The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

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

Quite a few $20k ish, though only the Forte actually making it under that. Forte LX starting at $19,900.

Of course that's without without the $1,155 "destination" fee, so even the Forte really starts at $21,145.

But considering inflation, $21k isn't a bad price.

The Nissan Versa currently starts around $17k, and I see a lot of those on the road. The Mitsubishi Mirage is similarly priced but I don't think I've ever seen one in the wild. I rented a Kia Soul a few years ago and thought it was perfectly fine.

But with so few options, like the parent, I'm planning to keep my current car (a 2008 Prius) indefinitely, just paying for repairs as needed until parts are unavailable or nobody is willing to do the work.

My worry is that US automakers have all but abandoned the compact and midsize economy car segments, and I don't know what tariffs will mean for the Japanese and Korean automakers that do cover these segments. But see my other comment about the pendulum swinging back and forth.

We need laws that ban these junk fees. Any advertised price should be one I can get when I walk in.

I cannot get the car without registration. I cannot get the car without 'destination' fee.

Bake it into the price.

Japanese and Korean automakers make a lot of their US-bound cars in USA, so I don’t think it will be that bad. A Honda civic is likely to be more American than a Chevy compact, for example.

Registration cost is too variable. Varies by state, and even by city.

I rented a Versa about 5-6 years ago and I was surprised how completely "fine" it was.

It was a totally functional vehicle. The radio sounded good enough. The seats were comfy enough. It was a bit of a slug, but it had enough power so that you weren't scared for your life when merging onto a highway.

If those sound like low standards... well, this was not always the case for bargain basement cars...

You'd say someone would build an API to retrieve that information by city. But I would not be surprised that the product seller can't be bothered inserting that information into their sales flow.

> The Nissan Versa currently starts around $17k

Vehicles at that price are usually crap, esp. the Versa with the CVT engine. And, at least last year, there was a shortage so that you'd be paying a few grand above that price just to get it. I'd bet it's still the same where you're paying closer to 20k for this car.

Now, if you could get a Versa with the simpler engine (I think it was a manual shift), it's apparently a decent car. But finding that model is like a full-time job for a week, then either flying out to whatever dealership has it or getting it shipped which is another grand.

I posted in another comment above, but I bought a 2023 Kia RIo 5 - excellent car. Small, simple, efficient and IMHO good looking. The Forte and Soul are larger (I also own a Soul)

The destination fee isn't really a "junk" fee. it's variable based on how far away from the plant that manufactured your car or, or the distance from nearest port of entry. Delivering a car isn't cheap. There's certainly some level of arbitrage going on, but the delivery driver is usually independent of the dealership.

The dealership knows ahead of time how far they are from the plant and how much it costs to ship the car. GP was asking that the fee be included in the advertised price. That's fair.

Just ask the dealer to compute the out the door price. It really isn't that difficult and certainly doesn't require yet another stupid regulation!

So instead of easily comparing prices online, now you have to call dealers individually and ask them to compute the out the door price? Which they already know and could post online themselves?

This is exactly the kind of problem regulations are meant to solve. Preventing false advertising and bringing information to all market participants make the market more efficient.

So compute and post some defaults? At least the state and city that the dealership is located in?

Right. I've been saying for a while that if you need four seats or fewer, there's no good reason to buy anything more expensive than an entry-level Versa, Soul, Corolla, Civic, etc. (If you need five or more seats, especially with kids' car seats, you're obviously looking at more expensive three-row minivans.)

One way of looking at it, validating the point that others have already made in their comments, it is that there are no bargain basement cars anymore; everything now comes with an automatic transmission, air conditioning, power locks and windows, cameras and sensors, etc. As recently as 2008 when I was buying my Prius, these things were optional on many models. Today's compact cars are, I think, the size of midsize cars from 20 years ago too.

It's kind of like housing in America where the cost per square foot didn't actually rise much in some places, but the average home is now twice the size, so the average home price doubled.

Okay, so build the API, and now customers will need to enter their locality before they can see the advertised price. It won't be a popular decision.

Sure, add that to the list of disclaimers in the small print so that the customer from the next town over will have something to reference when the dealer cannot sell them the car for the advertised price.

The problem is that cars are not treated like most other commodities. E.g. You don't have to buy a license to use a microwave or register it with the government. The closest analog is if you live somewhere with sales tax.

Closer to $20k than $10k seems insane for a budget-tier car, to me. I guess that's my age showing, but it wasn't that long ago (ten years ago? Twelve?) my in-laws got basically two identical Chevys of their shittiest possible model for under $10,000 combined. Granted I think it was the previous model year, but they weren't used cars or anything.

They'll have to know your address in order to accurately tell you the OTD price. Are you willing to give that information to every dealer you're querying about price?

There are also choices you can make during the registration process that will change the costs a bit. Quoting a fixed price for that would require yet more small print disclosing that certain choices were made.

I just don't see how it works out. Registration costs money. Not just when you buy the car, but over and over and over throughout the time you own it. You should know this as a driver. Further, the registration cost does not vary by dealer, so you don't need to know it in order to negotiate the best price.

