It has been my experience that people who talk about cars are lying to themselves.
They say they want one thing, but buy another.
They claim they want a manual transmission and then buy a RAV4.
They claim they want a sports sedan and then buy a RAV4.
They claim they want a station wagon and then buy a RAV4.
They claim they want a base, cheap, simple, vehicle and then they drop $55k on a fully-equipped RAV4 Hybrid.
Be weird. It's ok. Do the dumb thing and follow your desire.
And you can hedge your bets. I bought, used, a manual transmission convertible sports car, a sports sedan (red, even!), and capacious station wagon for all of my Home Depot needs all for less than the price of RAV4 Hybrid and between the three I always have at least one functional vehicle!
Knork-and-Fife · 1h ago
I think a lot of people do want these things, but car buying is not always up to just one person. It's often a decision made in the context of a family or group who will share a vehicle or otherwise have input on the buying decision.
These studies should be surveying these groups instead of individuals I think. Sometimes the "group" will just be one person, and that's okay. But I wouldn't want someone's opinion if they're making it on behalf of a group without the groups input, because that's not realistic
potato3732842 · 1h ago
Exactly. And this is the "magic" behind the Jeep Wrangler. It's the person driving it who you have to please but buyers have all these other spurious "requirements" forced upon them.
So they went out and built a 2dr jeep with a shitty 2nd row so people can pretend like it's optimized for people hauling and sell the "lifestyle car" they really wanted to their SO. They retained the soft top and manual at non-insignificant cost to appeal to additional swaths of buyers and then added a hybrid option as a checkbox exercise.
It's kind of beautiful if you think about it.
arprocter · 57m ago
When it comes to Wranglers they used to only do 2 doors, but then they introduced the 4 door which is supposedly now 90% of the sales (I'm guessing the extra doors make it easier to compete with other SUVs)
Anecdotal, but I've also noticed way more 4 door new Broncos and new Defenders around than the 2 doors
dingaling · 59m ago
> And you can hedge your bets [ with multiple vehicles ]
In many countries that's unaffordable. In the UK I pay £350 per year car tax, £480 insurance and £50 mandatory roadworthiness testing. Best part of a grand before I've even driven a mile - and the UK is considered cheap in Europe. In Ireland the tax alone would be over £1000.
My partner pays about the same for her 20 year old petrol Honda SUV. Ironically if she chose the filthy, carcinogen-spewing diesel model she'd pay just £40 in tax, so it's little wonder that people compromise.
chithanh · 1h ago
Is it like coffee? People say they want a coffee with a strong flavor but they then proceed to mask the coffee flavor by adding milk and sugar (or plant-based creamer and artificial sweetener).
potato3732842 · 1h ago
Nobody can afford to "follow their desire" at new car price points so everyone buys blob SUVs that are the best bang for your buck.
natch · 1h ago
Great post.
I think also in life your opening line can be generalized to:
It has been my experience that people .. are lying to themselves.
SoftTalker · 1h ago
Exactly what I do. I own 6 cars. I didn't pay more for all of them combined than the cost of one new car.
SketchySeaBeast · 1h ago
With 6 cars, how's the insurance cost?
os2warpman · 15m ago
Everyone's driving record and location is different, but on my three paid-for used cars liability-only is less than comprehensive on one cheap new car.
It helps that I haven't had a claim in 30 years.
SoftTalker · 1h ago
I have liability only, none of them are worth insuring for loss. Multi-car discount, and a couple of them I don't drive in the winter so I suspend the insurance for those.
anon7725 · 1h ago
How’s the registration cost? Where do you store them? How much does it cost/how much time do you spend keeping up with all of the regular maintenance?
AlotOfReading · 1h ago
The complete abandonment of budget models in the US is completely foreseeable from market dynamics and how the industry is structured.
1. Economies of scale are the only way to build a budget car.
2. The incremental costs of adding features are nearly zero. The vast majority of price comes from the basic costs of building a legal vehicle.
3. Buyers generally won't reject a car for having features they don't care about, but they'll frequently reject a car for lacking a feature they deem important.
4. Buyers have different preferences.
In order to sell at a low price, automakers have to sell as many as possible to hit massive economies of scale. In order to sell that many, they need to please a huge number of buyers, which means they add a whole bunch of cheap features to satisfy as many buyers as they can without cannibalizing their higher-tier offerings.
The other side of this is the price point that western OEMs can actually hit with economies of scale has climbed significantly in recently decades, in part due to inflation / wage pressures, but mainly due to massive institutional inefficiencies. Mary Barra's compensation alone adds several dollars to the price of each GM vehicle. Legally mandated dealer margins and fees add tens of percent to the price that consumers pay. The inefficiencies of spreading production for tax purposes across state and international borders adds more cost. So on and so forth, and the market feedback mechanisms to correct these issues are intentionally hampered by policy decisions to favor the current status quo.
Change in the market needs support at the regulatory level.
lenerdenator · 1h ago
Don't forget the way we handle fuel economy standards in the US... or did, given the way those regulations are being repealed for some reason.
