One of my favorite headline formulations ever comes from pre-Defector Deadspin, when Tim Marchman complained that Game of Thrones author George RR Martin seemed to be doing anything but finishing his series of books. Specifically, Marchman headlined his prophetic article “GRRM Has No Pages.” That was 2015, it’s been almost a full decade, and the next book still isn’t out.
Allow me to do my own twist on this formula by pointing out what the numbers seem to portray, which is that Tesla lacks the right cars. This has nothing to do with politics, or self-driving, or AI. Some folks want Tesla to be anything other than a car company, but it’s still a car company for the moment, and when it comes to products it’s falling further and further behind the competition.
Let’s start in China, where Tesla slipped way back in the sales rankings. The best-selling car there in April was the Geely Star Wish. It’s a car you’ve maybe never heard of, but it’s one of many successful small EVs. One of the other super popular diminutive electric cars is the BYD Seagull/Dolphin/Surf, which just went on sale in Europe where… Tesla has fallen behind a Chinese brand for the first time ever.
That’s not to say that all is peachy keen for people who make electric cars, as overproduction is still an issue. Plus, Chinese consumers seem to want more affordable cars, just like everyone else. This isn’t just an issue for Tesla as the dream of expensive EVs continues to be difficult to achieve for a lot of automakers, including Porsche.
Things are slightly better for Tesla in the United States, where sales inched up a bit in April. There, too, I see some troubling signs.
Check Out This Geely Star Wish
Technically, this is a Xingyuan, which translates to: Wish Upon A Star. It’s generally referred to as the Star Wish in English, and that’s how I’ll refer to it. For all the talk of upstart automakers like Nio and Xiaomei, it was a B-segment EV from the well-established automaker Geely that took China’s sales crown in April.
Here’s how Nikkei Asia describes it:
The top-selling car in April was the Star Wish, an all-electric sedan by Geely’s Galaxy EV brand, according to car marketplace app Dongchedi. The lowest-end version of the model comes with a driving range of 310 kilometers and is priced at 68,800 yuan ($9,500), compared to the Tesla Model 3, which starts at 235,500 yuan.
“It is equipped with a CATL battery, has lots of room for storage and has Level 2 driver assistance technology,” said an employee of a Geely Galaxy dealer on the outskirts of Shanghai. “The value for money is very high.” She added that the car, which comes in bright colors, is popular among women with children. The store offers 5,000-yuan discounts for some higher-end versions of the model with longer driving ranges.
It was launched last fall to compete with the curiously inexpensive BYD Seagull (more on that later). Overall, the Chinese market continues to be incredibly competitive and, as that article points out, the push is to get less expensive cars:
“With persistent oversupply, the price war will prolong,” said Claire Yuan, director of corporate ratings for China Autos at S&P Global Ratings. “Carmakers are introducing more low-price models to grab share in the mass market.”
Unlike the United States, many electric cars actually undercut their gasoline equivalents in price. This has made things harder for all sorts of companies, including Tesla, which has fallen from its high perch, according to CNEVPost:
Tesla’s retail sales in China were 28,731 units in April, down 8.6 percent from 31,421 in the same month last year.
The US electric vehicle (EV) maker ranked No. 8 in China’s NEV market in April with a 3.2 percent share, down from a 7.5 percent share in March and down from 4.6 percent a year earlier.
Tesla dropped five spots in China’s NEV market in April compared to its No. 3 ranking in March.
Tesla was reportedly trying to build a cheap EV, but that probably became the Cybercab. Instead, the company is likely to put out a de-contented Model Y. [Ed Note: I think that could be a great value. I have no issue with using the Model Y as the basis for a cheaper car. -DT]. Rather than focus on the bottom end of the market, Elon Musk harnessed his hopes to the Cybertruck, which hasn’t exactly been a hit.
It’s hard to make money on cars that cost 1/4 the price of a Tesla Model Y, so I get the appeal of a Cybertruck. It does seem like the market for expensive EVs is saturated, and so lower-priced EVs are the way forward until there’s some big advancement in battery technology/range.
While Tesla does enjoy some support from China’s government and produces cars in the country, it’s not a Chinese automaker. Therefore, it might be difficult for Tesla to get the same kind of subsidies necessary to compete on the lowest end of the market. It could (and should) probably offer something more affordable.
BYD Outsells Tesla In Europe For The First Time Ever
There’s no way around it, Tesla’s European sales were hurt by CEO Elon Musk’s involvement in far-right politics, but I think the bigger issue for Tesla isn’t that, it’s competition. Tesla is just selling the same things, and other automakers are offering a way wider range of vehicles at better price points. Who wouldn’t want a Renault 5 E-Tech?
It’s one of the big reasons why Tesla got outsold by Chinese automaker BYD in Europe for the first time ever, according to data from Jato Dynamics via Bloomberg:
BYD Co. sold more electric vehicles in Europe than Tesla Inc. for the first time, overtaking the American brand that’s long led the continent’s EV segment.
China’s leading automaker registered 7,231 new battery-electric vehicles in April, according to market researcher Jato Dynamics. That was up 169% from a year earlier, vaulting BYD into the top 10 brands by EV sales. Tesla placed one spot back as its registrations plunged 49%.
“Although the difference between the two car brands’ monthly sales totals may be small, the implications are enormous,” Jato Dynamics analyst Felipe Munoz said in an emailed statement. “This is a watershed moment for Europe’s car market.”
It’s bad. It’s real bad. EV registrations were up 28% across Europe and the UK, while Tesla’s sales slumped by 49%. On the high-end, there are the traditional European automakers like BMW and Volkswagen. On the lower end, budget VW brand Škoda has been killing it, thanks to vehicles like the sub-Model Y Elroq EV.
As if that wasn’t troubling enough for Tesla, the automaker now has to compete with the BYD Dolphin Surf in Europe. This is a bigger, more European-ified version of the sub-$10,000 Seagull. Before the Star Wish, the Seagull was regularly the best-selling car in China and is still BYD’s best-selling model. It wasn’t available immediately in Europe as the company made changes to make it more appealing to the market. This means the car, called the Dolphin Surf, now costs around $22,000 according to Inside EVs.
Like its larger brother, the Dolphin, the BYD Seagull has a few specific revisions to make the car more palatable for audiences in Western Europe. They both offer roughly the same Lamborghini-in-the-city esque styling, but the European market version is a full 8 inches longer. Most of the length appears to have gone to the revised nose and tail, which protrude out a bit more than the ones on the Chinese version.
