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: 0s | 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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navane ◴[18 Nov 24 00:22 UTC] No.42168574[source]▶

>>42168473 #

Is the car 10k more expensive because of inflation or is the inflation so high because the car costs 10k more?

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1. kjksf ◴[18 Nov 24 17:25 UTC] No.42174633[source]▶

>>42168574 #

Inflation is a shit metric because it's easily manipulated.

The cost of a GB of hard drive is failing spectacularly. The price of health care went up much more than the price of eggs. So what is the "real" inflation?

Government gets to pick what they use to define inflation so they can manipulate "inflation" numbers. And manipulate they do.

What you should look at is money printing: how much money did the government print. This is about 8% yearly for US.

This money debasement is eventually reflected in prices.

Some things get cheaper, because we can produce them more efficiently (like hard drives). Some things get even more expensive than 8% because we produce them less efficiently (health care insurance or college diplomas).

So to answer your question: cars costs more mostly because the government prints money, which devalues your dollars and car makers are not getting more efficient at making cars to counter currency debasement.

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