Petroleum is a critical resource and most countries manage its use in automobiles for fuel in a fairly direct way: They tax the living shit out of gasoline and diesel. If you use more, you pay more. You have incentive to buy a smaller, more basic car because they will ultimately cost you less.
But not here. We gave exceptions on light trucks because that's all the big three could competently produce back when fuel economy standards were being introduced and we were getting our brains beaten in by the Japanese. Making more fuel-efficient vehicles requires R&D, and R&D spend is money not sent to a shareholder. Since the bigger vehicles don't count towards CAFE and smaller vehicles do, guess which vehicles the big three push harder to consumers?
AlotOfReading · 58m ago
That's a factor, though it's worth pointing out that California and Canada both have fuel taxes substantially higher than other parts of North America and light trucks/SUVs continue to outsell sedans significantly. Fuel taxes aren't irrelevant (sedans sell relatively better there than in other regions), but it's overwhelmed by buyer preference.
afavour · 1h ago
In addition to this I think financing plays a huge factor. If an extra feature adds $2,000 to the cost of a car people will think twice. If it adds $5 to a car payment (that's already astronomical if you add it up, which they won't) they'll shrug and sign on the line.
csours · 1h ago
> 3. Buyers generally won't reject a car for having features they don't care about, but they'll frequently reject a car for lacking a feature they deem important.
4. Buyers have different preferences.
Yup. I don't care about the radio, and you don't care about manual windows, but you care about the radio, and I care about manual windows.
hobofan · 1h ago
5. Americans widely have a high willingness to (over)spend on cars paired with a high affinity for debt
drweevil · 2h ago
My number one requirement is that any car that I buy is mine. No subscriptions. No calling back to the mothership. No spying on my activities or driving skills. I'd like to be able to repair it too, or at least be able to take it to the mechanic of my choice. This is a somewhat different desire than simply K.I.S.S.--and wasn't addressed in the article--though I wouldn't mind that either.
jacquesm · 1h ago
These are the exact reasons my car is now 28 years old. It's not like I can't afford a new one but I want a vehicle, not a piece of malware on wheels.
pryelluw · 1h ago
What do you drive if you do t mind me asking?
Fellow older car driver here. I have a 91 Mustang.
sleepyguy · 1h ago
2006 Lexus IS350, 2007 Toyota Avalon, 2010 Toyota Venza. My in-laws have a 2000 4Runner that I still need to drive into the ground, but I'm not sure if I will be able to do it since it refuses to die (325k miles). All the vehicles are immaculate and have at least a decade or more left in them. I plan to drive them all, as long as they continue to sell gasoline.
ourmandave · 1h ago
Yeah, this. I drove my daughter's 09 Pontiac Vibe and trying to flip the mirror, accidentally hit OnStar and they answered, even though she never had a subscription.
After all the niceties and "no, I hadn't been in an accident", I was afraid to touch the mirror after that.
0cf8612b2e1e · 1h ago
Is that even possible on a modern vehicle? I thought all of the major brands were now selling your location data.
natch · 1h ago
People who would buy such data don’t care about getting it for every individual. They’re perfectly happy if they can get it for merely 99.999% of people, and that they can do with cellphone app data.
So they don’t need car data. My car maker does not sell its data nor does it link car locations with car owners. Although it could do so, but not without some bad PR or legal risks of doing it secretly after having made assurances that it doesn’t do it.
But that gets back to who would buy it? Nobody. They already have all the data they need from phones.
lenerdenator · 1h ago
I've heard you can yank a fuse/relay/antenna and avoid it but would like confirmation of that.
bityard · 1h ago
Maybe in some cars, but certainly not all. I have a 2021 Highlander. We have no subscription to anything related to the car itself, but there is definitely a mobile connection sending data back to the mothership every time the car is turned on. I know this, because A) Toyota's manuals/literature say they do this, and B) There's an icon on the "infotainment" screen showing the signal strength.
All car manufacturers are extremely vague about what data they are sending, but you can assume it's basically everything: GPS location, speed, engine and maintenance data, control inputs (accelerator, brake, light switches), even seat occupancy. (Yep, mine has seat sensors for that.)
I spent several hours researching how to disable this thing and there is very little information on doing so for my exact year/model. What little info I did find says there's no easy and simple way. The fuse for it powers several other things. There is a module you can disconnect somewhere deep in the dash, but you lose other functionality like Bluetooth. And the car will probably constantly warn you about a failed module and turn your check engine light on.
My best guess right now is to find out where cell antenna is and bridge it with a 50-ohm resistor. (But that is not necessarily bulletproof either as dummy loads can still transmit, just with greatly reduced output.)
I have read that car manufacturers make these systems intentionally hard to disable because each one is a perpetual stream of income for them for as long as the car is on the road: They sell the data to data brokers who then re-sell it to insurers and various other customer profiling companies.
