looks good to my eye, small trucks are neat, etc. But, I'd want push-button windows, up-to-date charge controller/battery tech, and the normal EV integrated app. Maybe if it was really a $20k truck (they're advertising the price after incentives, many of which are either going away or vanish for higher inc…

Anyone? Sure. If this was available 2 months ago, I may have bought one instead of a used Polestar. The Polestar is wildly faster, more luxurious, better range, but I'd have liked a truck, and if I got the $7500 tax credit, I'd have paid about $9k less for this. (Used, 20k miles, $29k.) Lots of people? Much harder to say. Has to be either "first car" kind of thing for someone young, or "second car" in a family where…

There's a 5-seat SUV version, so that expands the market a bit. I'm still not convinced it'll sell without beefing up the specs a bit while maintaining the price.

"third car" for people with money to spare.

Yeah, but the same ~$20k - $30k buys you a heck of a lot more ICE. A new Maverick XLT starts in that range. Or a Lariat trim at $34k. And if this is just a toy, that same money gets you in a new base or very high-spec used Miata.

Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

#432

Post by adverbly »

MostlyStable wrote: post #338
aidenn0 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's overly reductive. 1. Poorer people tend to drive older vehicles, so if you solely encourage higher fuel economies by taxing carbon emissions, then the tax is (at least short-term) regressive. 2. You can work around #1 by applying incentives for manufacturers to make more efficient cars should lead any carbon tax 3. If you just reward companies based on fleet-average fuel economy without regard to vehicle size,…

All carbon tax is inherently regressive but that's also trivially fixable. Make it revenue neutral and give every citizen a flat portion of the total collected revenue. Bam, it is now progressive , since on average richer people will spend more on fuel (and therefore the tax) even though it is likely a much smaller percentage of their spending. Every single one of your ideas has problems that are solved by a carbon t…

You are correct that most consumption taxes are intrinsically regressive, but you can turn pretty much any consumption tax into a progressive one by simply taking the money and redistributing it at a flat amount per person.

I believe this would be more fair to children who are the ones who will be most impacted by climate change in the end.

I believe there are even some governments that use this approach, but many of them don't make it feel as significant as it should. You should get a big fat cheque in the mail every month as if you won the lottery.

Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

#433

Post by mtillman »

aidenn0 wrote: post #253

For anyone curious, if you made a similarly sized gas-powered pickup with an i4 engine, it would be penalized more than a full-sized pickup for being too fuel inefficient, despite likely getting much better mileage than an F-150 because, since 2011, bigger cars are held to a lesser standard by CAFE[1]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...

Fine print: The truck in the link is only $20K after government subsidies/rebates. So if the government gives my tax dollars to buyers of this truck, then it will cost $20K.

Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

#435

Post by michpoch »

MostlyStable wrote: post #338
aidenn0 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's overly reductive. 1. Poorer people tend to drive older vehicles, so if you solely encourage higher fuel economies by taxing carbon emissions, then the tax is (at least short-term) regressive. 2. You can work around #1 by applying incentives for manufacturers to make more efficient cars should lead any carbon tax 3. If you just reward companies based on fleet-average fuel economy without regard to vehicle size,…

All carbon tax is inherently regressive but that's also trivially fixable. Make it revenue neutral and give every citizen a flat portion of the total collected revenue. Bam, it is now progressive , since on average richer people will spend more on fuel (and therefore the tax) even though it is likely a much smaller percentage of their spending. Every single one of your ideas has problems that are solved by a carbon t…

> since on average richer people will spend more on fuel

Why would you think so? People driving older cars, not being able to afford to fly - will certainly spend more money on fuel for their car.

Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

#436

Post by Aurornis »

Yhippa wrote: post #424
UncleOxidant wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is largely why all the vehicles around us have become supersized. It's completely idiotic.

Anybody know how it got to this point? It can't be because of regulatory capture, right? I don't think small cars are getting made for the US because of SUV mania and something like a 67 MPG requirement for the Honda Fit based on it's build.

> I don't think small cars are getting made for the US because of SUV mania and something like a 67 MPG requirement for the Honda Fit based on it's build.

The famous 67MPG requirement was for a hypothetical 2026 model year car

But Honda discontinued the Fit in the United States in 2020, long before the hypothetical 2026 target.

The reason is consumer demand. People weren't buying them. There are thousands of lightly used Honda Fits on the used market for reasonable prices, but they're not moving.

Yes, the regulations are flawed, but that doesn't change the lack of consumer demand.

Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

#437

Post by michpoch »

bflesch wrote: post #329
aidenn0 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's overly reductive. 1. Poorer people tend to drive older vehicles, so if you solely encourage higher fuel economies by taxing carbon emissions, then the tax is (at least short-term) regressive. 2. You can work around #1 by applying incentives for manufacturers to make more efficient cars should lead any carbon tax 3. If you just reward companies based on fleet-average fuel economy without regard to vehicle size,…

Meanwhile jet fuel for private jets is (and remains) not taxed at all, even in the EU.

What makes a jet private? Should Trump's Boegin 757 count as one? What if an airline is flying a jet with no passengers? Cargo jets?

Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

#439

Post by odo1242 »

Animats wrote: post #421

Price seems to be creeping up. Car and Driver says $28K.[1] That may be related to "incentives". This could be very popular with companies that need small fleets of pickup trucks. The ones that have company logos on the side. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVeYjxQPdz4

Yea, incentives are currently about 7-8k depending on state so that sounds about right.

Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

#440

Post by nrmitchi »

aidenn0 wrote: post #260
nrmitchi wrote: post #230

I see this and I don't see it as an every day, driving-on-my-commute style vehicle. As someone who (previously) drove a 2014 honda civic, cheaper cars leave a lot of comfort for longer drives. I can't imagine this barebones vehicle being fun to drive for any extended period of time, or any extended distance, unless you'd spent considerable time customizing it to those needs (at which point, you've probably spent more…

If the timing weren't so off (I just bought a compact electric car), then this would have been a real possibility for me: 150 miles is about 1 weeks worth of driving for me, it's usually just me (or occasionally +1), and we have my wife's car for driving the whole family long distances. Of course I'm skeptical that it will come in under $27,500 (implied by the "Under $20k after federal incentives), and if it's much m…

Completely agree. It has to end up cheap enough to be a "tool", rather than a "vehicle". If there isn't a clear price-based market segmentation between the two, this will get crushed.
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