The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

I do think part of it is how darned long cars last now.

I have an 18 year old car that I purchased used long ago and currently has no mechanical issues. I've had a few repairs but nothing terribly expensive. I have no interest in replacing it.

When you think about it, people who are frugal will buy practical and cost effective cars and drive them for a decade or more (that is, if they buy a car at all!). That means they either never buy new at all, or when they do they do so only seldom.

People who are chasing the new shiny will continue to churn through new shiny. And of course they want to pay a lot to get only the shiniest.

So I can see why the average new car cost would creep up, because buying a new car at all is a luxury in most cases.

An older "nice" car is also a lot nicer than a new economy car and in most cases even a newer luxury model car. There may be more bells and whistles which are nice on new cars but it's fairly evident they have skimped on elements of the suspension and body that reduce roughness and road noise. There's a very marked difference in quality of vehicles made before and after the "realignment" prompted by the great recession, even as those cars are approaching 14-16 years old.

The average car in the US? Or the average daily driver car?

Cars just don't disappear, so all vehicles would "polute" the statistics right?

>The highest lifetime EV sales in the US is the Leaf, Model 3/Y, and Bolt.

The cheapest Model 3 is $42,500. The cheapest Model Y is $45,000.

Is that cheap?

The Leaf ($30,000) and Bolt ($27,500) are cheap_er_ (by a lot), but they are still not what I (and presumably parent) would consider cheap.

In fact, most don't. 3/4 of car sales in the US are used cars. The vast majority of Americans are driving used cars. Only relatively well-to-do people buy new cars. It might seem counterintuitive, but the stock of cars on the road is rotated around a lot, and new cars are only a small fraction of them.

how is it efficient when there's regulation that prevents manufacturers from directly selling, and have to go through dealers?

Well regulated marketplace huh? You mean the marketplace that forces customers to purchase through a dealership because of dealership lobbies? You mean the marketplace which has those same dealers charge outrageous markups just because the law says they must exist? Ok.

You said it yourself — their dwelling is the entire city. Those 400sqft are where they sleep and relax but most of their living probably happens outside. Different strokes and all that.

I don’t think that’s a good comparison. If you’re buying a car primarily for commuting a $10k car is going to achieve that purpose just as well as a $50k car. But $2500 on a small apartment in a city gives a very different lifestyle than one in a big house in the suburbs. I’m not going to make a value judgement either way there but there is a clear difference in functional result.

I have a feeling that if BYD was a Taiwanese company it’d be fine, could there be a concern with the Xi government’s bellicosity?

I would never, EVER, buy any BYD or any car manufactured in China. Support local brands who manufacture locally.

Both parties are in the wrong on this. Americans (and others) would be wealthier and the world would decarbonize faster if the tariffs on China were lifted but it is what the people want

So you are blaming your good liberal democratic goverment for not protecting your market enough which forces you to make a living on some bs job while at the same time you complain that the market is overly protected so you cant get a cheap dolphin.

High compression engines require high octane to avoid knock. It's not about performance. An engine with a turbo or super charger will always need higher octane fuel.

> but there is no 'regular pickup truck' in existence

I grew up in deep country. I've owned my share of pickups. When you need them, they're invaluable. When you don't, they're basically the most inconvenient daily drivers you can have short of a box truck, an RV, or a main battle tank. Outside of a fairly narrow range of medium-sized hauling activities, they aren't really even terribly good at carrying things.

I hate talking about things as "it's more than anybody could need" because you end up with needs-based conceptualization of lifestyles with people eating diets of only sweet potatoes, commuting on onewheels, and living in Hong-Kong style coffin apartments. But these things are not only obnoxious main character syndrome demonstrators, they're actively dangerous to everybody in and around them even when they're following the rules of the road.

If I was king for a day, I'd make driving one require a special class of license and tax them extra if they aren't being used for active work purposes like they're intended. They should be in the same class of vehicle as commercial box trucks, because that's what they're supposed to be for.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if some type of vehicle fad takes over the U.S. at some point where people just start driving converted box trucks or RVs around as daily drivers, then complain that all the parking garages and train overpasses are too low for their 13 and a half foot tall lifestyle decisions.

> there is no 'regular pickup truck' in existence that gets 11 mpg

Point but e.g. the 2024 Silverado gets 12mpg in city driving. Go to any office parking lot here and you’ll see a lot of that size truck which have clearly never been used harder than going to Costco - and even the better ones are barely approaching ⅔ of the mpg of the pickup my grandparents bought in the 1980s.

I do agree that from a pollution standpoint we should treat all inefficient vehicles as the problem but large trucks and SUVs have significant immediate downsides for everyone around them. They’re far more lethal when they hit pedestrians or smaller vehicles, they produce higher tire and brake particulates which are known to cause health issues, they take more space to park, and at least where I live there are streets which could previously handle bidirectional traffic but now require someone to pull over to let oncoming traffic pass because there isn’t enough room for two large vehicles. In contrast, sports car drivers pose less risk because they’re low to the ground and the drivers are far more likely to see you and avoid an accident.

The external effects of large pickup trucks are drastically more than that of a small sports car, in ways that are more immediate than climate change.