According to my Vehicle Privacy Support (https://vehicleprivacyreport.com), LexisNexis is the data broker that Toyota uses. I submitted Consumer Disclosure Report with them and 6 weeks later, a snail-mail letter arrived saying they were not going to disclose any of my information to me.
lenerdenator · 18m ago
> According to my Vehicle Privacy Support (https://vehicleprivacyreport.com), LexisNexis is the data broker that Toyota uses. I submitted Consumer Disclosure Report with them and 6 weeks later, a snail-mail letter arrived saying they were not going to disclose any of my information to me.
What legal recourse would you have? They've got data on you, you'd think that at the very least they would be obligated to show it to you for a reasonable price.
OptionOfT · 1h ago
That used to work. Not anymore. Now that we have embedded SIMs and integrated GPS/Cellular antennas pulling the fuse does a lot more than just disabling sending back data.
It also kills a very important safety feature, the one that auto-calls 911/112/999/... when you get into an accident.
inahga · 1h ago
2023 Jeep: I was able to remove the cellular modem from the head unit. Disconnecting the antenna was not effective (just reduces the range).
At least 10 years ago you could remove the cable/bridge that connected the network board to the rest of the car. I'm not sure thats possible anymore. About 8 years ago you could get a fleet type vehicle that didn't include stuff like OnStar. Not sure thats possible anymore either.
CodingJeebus · 1h ago
Not really, all major auto manufacturers in the US AFAIK have trackers in their vehicles nowadays.
bityard · 1h ago
You could remove "in the US" from that statement and it would still be true. Japanese and Korean brands are doing the same thing. EU countries might have tighter data privacy laws, but I'm willing to bet their car industries know how to work around those. (Which can likely be as simple as getting the customer to sign a waiver in order to buy the car.)
giantg2 · 1h ago
I generally agree. I have an 8 year old work trim truck that doesn't have much tech in it. Im dreading the day I'll need to replace it. Hopefully I'll get another decade or so out of it.
zevon · 15m ago
There are many, many K.I.S.S. cars out there. They are used, old, cheap and can still run great. Personally, I really do not want to have a car with any kind of computerization (other than a basic ECU) and more complexity and weight than it absolutely needs to have. Fortunately, I'll be fine - I doubt the supply of old cars runs out before I shuffle off this mortal coil.
_fat_santa · 2h ago
A big part of this is economies of scale, the reason your cheap compact gets a digital guage cluster is that the cluster has already been engineered and tested and it's just cheaper to slap that in there instead of re-engineering.
But while it makes it cheaper for the manufacturer and ultimately cheaper for the buyer on the lot, it makes for much more expensive repairs. I'm looking at you Ford with your $1200 taillights.
potato3732842 · 1h ago
> I'm looking at you Ford with your $1200 taillights.
Those are not base equipment. But yeah the price is absurd.
thegrim33 · 2h ago
For an article about keeping cars simple they don't mention some really big things.
They present it as a choice between manual or electric seats, manual or electric buttons, etc., which are indeed valid items of discussion ..
But what about other expensive, complicated, things I want a choice to get rid of, major things I don't want to pay for, like .. auto stop-start, or the ability for the car to slam on the brakes by itself, or the ability for the car to decide to steer itself if it thinks I've strayed from the middle of the lane. Heck, I don't want a rear camera or blind spot monitoring, I'll check my blind spots myself. They're even working on mandating some sort of monitoring in the next few years to "detect" whether you might be drunk.
What are the costs of all those sorts of things? All the sensors? All the computers? All the design/coding? The costs for maintaining all of it? The cost of the extra complexity? No mention of any of that?
(Also don't get me started on the extra cost and complexity and loss of maintainability that emissions regulations have added to cars. They used to be dead simple and maintainable.)
Ambroos · 1h ago
Almost all of the other things you want to get rid of are legal requirements in some regions. Auto start-stop is generally to meet emissions targets. European safety regulations have made all of the following required on all new vehicles sold since mid 2024: AEB detecting cars/pedestrians/cyclists, intelligent speed assist, lane departure assist, reversing camera or sensors, drowsiness warning and a few others. For any car or platform that will at some point end up on the European market you can thus expect manufacturers to make all of these standard.
There's a cost attached to them, but it was decided that that cost is worth the significant benefits in road safety for both the people in the vehicle and the people around the vehicle.
unglaublich · 1h ago
The costs were always there, just externalized in the form of needless vulnerable road user injuries and deaths. Society pays a huge price for old, unsafe, polluting vehicles.
unglaublich · 1h ago
> [..] emissions regulations [..]
Emission regulations have reduced the cost of cars, if you count the health and environmental cost that manufacturers and drivers simply externalized onto the pulic.
Yes, it became more expensive for the polluter, but rightfully so.
bityard · 56m ago
Safety/emissions features are a much different animal than giant 15-inch touchscreens, seat warmers, persistent mobile data uplinks, and 25 buttons on the steering wheel.
