News

10ish years ago it was a conscious choice they made, the automakers.

Now?

They are trapped, they can only continue to exist if they have the margins from luxury car prices for basically standard cars.

The other thing that goes along with this is... horrendously shoddy construction and design, they're literally built to break down, intentionally.

They're not really automakers.

They're managers of very troubled tranches of debt obligations who happen to be in charge of auto plants.

We should have let them all die back in 09, but instead we bailed them out and their management became a punch of sycophantic 'dont rock the boat, we're experts' accountants, just like what happened Boeing after McDonnel Douglass bought them out, ousted their middle and upper managers, and wore the Boeing brand name like a skin suit.

They are completely incompetent, but even if they weren't, nobody could solve the mess they are in now after decades of coddling and kickbacks from the government, collusion with regulators... rotted them from the inside out, smothered themselves, not really caring because C suite gets golden parachutes no matter what happens.

Capitalism serves capital, not the needs of the people. And the free market of competition is just a convenient myth with which to distract people.

As someone who just bought car last year, I think Kia is the closest one serving that market. We made a list of potential cars that had what we wanted. It had to be under $35k and it had to have certain features without needing to subscribe to some service. We added a few Kiad to our list and I'll admit they were quite tempting as they had everything we wanted for less than all the other cars on our list. In the end we ended up getting a Prius, but the Kias were pretty close for us.

Ebikes will serve that market. Thant and expanded transit in some cities

There’s still lots of money to be made in the used car market. Make new cars expensive, then more people will lease. Then you have a constant stream of income and you can raise the prices on your used leased cars.

Large margins and small supply are a lot easier to deal with though, and mass production is very expensive to set up.

Honestly we need regulation in this space. Incentivize building a cheap car so the manufacturers will do it.

Honestly the gov is in a good place to do this. Spec out a vehicle and place an order for a could hundred thousand of the them for general purpose government worker transportation needs. Set a low cost target. Let them build it for normal people too.

It's really because of tariffs.

China has EVs with 300km range that only cost $15,000. Can't buy them in the US, though.

Gotta give the Musks your money, instead.

Yeah that was my first thought. How much is this influenced by 7 or 8 year loans on $70,000 trucks?

They're not. Lots are full of old inventory. One superstore near me has "new" 2023 model year units in the lot. Still above MSRP.

Land Rovers. Why.

Crying over fewer high margin sales. They want the same number of sales but with more profit.

I was going to make a comment about cheap Chinese cars, but then I checked the BYD price list, and the Dolphin is the only car they’re offering for less than $50k. The rest are a pretty even distribution between 50 and 100k pre-add-on fees and taxes and trims.

This is such a tired argument. Literally the only remaining US automakers are GM, Ford, and Tesla. A vast majority of car sales in the US are foreign brands not domestic. BYD is being propped up just the same as what you're claiming here, which is why no other automaker in the world outside of China is able to beat these Chinese prices, so how is this alternative better for anyone?

China is doing this in order to dominate the market wherever they're allowed to enter, and are well equipped to undercut those local markets for as long as it takes to put everyone else out of business. They control a majority of the minerals needed for EVs so they get to set the external and internal price. They have lax safety and environmental regulations. They already control much of the world's manufacturing capacity. They're a massive country with a massive workforce.

Allowing them to dominate the world auto market in order to buy one or two cheap new cars (before prices shoot back up because monopoly) is going to be bad for everyone.

Honestly, whatever.

Americans make shit cars anyways.

Not only that, there's just so many huge vehicles full of tech. Not enough people want basic simple transportation anymore, or at least there aren't enough models to choose from.

There's a big diff between I need a car and I need a car that makes the median reach 50k

Edit: average, for some reason I assumed editors aren't huge assholes

Good way to reduce peoples mobility as well. Can't have them "voting with their feet" now.