Such regulations are pro-market, too (not pro-business, in the sense of being something business owners will be thrilled about—confusing the two is a common error). Increasing price transparency is supposed to be a way to improve market efficiency.

> add that to the list of disclaimers in the small print

Correct. Instead of a vague "registration fees may apply" disclaimer now there's a "registration fees assuming <city>, <state>" disclaimer. It's definitely not worse for anyone, and is arguably better for the customers who will register in <city>, <state>. That's a green light for a utilitarian.

I didn't say pro-business. I'm sure dealerships won't like it.

> Are you willing to give that information to every dealer you're querying about price?

Dealerships generally get your name and phone number if you call them to ask about the price including fees and taxes. If you make them post defaults online, they get nothing from you. Clearly better.

> There are also choices you can make during the registration process that will change the costs a bit.

I'm curious about this. Do you have some examples?

Besides GP is also talking about things like the shipping fee, which are decidedly not variable or unknown. The dealership knows how much it costs them to ship the car from the factory and how much they want to charge you. They just choose not to disclose it.

> Dealerships generally get your name and phone number if you call them to ask about the price including fees and taxes. If you make them post defaults online, they get nothing from you. Clearly better.

I email, not call, and I lie. About my name, phone number, all of it. Best they will ever get is zip code. They could post defaults, but then I still don't know the actual OTD price -- it's already a hassle today because I have to be aware that dealers will advertise discounts that are only available in-state, and only mention that detail in the small print. I live in a metro that spans two states so this is common.

> I'm curious about this. Do you have some examples?

My state has a plethora of plate designs, and how much you pay depends on which you pick (it's really just a scheme for getting more revenue, of course). I can also choose (dependent on the vehicle, not all qualify) to pay for an extended registration period.

> They just choose not to disclose it.

I agree that they should disclose it. And they are required to by law. It's on the Monroney sticker, and it is included under "Total MSRP".

The destination fee is baked into the price in my experience. I recently priced used vs new cars, and every new car had the destination fee embedded in the advertised price. Customizing a car on the Kia website included the destination fee. No dealership in my metro tacked on an additional destination fee. The destination fee was line-itemed for total MSRP on the window sticker.

40 years ago, the Yugo was sold in the U. S. for $4500. I’m not questioning the truth of your story, but I think it a poor basis for arguing that cars should be $10K today. The dealer obviously was willing to take a loss to get those Chevys off the lot.

MSRP in 2010 (first I could easily find from around the same period—this was a couple years later) for the worst Chevy Aveo was under $5,000, and MSRP was rather more aspirational (bullshitty) then than it seems to be now, as far as what cars actually sell for. This wasn't even that big a mark-down from MSRP.

I don't think so... I vividly remember Nissan running commercials for the Versa in late 2008 during the darkest depths of the recession because it was one of the last models selling in the US for under $10k (like $9,990 if you got the manual transmission, etc.). There was also the Smart Fortwo, but it was a two-seater.

This page from KBB says that the 2008 Chevy Aveo "had a starting MSRP of $10,610 when new." https://www.kbb.com/chevrolet/aveo/2008/

However, KBB's page for the 2008 Versa also says that it "had a starting MSRP of $14,025 when new" so maybe you're right? Maybe they're adjusting for inflation? It was a crazy time, obviously, with deflation so maybe there were huge discounts.

Oh weird, maybe my source was fucked then. I did find it generally hard to find any reliable-seeming info about historical car MSRPs, which seems... odd? It's strange the ways the Web fails to provide certain information (or rather, in this case, I expect it's the way modern search engines fail to surface the information we're looking for).

I bought my only-ever (and probably last-ever, as I can't stomach the prices now) new car as a 2012 Nissan Sentra, and I think it was around $14k and was definitely a way, way better car than the infamous Chevy Aveo (and a big step up from the Versa in size, power, et c., for that matter).

Agreed. The Web seems to have a shorter memory than many of us like to think, and ironically seems to be getting shorter.

Your source is wrong. No one was selling new cars in 2010 for $5000. (Source: me, and my memory isn't that bad yet.) That's the reason I brought up the Yugo: in order to sell a new car for $5000 in 1985, 25 years prior to your Aveo example, a company had to buy the leftover tooling of the Fiat 128 (one of the biggest pieces of shit I've ever owned) and cut even more corners.

So 25 years on, without even looking anything up, it's pretty reasonable to assume no one was selling a car for that same price and adding airbags and ABS for the U. S. market. But if one insists on a source, Motortrend said they sold for around $12K in 2010: https://www.motortrend.com/cars/chevrolet/aveo/2010/

The dealer should do that. However the manufacture cannot do that - they are advertising to people all over the country - some of live next to the factory and some who live across the continent.

And yet the destination fee is the same no matter where you are. If you buy a Chrysler Pacifica in Detroit, 15 miles from the assembly plant, you get to pay the same $1595 destination fee as someone 2000 miles away in Los Angeles.

Since the fee doesn’t actually reflect anything related to cost of delivery, it’s hard to see it as anything other than hiding part of the MSRP so that they can lie about cheaper prices in advertisements.