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The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

wsj.com

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Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#81

Post by _jss »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #60
015a wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the disconnect is maybe just in the title: Lucid is obviously just trying to be the next Mercedes. Duh, of course they don't make a cheap car (how much did Lucid pay for this ad in the WSJ?); but their competitors kind of do. Tesla literally told their shareholders during the most recent earnings call that "more affordable models are coming in the first half of 2025". Jim Farley has spoken on how one of the r…

I wouldn't pay for anyone to write this, if I were Lucid... Mercedes sold their cars by having better engineering (perceived by customers). Does Lucid have better batteries? Almost certainly not.

I'm pretty sure they do, though. Lucid owns Atieva, the company supplying the batteries for Formula E. What they've learned through the many seasons directly goes back into the vehicle's battery.

https://lucidmotors.com/media-room/atieva-powers-season-6-fo...

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#82

Post by jancsika »

warner25 wrote: post #34
bluedino wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kia sells quite a few cars that start at $20k, like the Soul and Forte

The Nissan Versa currently starts around $17k, and I see a lot of those on the road. The Mitsubishi Mirage is similarly priced but I don't think I've ever seen one in the wild. I rented a Kia Soul a few years ago and thought it was perfectly fine. But with so few options, like the parent, I'm planning to keep my current car (a 2008 Prius) indefinitely, just paying for repairs as needed until parts are unavailable or…

> The Nissan Versa currently starts around $17k

Vehicles at that price are usually crap, esp. the Versa with the CVT engine. And, at least last year, there was a shortage so that you'd be paying a few grand above that price just to get it. I'd bet it's still the same where you're paying closer to 20k for this car.

Now, if you could get a Versa with the simpler engine (I think it was a manual shift), it's apparently a decent car. But finding that model is like a full-time job for a week, then either flying out to whatever dealership has it or getting it shipped which is another grand.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#83

Post by josefresco »

bluedino wrote: post #13
AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If even ICE cars are now super expensive, why isn’t this a screaming opportunity for some auto manufacturer to target the low end of the market? I’ve never spent more than 20k for a car. With prices like this, I’m just going to keep my old one as long as I can.

Kia sells quite a few cars that start at $20k, like the Soul and Forte

I posted in another comment above, but I bought a 2023 Kia RIo 5 - excellent car. Small, simple, efficient and IMHO good looking. The Forte and Soul are larger (I also own a Soul)

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#84

Post by NoGravitas »

015a wrote: post #32
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #4

Something has to disconnect here. Everyone complains that everything costs so much, but the average Americans' paycheck is not rising the same way, so they can try all they want to sell $95k electric vehicles because of thin margins for cheaper products, but if purchasing power doesn't rise with inflation, then that market that "sucks" is going to be the only real market one day...

I think the disconnect is maybe just in the title: Lucid is obviously just trying to be the next Mercedes. Duh, of course they don't make a cheap car (how much did Lucid pay for this ad in the WSJ?); but their competitors kind of do. Tesla literally told their shareholders during the most recent earnings call that "more affordable models are coming in the first half of 2025". Jim Farley has spoken on how one of the r…

Tesla has kind of been lying about "more affordable models are coming" for about as long as they've been in business, though.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#85

Post by derbOac »

preommr wrote: post #31
worik wrote: post #24

The Chinese are going to clean this market up. The British made the same mistake back in the day with motorcycles. "Who cares about the market for 125 cc machines?" they said. The Japanese did, and now they have the market, the British used to have, for luxury and high powered motor cycles. As well as most of the 125cc market

> The Chinese are going to clean this market up. Not if our governments start putting tariffs on everything. I am Canadian, but it also applies to other governments (including the US). The politicians know that it's not going to be easy to do the actual right thing and build up a competitive industry. Instead, it's much easier to just slap some tariffs and make lagging productivity the next generation's problem.

Yes, the lack of discussion of tariffs in the article and even in these threads is a bit odd to me. The US has tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in part specifically to keep cheap Chinese EVs off the market.

The complexities of this are outside my wheelhouse, but it's easy to see how keeping cheaper EVs out of the market would carve out a major source of cheaper vehicles period, leaving other manufacturers able to push higher priced cars. My guess is the tariffs are directly contributing to the process described in the article. Even if manufacturers were to "leave that market to China", eventually it would come to bite them as a certain proportion of people would start buying those cars instead.