There have been some under-the-skin enhancements, too. The 75 horsepower motor is gone; now the Dolphin Surf comes with either 87 horsepower in its lower Active and Boost trims or 156 horsepower in its top trim, called Comfort. The 30 kWh battery is still there in base Active, but the top two trims have a new 43.2 kWh battery, which isn’t available on its Chinese cousin. This may not sound like a lot of power, but keep in mind the Seagull/Dolphin Surf is about the same size as the old Chevrolet Spark EV.
I’m not saying anyone would buy these cars here. I don’t know that even a larger one would sell in the United States, but it’ll sell in Europe. It obviously sells in China. There are a lot of places where it’ll sell. In France, where the European model was just revealed, the cheapest Model 3 is about $40,000, or almost twice as much. The Model 3 is more car and a better car, but it’s also an extra $20,000.
Tesla Sales Were Up Slightly In The United States In April
While Tesla’s sales are dropping in markets like Europe and China, where EV sales are growing, the opposite is happening in the United States, where the EV market here saw a 5.6% year-over-year drop. A lot of this has to do with people panic-buying EVs at the end of 2024 and the beginning of this year, as most people see the EV tax credit likely being phased out soon. This pulled forward a lot of sales, and fewer of those sales went to Tesla than in the past, for whatever reason. If you’re not convinced by the political argument, it’s possible consumers were just waiting for the redesigned Model Y.
It’s here now, and they’re selling, just not at a huge clip yet.
While most manufacturers saw a month-over-month decline in volume, GM, Tesla, and Nissan reported notable growth in EV sales; Ford, Hyundai Group and VW Group experienced declines. Tesla’s market share remained below 50%, but it increased by 3.7 percentage points in April, driven by the success of the Model Y, which sold 25,231 units and held a 25.1% market share. GM brands had a strong month as well, achieving a combined market share of 14.4%, a 2-percentage-point increase from the previous period. Uncertainty in the market and tariffs, however, will continue to impact EV sales going forward. A recent consumer survey conducted by Cox Automotive indicates that nearly half of the respondents believe tariffs will have a significant impact on their decision to purchase an EV.
With the familiar caveat that Tesla still accounts for slightly less than half of all EV sales in the United States, this feels like fairly mid news for the automaker. The Cybertruck has seen price drops, there’s a brand new Model Y on the market, and they’re up less than 4% off a bad month.
If this were a traditional automaker, I’d be quite worried. It’s not building the products more customers want, its big new revision isn’t yet gaining huge traction, and its big product swing (the Cybertruck) is flailing. I just don’t think Tesla has the products to compete.
Now, there are two reasons why none of the above might not matter in the long run, but they’re both big “ifs”:
- The de-contented Model 3/Model Y thing is really cheap enough to be competitive with the Honda Civic/Toyota Corolla even without the tax credit. A $25k thing that’s roughly Model Y-shaped is a tempting prospect, especially if the Elon Musk-of-it-all doesn’t concern you.
- People do really like and use the Tesla Cybercabs in Austin, and the company is able to scale up the true Cybercab.
We’ll see.
It’s Not Easy For Porsche, Either
There will always be a market for fancy electric cars, even if more of that market (I think) will get swapped over for hybrids and EREVs.
How big of a market will it be, though? That’s my question. Porsche launched an IPO in 2022 on the concept that the company would “redefine the concept of modern luxury.” That hasn’t happened yet. There’s an anonymous quote from a Porsche insider in Manager Magazin that I think explains the problem so well:
A good two and a half years later, the strategy appears to be faltering at a key point. “Unlike with combustion engines, electric drives don’t allow you to differentiate yourself sufficiently from cheaper manufacturers,” says a Porsche insider. “Luxury and electric vehicles don’t seem to fit together yet.”
Or, as one of the company’s top managers puts it, “this is a real challenge.”
This is a challenge for everyone. Back in 2003, my BMW came with a relatively powerful and luxurious inline-six engine. You couldn’t build a car that felt as solid or performed as well at a much lower price or, at least, no one else did. While a Lexus GS at the time was competitive, it was only marginally cheaper.
With EVs, the biggest luxury is often still range, and while more battery is often required to achieve that, it can also be achieved with better and more efficient technology. Tesla has eaten Porsche’s lunch in the United States by building cheaper and faster cars with better range. I may like the way a Taycan looks and feels more than a Model 3 Performance, but a Model 3 Performance is like half the price.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Kelly Clarkson has a new song with “Where Have You Been” and it’s pretty good. I’m a Kelly Clarkson enjoyer.
The Big Question
Am I wrong? Does no one want a sub-$25k Tesla? Or Ford? Or whatever?
Photo: Geely Galaxy
the company is likely to put out a de-contented Model Y
If that means backup and dash only cameras, basic cruse control, A/C, a heater, manual seats but power mirrors, locks, and windows with physical buttons/knobs/sliders to control them, old school dial instruments and a DDin sized hole in the dash for a much lower price I’m interested.
I’m pretty sure Tesla fitting mechanical controls into a car that’s never had them would not reduce costs.
If Tata could figure out how to put physical controls in a $2k Nano nearly 20 years ago I’m pretty sure Tesla can figure out how to retrofit such controls in today. It’s not like Tesla has any aversion to interior styling components that look like an afterthought.
Twenty years ago we were all using flip phones with physical buttons and a touch only phone like the iPhone wasn’t released until 2007. Now it likely costs less to build an iPhone than an equivalently powerful one with buttons. Same thing here. Not comparable.
PS How’d that Nano thing work out? It didn’t light the world on fire either as I recall. If there is every a Nano 2.0 it would likely only have a tiny screen or more likely just a phone interface and an app to do EVERYthing, the vast majority via voice: “Nano, put ‘er in Drive” etc…It’s simply cheaper.
Google:
bluetooth midi control surface
See all those cute buttons knobs and sliders? And look how cheap they are!
A little bit of software and you could control all the flat screen stuff with one of those. Better yet, since since there is an established software abstraction layer / api , once one works , they all work.
Geez, somebody could probably make a lot of money doing this.
The point is not that the Nano was a market failure. The point is that its possible to build even an ultra cheap car with a full set of basic physical controls, therefore the controls should not be a dealbreaker.
“Same thing here. Not comparable.”
No its not. So why bring it up? There are HUGE safety and reliability issues for touchscreen only controls in cars that do not apply to phones.
The sub 25k rig I want is a Slate. Mostly cause I wish I could buy a new Geo Tracker.