Large pickup trucks take up a lot more space on the road and parking lots, are harder to see around, and when they get into accidents they cause a lot more damage and injuries to people both in and out of cars. There is a very different visceral response to a large pickup truck tailgating you with its driver perched above you, than a Lambo or 911 doing the same.

The grudges are valid.

The default in America is to make everything out to be individualistic, but the rest of us have to bear the very real costs of the externality of pickups, not just limited to pollution but also safety, land use, etc.

Agreed. It's really amazing what they've done in recent years.

I ended up in a fullsize primarily because I got it cheaper than the midsizes I was looking at. The midsize market is priced really oddly.

Anywho, I was blown away that it's getting me 23MPG. That's what my previous midsize was giving me. That's nearly double what fullsizes got in the 90s.

My guess would be the difference in perception comes from the fact sport cars tend to be smaller and sit lower, which makes pedestrians and motorist feel safer and less intimidated around them. In addition their general rarity means most people still view them as novelties rather than something to actually take a side on. That being said though it is 100% true performance engines are the absolute worst in terms of economy/emissions/noise; most truck engines are really just oversized economy engines and have the efficiency to match.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecnS1Ygf0o0 I've been waiting for the chance to use this

Lamborghini drivers obeying the traffic rules aren't creating a hazard.

Aftermarket headlights blazing directly into the eyes of oncoming drivers are creating a hazard. As is the fact that it takes up a lot of road space and has poor visibility for small objects in front of the hood.

Yep. Midrange-to-expensive EVs have been around for long enough that pretty much everybody in those market segments who are currently interested have already bought one. Additionally, the segment has been flooded with midsize SUVs, with the odd midsize sedan — variety is sorely lacking.

Between these two, quite a considerable market is being left unaddressed. The first to fill these niches with affordable models that don’t have weird quirks or make strange tradeoffs will likely do well.

I can't make great use of a full EV but would love more AWD PHEV options, of which there are currently few and they're mostly very expensive. A PHEV can be my everything-car that runs entirely on electricity for 90% of trips. I assume there's some reason they're not a more widely-supported option, but damn, I wish they were more common.

Because demand isn't the issue. The issue is a new car that isn't a budget brand is increasingly a luxury option in the United States, because, and say it with me...

Wages have been stagnant in the United States for nearly 50 years.

Every economic stat right now points to this as the core issue. Consumers are squeezed more on every last good and service, tons of services are now only available via subscriptions which inherently cost more, and despite the economy supposedly (and, actually) booming in a lot of ways, that doesn't hardly at all make it's way down to the workers either via higher wages, or via cheaper products.

This is a complicated situation that doesn't lend itself well to comments but a number of the bigger datapoints include an employment market that favored employers for the majority of the time since the 70's, the ongoing slandering not to mention outright interference on the part of employers against labor organizing, "inflation" that when you scratch the surface is just companies charging more because they can, the ongoing consolidation of enterprise resulting in monolithic companies that own dozens of brands of the same product, none of which truly compete on price, on and on and on.

There are a ton of good reasons for Americans to be broke, and a number of prominent economists have been ringing alarm bells for decades now that all of these things coming together is going to stall the economy cold and send us into the... by my count, fourth once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis I've experienced.

It's actually growing at around 20% year on year, this year. World wide. The EU is the exception. Mostly because Germany is struggling. Everywhere else, EVs are growing pretty nicely.

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.

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?

There's no way to sell a good, cheap car without also cannibalizing your high margin sales and the dealers wouldn't want to sell it anyway. The vast majority of vehicle cost goes to:

1) amortizing the assembly line and upfront platform design costs

2) the raw materials of the basic car components, e.g. power train, chassis, and body

3) getting the car into consumer hands (distribution fees, taxes, advertising, dealership margin, etc).

Everything else like labor and upgraded trims works out to a relatively small percentage of the overall price, often under 20%.

Since you can't make enough impact by cutting amenities, you have to cut one of the listed things. You mostly can't build things more efficiently than major manufacturers do (though Tesla is quite good here), so that's out. You can't shave 50% off the basic materials costs because you run into basic FMVSS issues. Kia's strategy is to get as close to this line as they can though. That means you need to cut from the third category. No company wants don't want to cut their own margin, so that's out. Manufacturers can't work around the dealers by law, so they need to keep some dealer margin. Manufacturers can't stop advertising because the advertising department has significant political power and can get anyone proposing that fired. Manufacturers can't avoid taxes for consumers either.

The only real paths to cheaper cars involve opening the market to competitors that aren't limited like this, for instance foreign companies that don't need dealers and are okay accepting lower margins and not advertising.

The real reason is that it's basically impossible to produce a cheap new car that is a better deal than a Toyota with 80k miles on it.

Looking at what's available in Ireland at the moment, in the 20-30k range there's a Nissan, a VW (though it's the ancient e-Up, due to be replaced by the i2 any day now), a BYD, a Fiat, an MG, and an Ora (tragically no longer under the names "Good Cat", or "Funky Cat", presumably because Ora got around to hiring someone who had heard of marketing).

There are a bunch more in this price range due to launch next year.

