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: 0.209s | source

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bartvk ◴[18 Nov 24 00:05 UTC] No.42168473[source]▶

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]▶

>>42168473 #

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. hansvm ◴[18 Nov 24 16:53 UTC] No.42174252[source]▶

>>42174015 #

> 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.

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