Plus, I can’t wait to watch the aftermarket go Bugfuck over a modular vehicle that’s easy to design mods for, and even easier to sell as end users can install them easily.
Bring the Suzuki Jimny to the US!
Bingo. But I also want a choice other than just a Tin top.
Honestly, what would a decontented Model Y be? They’ll just remove the seat heaters and power trunk? The car already has vinyl seats so that’s out. A smaller battery would mean <250mi range which would not be attractive to Americans. The only way to cut $15k from the MSRP is by designing it to that price point from scratch.
My question exactly. Maybe there’s enough fat to trim $5k (I doubt it). That still leaves you with a $32,500 car after tax credit, and it’s stripped down so hard by then, is it even the best EV at that price point? Like, the Equinox is $5k less than that, and it would have all the stuff you’ve stripped from the Y.
Time was the Tesla name would easily pull customers from a Chevy, but not now.
Use the Texas production line for the cheaper one and the CA line for the regular one
Smaller battery or at least cheaper battery chemistry
Lose the glass roof, add a metal panel instead
Remove heated seats
Cloth is cheaper than good vinyl
Remove powered trunk lid
Remove heated seats and steering wheel
Remove dimming mirrors
Remove wood or whatever trim is on the doors
Remove the ambient light strip inside
Remove headlight cross bar
Remove taillight cross bar
Use cheaper non-Matrix tech headlights
18″ wheels and thus smaller tires
Reduce the screen size by a couple of inches across
Remove the dual wireless charging pad
Reduce the brake disk, caliper, and pad size
Remove the cabin air filter
That’s all just off the top of my head.
Lots of ways to reduce cost, especially if optimizing the different lines for the different configurations. It all adds up.
My point is that doesn’t add up to $15k
Perhaps not, but you can also add higher line utilization to the total, i.e. if you run a production line for two shifts instead of one or three shifts instead of one or two, your per-unit production cost goes way down as you are amortizing the line, building, etc over significantly more units. Your costs such as labor and power are also less per unit in general as there are fewer daily start-up events although of course each unit still has those costs but perhaps to a lesser degree than otherwise. Volume is king, running below the designed speed costs way more per unit but being able to add a shift when it wasn’t originally accounted for results in a lot of gravy ASSUMING of course that one doesn’t price their product too low and just lose more money per unit (see GM in the bad old days).
Tesla (perhaps only Tesla?) is actually profitable on their EV production, so if volume can go up, then the per unit sales price can perhaps go down even without cutting any of the above (i.e. cut some profit out of each one but sell more and end up with a bigger pile of money at the end of the day.) The market (and this website’s reporting) cares about profitability to an extent but really what gets discussed is volume and market share even though at the end of the day the overall profit is what matters.
Make the cuts, increase the line utiltization, cut a little more profit and you may get there. But I’m not an accountant, however to simply say there is nothing that can be done to reduce the costs at all is simply disingineous. (I’m not saying that specifically you said that but you did sort of imply it). Maybe you can’t get a full $15k but I’ll bet you can get closer to $15k than to zero.
Higher line utilization is definitely a thing,
Ford proved that with the model T
But you get there by cutting the price, not by cutting the content.
The main problem is Elon has pissed off everybody that might be interested in an EV. Henry Ford was just as much of a monster, but unless you picked up a copy of the international Jew or the protocols of the elders of Zion in the back of the dealership you wouldn’t notice.
I think part of the problem is that oftentimes when you remove something, there’s a space where that thing would have been, and now you have to design and produce something to fill that space. If you ditch the glass roof, you now have to design and build a metal panel to take its place. Ditto for removing things like light bars/accents or wood interior trim. Reducing brake component size means having to design or source and test smaller components. If they could sell a ton of them spec’d that way then you could likely cover the initial investment to do a major decontenting like what you described. But I don’t know if they would sell a ton of them, especially because one of the easiest ways to cut costs is to just have a smaller battery, which is probably easier to achieve than re-engineering a lot of smaller things. And people in the US expect 300+ miles of range in an EV at this point.
You are correct but the re-engineering is a one time deal (per item). And yes if you sell enough of them (which is what everyone seems to think is what is needed, right?) then it’s simple math to figure out if the payback is worthwhile. Something like a smaller battery will be a negative to many people but maybe work well for others. Maybe the front lightbar is a big turn-on to some people, but if a body color panel results in a cost savings for them and for me, the buyer, and I don’t care about a light panel that will likely be VERY expensive to replace if a rock hits it and cracks it then I’d be all for that. Plenty of people profess to hate the glass roof, a painted panel may be preferable to some. People in Florida probably don’t care about the heated steering wheel as much as someone in Maine, same with AWD vs just RWD etc…
People on this site sure don’t seem to expect 300+ mile range on that little Slate truck, I didn’t think that 100k $50 “reservations” in two weeks was that big of a deal but lots of people here disagreed with that and were happy to sign themselves up for it, “low” range be damned. I don’t believe you can get anywhere near 300 miles in that thing even with the upgraded (more expensive but as yet undefined cost) battery).
In the end I don’t really care one way or the other about any of it, someone above though said there is almost nothing that could be taken out of the model Y to reduce cost, so I typed out a top of my head list of things that could easily reduce the cost…Likely there are other things as well.
I don’t see how most of those would actually reduce cost much
cheaper battery
that’s a big one, maybe people would go for that, I think the battery size is there for th second owners that buy them when they go off lease
Lose the glass roof – maybe, but then there’s a headliner and a metal roof that needs to attach the same way
Remove heated seats – negligible, cost savings
Cloth is cheaper than good vinyl
But it makes the off lease price go down
Remove powered trunk lid , the colonize is probably cheaper than a lock cylinder
Remove heated seats and steering wheel the heating element costs pennies
Remove dimming mirrors – maybe, that’s actually a safety feature that’s worthwhile
Remove wood or whatever trim is on the doors – piano black probably costs the same as fake wood, but plain door cards would actually be nice. Don’t see much savings though
Remove the ambient light strip inside. Save a dollar maybe, but a new version of everything around it would be costly, cheaper to just disable it in software
Remove headlight cross bar
See above
Remove taillight cross bar
Same
Use cheaper non-Matrix tech headlights- sadly this is true, but they will probable be mandatory soon
18″ wheels and thus smaller tires
According to tire rack, no savings at all. Less aluminum for the wheels though.
Reduce the screen size by a couple of inches across. – $20 ?