Cheap-ish electric cars exist, they're just not, generally, suited to US consumer preferences.

A 2025 Toyota Corolla hybrid is ~ $25k

I bring you https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/toyota-hilux-champ-lau...

You can't have it because of existing tarrifs.

My understanding is that because cars are generally purchased rarely, they make more money with the status quo instead allowing customers a budget option.

Low price normally requires lower margins, so for the same risk, you're making less money than with a higher end model. Make it up in volume, you say? Well, that increases the risk that you don't sell enough and end up with a loss.

Ultimately, you CAN "win" by doing really well with a low-end model, but the chance of losing big is there, too.

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

>why isn’t this a screaming opportunity

with the American consumer buying 15M cars a year at those average $50K there isn't an opportunity for the low end. And if such market really appears - i.e. if the American consumer would hit hard economic patch and would really need cheap car - it will be at any moment filled by cheap Chinese EVs.

I would imagine the most price sensitive buyers wouldn't be looking at the new market at all - there might not be enough demand for "cheap, but still nowhere near as cheap as a second hand car" to make the price point worth targeting as a manufacturer.

There are small, ~20k cars in the US, but this isn't where most of the sales volume is. Trax starts at ~20k and isn't even that small.

Because there's no incentive to. The invisible hand of the free market only encourages a race to the bottom when the incentives are aligned. With the ridiculously high capex required to become an automaker these days, why would someone come in, just to make $3,000 per car, in a saturated market, chock full of regulations, to make money on the bottom end of a market where existing manufacturers can easily just undercut you the second you get any traction in the market.

Manufacturers make more money off selling luxury cars. The poors can just buy used luxury cars for all they care. We see the same problem with housing and luxury vs spartan options. The spartan option exists, but only begrudgingly so.

> Privacy is in my top two concerns for EVs

Any bit of telemetry in a modern EV is also in a modern ICE. There's no reason to hate on EV's for telemetry, you have to hate on the entire modern auto industry.

I don't think EVs are any worse than any other car. My F150 Lightning has precisely as much telemetry as the ICE version. Which is to say, more than I'd like. But I realize most buyers don't care.

Not good privacy by default, but as a hack you can also just buy a Bolt EV for like ~14k or so, then disconnect the location tracking antennae which takes like 30 mins of fiddling and $12 of parts.

> Privacy is in my top two concerns for EVs

Yes.

But it does rue out every single modern car on the market.

Very frustrating

> I think there's plenty of demand for cheap EVs. But there's a problem with US manufacturing not being able to deliver those.

How much of that has to do with the USA's extreme needs for range and size?

There are places I'd be happy to drive a subcompact with a 300km range (eg. the Byd Dolphin), but most of the USA that kind of vehicle wouldn't be safe or practical. That's an awful lot of expensive battery-mass the Byd Dolphin doesn't have to pay for.

One of the best understandings of inflation is to use the mathematical concept of "equality" on those. They're two ways of phrasing the same thing.

A lot of people do a lot of bad thinking when they say "oh, well, inflation is umptybumpkins percent, so the fact that cars are that much more expensive is 'just' inflation, and thus isn't anything".

But inflation is prices going up. When the various sources release "how large inflation is", they are telling you "this is how much prices went up". Ignoring prices going up because "oh, the prices went up because of inflation" is basically using the thing's own existence to argue that it doesn't exist, which, while abstractly sort of impressive, is not strong thinking.

There are some arguments about what causes prices to go up, but that's a separate question.

I had the same thought. You can actually look up the inflation data by category:

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/find-me-the-cpi-inflation-d...

New cars actually match the total average inflation the closest of any categories (22.3% for new cars vs 22.1% all items). Also interesting to note that food is up 30.7%, transport is up 39.5 % and shelter is up 27.6% in the past 5 years!

Is it actually $10K more expensive? The F150 Lightning I just bought was cheaper than the hybrid version I was looking at buying. The Tesla Model 3 & Y seem to be priced pretty competitively, as well.

Inflation is a shit metric because it's easily manipulated.

The cost of a GB of hard drive is failing spectacularly. The price of health care went up much more than the price of eggs. So what is the "real" inflation?

Government gets to pick what they use to define inflation so they can manipulate "inflation" numbers. And manipulate they do.

What you should look at is money printing: how much money did the government print. This is about 8% yearly for US.

This money debasement is eventually reflected in prices.

Some things get cheaper, because we can produce them more efficiently (like hard drives). Some things get even more expensive than 8% because we produce them less efficiently (health care insurance or college diplomas).

So to answer your question: cars costs more mostly because the government prints money, which devalues your dollars and car makers are not getting more efficient at making cars to counter currency debasement.

yes

> do people really spend a sixth of their total income on cars

Yes. It's a huge expense for a lot of Americans. Either the primary expense, or just behind housing.

> assuming people don't want to drive vehicles older than a decade

That's not a great assumption, especially if you're looking at people with less money. The normal lifespan of a car is 15-25yrs, and _somebody_ is driving those cars.

