Mass transit systems yet? No? Okay, I’ll check back in a decade after this problem has gotten substantially worse.
I get so sick of dealers advertising “$20,000 off! Only $499/mo” for overpriced cars no one wants, when $20K is larger than my entire vehicle budget and the max monthly payment I can handle is $150. My car is 20 years old and it’s paid off, and I plan to drive it forever if prices aren’t going to go back to reasonable levels.
I’m told that Americans only want big expensive cars but for some reason the government felt the need to slap 100% tariffs on small inexpensive Chinese cars.
Because Chinese cars are priced at a loss to corner the market and put competition out of business.
Meanwhile VW and other manufacturers make smaller more affordable cars, but they don’t sell them here.
BYD and Xiaomi profit from their EVs.
nobody buys them. sales for such vehicles are tiny compared to larger cars.
it doesn’t make sense to sell subcompact cars if you only sell 5000 of them a year.
That’s because the goal isn’t to sell you a car, it’s to saddle you with a $50K debt obligation they get to sell off.
Exactly. If they were incentivised to encourage the best vehicle for the customer they’d be talking most people into a subcompact or minivan
Tbh this is largely consumers’ faults. I know so many people who make a lot less money than I do and have similar needs from a vehicle but they still go out and buy big ass trucks and SUVs that cost 2-3x what my car would today. Yes there are systemic problems at play but ultimately the American public are not very good at making good decisions.
I just want a small car I can work on myself. 30 years ago, I could maintain my own car, do some shadetree mechanics…
But all cars today are meant to be black boxes. All need proprietary tools and computers to do almost anything.
Dear Santa, could I have a 67 camaro.
Kias just a few years ago were copies of late 90s cars at a price reflecting that and low complexity making them efficient to maintain. Take a Kia now, it’s just as expensive as everything else and will be scrapped in 8 years when one of the $2000 proprietary led assemblies fails.
I’m still chugging along doing maintenance but yeah it’s getting ridiculous. Just as a metric: service manual length.
My motorcycles: ~800 pages
My 2010: ~1800 pages
My 2016: ~13500 pages
I fear to see a more modern vehicle. I don’t own anything newer.
A lot of the page increase is all the diagnostic code debugging. Modern vehicles have way too many computers.
I have a gearless (fixie) bike since last Summer, I don’t even have a manual for it, not do I really need one.
Before that I had a fancy e-bike which nobody but the manufacturer could fix. Even bike shops would warn “We can fix the mechanical parts but we don’t touch the electronics, if it fails while we fix it, it’s on you.” and basically saying they would prefer not to fix it.
Now my bike is so basic I don’t care and I think it’s even safer from potential robbers.
So… in my own experience, less is more! It’s less maintenance, it’s less money, it’s less temptation for others, and ironically enough in this specific case it’s even healthier. I use it everyday, from Sunny spring to rain and snow, it just works.
Simplifying is empowering.
I’m very pro simplifying, but you’ll take my freewheel from my cold dead legs. The only part of my bike that I struggle to repair is I still can’t true a wheel despite trying many times. Well also a broken frame
Ah, pesky tiny ball bearings but honestly it’s not so tricky, mostly patience. Also I did welding workshops so naively confident I could actually make a frame, not a good one though! I’m a bit too lazy for all that though so… now I just ride :D
FWIW nobody should use a fixie rather than a freewheel unless they absolutely genuinely want to… because the first moment of inattention initially, being a bump on the road or just a turn they’ll fall over the bike. After a few cold sweats though then it becomes automatic again, no thinking, just riding, and it’s genuinely fun.
I’ll take more complex computers over trying to get KE-Jetronic to run properly any day of the week lol
Honestly, things have gotten easier for me with the extra computers. Usually if something electrical is wrong, there’s a code for it. Can’t blindly trust the code of course, but it’s usually a good place to get started when doing diagnostics.
hugs Civic si
you’ll get all the motors and transmissions you need, widdle guy.
My last car was a civic si. It was a great car.
There was a whole line of outstanding Civic models for a while there. I miss the Del Sol.
Hurray! The GDP is saved!
- Make car dependant infrastructure for every single city or town
- Refuse to innovate, build only “luxury” models
- ???
- ProfitSimilarly with housing. Why make cheap starter homes when you can make so much more with “Luxury” homes and condos.
And yet use the same cheap materials in the “luxury” ones that you would have used in the cheap ones anyway!
