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Americans can't afford their cars any more and Wall Street is worried

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Americans can't afford their cars any more and Wall Street is worried

#81

Post by potato3732842 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #70
NDizzle wrote: post #35

Why more people don't keep their cars long term has always been a mystery to me. Sure, I had plenty of them in my 20s when I was young without a bunch (3) of responsibilities roaming the earth. But currently, counting my oldest kid's (19) car, we have 4. I don't worry about any of them. 2008 Land Cruiser and RAV4, 175k on one, 185k on the other. Both bought used. 2013 Sienna, bought new (with a huge discount) - 161k.…

Next to a house, a car is one of the biggest status symbols you can grab. Those people aren't buying Ford F350's because they need significant pickup and towing ability. It's the last bit of personal expression they have in life. Now that said: I own a 2008 car with 180k miles, bought used over a decase ago. and I'm really hoping I can ride it out another 2 years. I wanted to go FEV a while back, but then the market…

>It's the last bit of personal expression they have in life.

Little of column A, little of column "jerks on the internet have these people convinced that using a vehicle anywhere near it's rated capacities let alone beyond them is guaranteed to end in a fiery crash" so they say "oh we might pop out a 2nd kid, better go with the CRV over the HRV" as if the latter can't do both fine.

HN is very much complicit in this pushing of social norms in a direction where people feel like they're slumming it or behaving irresponsibly putting two adults and 3-kids in a 5-seater or towing something recreational with a half ton.

Re: Americans can't afford their cars any more and Wall Street is worried

#82

Post by potato3732842 »

danans wrote: post #38
decimalenough wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they sold well in the US, they would bring in more of them. But they don't.

> If they sold well in the US, they would bring in more of them. But they don't. The auto industry would rather use its limited assembly line capacity for the highest margin products, which are large luxury internal combustion vehicles. We have long been in the era of lean manufacturing, where assets like factories are hyper-optimized for returns to capital, not for making products to serve all needs or desires. Why…

The Toyota fanboy mob will be along shortly to downvote you for saying bad things about our lord and savior lean manufacturing.

(joking, but not as much as I want to be)

Re: Americans can't afford their cars any more and Wall Street is worried

#83

Post by potato3732842 »

kristopolous wrote: post #33
decimalenough wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they sold well in the US, they would bring in more of them. But they don't.

In the 1970s Detroit thought the Honda Civic was a joke as well. How could it ever compete against the Pontiac Astre or the Buick Skyhawk they thought...

It couldn't compete. Those cars were shit, just like the Chevettes they were competing against. It was all shit. All of it. The imports were typically slightly more expensive to boot.

They sold well because you could get a Civic or whatever with a nice radio and they had a bunch of them on the lot in automatic and all the other things buyers cared about beyond just A to B because for the Japanese automakers shit was serious business and so they built their shit with some give-a-fucks included whereas to the Americans shit was a sideshow and they phoned it in and it was like pulling teeth to get a well optioned domestic that wasn't hobbled by the lack of some key feature or ergonomics issue.

None of these were cars people wanted to be driving. The market for big nice fuel hogs shrunk and the market for compacts rose in it's place and the Japanese were very well positioned to put their ass in that seat when the music stopped.

Re: Americans can't afford their cars any more and Wall Street is worried

#84

Post by JumpCrisscross »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #48
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If only there was a country selling cheap, reliable electric vehicles with extremely low running costs The missing middle in discussions around Chinese EVs is import quotas (and disconnection mandates). Americans buy over 15 million vehicles a year [1]. Letting China export up to 150,000 EVs into America a year, subject to anti-surveillance measures ( e.g. no phoning home), paid for by the importer and thus--ultima…

I don't even care if china is attempting to surveil me honestly, feels like there are already a dozen American companies trying constantly to collect my data so they can exploit me

> don't even care if china is attempting to surveil me

Flip it around. You're in China. Would you want the CIA to have access to your life?

Of course not, unless you're an idiot. Every intelligence agency has near-limitless utility for disposable stooges.

Re: Americans can't afford their cars any more and Wall Street is worried

#85

Post by ericd »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #36
bombcar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remind me if I’m wrong but didn’t something dramatic occur financially in the 20s?

> Remind me if I’m wrong but didn’t something dramatic occur financially in the 20s? "The practice of Americans buying consumer goods on the installment plan dates back to the Civil War," e.g. for sewing machines [1]. America's first affordable car, the Model T, was released in 1908. In October 1919, less than one year after the Armistice of November 1918 and just four months after the Treaty of Versailles, GM had "c…

>America's first affordable car, the Model T, was released in 1908. In October 1919, less than one year after the Armistice of November 1918 and just four months after the Treaty of Versailles, GM had "created a financing arm called the General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC)."

(Now known as Ally Bank, the online bank popular for relatively high interest rates on deposits).

Hopefully we won't be testing FDIC coverage with them...

Re: Americans can't afford their cars any more and Wall Street is worried

#86

Post by potato3732842 »

caterama wrote: post #19
DaveZale wrote: post #4

I use the Loud Muffler Index for judging the economy. Traffic gets louder when working people are under financial stress. It's easily measurable.