As you suspect though, the flow of new vehicles largely goes into wealthier people (average incomes in the $100k range), and after 6-10yrs the used cars trickle down to everyone else and live ~20yrs in total. There exist a number of exceptions (e.g., people getting a new car for reliability and not realizing that you could replace the engine and transmission three times over for the extra premium they're paying -- trying to do the right thing and make a fiscally responsible decision but accidentally doing something more expensive), but those aren't the norm.

Median incomes of single earners get pretty skewed from people willingly working part-time or low-income jobs as secondary income instead of primary income. I usually prefer analyzing things on household income for this reason. Think a grandpa working a part-time gig as a greeter at Walmart while going back to a multi-generational household or a stay-at-home parent working a part-time remote call center job while the kids are in school or a teenager working a part-time job. All of these positions would pull pretty small amounts of overall yearly income but chances are they're not the sole source of wealth/income they have access to.

The median household income is ~$75k. There's ~131M households in the US. This means there are 65M households making more than $75k/yr.

But yes, generally speaking wealthier people are the ones buying new cars with a lot of people buying used models.

A lot of people buy used cars rather than new cars. The wealthiest buy the new cars, eat the cost of most of the depreciation, then sell them.

If we had a functioning housing market, you'd see something pretty similar there too. The wealthiest would be the ones paying for nearly all the new construction, instead of driving up the cost of housing for everyone else.

That's an odd way of looking at it.

Those who are most able to pay for it are those who are paying for the highest initial costs, lowering the costs for everyone else by improvements in the technology, and making it easier for others to adopt later. Early adopters take lots of risk on things not working out well, and learning what things can go wrong and how to fix them (at additional expense, too.)

This is much better than those who are least able to pay being made to shoulder the cost and risks of being early adopters.

We need both. There's plenty of wealthy people that can afford to go solar and could arguably have a bigger environmental impact if they did since they often also have large homes, big cars etc. If they don't feel strongly about doing it for altruistic reasons then subsidies are a useful tool to get them to take the plunge. Without subsidies there's really no economic argument for them to do it since the break even times are long and they probably aren't too worried about utility costs.

>We should be investing solar in lower income communities, as those people could really use cheaper utilities, and any saving they get would immediately go back into their communities.

Good news, these are called "community solar gardens" and they exist all around the USA, here's a large one based in Minneapolis: https://www.cooperativeenergyfutures.com/

We do. Through community solar programs low/medium income households can get anywhere from 10%-50% off their electricity supply costs.

*Waves from Germany* We have self-install balcony PV systems starting at a few hundred euros: https://www.obi.de/p/8073827/absaar-flexibles-balkonkraftwer...

I've been to the US a few times, seen AC hanging out of the windows all over the place.

If you can do that, and Germany can do this, why can't you also do this?

Now sure, it won't cover 100% of demand, but it will help many of the poorest.

Look at what it's solving for. Low income households are not the largest consumers of energy. They may own less efficient appliances, but there are other programs for that, like free home sealing and heat pump installation.

One group has insufficiencies that need to be solved, the other, excesses. Lessening dependence on the grid for the ones for whom cost is not a barrier lowers costs for everyone.

Now, having some sort of solar community energy bank would eventually be novel, akin to the replaceable battery charge stations for electric scooters in the Pacific Islands. Take your high density 12VDC canisters up, slot them into the locking wells, and get a text when they're full. Dock them onto your appliance circuit when you're home, and enjoy grid-free power for your home or vehicle.

This seems like an argument for utility-scale solar and batteries, which can be used by everyone. The do-it-yourself approach makes more sense for people who own their own home and can invest in improving it. That’s going to skew towards wealthier people who live in suburban and rural areas.

Agreed with the caveat, I'm from a lower income area where solar has been on the up. Panels would get stolen often enough to warrant thoughful consideration.

Probably found out about the tax credit while wine tasting, diving a Tesla and trading crypto while on the way to buy a new house with RSU's right after was given a bonus for new internal tool development.

In canada the lower your income the higher the grant for solar and things like insulation and window upgrades, heat pumps, etc.

The domestic manufacturing component is helpful to many of the people in the "Battery belt" and in auto manufacturing!

Most of the IRA has actually been spent in red states and rural areas

I’m conflicted about buying Kia again. I’ve got a recent model Sorento and the dealer where I have to take it is dogshit. I say I have to, because the next dealer is a $50 bridge toll and 2-hour drive away.

I’ve been charged for things that should be under warranty. They refused to do a permanent fix for a recall after they did a temporary fix. Dealing with corporate is an exercise in being gaslit and living in a Kafkaesque nightmare.

Kia and possibly Hyundai are in purgatory right now: they’re innovating and making cars that no one else is. Their dealer network, however, can have some sleazy used car sales personalities and make for a terrible experience that can ruin your week.

Pick your poison.

It’s an amazing truck and you’ll never go back to ICE!

There was a recent article about Kia reconsidering the EV9 factory line in GA since the incoming Trump admin is likely to squash the IRA/BBB stuff Biden set up - specifically the $7500 tax credit for EVs.

As an EV6 owner I strongly considered the EV9 - which apparently fixes some of the annoyances of the EV6 and other eGMP vehicles.

I disconnected from the grid entirely so there is no bill.

Since the local power company here is only paying 10 cents per kw for solar power (which they resell at greater profit), I decided to run a small crypo miner and I still have excess power on a 22kw system.

