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The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

(www.wsj.com)
152 points voisin | 1 comments | 17 Nov 24 23:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.363s | 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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torginus ◴[18 Nov 24 16:32 UTC] No.42174015[source]▶
I honestly don't get it - the median income in the US is like $35k - assuming people don't want to drive vehicles older than a decade, do people really spend a sixth of their total income on cars?

In Europe the numbers are even worse. I'm fairly convinced only rich people and businesses buy new cars

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1. epistasis ◴[18 Nov 24 16:38 UTC] No.42174078[source]▶
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.