The $25k car is going extinct?

Last year we bought a car.

While not being a petrol head I was still living in a lala land where you could buy a brand new car for 10k EUR. Nothing fancy, just "a car". Obviously it turned out to be not true.

After some digging it turned out that in the last 10 years the price of cars went double. Literally double. Same car, like Fiat Panda, with the same engine and configuration, that ten years was worth one potato is now worth exactly two potato.

Long story short, the entry level car now costs close to 25k EUR. [1]

But here's the kicker.

While subvenstions seem to fail in most cases for regular people - like gvt giving people money to buy apartements equals to apartments being equally more expensive - it seems to work wonders for automotive thanks to Chinese.

EU offers up to 10k EUR subvention for electric cars and with that in mind you can get something like BYD Dolphin for slighly less than 20k EUR. Which is mind blowing. The car is comparable to Volvo XC40. Of course this is just an example and there is plentiful of other options.

[1] If you're not familiar or comfortable with EUR just think 1 EUR is 1 USD and you'll be fine.

I'd never seen the word "subvention" before. Today I learned it's another way to say "subsidy".

On the other hand you could have bought a mint condition E30 late model for $10k euro.

Yes, but repair costs haven't gone down and the E30 will need maintenance and repair at $10k euro. Time without a car or an unreliable car also doesn't work for most working people these days.

It's a europeanism. In both French and German (and probably other EU languages) the word for "subsidy" is something like "subvention" so native speakers of these language often reach for an unnatural word in English.

Btw other examples include "actually" which is used to mean "currently", and "eventually" which is used to mean "maybe".

Personally I'm torn whether to consider this incorrect use of the language as it is quite widespread. Maybe it would be better to consider this as the emergence of a new dialect.

I'm really sorry, engrish is really hard

You are correct.

I actually double checked the word "subvention" on google to see if I'm not misspelling it and the results said I was correct. But yes, I used that word because it was direct translation from my language.

Other examples you gave are also correct.

Engrish is hard.

EDIT: as a kicker I will add that while working for BigCo I was resposible for taking care of colleages coming from abroad and the very first thing I was telling them after saying "hello" was "do not ever ask anyone how are you". ;)

It's probably a new dialect if speakers of it understand each other, and also understand when usages of their dialect are wrong.

European flavored English has existed for a while though since the existence of the EU as an institution has required a lot of English learning and writing as one of its official languages.

oh, and to add to your vocabulary - the word pathetic, especially around Elbonia, can be used with the intention of saying something is full of "pathos".

One thing that throws me off even after a decade in Finland is people saying “we are ready” or “you are ready” when they mean “done”.

English being just one of the official EU languages would not have mattered much. No one is picking up Portuguese or Polish, even though they are also official languages and have been for a long time.

The important fact is that English is the lingua franca of both trade and administration in the EU. People sometimes still learn some French and German, but the vast majority of international EU discussions are in English, both in the EU bureaucracy and in business circles.

>EU offers up to 10k EUR subvention for electric cars and with that in mind you can get something like BYD Dolphin for slighly less than 20k EUR.

"The EU" does not offer subsidies for any car, some member states do (And I have never heard of a subsidy of 10k per car). On the contrary, Chinese cars are strongly tariffed by the EU.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, however, until someone provides a link, I label this post "hyperbullshit".

Dinner is ready when it is done. I'm sure there are others in English as well.

Yep it’s “subvención” in Spanish.

> EU offers up to 10k EUR subvention for electric cars and with that in mind you can get something like BYD Dolphin for slighly less than 20k EUR. Which is mind blowing.

BYD Dolphin? MSRP for that car where I am is at 2.99m JPY(17k EUR, 20k USD). You guys are getting screwed.

> the word for "subsidy" is something like "subvention" so native speakers of these language often reach for an unnatural word in English.

A Google search for subvention turns up government publications from UK, India and South Africa.

Chinese EVs are certainly strongly tariffed. The below Reuters article highlights how BYD are apparently shifting to plug-in hybrid sales to avoid the 27% tariff the EU imposes on its pure battery electric vehicles (plug-in hybrids attract a reduced 10% tariff).

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/chines...

Yeah, a thing can be ready to be used/eaten/etc. What confuses me sometimes is, for example, a doctor writing some notes on their computer and then saying to me "now you are ready", meaning that we're done and I can go.

The UK discontinued EV direct subsidy, and the Dolphin is still only £17k. Chinese economics is just built different. I am extremely tempted to try one.

Have a car that's effectively uninsurable and then spend months sourcing parts that are not chinesium whenever something breaks? For the same 10k you can get F30 which is not even in the same league as a daily people mover and is actually repairable.

A car without isofix, adaptive cruise and worse crash safety.

Yeah it's a real word but it's not commonly used by native speakers.

Yeah. It was only just pre covid, 2019 you could get a new panda for ~10k eur. I think a lot is the push to go electric.

Governments want manufacturers to sell like 25%+ electric cars and customer won't buy so many if they can get a 10k petrol instead.

Are we just lying for fun now?

It's just a comment generated by some trash AI

"Eventually" is the worst false friend I think. Because in english it implies certainty while in latin languages it only implies possibility. But since the meanings are so close, it looks legit in context 90% of the time.

"Actually" does look out of place when used in english with the latin meaning so it's safer.

> Long story short, the entry level car now costs close to 25k EUR. [1]

Just this February I bought brand new 2024 Clio for ~17k EUR, gas+LPG. At least until July it was super easy to get even better deals on small/compact cars with ICE engine. Hybrid engines are closer to 25k EUR.

No it's only HNers and their lack of humour. It's a joke and the hint is "Elbonia".

Some already consider this a new dialect. It's called Euro English[1]. There are some more examples in that wikipedia article. Not just synonyms, but grammar as well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English

Interestingly, it has kind of spread into standard Irish English now, as well. Used very frequently when talking about government subsidies.

Higher transport costs, plus very large tariffs on Chinese electric cars. The EU believes (quite accurately), that there wouldn't be much of a EV industry if they let the real prices stand on their own. So there's the big tariff, and a rebate that blanks it, but also subsidizes the EU competitor.

>After some digging it turned out that in the last 10 years the price of cars went double. Literally double. Same car, like Fiat Panda, with the same engine and configuration, that ten years was worth one potato is now worth exactly two potato.

You communicated the concept perfectly. Anyone holding onto a pile of say 10k cash in 2015 have exactly 5k cash value in 2025. But here's a hidden kicker. Storing any functional vehicle in cheap storage is turning out to be a sold form of investing.

In that context, my response would be "ready for what?"

Dinner being ready, my car being ready (at a mechanic), things like that have proper context that being ready means being done.

I'm an English as single language pleb though

I pay $130 a month to insure my E30. All OEM parts are 98% available and you can do tons of repairs yourself if you're so inclined, it's the Thinkpad of cars. I've run my E30 with raised suspension and some hardcore winter tires and I got through some insanely tough northern winters no problem. I get all my parts via FCPEuro. Here [0] you can see all parts in the car in a 3D way along with prices. Also has a Bentley service manual making maintenance a breeze. Brilliant car/community. Also gets 7.0L/100KM 40 years later.

[0] https://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/partgrp?id=1113-USA-04-1991...

A used Renault Twingo II with AC cost around 5k€ if you want "just a car"

I was talking about a brand new car at the dealership.

A used car is completely different can of worms.

here's a list of words that will help you communicate better with Elbonians:

  sympathetic - pleasent
  pathetic - exalted
  eventually - alternatively
  actually - currently
  lecture - reading
  fabric - factory