The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

I can't believe that the average price of a car in the U.S. is almost $50k. For rapidly depreciating assets.

Here I am working out TCO costs for a range of mid-sized cars for my next purchase, and trying to decide if the extra $2k for a Prius Prime over a Prius will beat the differential in fuel costs for my driving situation. I feel like a chump, but I know it's the smarter thing to do with my money.

I coworker of mine just spent $100k on a regular old pickup truck that is planned to spend less than 5% of the time doing anything other than commuting him back and forth to work. It doesn't fit in any of the parking garages around here, or in his garage -- he has to park it at the other side of a surface lot because it doesn't fit in the normal spots. It gets like 11 mpg and uses the 92 octane fuel.

Americans won't buy cheap cars, they won't buy upmarket small cars, but they'll burn their children's college fund into the ground for a 2 second gain on 0-60 and bad ergonomics.

I can afford the fancy car, but I'd rather turn $100k into $200k in my index funds and buy an entire apartment in Spain overlooking the Mediterranean with the gains.

We can have nice things, but this is why we can't have affordable things.

Some Americans. The average car in the US is 12 years old. I just checked my local craigslist, most cars of that age are under 10k, and almost none are more than 20k. Since that is average we can assume cars of that age will run (with maintenance) for another decade and so shouldn't be very expensive. Of course at that age almost nothing is electric.

I do think part of it is how darned long cars last now.

I have an 18 year old car that I purchased used long ago and currently has no mechanical issues. I've had a few repairs but nothing terribly expensive. I have no interest in replacing it.

When you think about it, people who are frugal will buy practical and cost effective cars and drive them for a decade or more (that is, if they buy a car at all!). That means they either never buy new at all, or when they do they do so only seldom.

People who are chasing the new shiny will continue to churn through new shiny. And of course they want to pay a lot to get only the shiniest.

So I can see why the average new car cost would creep up, because buying a new car at all is a luxury in most cases.

The difference is that new cars are safe cars. Old cars are death traps.

If you value your life you will be buying the new shiny every 5 years or less.

It is one of those 'was it really that long ago? I am getting old' moments to actually look this up, but the last major safety features which moved the needle on keeping you alive in a car were the mandates for side-impact protection and anti-lock braking systems. Both are more than ten years old.

I think you would be hard-pressed to name a single innovation from the past five years which has increased your lifespan in a car as either a driver or a passenger. Given the fact that things like adaptive braking, lane-following assist, and blind-spot sensors are old enough to be showing up in low-end cars these days I cannot name a single new or shiny safety feature which would not be available in a mid-tier car from 2014. Can you?