Disagree. Do you mean that vehicles gets louder because people skip maintenance? Or more stress produces more honking? An opposite effect: more financial stress means less spending on aftermarket exhaust mods means quieter traffic. Also, financial stress means less driving means less noise. Overall, I doubt you're going to find much signal in the noise!

In large parts of the country mufflers rust off periodically.

And people pay more taxes for the privilege (you don't think road salt is free do you?)

Re: Americans can't afford their cars any more and Wall Street is worried

#87

Post by tamimio »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #69
tamimio wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> . I can’t understand why banks keep lending money for deals like that Because that's literally the only way banks make money. Cars, houses, whatever -banks are after the interest money. The loan is a fake number that gets transferred from your account (as debt) to theirs, as digital numbers too, all under the "trust" that you can withdraw all of it one day. The real money in this is the interest that the bank will…

> Because that's literally the only way banks make money. Cars, houses, whatever -banks are after the interest money. Lending for bad investments isn't a way to make money. It can work for the banks if they resell the loan, but in that case one thing they definitely aren't after is the interest money on the loan they no longer hold. > The loan is a fake number that gets transferred from your account (as debt) to thei…

> because they are never holding enough money to cover all deposits at once.

Yep, that's the reason (not the other one you mentioned), which means banks are creating money without actual assets backing it up. It's fake numbers basically created out of thin air, but that's not an issue as long as it will make money, real money, from the interest. The concept of modern banks when it was created was that this money is the receipt of actual gold you own, or the bank owns, so when you give these receipts to someone instead of actual gold (which is safer and easier) they can go and withdraw the gold using those receipts. Later, people started using these receipts instead of taking the gold and redepositing it again. Till here things are fair. Later the banks got greedy and started giving receipts for loans without having enough gold, and if someone ever decided to take the actual gold and the bank didn't have enough of it, they would borrow it from another bank, which kept banks in check because they couldn't go crazy with loans (to maximize their interest aka profit) until gold was no longer backing up those receipts (1), and banks are creating credit just because they can, resulting in an overinflated assets, especially the ones that are seen as investments with speculated values not real cost, rendering the housing market a legal state-sponsored Ponzi scheme. And the government is happy too because even after "owning" the house you still have to pay a perpetual rent aka property taxes that will increase when the house value increases as well, so everyone is winning except the home "owner", in fact, the attack on work from home was because the taxes the government collected from commercial property and residential ones are getting lower, it was good for the people to live in cheap locations, but bad for whoever is collecting the taxes.

For the last point, your deposit as a customer is in fact a loan to the bank, and the bank is your customer, but I was talking about bank loans to the account owners that they take to purchase/invest/etc., with added interest.

(1) https://wtfhappenedin1971.com

Re: Americans can't afford their cars any more and Wall Street is worried

#88

Post by potato3732842 »

Animats wrote: post #78
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If only there was a country selling cheap, reliable electric vehicles with extremely low running costs The missing middle in discussions around Chinese EVs is import quotas (and disconnection mandates). Americans buy over 15 million vehicles a year [1]. Letting China export up to 150,000 EVs into America a year, subject to anti-surveillance measures ( e.g. no phoning home), paid for by the importer and thus--ultima…

Farley, the CEO of Ford, keeps pointing this out. He and his management team went to China recently to look at cars and car factories. They were impressed by BYD's cars and terrified by the factory visits. Ford wants to keep exporting trucks from the US, and Farley says that Ford needs to up their game to compete. Latest thinking at Ford is to have three assembly lines side by side, for front, middle, and back of veh…

>A plug-in hybrid with a 21 mile electric range?

You fail to understand the magic of the Jeep Wrangler. It is a masterful exercise in checkbox engineering.

It is a lifestyle car or a practical SUV. It has a (shitty) 2nd row for the kids. It comes in hard top and soft top. You can get it in a hybrid, or 6spd manual.

It is literally the car that has a "well askshually" in response to whatever reason your significant other has for why not to get it.

Yeah 21mi plug in range is crap, but that's all it needs to check the box.

Re: Americans can't afford their cars any more and Wall Street is worried

#89

Post by potato3732842 »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #48
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If only there was a country selling cheap, reliable electric vehicles with extremely low running costs The missing middle in discussions around Chinese EVs is import quotas (and disconnection mandates). Americans buy over 15 million vehicles a year [1]. Letting China export up to 150,000 EVs into America a year, subject to anti-surveillance measures ( e.g. no phoning home), paid for by the importer and thus--ultima…

I don't even care if china is attempting to surveil me honestly, feels like there are already a dozen American companies trying constantly to collect my data so they can exploit me

This. They are of substantially less threat to me than any local agency.

Re: Americans can't afford their cars any more and Wall Street is worried

#90

Post by potato3732842 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #84
micromacrofoot wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even care if china is attempting to surveil me honestly, feels like there are already a dozen American companies trying constantly to collect my data so they can exploit me

> don't even care if china is attempting to surveil me Flip it around. You're in China. Would you want the CIA to have access to your life? Of course not, unless you're an idiot. Every intelligence agency has near-limitless utility for disposable stooges.

There is no universe in which foreign intel trying to blackmail you over some bit of info is worse than the local agencies doing the same.
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