I follow some home inspectors who post videos from their new home inspections, and holy crap the things they find are ridiculous. Like, construction companies should lose their licenses bad.
I visit some partially built homes from time to time, and recently saw one just after it had been inspected. On one wall, on the insulation, the inspector had scrawled STUD? In red felt.
The stud was completely missing from the wall. It was just an empty frame filled with insulation. You’d think someone would have noticed earlier during construction, but obviously the actual contractor had just let the day labor go to town and never bothered to review their work before inspection.
A lot of times, it’s the contractor cutting corners and hoping no one notices.
lol, that is 100% every australian apartment built in the last 15 years. the window frames are plastic and the cladding is combustible… but it’s got Italian tiles and “European appliances” so it’s an “executive suite”. that will be $1.5million fuck you very much.
It cost nearly the same to make a luxury unit as a stripped down one. Most of the cost is labor. Spend 5 k in fancier materials and get 50k for the unit.
Similar to literally every market that involves ‘things’, as we transition from failing liberal capitalism to horrifying technofascist neofeudalism (aka cyberpunk dystopia).
The next step is… well they won’t lower the luxury prices, everything becomes renting, loaning, etc, even further and harder… untill you end up with bundled subscription plans / leases on a diverse array of physical things, as we currently have with bundles of online services.
We literally going to transition to a subscription based model for just being alive.
… unless enough people actually do something effrctive about it.
Other wise, the K shaped economy becomes a === shaped economy. You’re either on top, or you’re not, and you’re basically treated as a kind of cattle; raised, milked, then expended whenever it is most profitable to do so.
There’s a difference between “cheap” and “inexpensive.” Mcmansions are cheap.
People wanted those mcmansions and rebuilds jack up prices. Now those massive suburban mcmansions are getting old in the tooth and no one wants to buy them. They are realizing they need to build smaller homes finally. We’ll probably see more townhomes with shared structures (walls/roofs).
Before they were building mcmansions and charging a fortune for them. Now they’re building sardine cans and charging a fortune for them. Much better.
- Force you to rent an apartment
- Refuse to build anything affordable, only “luxury” models
- ???
- Profit
- Capitalism
- ???
- Planetary Doom
Don’t forget the government cutting funding for affordable housing projects.
Amateur hour, my government funds ‘affordable’ housing projects that cost 300 grand and immediately turn into overpriced rentals.
I recently read an article about “affordable” apartments being constructed an hour or so away. 900 SF, one br and bath, $2200, in a right to work, $7.25/hr minimum wage state.
that sounds cheap to me. where i live a new 1bd/1bath will be closer to 3000-3500
crappy leaky roach filled basement apartments go for 2200
What’s minimum wage? These are “low income.”
20 bucks an hour
minimum wage isn’t low income. most people in low income housing make well above mimimum wage.
stop conflating these two things. also, just because you think it’s too expensive doesn’t mean it isn’t. other people have different price thresholds than you. i know people making half what i make paying way more rent than I am, because that’s what they’ve chose to do because they believe they ‘need’ to live very expensive places. plenty of people are willing to vastly overpay for ‘new’ housing, as it’s an amenity. just like in my city you pay an extra $1000 to live near a subway stop and if you go 1km away, the rent is way cheaper. or that if you want pets the rent goes up $500+
At least housing is actually being built, but I know what you mean. Theres no real affordable housing near me and the wait list for what little is available has been closed due to budget cuts.
Sorry I didn’t get that, did you say you wanted an even larger pickup truck?
Can you jack up the front so I can’t see and put a bar on it so I can kill anyone I hit? Thanks.
We’re way ahead of you! Our engineers have worked tirelessly to come up with an extra flat front that maximises impact with unsuspecting pedestrians
Can I get it angled to ensure they’re swept under? I don’t want to risk them hitting my 1’ of windshield
Thanks to the invention of debt, we can continue taking from the poor what they don’t even have!
They do have it. It’s the value they generate while working. That’s what we’ve always taken, regardless of the exact financial tool used.
- Cede sedans to Japanese car companies.
Even they aren’t selling them as much in the US any more. You don’t really see many new Accords or Camrys any more, you see CR-Vs and Rav4s.
Tough segment. There are examples like https://kilow.com/pages/la-bagnole of a cheap, small car but it’s basic utilitarian. It is NOT a status symbol. It’s equivalent to a cargo bike or long tail bike : it’s not sexy, it’s small range, you can’t bring lots of people or furniture, it’s JUST to go from A to B, mostly in small city or on the country side (if the roads are safe enough).
