Just join the motorcycle club...
You don't see a lot of motorcycles with snow tires.
Or toddlers.
New cars are just for rich people now
91–100 of 130 posts
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn't make any sense. This sounds like a play for a more loyal labor force, a larger labor force, or to head off unionization. Ford was an incredible asshole that supported Nazi beliefs. He's wasn't going to just give people money.
Quoting Ford “I will build a motor car for the great multitude. It will be so low in price that no man will be unable to own one.”. You are looking at it from a take of more people fighting over how big their slice of the pie will be. Instead of splitting up one pie, Ford wanted to make more pies and drive down the price from the efficiencies/economy of scale of making so many pies that everyone got their own. And it…
Yes, driving down the unit cost increases scale and makes things more affordable. That's standard commodity capitalism. Paying your workers more, well what percent of the economy did Henry Ford control? Was it enough to substantially influence mass adoption? In any case, that's coming right out of his own pocket, so he'd have to hope that it's a marketing strategy for... other capitalists? The rest of the population? Otherwise he's just subsidizing cars and eating the costs.
Raising the wages directly for labor-related issues makes more sense.
You have to remember that rich people like Henry Ford and their estate/descendants (e.g. the Ford Foundation) like to manufacture an image for themselves. It's a nice story if instead of spreading anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, Henry Ford was a great friend to the workers with a nonsensical business concept.
"Indeed, as a vocal antisemite, he used his status as one of America's most well-known and trusted business leaders to systematically spread conspiracy theories about Jews. His screeds against Jewish people became so well-known at home and abroad that he is the only American whom Adolf Hitler compliments by name in Mein Kampf.
...
But while it dramatically reduced manufacturing time—from 12.5 hours to 93 minutes per car, allowing mass production of up to 10,000 Model T cars a day by 1925—it also made his workers’ jobs more monotonous and unsatisfying. The turnover rate at Ford’s Highland Park, Michigan factory soared to 370 percent.
To solve the problem, Ford realized it would be cheaper to raise wages (which at the time were competitive with those at other auto companies) than to continue hiring and training new people at the same pace. So on January 5, 1914, he announced that his company would double wages to $5 a day. The move proved seismic: By prompting wage hikes across the car industry, historians say, it gave American factory workers a crucial boost into the middle class, allowing many to afford their own Model Ts.
...
While $5 a day was a generous factory wage at the time, it came with a substantial catch. Technically, workers’ pay remained less than or near $2.50 a day, and the extra money was a bonus they had to earn. The year Ford introduced the bonus, he established a company Sociological Department that sent inspectors to the homes of his employees—at this point, mostly male immigrants—to make sure they were living in a way Ford approved of. Workers were denied the full $5 a day if their wives worked outside the home, if their homes were unclean, if they displayed signs of drinking or gambling, if they took in boarders or if they didn’t contribute to a savings account. "
https://www.history.com/news/henry-ford-antisemitism-worker-...
Worth noting that American companies did stuff like this in South America too. The population generally doesn't want to work on the terms of the corporation, so they "terraform" the place until they have a compliant population. Shredding extended family ties, religions, etc. Anything that would interfere with the relationship between a man and his boss.
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#93I feel this a bit. I had a Jeep Grand Cherokee which I loved but decided to have engine problems which apparently is not uncommon. After months of attempted repairs the only option left was a replacement engine that cost more than the value of the car. I considered it but decided against on the advice of a trusted mechanic who says the Jeep replacement engines are problematic and I'd just be inviting more repair cost…
I really wish I could have my old Toyota light truck from the mid 90s again. It was perfect for those light run around town jobs. Who knew that they would be impossible to find 30 years later.
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inflation has gone up in no small part due to cars. They’re one of the biggest factors and people who aren’t buying them or driving heavily have seen far lower rates of inflation.
Inflation has gone up due to the reckless money printing, car prices just reflect this fact.