Remove the dual wireless charging pad —$20
Reduce the brake disk, caliper, and pad size — maybe, the car is fucking heavy though. You would have to redo a lot of testing and design and one lawsuit over cheapening out on brakes would suck all that money right back up. Maybe with lighter batteries you could justify moving to smaller brakes
Remove the cabin air filter —
You could remove the filter but all the ducts and stuff are still there.
Realistically the only thing that would cut cost more than a few hundred in total is the size of the battery pack, and that would cut back on the durability and resale value.
Maybe remove the CEO. He’s become Kryptonite. Maybe Muskonite will become a term in MBA programs. If you remove all the other stuff above, you have a car that is not even competitive with a 2017 Accord.
Agreed: they will develop pleather seats that are much more unpleasant to sit on and that will lower the price by $60.
It’s exactly what the decontented Cybertruck became; can’t wait to see what the market has to say about that one.
I know this topic has been hammered to death for its comedic attraction but I sure want to see that decontented model 3: no instrument cluster? No interior door latches? Spartan interior? No exterior color options? Smaller battery size and smaller motors will definitely make a difference but it will feel like what it is: a poor person’s Tesla as opposed to a thoughtful, truly frugal car. 2CV this aint.
How are respectable people giving this the benefit of the doubt “let’s see what they come up with” is puzzling to me. There is no rabbit, just an empty hat.
I don’t know how more people aren’t saying this, they already removed everything from the car
They could theoretically remove tech features, but when those are features that have already been developed, omitting them generally does not save money. They’ve already spent the development cost.
At that point you’re removing features just to try and convince consumers to step up to the more expensive model.
Yeah disabling fart mode has no effect on production costs
I am a photographer, therefore, I buy cameras from time to time. And read about them. And there are lots of people that complain about paying for features that they don’t use, but the thing is that most of those features actually cost zero per unit sold, but they broaden the market to people who think those features are important.
Photographers are always complaining “I don’t want to pay for video because I never use video” but the video feature actually makes the camera less expensive because they can sell more units and would not save anything by deleting that feature.
What’s the last camera you bought? Other than an iPhone 14, the last I bought was the original Canon R Mirrorless when it came out in late 2018. I’ve taken a lot of lovely photos with it. Years later, I’ve seen newer models come out, and while they’re interesting to read about, I don’t shoot for a living now. And when I stopped in 1999, it was video with a Sony Betacam. I prefer shooting stills and being able to shoot in portrait mode was not an option in TV news.
There’s no feature the R didn’t have, or a more recent one has that would make any significant difference in the pictures I’ve taken with it. And I can’t bring myself to buy anything newer yet. The 24-105L chunk of glass it came with has covered my current needs. That lens usually goes wide enough, long enough and is plenty sharp at every length. I have some older, more exotic EF mount lenses that work fine with an adapter, which I think I’ve used twice in seven years.
I wish I had this kind of gear in my newspaper days. Incredible low light sensitivity compared to having to chemically abuse Tri-X or Ilford HP4 35mm film. That alone would have been awesome. Unlimited 8FPS bursts compared to a Nikon F with a motor drive that was good for three FPS on a good day.
And other than the limited focal length, my iPhone shoots better video than my $60K Sony did back then. It’s so wild.
I got a Fuji x100vi when it came out because I like leaf shutters and being able to shoot flash at 1/2000 and make daylight look dark
Then my vision got messed up
About the same time I picked of 750 feet of 70mm film for my Graflex KE-4 70mm Combat Camera. Keep planing on shooting film again and 70mm is near impossible to get outside of Ilford’s once a year pay enough money and we will cut a batch of film for you program.
The Indian air force quit using film aerial cameras and sold off a bunch of film so I stocked up.
I mostly accumulate old lenses for my Sony AII which was the previous purchase, and keep reminding myself that I have probably a hundred old cameras at home, especially stereo cameras which is ironic now that my binocular vision sucks. A 5×7 stereo Graflex is the star of that batch.
Really any good camera in the last 20 years is fine for my purposes.
I’m so sorry about your eyes. As a guy who did photojournalism of one sort or another for almost 25 years, anything that would mess with eyeballs really creeps me out. I have floaters, which they can’t do anything about, but I’m thankful to not have cataracts. Yet. I’d probably have to go under general anesthesia for those to get worked on. And they would have to get really bad before I let that happen. I shudder just thinking about it.
I had to look up the KE-4. Very cool-looking. I bought an old Rolleiflex but only put maybe three rolls through it. I have a Nikon F Photomic, a Canon A-1 with a motor drive and an AE-1 that was the backup body for the A-1 back then. I recently gave away a Canon 70D and I still have a couple of old digital point and shoots I never use. The Sony A-series are really cool in that you can find an adapter for just about any lens to put in front of them.
The video cameras I shot with were too pricy to buy as souvenirs (then) and too bulky (now) for my limited bookshelf space.
Cataract surgery itself is not a big deal. The main drawback is that your eye becomes fixed focus afterwards, but other than that the improvement is quite amazing. There is a new kind of of lens that is dark around the edge that is like stopping a lens down a stop, and it actually improves your night driving vision by eliminating sparkles from the edges of the lens. I’m not sure the cylinder correction for astigmatism is worthwhile or not, but don’t let them give you the equivalent of progressive lenses.
Oh, and there is a slight color shift to blue, because your natural lenses yellow with age.
Funny you should say that. My eyes see stuff a little differently including white balance. One is a little warmer and the other a little cooler. One sees better further away and the other sees better close up.
In my newspaper/SLR days, I was left-eyed. And I am definitely left-eyed. Which was unfortunate during my video days, because that wasn’t how video cameras were engineered for then. But I managed.
Maybe it would have been funny to wear an eye patch over my left eye back then. Who knows? I didn’t mess it up.
“There is no rabbit, just an empty hat.”
Great quote.
Yep. That was awesome. Right up there with “no cattle, no hat” in Texas.
The one thing I never see discussed much when talking about cheap Chinese EVs is safety. The BYD Seagull, the vehicle lauded for it’s ability to go as far as you can for 10k, is heinously unsafe by modern standards. Just watch this crash test. Specifically look at the rear end test, that was a 1.4t vehicle, that’s 3k pounds. The average US car is 4300 pounds.
In the off-chance you get rear ended by a Miata it’ll be pretty gruesome, but maybe survivable, but a Tahoe, or pickup, hate to say it, but you’re red mist. The reality of these cheap EV’s is that not only are they cheap because of a list of things like Chinese state funding/assistance, abysmal labor conditions, dubious ethics for materials sourcing, but these cars cut MASSIVE corners on vehicle structure and safety testing/equipment.
