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The $25k car is going extinct?

(media.hubspot.com)
319 points pseudolus | 18 comments | 29 Jun 25 15:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.479s | source | bottom
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zeroq ◴[30 Jun 25 03:06 UTC] No.44418882[source]▶
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.

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tricolon ◴[30 Jun 25 03:11 UTC] No.44418925[source]▶
I'd never seen the word "subvention" before. Today I learned it's another way to say "subsidy".
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1. ml_basics ◴[30 Jun 25 04:00 UTC] No.44419227[source]▶
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.

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2. zeroq ◴[30 Jun 25 04:10 UTC] No.44419269[source]▶
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". ;)

3. bobthepanda ◴[30 Jun 25 04:10 UTC] No.44419272[source]▶
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.

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4. zeroq ◴[30 Jun 25 04:23 UTC] No.44419348[source]▶
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".
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5. freetonik ◴[30 Jun 25 04:32 UTC] No.44419402[source]▶
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”.
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6. tsimionescu ◴[30 Jun 25 04:42 UTC] No.44419463[source]▶
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.

7. jonah ◴[30 Jun 25 05:07 UTC] No.44419625[source]▶
Dinner is ready when it is done. I'm sure there are others in English as well.
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8. Xenoamorphous ◴[30 Jun 25 05:08 UTC] No.44419627[source]▶
Yep it’s “subvención” in Spanish.
9. unmole ◴[30 Jun 25 05:17 UTC] No.44419668[source]▶
> 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.

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10. ◴[30 Jun 25 05:31 UTC] No.44419760[source]▶
11. freetonik ◴[30 Jun 25 05:37 UTC] No.44419789{3}[source]▶
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.
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12. disgruntledphd2 ◴[30 Jun 25 06:20 UTC] No.44420048[source]▶
Yeah it's a real word but it's not commonly used by native speakers.
13. thaumasiotes ◴[30 Jun 25 07:02 UTC] No.44420318[source]▶
Are we just lying for fun now?
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14. nottorp ◴[30 Jun 25 07:45 UTC] No.44420549[source]▶
"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.

15. nottorp ◴[30 Jun 25 07:46 UTC] No.44420560{3}[source]▶
No it's only HNers and their lack of humour. It's a joke and the hint is "Elbonia".
16. iib ◴[30 Jun 25 07:56 UTC] No.44420622[source]▶
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

17. rsynnott ◴[30 Jun 25 09:11 UTC] No.44421107[source]▶
Interestingly, it has kind of spread into standard Irish English now, as well. Used very frequently when talking about government subsidies.
18. conductr ◴[30 Jun 25 15:36 UTC] No.44424592{4}[source]▶
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