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.

If you're an American wondering why you're forced to buy shitty overpriced Teslas instead of those $15k BYD Dolphins, here's Janet Yellen screeching about how unfair it is that China uses its labor force to manufacture consumer goods instead of creating millions of bullshit make-work financialization jobs like good liberal democracies https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/yellen-intends-warn-...

I would never, EVER, buy any BYD or any car manufactured in China. Support local brands who manufacture locally.

> Support local brands who manufacture locally.

There are none. The Model Y is the closest with 70% of it made in either the US or Canada (the law does not require them to break it down to US only...) Every other car available for sale in the US has more than 30% manufactured outside of the US or Canada. And the big 3 are some of the worst offenders for offshoring their manufacturing out of the US.

There are several vehicle models such as the Tesla Model 3 which have >70% North American parts content.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/part-583-american-automobile-labeling-...

Ah, I used a third party source which was missing the Model 3 Long Range specifically, which is 75%. Maybe it was not listed because it is limited to that one trim. Then there's the Model Y and the Model 3 Performance at 70%. All other American brand vehicles are < 70% and most are 20-40%

The top vehicle from the big 3 is the Ford F150 at a whopping 45% US/Canada.

My point is that if you buy any car in the US, you are buying a vehicle with significant foreign manufactured content.