Sure they throw some bonus airbags in there, but that doesn’t mean anything if they don’t function, just like the driver’s airbag in the test deploying late. This car wouldn’t pass any bit of federalization for the US without a significant overhaul that would inevitably add massive cost and likely weight, if it was even possile.
I don’t think cheap Chinese EVs are nearly as safe as cars sold in the states and Europe, let alone large new cars and trucks. However, my old Miata isn’t exactly safe, and I’m willing to drive it (not daily) because it gives a lot of pleasure and some utility at an attractive price point. Same goes for bikes and motorcycles: they’re fun, and cheap (compared to cars, especially new ones) so a compromise is worth considering for some.
I doubt anyone here really thinks that Chinese-made cars, or kei cars, are as safe as a new Corolla.
Sure, but the point is they’re not remotely saleable here without reengineering. I dunno, maybe the BYD in Europe shows that it’s not as onerous as that, but at the bottom end they’re as much Moke as Leaf.
Let’s see how the Dolphin does.
The Chinese can make whatever the market demands.
The question then is how different EuroNCAP standards are from NHTSA standards. It may be entirely possible to do minimal re-engineering to make it work, although we’re not likely to see Chinese EVs here anytime soon
This is very true, but my point is more that you must compare new cars to new cars when talking about “how would this car do in the XYZ Market.” It’s also true that an NA or NB could NEVER be sold today because it wouldn’t pass safety regulations in the US, neither would Kei vehicles new or old. That’s why I find this whole debate over whether or not a BYD seagull or similar subcompact Chinese EV would sell well in the US to be complete waste of time because they simply could not legally be sold in the US for failings on safety grounds at a minimum.
Well, they could be sold here if legislation permitted it to happen (which it won’t, given the influence and power of vested monied interests, but hey, that’s our system and we have to live with what we got). Again: motorcycles are legal to drive on public roads in all 50 states, and NOBODY expects a rider to do well in an accident, certainly not as well as a driver in most any car no matter how old and small. But that’s a motorcycle riders’ choice: they choose to accept a higher degree of risk. Logically, the same freedom to choose ought to enable less-safe imported/small cars to be sold here.
I don’t really think that’s a fair argument. For one, even Europe’s Euro NCAP testing has weeded out some of the BYD and micro-EV offerings from China, and I truly don’t believe that there is an honest appetite to lessen safety regulations for new vehicles in the US. After all the IIHS, a non-government entity mind you, has immense influence over automakers and has done massive amounts of good for strengthening automakers focus on safety of vehicles, and sways consumer purchasing and marketing massively.
There isn’t much of a point to trying to make motorcycles safe because you can’t. A car you can, and a motorcycle isn’t used to carry small children and the elderly around often. The argument that we should lessen safety standards to allow for new competitive products to be sold here is very pre-cold-war thinking. We have OSHA, the CFPB, EPA, and numerous other agencies that look out for the safety of the public because it’s a net-benefit to society when people don’t get hurt, even if it can make costs slightly higher.
I didn’t advocate for the abolishment of OSHA, or the NTSB, or any other agency charged with working for the public good. I didn’t even suggest abandoning current safety requirement of existing/new vehicles. I simply pointed out that offering consumers the choice to accept somewhat less safe vehicles strikes me as the kind of ‘freedom’ that so many Americans get all loud and strident about. A $10K Geely Star Wish vs. a $40-50K small EV crossover that’s legal for sale in the states today? It costs FOUR or FIVE times more to have a small car pass crash testing? Someone’s wetting their beak.
Sorry, my intention was not to accuse you of advocating for that, it was more to explain that on a government wide level, I don’t see there being much appetite to open the floodgates for unsafe vehicles, especially when a large percentage of the car-buying public considers safety as a high priority. Also I mentioned in a different comment, but the BYD Dolphin which does well in most Euro NCAP tests, is about a 26k USD car, mid 200s miles of range, and relatively basic transportation. Basically about what would be reasonable to expect from GM should they have made a next-gen Chevy Bolt. Also a Star Wish wouldn’t compete in the size, range, or feature set of any 40-50k EV like a model Y, Mustang Mach-E, etc, it’s an EV Nissan Versa hatchback competitor in terms of size.
I didn’t mean to come off as defensive, but wanted to clarify that I (stated that I) didn’t expect federal safety requirements to be amended or modified based on consumer choice.
I thought the Dolphin was a fair bit cheaper than that, at least in its home market. I’ve no idea whether it’s lying to me, but DuckDuckGo’s AI assistant says that “The MSRP for the BYD Dolphin ranges from approximately $13,735 to $17,315 USD.”
The BYD Seagull is a lot cheaper, but presumably less safe.
You’re totally fine and I appreciate the clarification so we’re on the same page! I was going off an Elektrek article that states 26k USD equivalent (23k Euro) starting in Europe, but I don’t know if VAT or similar is factored into that. And that starting price is for the lower range model that only has a WLTP range of 137 miles, which is more like 110 EPA rating equivalent, it may be closer to that 13-17k USD price in China, but I tend to use European pricing before VAT as a closer analog to US pricing since they have similar testing and certification regime, along with some import duties IIRC.
I’m semi-retired, so my peak earning years are surely behind me, but I’m also one of those weirdos who think that 100ish miles of EV range is fine (for me/personally/my needs). I don’t currently have a smartphone either, so (again) I’m odd. 🙂 Right now, I’m waiting for prices on a used Mazda MX30 to come down another few grand to $10K… if I still want one when that happens (another 3 years maybe?) I’ll just go buy one in that nice metallic red Mazda does. It’ll be my first car ever with some modern safety tech, like a 360 degree camera, so I’m kind of looking forward to it, if it happens. 🙂
My current daily is a two-decade-old Volvo and I’m pretty happy with it, especially in view of how little it cost me. This doesn’t mean that I don’t feel some desire for newer car/EV tech, especially in the areas of passive/active safety. For one thing, pretty much ALL new cars are statistically safer than most old cars. Here’s a one-minute video of an offset frontal collision between a late-model Renault Modus (a small, odd looking Euro-market people-mover that I’d probably happily own were it available in the US) and a big boxy Volvo 940 wagon, which is a car I think most people (myself included) would imagine to be quite safe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQKdXBKnZfg
With age comes a greater appreciation for safety/comfort, at least for me. This doesn’t mean that I don’t think folks ought to be able to choose to be less safe it they want to, in exchange for some perceived benefit (like reduced cost).