Most of the things you listed are both a good idea and legally required.
lenerdenator · 1h ago
> But what about other expensive, complicated, things I want a choice to get rid of, major things I don't want to pay for, like .. auto stop-start, or the ability for the car to slam on the brakes by itself, or the ability for the car to decide to steer itself if it thinks I've strayed from the middle of the lane. Heck, I don't want a rear camera or blind spot monitoring, I'll check my blind spots myself. They're even working on mandating some sort of monitoring in the next few years to "detect" whether you might be drunk.
What are the costs of all those sorts of things? All the sensors? All the computers? All the design/coding? The costs for maintaining all of it? The cost of the extra complexity? No mention of any of that?
Depends. The rearview camera thing? Probably not that expensive at this point; development costs have been amortized. Sensors probably are a bit more expensive.
The thing that chaps my ass about it is that there's so little commonality among parts between models and makers. We're 40+ years into the microprocessor revolution and ECMs are still mostly bespoke designs that have closed code running on them. Why? One way to deal with the design/coding costs would be to simply spread it across more automotive manufacturers, because at the end of the day, most of them are trying to achieve the same goals with regards to the function of the component. It's like looking at the different lug nut patterns between automakers... there's only so many ways to mount a wheel on a hub and you could reduce the tooling cost to make those wheels if you shared it with someone else.
> (Also don't get me started on the extra cost and complexity and loss of maintainability that emissions regulations have added to cars. They used to be dead simple and maintainable.)
It's nice to have breathable air, no?
natch · 1h ago
You dying and/or killing and maiming others also has costs though. You present it as a one sided thing.
The keyboard you typed your message had a cost, yet apparently that was worthwhile so that all of us could contemplate your points.
darth_avocado · 1h ago
You didn’t talk about the biggest cost saver: not buying oversized SUVs. Cars got expensive because everyone was buying giant SUVs and smaller sedans and hatchbacks which usually covered 20-30k market, became less popular and therefore profitable to sell.
lenerdenator · 2h ago
Simple cars don't make money... well, all of the available money.
The complex ones do.
You can get John Q. Public to buy a basic, efficient, safe compact car with cloth seats... or you can use that same production line to build a full-sized truck with tons of non-essential electronics that costs three times as much, which then requires the buyer to take out a loan from your financial arm for 84 months.
Which one returns more value to the shareholders?
EDIT: "non-essential electronics" should be seen as huge displays and the like, not things like emissions controls or safety equipment.
csours · 1h ago
Disclosure: I work for General Motors, this is solely my own opinion and experience.
> Which one returns more value to the shareholders?
I think the 'shareholder primacy' era of American capitalism has had some particularly dumb and bad effects... unfortunately I can't change that just by being angry and anxious about it. The market loves tech companies right now, which really distorts the valuation of other companies.
I think that people still vastly underestimate how difficult it is to make a physical product, how much time and attention it takes.
I saw a presentation for assembling the Chevy Cruze in Lordstown, Ohio. There was a planned market size, production volume, etc, etc. The closest it got to the estimates (if I recall correctly) was about 1/2 to 2/3 the planned production volume. After the first couple of years of production, volume dropped more.
At 1/2 volume, the plant would never make money. The fixed costs simply eat too far into revenue. The lower the volume, the longer it takes to pay off things like engineering costs - not just for the OEM (GM, Ford, etc), but also for the suppliers. Suppliers often book substantial losses for the first couple years of a new product.
> Simple cars don't make money...
They really don't make money. On the very best day, a $30,000 simple car might make $1,000 net profit to the OEM, maybe another $500 to the dealer. On a median day, the initial sale might be a small loss.
Under capitalism, there is strong pressure to move upmarket. Under communism, most people never even got the simple car, and those who did get the simple car had to wait for many years.
lenerdenator · 21m ago
And yet, other companies are able to stay in business while making these vehicles, sometimes in countries with even more onerous business and labor environments than the United States.
LightBug1 · 1h ago
Not if that means I don't buy them at all, because I don't !
Still rolling in 2005 Toyota. Fuck modern cars! Excuse my French.
ckjellqv · 1h ago
I've thought for a long time that offering only electric vehicles with 200+ mile range as the base availability is overkill. I drive a short commute to work and then maybe 2mi to the grocery store and I have no other needs. Otherwise I take plane/train.
The common arguments I hear are
1. What if I need to take a roadtrip?
2. What if I don't have accessibility to a charger at home or work and need longer range to account for that.
Only (2) seems reasonable to me, but many do have access where they live. Seeing as the huge expense of EVs is batteries, I'd love the option of something with a much, much reduced battery (and the additional reduced feature sets the article mentions).
chithanh · 1h ago
The reasonable way is to buy a PHEV and use the fuel tank as range extender for occasional extended roadtrips or when chargers are unavailable. However that may or may not be desirable when it comes to regulatory concerns (taxes etc.).
ckjellqv · 28m ago
But even so, these extra tanks and ICE engines contribute to the cost and weight of the vehicle when the objective for me is to minimize cost given that I don't drive more than 100mi/wk. I could do with with 100mi of total range or less without need for an ICE generator.
for the people that want roadtrips and incredibly large range. Sadly it seems like many of the cars in the article are plopping ICE generators on top of EVs with already 300mi of range.
darksaints · 1h ago
I'm actually a huge fan of the extreme level of simplification that electric cars have to offer. They literally eliminate the need for thousands of high maintenance moving parts, and replace them with motors that can run hundreds of thousands of miles without service. Regenerative braking reduces brake wear and maintenance dramatically. 4 motor setups eliminate complex differentials and give you extremely high quality awd, traction control, and stability control, without any increase in mechanical complexity. You get better low-end torque output and smoother power curves. The only mechanical features that really remain the same are bearings and suspension components. Complexity still exists, it just has been offloaded to electronic complexity which has become orders of magnitude more reliable and capable in the last 4 decades.
