The $25k car is going extinct?

I work on my own cars now (as a hobby really) and one of the reasons the new cars are so expensive is they are much more complicated. A lot of this seems to be over-engineering IMO. This is alluded to in the article, but not explicitly stated.

The cars I work on are from the early 90s and everything is very simple to understand.

e.g. Electronics are normally simple circuits that aren't much more complicated than what you would find in a door bell and finding faults is normally just tracing wires and using a multi-meter. I had issues with the brake lights / reverse lights not working, the issue turned out that the spade like connector in the fuse box was pushed through and was making partial contact. Price to fix this was £0.

EDIT: Just remembered this isn't accurate. I had to buy a new reverse light. The entire reverse light assembly was ~£20. So the price to fix was about £20. The light assembly itself was like a big bicycle light.

My newer car needs a OB-II scanner to diagnose anything with a phone app. While this is arguably quicker it can be misleading. Sometimes it will be telling you that something is malfunctioning but it is really the sensor itself. These sensors are £200-£300 a piece. Replacing 4 glow plug sensors cost me £800. I was paying essentially to make the "you must service your engine" light to go away. There was nothing wrong with engine itself.

Yes, if they would make a basic car like in the past I would buy it. Everyone has to sell you too much, I want a simple car, I don't want either the stereo, I will add my own later (I can put it one that is better than the factory one for a cheaper price, but in a modern car replacing the stereo is almost impossible). There are a ton of useless sensors, the sensor that tells you if you have a flat tire (I think I can notice myself), the emergency call button (while everyone has a mobile phone these days), automatic regulating seats (pulling a lever is too much difficult), dual zone clima control (it's the same space in the same car, why I would want to set 2 different temperatures?), etc.

And in all this useless things that they put in a car, they no longer provide you with a spare tire, just an useless repair kit...

Some of those “useless” sensors like tire pressure or backup camera are required by law. Even if you get a bare bones hatchback (manual transmission, manual locks, manual windows etc.) they’ll be forced to include those.

They are required by law in no small part because car manufacturers want it to be. Compliance is a moat.

Rearview cameras are effective: https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/bibliography/ref/2130

I agree with having simpler SKUs, but rearview camera is not where to start

Funny story about this.

There was a woman who backed over her own kid in the driveway. For some reason, she was not imprisoned for vehicular manslaughter. So instead of not being in prison, she spent the next half decade lobbying congress to make backup cameras mandatory. And it happened. So now everyone's car costs $3k more.

It would have been cheaper to put her imprison than impose a $3k cost per every car sold in America since 2018.

Lots more people need to be imprisoned for manslaughter, and lots of people need their license taken away for "backing crashes".