HN Reader

Here I am working out TCO costs for a range of mid-sized cars for my next purchase, and trying to decide if the extra $2k for a Prius Prime over a Prius will beat the differential in fuel costs for my driving situation. I feel like a chump, but I know it's the smarter thing to do with my money.

I coworker of mine just spent $100k on a regular old pickup truck that is planned to spend less than 5% of the time doing anything other than commuting him back and forth to work. It doesn't fit in any of the parking garages around here, or in his garage -- he has to park it at the other side of a surface lot because it doesn't fit in the normal spots. It gets like 11 mpg and uses the 92 octane fuel.

Americans won't buy cheap cars, they won't buy upmarket small cars, but they'll burn their children's college fund into the ground for a 2 second gain on 0-60 and bad ergonomics.

I can afford the fancy car, but I'd rather turn $100k into $200k in my index funds and buy an entire apartment in Spain overlooking the Mediterranean with the gains.

We can have nice things, but this is why we can't have affordable things.

I wish it would have adjusted for inflation. One quote: "The average transaction price for a new vehicle sold in the U.S. last month was $48,623, according to Kelley Blue Book, roughly $10,000 higher than in 2019, before the pandemic." However, about 9200 euros of that is due to inflation according to this calculator: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

That's a nitpick though. All in all, an interesting article, which can be summarized as: the EV car market is lacking demand, and car makers definitely don't want to make cheap EVs since it's already so hard.

I picked up a used 2023 for $14k last month. Hertz is unloading their fleet of EV's, so they're ridiculously cheap if you don't mind driving a former rental car.

“As automakers were profit maximizing during the supply chain crisis era, you are going to prioritize the bigger vehicles, the more expensive vehicles with their higher margins,” Tyson Jominy, vice president of data and analytics at J.D. Power, told me. “Now we just don’t have” these cheaper models.

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

https://www.hertzcarsales.com/used-electric-vehicles.htm

There are also inexpensive cars. A local dealer has new Mitsubishi Mirage Hatchbacks available for $17k all day, every day.

People don't want them.

They're not being tricked, cajoled, strong-armed, forced, pressured, misguided, or hoodwinked.

American consumers WANT and CAN AFFORD gigantic $65k SUVs with heated and cooled seats and wifi and huge screens that take up the entire dashboard.

"Oh but they're prioritizing higher-marg..." yeah no shit Sherlock literally all a consumer has to do is not buy one of those.

But Toyota can slap a limited edition retro paint job on an SUV, mark it up $5k and the dealer can mark it up $10k and people will walk past the cheap cars to sign up for a waiting list to get a chance to earn an opportunity to put down a non-refundable deposit to maybe, potentially, pay $75k for an middling SUV with a limited edition retro paint job.

Of course, that is not allowed, because it would benefit the American people and hurt the American car cartel.

Of course. You start by designing a car to be cheap, not slimming down an expensive one.

People that buy used, can get a cheap electric car like a 2023 Tesla M3 with approx. 50k miles going for 20-24k on Hertz Rental Car sales site.

If you want a better price, just wait until 2026, when the 250k leases come due. There will be a flood of used electric cars on the market.

1) a SV/Texas "tech" company, which, by its very identity, must yield insane returns to shareholders 2) Legacy auto companies who must yield insane returns to both shareholders and, to a lesser extent, retired employees. In their defense, the second group actually did work

Compare this to Chinese EV makers who are dumpi - I mean, willing to take less return on their sale in order to establish market dominance globally.

Yeah, no wonder American EVs are expensive.

ROTFLMAO!

Says the richest person in existence. What an entitled nasty person.

Their purpose is to "save the US automotive industry".

The idea that billionaires and car manufacturers would be motivated by anything else is laughable.

Support public transportation.

[0]https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=25000&year1=20...

Curious if anyone knows — do people actually drive off the lot with a Tesla for $35,500?

https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10440