That’s probably why the Euro NCAP-compliant model is 8″ longer and costs twice as much, right there.
This right here. I generally agree that the Changli’s of the world are effectively death traps by US standards, but I also know the EU standards are generally comparable and usually stricter than US standards. So if this thing made it past the EU standards I am inclined to believe its decently safe, but they did have to do a ton of changes to get it there.
The Changli is a golf cart with a cab…
I admit I was be a bit facetious by tossing the Changli in there 🙂
Exactly. From all that I can see, the BYD Dolphin has the pricing, size, range, safety, and feature set from about what could be expected form a next Gen Chevy Bolt. This is to say, it’s not like there is some magic cheat code, the “cheat code” is hiding compromises.
Pretty rough, especially when I compare it to the 40 year old car I occasionally drive my daughter around in.
(Yes, I know an ad is different than a standard crash test. But it drives the point home.)
This is the sad truth as to why I sold my 60s cars when I had a kid. I couldnt figure out a safe way to put a carseat in there (I thought of some serious custom fabrication of seat mounts, seatbelt mounts etc) and even then, any crash would be horrible. I still love old cars but I knew I wouldnt drive mine at all if I couldnt use it to take my kid/spouse to the store occasionally.
It should be noted in that video you linked, the truck’s ‘Mansfield bar’ rear bumper was pathetically weak and failed.
In my view, we need stricter standards for commercial truck bumper design to avoid cars from ‘submarining’… which is more or less what happened in this video.
Expecting the top inch of the A pillar to and the windshield glass take all of the crash force is unrealistic.
Why semi trucks with no bumper are still allowed is a testimony to corruption.
I’d want a Renault 5 E-Tech, or any Citroen or Peugeot equivalent. Especially if they were priced to even just try to compete with Chinese offerings like the Geely Star Wish. Heck, for the $10K an entry-level Star Wish costs, I’d probably be happy to give one of those a shot despite my misgivings about surveillance tech and the CCP in general.
Small, practical cars that come in actual colors and are priced well below what passes for ‘average’ in the states (currently about $48,000. I think)?
Yes please. 🙂
This! The Renault 5, the Alpine A290, the Cupra Born VZ, fun hot hatch evs. We’ll get the Alpine maybe, but nobody will buy it and prove those that don’t sell them over here right.
As Tesla struggles to introduce new models on any sort of reasonable time frame, have they considered acquiring them the old fashioned way, namely badge engineering? Has to be some Chinese company that would want the extra, incremental sales volume
Alternately, Geely has a market cap of $26 billion, and Tesla has $36 billion in cash
I’m basically saying Tesla should give up, surrender, and turn to companies that know what they’re doing for R&D on new models
On first glance, I thought that Geely Star Wish was actually a photo of a Smart #! (or whatever they call it) which is of course based on the same platform as the Volvo EX30 and Geely’s own Zeekr X. I was about to say that I thought the Smart version of the three cars was the easiest on the eyes (and I do) but that Star Wish has similar, soft, rounded lines without excessive/artificial swoopiness or macho burliness, so I think it’s pretty good looking too. A bit generic yes, but far from unpleasant. 🙂
Not a Tesla.
“Ford” is a pretty big range. If taking out the nanny features reduces the price, I’m all for it. If they cannot be undone as default, then no, and that is any car at any price.
It would also have to last 20+ years, as my current car currently is, and which cost less than $25K when I bought it new. AND not be out of service for more than a day, as my current car has done, save for a few weeks of replacing the suspension and transmission (a few years ago, not days after I bought it).
I have no interest in a Tesla at any price point. In addition to the dumpster fire of a human Musk is, I don’t find their vehicles to be attractive or well designed for what I want as a driver.
I’ve never wanted a Tesla due to the random build quality that typically tends toward poor and the weird way things have been unnecessarily reduced to touchscreens and simplicity that inhibits actual use, especially the newer models. I’d rather not beta test their build process and endure weird decisions.
Musk’s political leanings and recent extra-governmental chaotic involvement in the dismantling of the US government are a bonus reason to stay away.
The only good thing Tesla has done is to make the Cybertruck in the shape of a dumpster to pay tribute to the fire within it.
That is the most milquetoast Porsche I have ever seen. I’m surprised it isn’t beige.
For an extra $8,500 it can be. Any shade of beige you want, in fact.
The garbage can cybertruck was a disaster. They should’ve just made a Mode 3 with a pickup bed. It would practically print money.
All they had to do was commercialize what Rich Benoit and Simone Giertz did years before!
I still love the fact that they invited Simone Giertz to the Cybertruck launch but told her to leave the Truckla at home. They knew their product would look worse than what she built.
Really. Tesla had many opportunities to just build a normal electric pickup or coupe-utility that would have had much wider appeal, but they went with that 3rd grade notebook sketch of a stainless steel doorstop with wheels, due to heavy handed microgement from the CEO
They could’ve even done something that had CT elements but was slightly more conventional-looking, cheaper, and, critically, smaller.
As a Porschephile I’ve been taking great interest in their recent struggles. It was only a few years ago that they seemed to be an unstoppable monolith, and now they’re in pretty significant trouble. I think the point about BEVs is a valid one. Porsche are absolute chassis wizards and can absolutely make an EV that’s more engaging, fun to drive, and feedback rich than just about anyone else.
But the powertrain is going to behave in the exact same way in a $120,000 Taycan as it is in a $50,000 Tesla, Ioniq, etc. One of the things that’s always been appealing about Porsche is their interesting engines. No one else really makes flat 6s, and they offer an experience that’s all their own. They have a totally unique sound and feel. When I’m at the track I can tell you when a Porsche went by on the back straight without even watching.
They don’t have that with EVs, so the price premium is harder to justify. Which brings me to my second point…this may sound nuts, but I actually think Porsches have become way too goddamn expensive. Their best selling vehicles are the Macan and the Cayenne, which are essentially 20% more expensive than anything they compete with…and underneath they’re basically just Audis with better suspension, engine, and transmission calibration.
You can get an X3 M40i with a B58 for the same price as a 4 cylinder Macan with no options. It’s way faster, somehow way more efficient, it sounds better, is probably 90% as fun to drive, and will be less expensive to own. You can get a well equipped SQ5 for the same price too. By the time a Cayenne is built and reaches a dealership you’re probably not getting into it for less than $85,000.