Meanwhile cars keep on being advertised, and thus mostly perceived, as something to travel with, to show of, to protect oneself and your family against the “others” as dangers on the road. Cars keep on getting bigger, higher and consequently heavier, polluting more (yes, even EVs, at least for pollution come from tires erosion on roads) and the acceptance window keeps on moving up.
Until laws get in place, like in Paris, to make SUVs expensive due to their impact on ourselves and our environment, car companies will keep on pushing for whatever makes the most money.
Cars keep on getting bigger,
(US) I’ve noticed over the past couple of years that “small” trucks are starting to shrink again. Seems they finally hit critical mass.
I remember when the Toyota Tacoma was a truly small truck (up through the late 1990s, maybe early 2000s?). If I’m not mistaken, the 2015-2020ish Tacoma is the size of the 90s Toyota Tundra which was a “big” truck at the time. It’s stupid. I need a truck but I don’t need a $100,000 tank with a quad cab and a useless fucking tiny bed. About 75% of the people I know that buy those huge quad cab trucks actually need a minivan because all they use it for is shuttling their kids around but, of course, minivans aren’t “cool”.
… now I’m getting off topic but minivans are freaking awesome. Assuming the seats are stowable or removable, you get a ton of (enclosed) cargo space (more than those stupid quad cab trucks with tiny beds) and can optionally move a lot of people or a lot of cargo. They are fantastic for road trips if you need more space than a typical sedan.
This is one of the things in life that makes me irrationally angry. Give us small trucks that are actually small.
75% of the people I know that buy those huge quad cab trucks actually need a minivan because all they use it for is shuttling their kids around but, of course, minivans aren’t “cool”.
Yeah… honestly I would go much further. I’d say 90% of people do NOT need a truck and 90% do not need a car either. They might want one, and that’s perfectly fine, but I bet if people were to actually check their GPS data for the last year we would see a very obvious pattern : 9-5 on the ring road from home to work, picking up kids, grocery, etc. Yes, there WILL be few trips to a warehouse, yes there will be a trip to the country side (but not off road) but that’s NOT the normal traffic. That something that could, just for the pleasure of it, be a rental that is adapted to it. I think there is a huge gap between how people IMAGINE themselves driving versus their very boring daily life. They get a car or a truck for the person they want to be, not who they actually are.
To be clear, to anybody who DOES actually need a truck and do use it as a truck, or somebody with a wheelchair and needs an SUV to haul, please, pretty please those cars are made for you! Do buy one! It’s for all the posers out there though that it’s NOT ok.
minivans are freaking awesome. Assuming the seats are stowable or removable, you get a ton of (enclosed) cargo space (more than those stupid quad cab trucks with tiny beds) and can optionally move a lot of people or a lot of cargo.
Which is why people in trades who actually work use vans, not stupid pickups.
(US) I’ve noticed over the past couple of years that “small” trucks are starting to shrink again. Seems they finally hit critical mass.
I fucking pray this is true. All I want in a vehicle is a late 90s style pickup with a single cab and a full bed to drive on the highway. I don’t need passenger space, I don’t need ridiculous ground clearance, I don’t need an engine powerful enough for towing. I just need something to haul furniture and lumber around in, maybe some yard waste if I ever manage to afford a house. Bonus points if it’s electric.
If nothing like that comes out I’ll just keep driving my Honda civic until it disintegrates and borrow my dad’s shitty Colorado when necessary.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re currently still huge. But I saw a 2024 or 2025 Tacoma a few weeks ago that looked a fair bit smaller than the previous year models. I’m hoping we’re on the rebound and that they’re going to continue to decrease in size. Guess we’ll see but I’m hoping so too.
I will say that I love a (tiny) extended cab - Toyota calls/called them the “access cab” and on the old (early to mid-90s) S10’s I had I think they called them a “king cab”. Having space in the cab to store tools, camping/emergency gear, etc is really nice. There are ““seats”” there in the Tacoma, presumably to get around the chicken tax, but they are horrible to use as such. The ones in the old S10 folded up into the side walls which was awesome. They were out of the way but available for the 0.0001% of the time you needed them and those actually weren’t too horribly uncomfortable since they faced the center of the vehicle instead of forward.
Yeah the ones with like a 1.5 cab aren’t terrible but I don’t want something that’s dedicating a whole ass second seating area for passengers when I don’t ever drive other people around. Being able to fit an entire desk/bookcase/bedframe in the bed is far more important to me (and being able to get it out without having to climb because I’m short as fuck).
