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The $25k car is going extinct?

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Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#471

Post by jdietrich »

mxfh wrote: post #371
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just because they are not heavily advertised, doesnt mean they don't exist. Dacia Sandero/Duster/Spring exist. (Renault) Citroen C1, Toyota Aygo, Peugeot 108, (VW up!.) Considering Volkswagen Group: With a choice of Skoda Fabia/Seat Ibiza/VW Polo you would go for Skoda or Seat, not the VW brand itself if you dont care about marque but price. But prestige is a huge factor still, so people would still go for an overpri…

Here in the UK, the price of the base-spec Dacia Sandero (and comparable cars like the Kia Picanto and Hyundai i10) has more than doubled in six years. The C1, 108 and Up! have been discontinued, as have a raft of other cheap small cars.

That's partly explained by inflation, but also by the massive amounts of extra safety equipment mandated by the General Safety Regulation. The bill of materials for cheap cars has increased by thousands of euros, because they're legally required to have cameras and radar.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/plmrep/COM...

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#472

Post by moconnor »

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...

No. Inflation is what we call the value of money going down. As evidenced by needing to part with more of it in exchange for a standard basket goods.

It is fundamentally different to ask whether cars cost more because money is worth less, or whether cars cost more because we are making them less efficiently.

The ancestor comment points out that most of the change can be attributed to the former and as cars are only a small percentage of the inflation basket then it is reasonable to conclude that this is indeed the prime reason for the price rise.

The fundamentals of civilization would be a lot clearer if we measured the value of things in energy instead of a floating currency.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#473

Post by m82labs »

I’d be interested to see what this does to overhead costs of businesses that actually need a large vehicle.

I have a small horse farm and drive a 2010 F-150. I haul horses, 900lb. hay bales, feed, lumber for repairing fences and building shelters, etc.

If my truck breaks down I am going to have to scrape through used inventory to find something that fits my needs. I don’t need leather, 16 cameras, seat warmers, and a high end sound system. I need a truck that can get done everything I need around the farm, and I need it to be cheap enough that I’m not worried about it getting scratched.

All cars seem to be luxury vehicles now, I don’t know what folks are doing the just need something more utilitarian.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#474

Post by lm28469 »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #327
lm28469 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 12000$ for a new electric car in China. That is the real competition. And then people cry when their entire industry is moved overseas...

I get that they dump loans and the government allows for subsidies. But on the other hand car manufacturers already outsourced everything they could to other countries for larger profit margins anyway. They act no different than companies like Apple or Google. So at least as a customer I need to profit from that too, I have no interest of paying large margins for nothing. Why should only companies profit from cheap l…

The problem is that on the long run you lose the knowledge to produce physical goods locally, all it takes is a few years and once it's gone it's extremely hard to build it back.

The other problem is that if there is a war, a pandemic or anything impacting production and/or deliveries your country is now alone. If 80% of your economy is based on tourism and other services but what you now need are cars, masks or weapon parts you're in for a bad time

> I get that they dump loans and the government allows for subsidies.

It's the same in the US/EU, all these companies would have died long ago if they were not propped up now and then

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#475

Post by BLKNSLVR »

brianaker wrote: post #271
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subaru's have an increasingly good reputation for long-term reliability. Stick with and love the beater. I find a certain liberation in not caring too much about risks of car park dents and "curb rash" and other surface-only non-mechanical auto-maladies.

You obviously have not been following Subaru, while what you are saying was once true, it has not been true for several years now. Google "Subaru battery", read about all of the additional electrical problems that are the result of Subaru being unwilling to fix a problem that is the end result of them selling your data. Subaru stopped making reliable cars somewhere around 2014.

That's very useful to know, thank you!

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#477

Post by potato3732842 »

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?

It's not "illegal collusion" when you pay off your lobbyists to get them to legislate the status quo into place.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#478

Post by elif »

a_c wrote: post #431
BanterTrouble wrote: post #382

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…

Any recommendation how to start learning repairing a car? I have absolutely zero experience. A friend of mine said just learn to change a tyre first and I have been procrastinating since.

I went down this route in the early 2010's. In preparation for an over landing expedition I wanted to have mechanical knowledge to be a sort of "mechanic" on the trip so I bought a bunch of "project cars" and began tinkering. While it WAS a lot of fun and I feel smarter, it was a total waste of time.

To save you all the trouble of all I went through, it was fun debugging mechanical stuff, but ultimately there is no "self-reliant car owner"

It all comes down to tools and parts. You need easy access to a lot of both or else you are limited to extremely ugly temporary fixes which amount to super gluing your engine back together.

On our overland trip, when we had an issue, it turned out impossible to fix without a massive lift and air tools, so all my years prep was essentially reduced to having a few extra words I could tell the actual mechanic capable of performing the fix.

If you still want to go down this route I recommend the book "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" and have 4 Saabs you can have lol. I'll even throw in the clutch kit you can't install without a custom Saab tool.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#479

Post by dagw »

sofixa wrote: post #421
matthewowen wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

> You don't need recourse to GDP, you can just look at household income which really is higher. Income would include the money being immediately spent to cover debt (be it student loans, mortgage, medical, car). > Most things do _not_ actually have inflated prices relative to European countries I'm struggling to think of things which aren't inflated. Only one I can come up with is gas/petrol/fuel, because there are m…

Everything else I can think of is more expensive in the US...food

Where in Europe are you? Because I've always found food ridiculously cheap in the US compared to the Europeans countries I've lived in or visited for an extended enough period of time that I had to regularly go food shopping (Scandinavia, UK, Germany, Switzerland). You can get 3 chickens, each 3 times the size of the chickens I'm used to, for what I pay for 2 chicken breasts. Many restaurants will give you a serving that could feed a family of 4 for what I might pay for starter back home.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#480

Post by Orygin »

potato3732842 wrote: post #449
Orygin wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you consider a Ford Flex to not be a SUV ? Thing's huge and most other example you provided are either clearly SUV or are bigger than they need to be to be a "normal" car.

The Flex is close to identical in form factor and size to a pre-oil crisis station wagon. Probably has less ground clearance too. It takes the honesty of a professional political to call it an SUV.

Are you comparing to the car market of 50 years past to justify a vehicle that is more akin to a tank than a modern regular car?

Like you say, the term itself is meaningless but it does encompass the current class of vehicles that are needlessly big, heavy, and so high of the ground that some tanks literally have better forward vision than those SUVs.

I don't really care what Americans drove 50 years ago, I care that most cars sold here (EU) are way oversized for practically no reason that the consumer cares about.

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