I don't know of anywhere where its not legal to be solar powered but there were several thousand in costs associated with engineer plans and permits.

> I have an off grid home

Seems like the utilities aren't involved at all?

Cheap storage actually makes grid defection a possibility for a ton of people these days. Especially when you start considering the cost of upgrading 100 amp service to 200 amp or similar. Once you've added a bit of battery, might as well go a bit more, and use your vehicle for additional backup when necessary.

People having 70kWh or more of mobile battery in the garage is going to change the calculation for a lot of people. Many people who would never install solar unless it saves them money will also spend a tooooooon of money on a big truck for aesthetic reasons, and then find that it makes solar a cheaper propositon.

this is a good example of how individuals are fine to do things for the public good when they are consequential or at least compatible with the things in their best interest. We're willing to self sacrifice only so (and not very) far, so need to apply that goodwill very strategically. Another example: I commute by bike everyday, not because it's cheaper, healthy good for the environment (even though these are all true), but because I love it and it's so enjoyable - even it winter. Screw with the roads, or traffic patterns, or waste my property taxes, or neglect the bikes paths and snow removal enough and I'll either stop or move.

With this kind of setup you can stay connected to the grid. In the event that your solar and storage fail unexpectedly you can still pay for grid electricity.

It's getting cheaper all the time, look at tesla powerwalls and many other companies are using them. But the really cheap thing to do it get an older EV like a leaf, they are much much less per kwh than standalone cars.

You should be downvoted for your last comment too! Or at least someone could explain the world we live in. Is it confiscatory to have public schools, funded by your taxes, fsck guy (you do have a great handle...)? How about publicly funded (by our taxes too) police and fire protection? Uh, govt funding to help pay for hospitals? Food inspection, are you crazy you might say, the perfectly working markets of our paradise make this not a necessity. People will self report when the water has contaminants - maybe?

Now let's add significantly reducing your own greenhouse gas impact for 20 or 30 years after you buy the demon solar panels (made from dead babies, some right thinking american might say), then putting your own excess electricity on the grid, further reducing fossil fuel generation. So in all thoses cases, that dastardly helpful socialism is for the public good.

I believe it's worth pointing out that with your Toyota, you're still buying an American car. The vast majority of Toyota vehicles sold in America are made in US plants.

Which is a good thing! It shows that those other quality issues are not related to US labor force, or some intrinsic American inability to make high quality goods.

US cars have not been dead at 100k miles in decades, but people still accuse them of that. I have my Chrysler at 230k miles and still running fine.

Note that many of the "American" cars with the bad reputation are Toyota's with just a different logo. Even though it is easy to check who made the car, the American logo makes for the reputation that it will die in 100k miles.

I don’t know what you’re doing but I have had 3 American sedans (1 mustang, 1 fusion, 1 Malibu) over the past 20 years and they all (2) made it over 200k miles when I sold them with my current one approaching that, nothing but regular maintenance and one time I had to replace shocks/struts on the ford fusion. 200k is when I generally pack it up and get a new car.

> US car companies have created the lasting idea that cars are dead at 100K miles

OT but, there were clear exceptions to this even back in the bad ol' days. It was common knowledge in the 70s that for certain engines (such as Chevy small blocks), if you cared for the engine (mainly: regular oil changes) you could get 200K+ out of it. The rest of the car was too low-tech to decay, except of course for road salt vs body work.

We have 2 Chevrolet EVs, a Bolt EUV made in the US and an Equinox EV made in Mexico.

They're great. I have rotated the tires twice on the Bolt and I'm getting some different wipers for the windshield because my wife doesn't like the noise the factory ones make. Oh, and I got floor mats for both cars.

I have Car Play in the Bolt and GM's own system in the Equinox (Android for Autos or something like that, not the standard Android Auto) and they're both fine.

I use SuperCruise whenever I can. That's only on freeways with the Bolt and a lot more other places with the Equinox. I was backseat in an Uber Saturday and it was neat watching the Tesla Model 3's AutoPilot system. Very cool. On the other hand, GM was reporting no accidents with their cars, which include ICE vehicles, too. https://gmauthority.com/blog/2024/02/gm-super-cruise-users-t...

I exclusively buy Toyotas because they are cheaper to maintain than American cars. Is your argument that I shouldn't have access to Japanese cars either?

I understand the desire to have a strategic reserve of manufacturing capacity. However, the US also subsidizes the US auto industry heavily by e.g. bailing out GM and Chrysler. It frustrates me that US car manufacturers continue to make exclusively heavy, low-efficiency vehicles. Give me something inexpensive, safe, efficient, reliable, and I'll buy it.

Subsidy cannot work beyond a certain scale. Sure they may have benefitted initially, but in the long run I presume they need some kind of profits to sustain.

May be the lead in Chinese EV and battery industries is not purely technological, it is also the supply chain and scale developed over the years.

All this talk assumes that USA or Western countries have always had a level playing field whereas companies like Boeing or Airbus are prime counter examples

It leads to market separation. No one outside the US will buy US made when they have cheaper Chinese cars as an option. And the US can’t force external competitiveness to emerge with those subsidies in place. Not to mention internally having to buy more expensive transport has knock on effects to the entire economy.