You should try not tariffs.
Car prices were on the rise long before the tarrif crap. Yes the tariffs continue to make it worse, but this was a trend already! As long as people are willing to pay 50 grand for a rav4 with leather seats they will continue to pump their numbers up. I know VERY few people that drove a car more than 10 years old, their afraid it will break down on them when the reality is their newest 700$ /mo POS techno trash on wheels will be dead long before my 87 gives up the ghost.
The symbol for this are the run down ranch houses near me that look like dumps but they have a $70K truck in front.
- Dogmatically sticking to fossil fuels.
- “Protecting” domestic manufacturering jobs by refusing to engage with your neighbours.
- Using tariffs to keep out affordable Chinese EVs that use tech everyone will probably be using in 15 to 20 years.
Sounds like a recipe for disaster. You can only artificially prop up your domestic market for so long. You’ll inevitably fall behind even further on innovation with this approach.
Might be the first to make a CoPilot or ChatGPT powered car though.
Look, the Chinese EVs are a literal trade weapon. The other points I agree on. But China has subsidies on EVs even when sold to other countries because they aim to put competitors out of business globally. Otherwise they’d just be subsidizing EVs for domestic use.
So I can’t blame them for tariffing those. But the solution is to invest heavily in domestic EVs, not to keep running with internal combustion…
From what I’ve seen it wasn’t specifically a global trade weapon. It was more a side effect of central government planning.
There was just a government program to encourage electric car manufacture to boost local manufacturing. They over saturated the domestic market and are now dumping the cars internationally.
The US heavily subsidizes its auto industry. Why is this being raised as a point against China? It’s not China’s fault that American auto companies use their subsidies to line their pockets instead of creating cheaper and better vehicles.
And countries that have auto industries put tariffs on US cars too. They also don’t get nowhere near as much in subsidies per car sold abroad. And for the EV subsidies, foreign EVs were also eligible.
China also tariffs foreign cars heavily and always has.
Have you been to China recently? Seems like all the new cars sold there are EVs. They’re not just dumping them on the export market.
If they were just looking to replace ICEs with EVs domestically, they’d have subsidies for domestically bought EVs. They instead subsidize production, regardless of where it’ll be sold. Chinese manufacturers can afford to produce at a huge loss right now and still make a profit.
The scooters there are all electric. It makes it scary to walk on the sidewalks because they’ll ride up on them and they are so quiet you suddenly realize someone is about to run into you. lol
Sure China is not some moral or benevolent actor in all this. At the very least they were forward thinking enough to subsidize the future of automobile transport. Some degree of protectionism may be warranted but the goal should be to catch up with China in the meantime, not double down on fossil fuels.
They’re doing what we should be doing. Subsidizing a sustainable alternative.
Canada and Europe have already let Chinese vehicles in. Canada reportedly wants to make an indigineous EV through sharing of Chinese technological knowledge. Wonder how long the US will hold out.
So what that Chinese subsidize their EVs. The US subsidizes most of their industry.
It’s really tiring for people to say what about China doing X, which the US already does in spades.And most US goods are similarly tariffed elsewhere. What’s your point?
We have been propping u domestic car manufacturers since they started making cars domestically. Pretty rich for a “capitalist free market” if you ask me. I forget we don’t get to be part of socialist America if we aren’t billionaires…
Paying massive tariffs could be part of the problem.
For some reason most of America decided that they needed a massive truck or SUV that could haul a semi trailer yet their needs 99.9% of the time are short trips and buying groceries.
Americans didn’t decide it. Loophole in fuel efficiency laws ties the fuel economy footprint to carriage size. So to get around this, the manufacturers started making the cars larger, wider, and boxier. It’s why even small sedans are several inches wider than they used to be, when you can find them at all.
Well you need to BE SAFE and walking is SCARY.
Something about companies lobbying for less tax on huge cars.
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I saw something about being approved for “up to 100k” for a car loan. 100k for a car? Man, this country is fucked.
There are pickups being made that are more than $100k. It’s absolutely absurd.
And their beds are spotless because they are used just for regular driving with 1 or 2 people. You could do that with a compact car.
But how else can I stick far out into the aisle in every parking lot and inconvenience everyone around me??
Trump tariffs combined with the policy to ‘make in America and buy American’ is going as well as predicted then.
Except American cars still source more than half of their parts outside the country. On top of that they are made far worse than foreign cars.