For that much money you can buy a base X5 and have enough left over for a used Boxster. I won’t even get started on the sports cars, but a 718 or 911 are god awful value propositions too. You can get a Z06 for way less than a base 911 that’s automatic only, has no differential, and an interior with as much plastic as your average $50,000 car. Once you get into the really special ones and have to pay the insane markups you’re at new McLaren, Ferrari, etc. money.
I don’t think it’s sustainable. They’ve been jacking prices up as recklessly as anyone over the last few years and I think it’s catching up with them. When you’re paying 20% more (at least) for a badge on a product that isn’t that much better people are eventually going to wise up. Porsche’s in house financing is also an absolute joke.
Most people buying expensive luxury cars lease them, and there isn’t a single Porsche out there that you can lease for less than 4 figures. That’s a problem when you can walk into another luxury dealer and drive out in an $85,000 car for $799 a month. The other German luxury brands also offer decent finance deals. Porsche isn’t even going to give you the average market rate.
Trust me, my wife and I make good money at this point and I’ve done all sorts of enthusiast math to see if I can make a totally base Macan or Cayenne work and every single time the numbers come back totally fucked because you can’t get decent financing, you’re going to pay way more for gas and insurance, and a goddamn oil change is a $500+ proposition…and that’s not even getting into the cost of Porsche consumables.
I genuinely think Porsches need to be less expensive. I’m not saying they need to make a cheap car, but they’re too damn expensive even for most luxury buyers and the price delta doesn’t add up. The kind of people that can comfortably afford a Porsche already have one or several, and almost all of them are 50+ years old. Either the entry point needs to more manageable or the base cars need to offer more. The $70,000 Macans on your lot have the same engine as a Tiguan and cost $1,199 a month to lease. That’s a problem and the badge will only get you so far.
Agreed on all points.
Recently shopped for a electric SUV…settled on an Audi (with some regrets)…but cost for the Porsche equivalent was $25k more!
Lets also talk about the insane options and costs associated with a Porsche purchase.
If you don’t want to wait 6 months to get the vehicle, you have a choice of the grey or white or black ones sitting on the dealer lot…because they could not possibly stray one lane away from anything with personality.
Of course the leather steering wheel you want is $3,200…they will only make three of them and sell two (the other one will sit in their parts department until sold for $4,800).
So yes. Porsche has some issues.
It’s absolutely insane. The base price is $70,000 or whatever…but once you add leather, heated seats, upgraded audio, performance bits that are standard on an Elantra N or Civic Type R, and a color that isn’t grayscale you’re looking at $90,000 out the door for a base EV Macan with 300 horsepower or ICE one with an engine that you can get in a $30,000 VW.
It’s not worth it. At all. Oh and you like the powder blue color? That’s paint to sample only and it’s $4,999. Blue brake calipers are $2,999, and any interior color other than black requires the $9,999 premium package, which you need equipped to unlock the differential. For someone with an 800 credit score we can finance you at 9.9% APR, and sorry but there is 0 complimentary maintenance.
We can offer your first service for $499 if you pay now, though!
Uh what does that include?
An oil change AND a car wash!
Stellantis rightly gets criticized for its price-gouging, but we should by no means let Porsche off the hook, either. It’s borderline criminal what they charge for a base Cayenne, and like you said, you’re almost at $100k by the time you start adding the options it should’ve had as standard. I also love Porsche, but unless I have unlimited resources I’d probably rather get a BMW.
Id pick the nicest X5 I could get for the same money as the cheapest Cayenne every single time
Yeah, I don’t think Porsche is the place to go for an SUV, you’ll just wish you had the Cayman or 911 anyway. You can get a great SUV for half of Porsche money and save the rest for when you turn 50 and can finally get that 911…if all goes well…crap…I’m 45 and I definitely need more than five years to get that 911 money together…ugh!
It’s not nuts. They have.
My 2016 Boxster Spyder was $96,620 in Nov 2015, $101,595 OTD.
My 2025 Spyder RS was $219,395 in Jan 2025, and $265,120 OTD w/ ADM.
Adjusted for inflation, the 2016 Spyder would be $135,985 OTD in Jan 2025.
So even adjusted for inflation, it was nearly twice the price (+95%). If you remove the ADM, it would’ve probably been $233,500 OTD, which is still +72%. Is it a lot more car than the 2016 Spyder? Absolutely, in every way. Not in just how it’s equipped, but in how it drives. It’s absolutely unassailable and entirely predictable. It sounds completely insane from inside the cabin. Yet it’s comfy for what it is, and absurdly well built. And 10 years from now, I’m sure it’ll have been faultless the entire time.
Though holy hell, I’m glad I’ll never have to do that again in my life.
Can I drive it? Pretty please?
If you’ve suitable insurance, it could be arranged.
(standing in line…)
Damn, I knew the Spyders were a lot more but had no idea it climbed that much. That is insane.
Of course I didn’t want even the S because I’d like to drive mine on regular roads occasionally and the roads are terrible everywhere.
How livable is the Spyder? Or do you just have it for the track and mountain road/occasional drives?
I don’t use cars as conveyances. To do daily stuff I buy a $35-40 pair of sneakers to put 3000-3500 miles a year on.
Since 2008, cars are only “toys” for me. There’s no using a car to go to the grocery store. It’s always “a trip” or mountain bombing run. Yet unless I need to rent something to haul things, the car I have is the car I use.
981 Spyders are the goldilocks Porsche. Everything you need, nothing you don’t, and sounds dirtier than a 997 GT3. Isn’t spooky fast, but isn’t slow (C7 comparable in a straight line). Great ergonomics and control weights, one of the best-to-use manuals in any modern Porsche. It’s the modern interpretation of the early 60s SCCA definition of a sports car, and never depreciated. Boxsters and Caymans are invisible to people, but Spyders do get noticed.
RS is a zero-lift, aero neutral version with everything sharpened that much more. And given the sound, the resonances, the sound, all the improvements, and the sound… is a bit of a cartoon character to drive. It’s genuinely fast.
This is a good answer all the way around.
Agree so much with all of this as a fellow Porsche fan. It’s not even just the cost of the cars but also the maintenance as you mention.
I now own 2 Porsches, both paid off and both purchased CPO. I am currently going to the dealer for service for both because I like it, they treat me well and all that but I don’t know how long I’ll keep it up. It so goddamned expensive. Basically it is nearly a $400/month car payment. Each. Not every year. Some years there is minimal maintenance on the Macan S but the Boxster always has something else that’s needed it seems. At a minimum I’m paying about $4,000/yr for combined maintenance.