Do you think this argument applies to microprocessor manufacture?

The current average monthly salary in China is $3000-$4000 US dollars. This is not about cheap labour anymore but simple economies of scale.

The whole talk about subsidies is pure smoke screen. US automakers have received a lot more subsidies than their Chinese counterparts. The top chinese firm receiving government subsidies, CATL, got ~$500M USD last year. BYD is said to have received $3.5 billion in total in its lifetime. In the meantime, the US government offered $12B just last year for automakers to start making more EVs, and Ford is reported to have received a total of $33B in loans, bailouts and tax rebates.

In any case, if you could put down $3.5B and get a BYD out, everyone would be doing it, reality is a bit more complex than that.

The only thing locally made is the bare minimum to make it "Made in USA", but everything is heavily outsourced already. There is no point to your argument, as that battle was lost a long time ago.

What is a "local manufacturer" some other multinational corporation? At least think about your bullshit propaganda before you repeat it.

I was nodding along with your post until you brought out your numbers (I agree fully with the broader point). For me, any car above 15k or so is very expensive - I've always bought used and drove them into the ground. I'd love an electric car but it's not in the cards for my family until the total cost of ownership gets down to 2-3k a year or so.

This is something I've always found fascinating about materialism (I can only speak to the US). The messaging and feelings are incredibly similar whether your budget is 10k or 100k. Very easy to slide up the scale slowly and feel like you're still living small with a bulging budget, or to choose options that are beyond your means and so stunt financial growth.

All those options and appearance packages just become liabilities as the trucks age. None of it ages well.

Is there a $27k base model ram truck? Seems like the base model on the ram website is $38k and when I tried to price a regular cab one from stellantis fleet those were like $46k, but I could have made a mistake on that site.

And American prices are already insanely low. If I want to buy a RAM in Austria for $30k I get a used car with 150.000km. If I want a new one it's (much) over $100k.

Tesla cars sold in US are the most American build cars. See https://www.carpro.com/blog/most-american-made-vehicle-the-t...

What it means that if you count what percentage of car parts are made in America, Tesla has higher percentage that other brands, even those you might consider "more" American, like GM or Ford. All Teslas sold in America are assembled in America (California or Texas). Ford Mustang, for example, is assembled in Mexico.

As far as I know Tesla never sold Chinese built cars in US. They used Chinese manufacturing (CATL) and Korean batteries in some model, but also manufactured batteries in US (Nevada, with Panasonic) and are expanding battery production in US with 4680 (used in Cybertruck).

Cheaper Teslas are coming to US but they'll be manufactured in US (Texas). Tesla told us that they'll start making a cheaper model sometime in 2025.

You puff up the local market when you're giving a speech in that market.

I recently saw a bumper sticker on a Tesla that said "We bought it before we knew how awful he was." Because of Musk, my wife and I will never buy a Tesla even if they do release a basic, low-cost model here in the US to compete with Japanese and Korean economy cars.

On the other hand, as the other comment said about him "tricking Republicans," I think he's also gained a new segment of buyers with his political play, so this might be a wash.

I don't know what will publicly get the blame, but I, and I don't think I'm unique in this regard, am not buying a Tesla because of the documented issues the cars keep having: getting bricked, catching fire, being needlessly difficult to escape in an emergency, tons of unfulfilled promises about new features, etc. On top of this, everyone who I knew who had a Tesla never bought a 2nd.

I kinda think the whole thing is just Elon tricking republicans into buying electric cars.

I get the point, but also he's a much more competent salesman (and, I'm assured, rocket scientist) than he is at basically all the other things he's inadvisably gotten involved with.

So, while I'd bet against Twitter (if I such a thing were possible), I wouldn't bet against Tesla being a good fit for the US market.

European sales may well collapse, and he may be very confused about this, but I'd still expect his approach to do well in the USA.

> Half of America doesn't want to support the incoming administration

Hasn't that been true for every US presidential election?

Labor prices and subsidies might be "cheating" but why would we count supply chain against them?

Not always, the lower end Toyotas it’s a better deal per mile to buy new, if you are willing to shop around a little and get last year’s model.

Used cars are not that much of a bargain. I’ve been looking and asking 20k for a car with 100k plus miles is insanity.

> I don't remember the source so, someone please correct me if I'm wrong but, I read that no EV battery can be made for less than $50K.

Absolute hogwash.

The only way for this to be true is if you amortize the cost of R&D and factory building over a small number of batteries and include it in the manufacturing cost, and I think it's incredibly misleading to include the cost of R&D into the cost of a battery, simply for the fact that you can make wild claims by just including it.

So...for an incumbent manufacturer that's putting very little effort into actually selling EVs, it might be true that it's costing them $50K per battery if you include the cost of setting up the manufacturing. But for someone like Tesla, who has literally sold millions of cars, even if you include that cost, it's closer to $10K.

I’ve heard replacing an EV sadan’s battery is typically ~$10K (capacity matters of course).

Also, fwiw, our home batteries (sold at profit, with lots of expensive other stuff and install labor) were about $20K, and the same capacity as our small car.