…and supply chain issues, a war in Europe, and opportunistic corporate profiteering…
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#95This may not be the worst thing honestly, from an environmental perspective. The cars themselves have much longer usable lives now so it's for the best that cars move down to new users instead of needing to build more and more. The downsides, however, is that while the car part of the car is more durable and long-lasting than ever, the software/computer parts of the car are hamstrung by terrible decisions that are su…
But you are forgetting that people aren't stuck with this system and could choose to revolt against it. Life is getting significantly harder for people and giving some future politician a convenient tools of a scape goat 'green leftists are taking away your cars' when taking away the car means taking away work, having to choose between having a home somewhere affordable and driving to a job to either giving up the job or giving up the housing could ultimately result in a long term more undesirable environmental result from people lashing out against being put into losing situations. So many people ASSUME the status quo will hold despite everything going on. You get Trump types all the time, but if things are good enough they don't normally catch on with people.
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#96Safety is a big factor here. The basic trim for all entry level models includes driving aids such as proximity sensors, blind spot warning, backup camera, pre-collision warning. The changes required to integrate those features into the car are diverse and influence design. The net result is that it's not economically feasible to offer them as optional components on higher trims and the base price of all models goes u…
Meh. I feel like that's a scapegoat that they like to use. Honda packed all that into the Fit (Honda Sensing), and it wasn't a $50,000 car. It was reasonably priced, and an excellent, economical car, with a top safety rating. It's literally the exact same tech used in their top end cars. But what they did was, they killed the Fit in the US. So now the cheapest Honda car you can get is the Civic. Which isn't the small…
I bought my Honda Fit in 2014 for 16k. It has a back up camera, but no other sensor/parking tech. I’ve put almost 200k miles on it without anything more than regular oil changes and brakes. I could afford a much more fun and feature rich vehicle, but there’s something to be said for the simplicity and functionality of this modest hatchback.
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#97From the Washington post article: > Ramirez, 33, and his wife Angelica Castro-Calle really want a new, small SUV with a little space for camping and paddleboarding gear > Johnny Loredo and his wife paid $38,000 for a new Nissan Frontier truck > If they hadn’t had a used Suburban to trade in Yeaah. That could be the issue. People aren’t looking to buy cars anymore, but tanks.
To be fair, you quoted a couple that traded in a Suburban for a Nissan Frontier. The former is one of the biggest mass produced vehicles you can buy, the Frontier is large but considerably smaller and wouldn’t be out of place on European roads (truck wise).
And the first part of the quote describes a small SUV for another couple. Everyone’s definition of “small SUV” will vary, but I’m not sure many would infer tank.
Of course, your definition of tank could be very different to mine.
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dunno. Ford saw the automobile as being revolutionary only if the person who makes the automobile is able to afford the automobile. (Funny, nobody applies this one to child care.)
Yes this is an excellent example! When I said 'some years ago' I pretty much meant pre-USA. The Ford story is a great example of that American socio-economic differences from the previous 90/9/1 kind of distribution they had before that in England or other places. EDIT: Also, people today would be calling Ford as literally communist
What are you talking about? Ford was about as anticommunist as you could get.
He was a strong anti-Semite, a conspiracy theorist who railed against "international Jewry", who paid to print the fabricated 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' in the US. He was absolutely against unions. His private police force used violent opposition against unionization, like the Ford Hunger March and the Battle of the Overpass. And he admired Nazi Germany, and was literally praised by Hitler in Mein Kampf.
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
can you please link an ev that's cheaper than a 26k total cost of ownership over a 10y period(excluding registration) I bought a midsized sedan in 2019, 10y warranty, 17k out the door. I tried to justify the cost of an ev, the cheapest I could find was 32k after credits.
People don't buy EVs in the US to be economical. That's not a thing yet. It's something for relatively rich people to do as a status symbol or for luxury, since most EVs are fairly luxurious.
Yep. The bottom of the EV market is sparse. Everyone is focusing on the 40k+ market.
Re: New cars are just for rich people now
#100I'm speaking out of ignorance here, since I have no idea what role a microchip plays in modern vehicles, but obviously it's geared towards software components. Assuming that's true, then this whole chip shortage would have been a great time for someone to bring a software-less, low-tech vehicle to the market. I've personally been wanting that as our last vehicle completely shit the bed when the digital transmission e…
The older trains in NL have a computer that reads and displays all kinds of things but it controls nothing. If it doesn't work the train functions just fine.
A linux car seems a fun twist.