So please, could we just have that? Just because it's easy for you to add internet connectivity doesn't mean I want it. I don't want my car to rat me out to megalomaniac dictators because my car company's psychotic CEO wants a sweetheart trade deal. I don't want my car to create data trails that will allow advertisers to see places that I frequently visit, regardless if that place is an oncologist or my friendly neighborhood dominatrix. I don't want my car to know my retinal data or fingerprints, to controllable via my phone, or to tell me that my resting heart rate is. Just give me a car, and let me do the rest on my own.
analyst74 · 2h ago
Do they not want those conveniences? Or are they tempering their expectations based on their budget and perceived cost?
If, let's say, a typical $30k car means a large EV SUV with all the luxury gadgets and conveniences, plus fridge, massage chair, full camping setup, etc. Would 30k car buyers not expect those things?
loloquwowndueo · 2h ago
I can afford an suv. That’s not the issue - I just find it ridiculous to move that much metal for a small family or one person. A regular sedan would do.
xyzelement · 1h ago
I used to think that way (small car is best) until I had a family. yes in theory you can fit a small family in a sedan but in reality - not being able to fit a suitcase + stroller + kids bike (or whatever) into the trunk at the same time, or having your wife strain her back bending down to strap the toddler into their seat - gets old quickly!
So in practice what happens if that if you have a family and can easily afford an SUV, you get the SUV to alleviate these painpoints,
loloquwowndueo · 1h ago
Sedan or hatchback are enough for my family - it’s what we use when we need to, I’ve never used an suv or minivan unless I need to haul cargo.
xyzelement · 1h ago
Of course, plenty of people do. But you may also have a neighbor who thinks that you having a car at all is excessive because they take public transport and walk and never needed a car.
My point is that any degree of "thing" can be enough if you accept its implications. So for example when you go on your family vacation, you make choices about what to take and what to leave. If your two year old daughter asks last minute if she can bring her scooter (and helmet), the answer might be "sorry honey no room" whereas with a larger car you could say "sure, toss it in." Or the grownup version of that, I tossed in my inflatable paddle-board, paddle, lifejackets and pump as a last minute decision for our last vacation "just in case" we want to get on the water before the kayak rental place opens up (ended up using it.) Again, the paddle-board or scooter are totally non essential - if I had a smaller car I wouldn't even consider bringing them at all and that would be totally fine, but it's nice that I can.
BTW, we got our SUV when our 1st kid was born, it was a larger car than I thought we needed but was still kinda helpful. By now we have 3 kids and the fact that "how are we gonna fit them and their stuff" isn't one of the many things we have to deal with as parents is very nice.
Again, if I couldn't afford it or was very anti-big-car, I'd find a way to make do with a smaller vehicle but it's nice to make the other choice and that's why many many many people do.
nradov · 1h ago
Well you're in luck! There are numerous regular sedans like a Nissan Sentra or Hyundai Sonata available at your local dealers. If you want one you can buy it and drive it home today.
loloquwowndueo · 1h ago
Oh hi there car salesman - I’m not shopping for a car right now but thanks anyway. Would probably buy used in any case.
nradov · 1h ago
Car makers aren't interested in what used car buyers want so I'm not sure why you would even comment on this article?
cosmic_cheese · 1h ago
> A regular sedan would do.
Or a small hatchback, e.g. a Fit, Golf, Matrix, Yaris, etc. They might not be the most attractive looking vehicles but darn if they aren’t practical. Better cargo space than much longer sedans while being short enough to park almost anywhere.
It’s so disappointing that they’ve disappeared from the US market almost entirely.
Eric_WVGG · 1h ago
When I was a teen I wanted to install electric windows in this vintage car I wound up with. My father said, “That‘s just one more thing that can break,” and yes it sounds kind of glib but I really took that to heart and let it shape my life in a direction of dependable simplicity.
I got out of car culture around 25 years ago, and every time I ride someplace in a modern car I'm just bewildered by all the bullshit. Do grown adults really need to be "pampered" with heated seats? How can you stand carrying around those "fobs" in your pockets — they make jeans look ridiculous, like a person is packing two sets of their junk.
I can't imagine buying a car built after 1990.
cnst · 1h ago
This is exactly why I got a Model Y AWD with all the default options.