>There's a bunch of free riders in the form of shareholders artificially driving up the price of goods.

Isn't this a natural consequence of capitalism in entrenched industries?

Look at fords lineup now. No sedan. Its straight up embarrasing if you are the first lemming to start burning furniture to save on heat. But if the entire industry has been doing just this since 2008 then you are the fool for not playing the game your investors expect from you. Never mind how you might fare 10 years from now. Quarterly thinking dominates.

They started long ago. Ford himself was doing that. However what makes for maximum profit has changed over time. As cars last longer more and more people are not buying new cars so they have to make cars for the people left. If you want me to buy a new car it needs to be cheap - my 25 year old truck is paid off and still runs fine.

They’ve done it for ages but there were market constraints. The pandemic broke that in two key ways: the first was the chip shortage they accidentally created by breaking their supply contracts early on but the second was because so many people stopped using transit. That created a demand spike at the same time supply was limited, which they capitalized on by prioritizing the most expensive models for production since they knew many buyers would feel they had no ability to negotiate.

Higher interest rates and other inflation caused by profit-taking in other industries drove this to a head since consumers couldn’t just soak it up, but none of the manufacturers wants to be the first to lower their margins.

US Congress has mandated a growing list of advanced features, leading to complex vehicles, complex supply chains, and higher sticker prices.

Yes, an in fact IMO that makes the used models even more of a steal. Get a several year old model with a pretty much new battery. The battery is pretty much the main wear item in the whole drivetrain, so its like buying a used ICE with a brand new drive train.

Yeah they are fixed. A Bolt is a nice vehicle to buy if you don't mind its slow charging; and judging by the number of Bolts on the road plenty of people don't mind.

Yeah, it was just a software patch. Real quick fix.

American Dream? At this point I'd settle for some reasonable chance that I'd be able to still rent an apt and put food on the table next year, nevermind actually owning anything or ever retiring, lol.

I'll be squarely in the have-not camp, eager to serve our rich robot-assisted overlords.

Americans already thought the Bolt was far too small and had far too little range. BYD's cheap EVs like the Seagull are even smaller and have less range.

I was happy to see them get funded, but its fair to be wary. They are a new company after all, but I think there are a lot of emerging markets where this type of vehicle makes more sense than a wagon. I'm pretty pessimistic about US manufacturing in general tho so I'm willing to admit that there's a good chance that you're right about Aptera.

demonstrably false. Unless you think they're lying, they have something like ~47k preorders registered. If even 75% of those preorders flake, that's something like 2 years of manufacturing pipeline and sales, if they manage to get the first stage factory they want.

People hated the prius too, when it first came out. But then Leonardo DiCaprio bought a Gen2 and pretty soon everyone wanted one. This is particularly funny because Honda built the insight first which looked crazy and nobody bought it, then Toyota built the Gen1 which looked like a normal car, then pivoted. Then Honda's Insight2 copied the New Prius vibe and this car ALSO failed, poor honda.

Looking unlike anything on the road catches eyes. Yesterday I was walking through an outdoor mall and I saw a bunch of kids crossing the road that jumped up and down and shouted "cybertruck!" when a cybertruck passed by.

Anyways, I happen to know the person who worked on the aptera's marketing campaign the first time around in 2009. Best Buy desperately wanted to get in on the EV market, and so they piloted showing Apteras at a few best buys, and they were laughed out of the room by all of the soccer moms walking in to store. It's pretty clear the market wasn't there in 2009... It's clear there is a huge vibe shift now, and the market is ready enough to at least launch the vehicle. Whether or not it will stick is a real question, but i think it would be silly to assume that the company can't get to say 100k cars on the road for lack of a market. Execution failure is, of course, still a possibility.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but unless there is another solar option, the 100 kWh pack will take around 40 days to charge by solar at 700W from 20% to 80%. Otherwise, it seems like the solar part is greenwashing with a bit of '70's-style geodesic dome and Balans chair styling. I'm all for cheap(er) EVs that don't involve Tesla like Scout or BYD.

> it would require segregated roadways to be safe

Why would it? It has a carbon fiber monocoq hull with a steel roll cage. The shape is pretty much egg shaped, which seems like it would be fairly structurally resilient (IANA MechE)

Not really, its registered as a motorcycle. From what I understand they're going above and beyond on safety to meet standards normally set for cars, but there are other light vehicles that people drive all the time that don't get special lanes.

Tell Mali and Niger that

That would only apply to markets with tariffs, and not the rest of the world. China can sell their EVs to Central Asia, Russia, Africa, south east Asia, Australia, and still dominate the world wide market. America, Canada, Japan, Western Europe, and Korea can protect their markets, but they can’t really protect their market share.

Let's face it, the Canadian reaction is purely out of US friendship. There is no end-to-end EV car manufacturing in Canada. There is an EV battery setup in Ontario (and perhaps Quebec?) but that's about it. We are a decade or more away from having an end-to-end manufacturing pipeline. So... we implement tariffs that hurt the majority of the population? For the govt's lack of investment across decades. If you want to, put a tariff on EV batteries or any other part that is manufactured in Canada - not the whole car. There is no good reason for us to take this tariff.

