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The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

(www.wsj.com)
152 points voisin | 3 comments | 17 Nov 24 23:52 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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bartvk ◴[18 Nov 24 00:05 UTC] No.42168473[source]▶
https://archive.ph/9oIT4

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.

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AgentOrange1234 ◴[18 Nov 24 00:21 UTC] No.42168570[source]▶
If even ICE cars are now super expensive, why isn’t this a screaming opportunity for some auto manufacturer to target the low end of the market?

I’ve never spent more than 20k for a car. With prices like this, I’m just going to keep my old one as long as I can.

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lmm ◴[18 Nov 24 00:58 UTC] No.42168743[source]▶
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?

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1. voisin ◴[18 Nov 24 03:55 UTC] No.42169592[source]▶
I don’t think companies are penalized for producing small cars so much as larger vehicles like trucks and SUVs are incentivized to become larger to sit outside the rules as commercial vehicles even though everyone knows that only a small percentage are used for commercial purposes.
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2. millerm ◴[18 Nov 24 14:24 UTC] No.42172519[source]▶
Exactly. The large gas guzzling, glorified grocery getters are just an easy out for manufacturers to subvert the requirements made for smaller vehicles (which was completely short-sited, or it was planned by lobbyists). It was simply easier for these companies to continue doing what they were doing with what they had. Give a company and alternative that costs them nothing, then they will do nothing. We need a new fuel standard. A truck or SUV purchased after <some date> then you pay an extra $<some dollar amount> per gallon. Yeah, I know the implementation is a problem, but I am simply throwing out an idea. Perhaps they yearly registration is now an extra $2000/year. They already screw EV owners in many states. I pay an extra $220 a year for my car, and that is ridiculous. I have owned my car for 5 1/2 years, and I have 24k miles on it. This tax is completely unfair and has no basis in reality for "road tax".
3. kube-system ◴[18 Nov 24 14:50 UTC] No.42172779[source]▶
> I don’t think companies are penalized for producing small cars

They are. CAFE target formulas have the footprint of the vehicle(s) in the denominator. Larger footprint = easier fuel economy targets

https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/cafe-ghg_my_2012...