It basically has everything you need, and is Long-Range, too, without having to decide whether or not you want a mutually-exclusive "technology package" or "XXX package".
Without having to decide a whole bunch of other things, too, which, if you don't get, won't give you the advertised features seen in commercials, and if you do, won't keep the advertised price of the car.
csours · 29m ago
Imagine manufacturing like a long vine - any disturbance along the vine can cause the fruit to wither.
The overall company can run low on capital or the share price may drop too far and induce leadership changes.
The product has to reach capacity targets to pay for overheads and fixed costs.
A competitor can drop their prices.
A supplier can go out of business or have their own production issues - fires and floods happen ever year.
Many governments have ramping targets for safety and efficiency.
Any particular government can increase taxes or tariffs, causing an unplanned uprooting of production from one assembly plant to another, costing at least millions of dollars; also unknown costs due to uncertainty.
Consumers preferences change over time.
---
With all of that, the fruit that withers first is the smallest - the cheapest or leanest.
I'm sorry if this is upsetting.
Bukhmanizer · 1h ago
Budget car buyers likely don’t make a good customer base. People who want their new car to be mostly like their old car probably will just drive the their old car until it breaks down then get a used car.
When I was looking for a car I was looking for 3 things:
1. Low gas mileage
2. Cheap/Reliable
3. Not run by Elon Musk
So I got a used Corolla Hybrid and plan on driving that for at least 5-10 years. But I understand that I’m not a profitable customers to most car companies.
They say they want one thing, but buy another.
They claim they want a manual transmission and then buy a RAV4.
They claim they want a sports sedan and then buy a RAV4.
They claim they want a station wagon and then buy a RAV4.
They claim they want a base, cheap, simple, vehicle and then they drop $55k on a fully-equipped RAV4 Hybrid.
Be weird. It's ok. Do the dumb thing and follow your desire.
And you can hedge your bets. I bought, used, a manual transmission convertible sports car, a sports sedan (red, even!), and capacious station wagon for all of my Home Depot needs all for less than the price of RAV4 Hybrid and between the three I always have at least one functional vehicle!
These studies should be surveying these groups instead of individuals I think. Sometimes the "group" will just be one person, and that's okay. But I wouldn't want someone's opinion if they're making it on behalf of a group without the groups input, because that's not realistic
So they went out and built a 2dr jeep with a shitty 2nd row so people can pretend like it's optimized for people hauling and sell the "lifestyle car" they really wanted to their SO. They retained the soft top and manual at non-insignificant cost to appeal to additional swaths of buyers and then added a hybrid option as a checkbox exercise.
It's kind of beautiful if you think about it.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelharley/2023/08/30/2023-j...
Anecdotal, but I've also noticed way more 4 door new Broncos and new Defenders around than the 2 doors
In many countries that's unaffordable. In the UK I pay £350 per year car tax, £480 insurance and £50 mandatory roadworthiness testing. Best part of a grand before I've even driven a mile - and the UK is considered cheap in Europe. In Ireland the tax alone would be over £1000.
My partner pays about the same for her 20 year old petrol Honda SUV. Ironically if she chose the filthy, carcinogen-spewing diesel model she'd pay just £40 in tax, so it's little wonder that people compromise.
I think also in life your opening line can be generalized to:
It has been my experience that people .. are lying to themselves.
It helps that I haven't had a claim in 30 years.
1. Economies of scale are the only way to build a budget car.
2. The incremental costs of adding features are nearly zero. The vast majority of price comes from the basic costs of building a legal vehicle.
3. Buyers generally won't reject a car for having features they don't care about, but they'll frequently reject a car for lacking a feature they deem important.
4. Buyers have different preferences.
In order to sell at a low price, automakers have to sell as many as possible to hit massive economies of scale. In order to sell that many, they need to please a huge number of buyers, which means they add a whole bunch of cheap features to satisfy as many buyers as they can without cannibalizing their higher-tier offerings.
The other side of this is the price point that western OEMs can actually hit with economies of scale has climbed significantly in recently decades, in part due to inflation / wage pressures, but mainly due to massive institutional inefficiencies. Mary Barra's compensation alone adds several dollars to the price of each GM vehicle. Legally mandated dealer margins and fees add tens of percent to the price that consumers pay. The inefficiencies of spreading production for tax purposes across state and international borders adds more cost. So on and so forth, and the market feedback mechanisms to correct these issues are intentionally hampered by policy decisions to favor the current status quo.
Change in the market needs support at the regulatory level.
Petroleum is a critical resource and most countries manage its use in automobiles for fuel in a fairly direct way: They tax the living shit out of gasoline and diesel. If you use more, you pay more. You have incentive to buy a smaller, more basic car because they will ultimately cost you less.
But not here. We gave exceptions on light trucks because that's all the big three could competently produce back when fuel economy standards were being introduced and we were getting our brains beaten in by the Japanese. Making more fuel-efficient vehicles requires R&D, and R&D spend is money not sent to a shareholder. Since the bigger vehicles don't count towards CAFE and smaller vehicles do, guess which vehicles the big three push harder to consumers?
