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The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

(www.wsj.com)
152 points voisin | 4 comments | 17 Nov 24 23:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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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rootusrootus ◴[18 Nov 24 00:10 UTC] No.42168514[source]▶
> the EV car market is lacking demand

There is scant evidence for this. Every time prices improve, sales surge. Sounds like the demand is there, but price matters. As it always has.

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cosmic_cheese ◴[18 Nov 24 00:18 UTC] No.42168553[source]▶
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.

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1. JKCalhoun ◴[18 Nov 24 15:33 UTC] No.42173300[source]▶
> The first to fill these niches with affordable models...

And is not tariffed to the point they are not competitive.

I'm on the fence as to whether tariffs are good or bad, but I do wonder if an external player might not be able to come in and shake up the US auto industry.

I feel like the working class in the U.S. are paying way too much for what amounts to a necessity for their livelihood: the automobile. We'd all benefit (the planet that is) if the options included inexpensive electrics rather than merely gas and diesel.

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2. DCH3416 ◴[18 Nov 24 16:27 UTC] No.42173970[source]▶
What would really help the working class is building out actual forms of transportation beyond private automobiles. That way we're not subject to a single point of failure in our ability to move around. Maybe warm up to the idea of ebikes for getting around town, and bring back some trams for city to city connections. Then you can free up the roads for actual useful transit.

The US is one crisis away from our expensive to maintain road infrastructure being unsustainable. The American people are one crisis away from their $60k SUV being worth nothing and still owing a four figure note against it. They're also one fuel crisis away from being unable to pay to use it. And we don't really have any alternatives at a scale to handle those sorts of things.

We're really going to have egg on our face at some point. And the only option will be to import affordable EVs the rest of the world has been building and developing.

3. cosmic_cheese ◴[18 Nov 24 16:32 UTC] No.42174014[source]▶
Economics is not my field, but I’d reason that tariffs can be useful if they’re used as a scalpel instead of as a sledgehammer.

So for example, if the goal is to stimulate domestic automakers to be more competitive without unnecessarily risking killing them off entirely, a moderate tariff that pushes the price of ultra cheap foreign cars up to a level that’s reasonably achievable by the domestic automakers but still well below the average price could be a good thing.

Where tariffs are just plain bad is when they’re so high that domestic manufacturers don’t even have to think about trying to compete and can continue to drive up prices unabated.

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4. JKCalhoun ◴[19 Nov 24 00:14 UTC] No.42178755[source]▶
Then perhaps we lift tariffs on sub-$20K cars. Let the Big-3 sell luxury cars to the wealthy.