Monopolies, monopsonies, and tariffs are playing a huge role throughout the US economy and it gets such little attention. Or at least it seems that way to me.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#86

Post by potato3732842 »

jopsen wrote: post #16
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I don’t understand the advantage of EVs really. Isn’t a plug in hybrid the best option? You can do everyday short trips on battery but also have the gas engine for longer trips. Sure it is more complicated but Toyota has shown that you can make this super reliable.

For most people, their daily trips are well within the range of what an EV can do. And most people don't do long trips every week. Personally, I try to optimize my life to avoid spending a considerable part of it in a car. With charging at home EVs are just easy. For long trips charging every 2-3 hours isn't too bad (most humans benefit from a break anyways).

People who are spending new car money are not going to settle for a product that requires planning and effort to be used outside of one's daily routine.

This is also why 3-row SUVs and half ton crew cab trucks have proliferated as much as they have.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#87

Post by yonaguska »

OptionOfT wrote: post #41
wlesieutre wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a few $20k ish , though only the Forte actually making it under that. Forte LX starting at $19,900. Of course that's without without the $1,155 "destination" fee, so even the Forte really starts at $21,145. But considering inflation, $21k isn't a bad price.

We need laws that ban these junk fees. Any advertised price should be one I can get when I walk in. I cannot get the car without registration. I cannot get the car without 'destination' fee. Bake it into the price.

The destination fee isn't really a "junk" fee. it's variable based on how far away from the plant that manufactured your car or, or the distance from nearest port of entry. Delivering a car isn't cheap. There's certainly some level of arbitrage going on, but the delivery driver is usually independent of the dealership.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#88

Post by triceratops »

yonaguska wrote: post #87
OptionOfT wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need laws that ban these junk fees. Any advertised price should be one I can get when I walk in. I cannot get the car without registration. I cannot get the car without 'destination' fee. Bake it into the price.

The destination fee isn't really a "junk" fee. it's variable based on how far away from the plant that manufactured your car or, or the distance from nearest port of entry. Delivering a car isn't cheap. There's certainly some level of arbitrage going on, but the delivery driver is usually independent of the dealership.

The dealership knows ahead of time how far they are from the plant and how much it costs to ship the car. GP was asking that the fee be included in the advertised price. That's fair.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#89

Post by derbOac »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #4

Something has to disconnect here. Everyone complains that everything costs so much, but the average Americans' paycheck is not rising the same way, so they can try all they want to sell $95k electric vehicles because of thin margins for cheaper products, but if purchasing power doesn't rise with inflation, then that market that "sucks" is going to be the only real market one day...

The problem IMHO is a variety of US policies have artificially taken out that cheap market in all kinds of domains through protectionist policies like rent seeking, monopolies, and tariffs. So, for example, tariffs hurt the emergence of a cheap EV market.

The solutions for this in general don't line up nicely with any of the major party platforms, at least in the US — major deregulation of certain areas in certain ways, aggressive antitrust enforcement, and dismantling of tariffs, possibly combined with government incentivizing of competition in certain areas, at least for awhile. It feels like candidates and parties demonize one or more of these things and overemphasize other things, or implement some of these things in the wrong ways, like they're all mutually exclusive.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#90

Post by kube-system »

josefresco wrote: post #80
lmm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC the US has some ass-backwards fuel economy laws that mean it's essentially illegal to produce small cars. Also there's enough demand for high-margin cars to max out available production capacity, and would you want to be making major investments in ICE car production right now?

I drive a 2023 Kida Rio 5 which is small, simple and fuel efficient (combined 40 MPG). Kia is killing it though, because not enough Americans bought them. They (Americans) instead buy the larger Forte. I specifically told them I wanted the Rio 5, and after a few calls they found one (1!) and proceeded to mark it up $2k - still worth it.

Not only do Americans tend to buy larger vehicles, but CAFE regulations encourage automakers to increase the footprint (area between the wheels) of the cars they offer. This is another reason the Rio is (and other small cars are) discontinued.

CAFE regulations (in a nutshell) require automakers' vehicles to meet a particular fuel economy per size of footprint, averaged across the vehicles they sell. So, they can meet the standards either by increasing the footprint of the vehicle, or by increasing the fuel economy of their vehicles, or both.

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