The $25k car is going extinct?

I don't know why inflation is dismissed so quickly. The article lists the industry average price increase as 29.2% and the inflation value I got out of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator[1] was 26.2%. So sure, "this isn’t just a case of inflation affecting the entire vehicle market" [emphasis mine], but it is mostly that.

[1] - https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

Retail inflation is based on the prices of goods, including new cars.

So it's pointless to compare car prices to inflation because they are part of the basis of the measure. Hence why they track closely.

Then it’s pointless to compare nearly anything to inflation, which means inflation isn’t very useful. You can still find many product categories increasing in price more slowly than inflation. Some much higher than inflation. So it is useful to compare inflation

But the question we're asking is why the price of cars went up. "Inflation" isn't an answer. Inflation is what we call the price of cars going up. It still happens for a reason...

Inflation is a result of too much money being created than what is needed by the growth of the economy. Average price increase that we use to estimate it is just a useful proxy.

Inflation is always the main contribution to price increase. It only makes sense to compare price raise above or below inflation if you want to unearth factors specific to any given product or industry.

Inflation is completely possible with no change in money supply. This is handled in economics with the idea of the "velocity of money" which conceptually captures the large range of factors by which prices can increase due to factors beyond money supply, for example an energy price shock or changing consumer and business expectations that result in changes in spending and investment patterns.

In theory, sure. But in practice the money supply has nearly quadrupled since 2005.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/m2.asp

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

$1 in Jan 2005 is only 1.69 today, not $4 because the velocity of money has decreased dramatically as it has pooled towards the top of the income/wealth spectrum where it doesn't get spent or productively invested.