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this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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Most people can't afford $35K for a new car.
Fewer and fewer people can afford the lease or finance payments on a new car, period, and fewer people can afford homes where they can charge an EV, while landlords can max out the rent all they like without having to spend on frills like chargers.
Meanwhile, we're reducing taxes and shovelling grants at the rich to build housing that they won't build, that'll require people to buy cars that they can't afford because we aren't going to build that new housing in a way that's suited to public transit--which we aren't going to build anyway.
The housing/transport/fiscal-policy clusterfuck is fractally shortsighted: it looks shortsighted when you first look at, but it gets more and more shortsighted in new and interesting ways the closer you zoom in.
But people do buy $35k new (and used) cars and after incentives the cheaper EV models are closer to $30k...
Look at the average car price in Canada at the moment, for used cars it's 35k!
"Most people" aren't people in their 20s/early 30s that haven't reached the peak of their career and just started their family.
Hell, if you want an EV I can get you a fully equipped used Leaf for 20k!
People buy those cars they can't or can barely afford because they have no other choice in the majority of Canadian cities due to car centric design.
They could all buy a Mitsubishi Mirage for under 18k if that was an issue.
I think people underestimate others' financial means (and what will be their own financial means when they'll be in their 40s/50s).
In my 20s I could barely afford to keep my car running and was finding it expensive to pay 300$ for my apartment shared with two friends, in my late 30s I can buy a luxury car if I want, my job doesn't require more than a high-school diploma and I live next to Ottawa.
The Mirage being $18K, and being almost the last subcompact standing, is a symptom of the issue.
Like house prices, car prices went bonkers over the last decade as manufacturers raised the floor chasing margin. At around the start of the last decade, we had the Mirage, Fit, Yaris, Versa, Accent, Rio, Spark, Sonic, Fiesta, City Golf, 500 and Mazda2. Of that group, almost all of them are gone, as are many from the next step up (Focus, Cruze, Caliber, the non-GTI Golf, etc). Interestingly, the platforms aren't gone, they've just been jacked two inches and covered in plastic cladding.
Why? Because cheap credit made it easier to get people into something more expensive.
The average price is indicative of a captive market, rather similar to what we're seeing in housing, and it's going to get nastier as OEMs do not want to see 1979 or 2008 again, where they're forced to make do with lower margins. We'll see "tax incentives" and lowering of interest rates before then, just like we're seeing with housing, because we've collectively made the decision that people with money must not, ever, lose money--and the more money you have, the more it must be protected--but people without money deserve to be ruthlessly exploited.
But most non luxury manufacturers sell cars under 25k, they mostly sell to young people, as they get older they buy more expensive cars.
You think the regular Golf got discontinued even if it was selling? No. Sales had been going down for a long time now, but look at that, the Jetta is still available, so maybe people just didn't want the compact hatchback but demand was still high for the compact sedan!
Take the Geo Metro in 95, base model was 10k back then. With 2% yearly inflation that's... 17 000 today! Will you look at that, same as the available equivalent, which is the Mirage!
I saw used 2013 Honda Fits going for 17k in BC last week. Is that mirage still available??
That's the MSRP, just go shopping