After all the niceties and "no, I hadn't been in an accident", I was afraid to touch the mirror after that.
So they don’t need car data. My car maker does not sell its data nor does it link car locations with car owners. Although it could do so, but not without some bad PR or legal risks of doing it secretly after having made assurances that it doesn’t do it.
But that gets back to who would buy it? Nobody. They already have all the data they need from phones.
All car manufacturers are extremely vague about what data they are sending, but you can assume it's basically everything: GPS location, speed, engine and maintenance data, control inputs (accelerator, brake, light switches), even seat occupancy. (Yep, mine has seat sensors for that.)
I spent several hours researching how to disable this thing and there is very little information on doing so for my exact year/model. What little info I did find says there's no easy and simple way. The fuse for it powers several other things. There is a module you can disconnect somewhere deep in the dash, but you lose other functionality like Bluetooth. And the car will probably constantly warn you about a failed module and turn your check engine light on.
My best guess right now is to find out where cell antenna is and bridge it with a 50-ohm resistor. (But that is not necessarily bulletproof either as dummy loads can still transmit, just with greatly reduced output.)
I have read that car manufacturers make these systems intentionally hard to disable because each one is a perpetual stream of income for them for as long as the car is on the road: They sell the data to data brokers who then re-sell it to insurers and various other customer profiling companies.
According to my Vehicle Privacy Support (https://vehicleprivacyreport.com), LexisNexis is the data broker that Toyota uses. I submitted Consumer Disclosure Report with them and 6 weeks later, a snail-mail letter arrived saying they were not going to disclose any of my information to me.
What legal recourse would you have? They've got data on you, you'd think that at the very least they would be obligated to show it to you for a reasonable price.
It also kills a very important safety feature, the one that auto-calls 911/112/999/... when you get into an accident.
See e.g. https://sandsprite.com/blogs/index.php?uid=7&pid=462&year=20...
But while it makes it cheaper for the manufacturer and ultimately cheaper for the buyer on the lot, it makes for much more expensive repairs. I'm looking at you Ford with your $1200 taillights.
Those are not base equipment. But yeah the price is absurd.
They present it as a choice between manual or electric seats, manual or electric buttons, etc., which are indeed valid items of discussion ..
But what about other expensive, complicated, things I want a choice to get rid of, major things I don't want to pay for, like .. auto stop-start, or the ability for the car to slam on the brakes by itself, or the ability for the car to decide to steer itself if it thinks I've strayed from the middle of the lane. Heck, I don't want a rear camera or blind spot monitoring, I'll check my blind spots myself. They're even working on mandating some sort of monitoring in the next few years to "detect" whether you might be drunk.
What are the costs of all those sorts of things? All the sensors? All the computers? All the design/coding? The costs for maintaining all of it? The cost of the extra complexity? No mention of any of that?
(Also don't get me started on the extra cost and complexity and loss of maintainability that emissions regulations have added to cars. They used to be dead simple and maintainable.)
There's a cost attached to them, but it was decided that that cost is worth the significant benefits in road safety for both the people in the vehicle and the people around the vehicle.
Emission regulations have reduced the cost of cars, if you count the health and environmental cost that manufacturers and drivers simply externalized onto the pulic.
Yes, it became more expensive for the polluter, but rightfully so.
Most of the things you listed are both a good idea and legally required.
Depends. The rearview camera thing? Probably not that expensive at this point; development costs have been amortized. Sensors probably are a bit more expensive.
The thing that chaps my ass about it is that there's so little commonality among parts between models and makers. We're 40+ years into the microprocessor revolution and ECMs are still mostly bespoke designs that have closed code running on them. Why? One way to deal with the design/coding costs would be to simply spread it across more automotive manufacturers, because at the end of the day, most of them are trying to achieve the same goals with regards to the function of the component. It's like looking at the different lug nut patterns between automakers... there's only so many ways to mount a wheel on a hub and you could reduce the tooling cost to make those wheels if you shared it with someone else.
> (Also don't get me started on the extra cost and complexity and loss of maintainability that emissions regulations have added to cars. They used to be dead simple and maintainable.)
It's nice to have breathable air, no?
The keyboard you typed your message had a cost, yet apparently that was worthwhile so that all of us could contemplate your points.
The complex ones do.
You can get John Q. Public to buy a basic, efficient, safe compact car with cloth seats... or you can use that same production line to build a full-sized truck with tons of non-essential electronics that costs three times as much, which then requires the buyer to take out a loan from your financial arm for 84 months.
Which one returns more value to the shareholders?
EDIT: "non-essential electronics" should be seen as huge displays and the like, not things like emissions controls or safety equipment.
> Which one returns more value to the shareholders?
I think the 'shareholder primacy' era of American capitalism has had some particularly dumb and bad effects... unfortunately I can't change that just by being angry and anxious about it. The market loves tech companies right now, which really distorts the valuation of other companies.
I think that people still vastly underestimate how difficult it is to make a physical product, how much time and attention it takes.