At the same time, politicians will talk about the dangers of climate change and how we should all try hard to mitigate it. I guess some solutions just don't have the right story to it.

I do agree that the situation we are in now is due to lack of investment in EV/associated tech starting 1.5-2 decades ago. China has invested over 200 billion in EV+Solar and are reaping the rewards.

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.

North Americans can have their Auto Galapagos. Even Aussies and the UK aren't listening to the White House's histrionics (for now).

The benefit of EVs comparatively is that the drivetrain is much simpler than an ICE vehicle. If a motor dies, unbolt it and swap in a new one. Same thing for the battery pack. Sure, it's inconvenient, but if these Chinese companies are willing to offer the same warranties as American manufacturers, then what's the problem?

Once they have the volume of the global market they definitely will, if not sooner.

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

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 think you're right about pendulums here, but we might be about to see a US auto maker vs China auto maker inflection point like I read about in the 1980s with US vs Japan.

I watching this video which lays out some fundamental diffs between US companies, like GM and Chinese companies, like BYD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXvcwM977D0 * Short term vs long term focus * .gov subsidies stronger in key markets in CN * CN companies extremely rapid in development (as low as 1.5 yr vs 6 yr in the US) * Lower wages and input costs

Things will probably have to get worse before they get worse. Corporate people know the machine (public traded US auto makers) keeps lumbering forward without change until it can't, and all handouts, bailouts, and other tricks have been played.

> We also now have sub-$30k used Tesla's out in the market too.

I purchased a 2023 Model 3 from Hertz over the summer for $23k, which I've been very happy with. I'm not eligible for either tax rebate (used or new), so 1 year ago I would have paid north of $40k for it.

There are definitely some good deals out there.

People not wanting a Leaf is how I got mine for dirt cheap. I also happen to live in a state with an extraordinary EV tax credit.

The annoyances of the Leaf are overstated, and the benefits are way better than people give credit for.

If people do what’s popular, they have to accept a popularity tax for the “keeping up with the Joneses” lifestyle

Congrats! You discovered the Broken Window Fallacy.

There are 300 million Americans. Why should ~1% get to hold the remaining 99% hostage?

Who is facing stiff competition from Amazon (heaps of Chinese goods) and Wish (Chinese company)

>threaten national security through technology dependence and harm American auto manufacturing jobs. Safety and environmental standards may also be lower.

Protectionism based tax and economic policy causes the exact same outcomes but far enough in the future and far enough away that the people who implemented it will be retired and/or dead and the people who voted for those people to do it will have had time to spin some counter narrative about it being an honest mistake, everyone thinking it was a good idea at the time, etc, etc.

You think Japanese auto imports was good for American auto manufacturing jobs?

Don't you remember American auto workers beating a Japanese man to death? You probably don't, because they beat a Chinese man to death by mistake. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Vincent_Chin

I’d say let’s ask the free market and put BYD’s for sale to see what the American people think.

Perhaps true, but how is this any different to other Chinese products sold at Walmart ?

Americans vote against their own self interests constantly. How is this any different? Or do you think the US govt couldn't backstop it's own car companies until they became cost competitive? Seems like a win/win if we want to speed up EV adoption and reduce global emissions. If a new $20k EV with 300 miles of range was released tomorrow, we'd see massive adoption similar to the original Model 3. Americans I believe are largely ready for EV adoption but the only thing stopping the majority is price.

Hybrids cost more to repair, but much less to maintain. Hybrid brakes can last decades, and their tires and suspension wear is very near an internal combustion engine. However, the added complexity of a hybrid powertrain almost always makes engine repairs more difficult and therefore cost more money.

And you still don't escape having to go to a gas station every few weeks, and maintenance twice a year. Those 10 or so hours per year don't seem like a lot but after having enjoyed EVs for 6 years now, that's the one of the main reasons I'll never go back.

true. I wasted over a year waiting to get a base model Toyota Sienna, and eventually realized they might as well not exist.

The cheapest Teslas are also best selling Teslas. With Teslas the base model is really good and more expensive models offer either longer range or performance of a Porsche for half the price.

That's the issue, yes.

The Chinese are selling either at a loss or far below the return expectations of their competitions' investors. They're not going to stop, because they want to drive everyone else out of the market. The solution is to drop things like dividends and executive bonuses down to sane (or, really, non-existent) levels and pass along the savings to the customer.

Otherwise there might not be a company to collect ROI on in a decade or two. Not that most shareholders care; they hire a guy specifically to engineer the holdings so that they can drop any one of them and not lose lots of value.

> its worth pointing out that Tesla also said that more affordable options will be available in 2025H1

Sure, but they've been saying full self driving is "next year" for a decade in a row. I take that with a large grain of salt. https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-promises-full-self-driving-ne...

Co-signed. One really concept is the locked-in demand: every single internal combustion vehicle sold now means someone is buying gas for at least two decades, but even if you use entirely coal power an EV will generate fewer carbon emissions now and that will drop rapidly every time cleaner power is added to the grid.

they understand that weight and efficiency is the only way forward

not like Tesla selling 3-ton vehicles that pretend to be green