I saw a presentation for assembling the Chevy Cruze in Lordstown, Ohio. There was a planned market size, production volume, etc, etc. The closest it got to the estimates (if I recall correctly) was about 1/2 to 2/3 the planned production volume. After the first couple of years of production, volume dropped more.
At 1/2 volume, the plant would never make money. The fixed costs simply eat too far into revenue. The lower the volume, the longer it takes to pay off things like engineering costs - not just for the OEM (GM, Ford, etc), but also for the suppliers. Suppliers often book substantial losses for the first couple years of a new product.
> Simple cars don't make money...
They really don't make money. On the very best day, a $30,000 simple car might make $1,000 net profit to the OEM, maybe another $500 to the dealer. On a median day, the initial sale might be a small loss.
Under capitalism, there is strong pressure to move upmarket. Under communism, most people never even got the simple car, and those who did get the simple car had to wait for many years.
Still rolling in 2005 Toyota. Fuck modern cars! Excuse my French.
The common arguments I hear are 1. What if I need to take a roadtrip? 2. What if I don't have accessibility to a charger at home or work and need longer range to account for that.
Only (2) seems reasonable to me, but many do have access where they live. Seeing as the huge expense of EVs is batteries, I'd love the option of something with a much, much reduced battery (and the additional reduced feature sets the article mentions).
https://www.motortrend.com/features/what-is-an-erev-extended...
So please, could we just have that? Just because it's easy for you to add internet connectivity doesn't mean I want it. I don't want my car to rat me out to megalomaniac dictators because my car company's psychotic CEO wants a sweetheart trade deal. I don't want my car to create data trails that will allow advertisers to see places that I frequently visit, regardless if that place is an oncologist or my friendly neighborhood dominatrix. I don't want my car to know my retinal data or fingerprints, to controllable via my phone, or to tell me that my resting heart rate is. Just give me a car, and let me do the rest on my own.
If, let's say, a typical $30k car means a large EV SUV with all the luxury gadgets and conveniences, plus fridge, massage chair, full camping setup, etc. Would 30k car buyers not expect those things?
So in practice what happens if that if you have a family and can easily afford an SUV, you get the SUV to alleviate these painpoints,
My point is that any degree of "thing" can be enough if you accept its implications. So for example when you go on your family vacation, you make choices about what to take and what to leave. If your two year old daughter asks last minute if she can bring her scooter (and helmet), the answer might be "sorry honey no room" whereas with a larger car you could say "sure, toss it in." Or the grownup version of that, I tossed in my inflatable paddle-board, paddle, lifejackets and pump as a last minute decision for our last vacation "just in case" we want to get on the water before the kayak rental place opens up (ended up using it.) Again, the paddle-board or scooter are totally non essential - if I had a smaller car I wouldn't even consider bringing them at all and that would be totally fine, but it's nice that I can.
BTW, we got our SUV when our 1st kid was born, it was a larger car than I thought we needed but was still kinda helpful. By now we have 3 kids and the fact that "how are we gonna fit them and their stuff" isn't one of the many things we have to deal with as parents is very nice.
Again, if I couldn't afford it or was very anti-big-car, I'd find a way to make do with a smaller vehicle but it's nice to make the other choice and that's why many many many people do.
Or a small hatchback, e.g. a Fit, Golf, Matrix, Yaris, etc. They might not be the most attractive looking vehicles but darn if they aren’t practical. Better cargo space than much longer sedans while being short enough to park almost anywhere.
It’s so disappointing that they’ve disappeared from the US market almost entirely.
I got out of car culture around 25 years ago, and every time I ride someplace in a modern car I'm just bewildered by all the bullshit. Do grown adults really need to be "pampered" with heated seats? How can you stand carrying around those "fobs" in your pockets — they make jeans look ridiculous, like a person is packing two sets of their junk.
I can't imagine buying a car built after 1990.
It basically has everything you need, and is Long-Range, too, without having to decide whether or not you want a mutually-exclusive "technology package" or "XXX package".
Without having to decide a whole bunch of other things, too, which, if you don't get, won't give you the advertised features seen in commercials, and if you do, won't keep the advertised price of the car.
The overall company can run low on capital or the share price may drop too far and induce leadership changes.
The product has to reach capacity targets to pay for overheads and fixed costs.
A competitor can drop their prices.
A supplier can go out of business or have their own production issues - fires and floods happen ever year.
Many governments have ramping targets for safety and efficiency.
Any particular government can increase taxes or tariffs, causing an unplanned uprooting of production from one assembly plant to another, costing at least millions of dollars; also unknown costs due to uncertainty.
Consumers preferences change over time.
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With all of that, the fruit that withers first is the smallest - the cheapest or leanest.
I'm sorry if this is upsetting.
When I was looking for a car I was looking for 3 things: 1. Low gas mileage 2. Cheap/Reliable 3. Not run by Elon Musk
So I got a used Corolla Hybrid and plan on driving that for at least 5-10 years. But I understand that I’m not a profitable customers to most car companies.