I’ve really considered looking for a 911 to replace the Boxster but I just can’t justify it. They want super-car money for them now. The used options are climbing nearly as fast. Of course, there are very few 911 models that offer the manual anymore so if you can find a used with a manual, they want new-car money for it.
I think they are just a victim of their own success. They were hitting on all the flat cylinders for so long they could charge what they wanted. Works great in a great economy but I think they just finally hit (and passed) their ceiling. I wonder if they’ll be able to bring it back in line with consumer expectations. Companies like Porsche don’t generally have the ego that allows for backslides very well.
The EV part of all this is just a curiosity. They don’t really need to address it yet. They just need to figure out where they need to fit in the market generally. I bet they’re fine for another 2 years at their current pricing but they need a better strategy to position themselves.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen the movie Rush. If not I highly recommend it, it’s a great racing movie about a very cool era in F1…but there’s a scene that comes to mind when Daniel Brühl (who’s playing Niki Lauda) hops out of a drive in Ferrari’s F1 car and they ask him how it was. He responds that it was an absolute mess that wanted to understeer him off the track.
The guy who ask’s response is to petulantly wave his hands and go it’s a FERRARI. Anyway I feel like this is where Porsche is at right now.
Here’s a $120,000 911. There’s no differential, it’s PDK only, the interior is comparable to a Nissan Z, and you can have it in white or black. If you want the performance bits that are standard on a fucking Mustang GT it’s another $15,000. If you want a manual you have to buy the $135,000 or whatever Carrera T starts at and by the time it’s on a lot with the full leather interior, adaptive dampers, a Bose audio system, summer tires, and guards red paint it’s somehow $165,000 and the dealer has slapped another 15 grand on it.
Why? It’s a PORSCHE! That’s why. Unfortunately that’s only going to get you so far….and as much as I love Porsches even if I had $300,000 or whatever to drop on a car I’d get an actual exotic and not something the average person can’t tell apart from the $120,000 911 with a rental spec interior….
Tesla already feels cheap to me. I get that they’re laden with tech, and that costs some amount of money, but it doesn’t appeal to me to have my car capable of fart noises. Even with Elon-baggage aside, I look more favourably to the Electric Mustang & Kia/Hyundai twins.
But it’ll be a while before the balance of costs tilt towards EV for me with the amount of driving I do.
I haven’t sat in the very latest Teslas, but in 2022 when I bought my Mach-E, it felt SIGNIFICANTLY better built than even the Model S at the time (and at the time, the Mach-E was quite a bit cheaper than the Model Y). 3 years on, and still no creaks/rattles. The only initial quality issue was the spoiler mounts leaked a tiny drip into the rear hatch when it was pouring outside. That happened within the first couple thousand miles, the dealer replaced the spoiler assembly, thoroughly tested it in a deluge tunnel, and it’s never been a problem since.
Ford gets crap for recalls, and I’ve had a few in the Mach-E, but we’ve had periodic recalls in every new car we’ve bought, and the Ford recalls haven’t been any more frequent than what we got from Honda and Nissan.
Agree with the interior assessment of the Mach-E vs Tesla.
However, I was ready to buy the Mach-E until our test drive got to 40 mph….the wind noise from the A pillars was a deal killer. Even drove another Mach-E in the hopes it was a one off…and second Mach-E had the same problem.
Ford is so close.
Weird, I haven’t noticed that in my Mach-E, but then I was comparing it to my Subaru Outback at the time, and any EV is quieter than that.
I’ll try and listen for that now.
Please don’t.
The moment you hear it you can’t unhear.
It will forever annoy you and you will be forever tuned to that horrible Album Rock station a few clicks louder than prudent.
Eh, I drove around a bunch and I really couldn’t tell any special noise at 40mph beyond just the normal increase in wind you get accelerating up to freeway speeds. If the noise is there, I must have tuned it out ages ago.
My only Fords were two Focuses (’12 SE and ’16 ST) and it was the same with recalls. The SE had one for an ECU update (manuals only) that I had done and to check the wiper arm for a missing seal (checked it myself, it was there). The ST had a recall for the hatch being able to be opened by the driver while moving at >15mph or something. Completely useless as one would have to hold the hatch button that was not near commonly-used buttons for several seconds while driving for this to happen. I checked to see if mine opened for the hell of it and it didn’t, but if it had, I wouldn’t have bothered bringing it in. I would have bought a mk4 Focus, but they didn’t want to sell them here.
In the US, a lot of people with friendlier views toward EV’s also self-select for lower paying jobs that involve helping other humans instead of being tech-douches or sociopathic financiers. Back before Elon made his brands anathema to that group, buying a Tesla new or used was a doable stretch. The Bolt sold so well because it was an affordable alternative and a lot of people had a gas car for longer trips. It seems the affordable EV’s are doing okay. But 250 miles seems the bare minimum people will put up with in this country where everything is sprawling and public transportation is terrible.
Maybe, but I’m an engineer, and work with other engineers. Most of us have at least some interest in EVs, and none of us self-selected lower paying jobs, lol. At the very least, everyone I work with understands why there’s a market for EVs and why they might appeal to people, even if EVs don’t appeal to them personally.
Among the circle of engineers I work with, most take a typically nerdy and pragmatic view towards EVs: I made a spreadsheet that factored the current cost per mile driving my gas car, my typical commute mileage, insurance costs, expected maintenance needs, how far I drive on road trips, then factored a weighted list of everything I cared about in a vehicle, and then ran a bunch of cars I liked (gas, PHEV, and BEV) through the analysis. My coworkers all did much the same for their own cars.
That said, engineers do have emotions, and I threw caution to the wind and got a Mach-E GT because I wanted felt-melting torque. No rational logic there, I just think it’s fun.
Also, I notice a general higher tolerance for early adoption among my coworkers as most are willing and capable of sorting out bugs in new tech. Quite a few got EVs even back in the very early days of the Leaf just for the novelty of trying new things.
Must be the part of town you live in. In my area, it was mostly tech bros who self-selected for higher paying jobs that drove Teslas until recently, and now they’re joined by sociopaths in general.
People in the US want cheap, not small. People want a $25k EV. Those two should easily begin to overlap and dominate in the next 5 years. The Chinese are proving it doesn’t cost that much to build them, and the Slate might be the vehicle to change that. There are many abandoned factories and malls that can be used to assemble vehicles. The past 40 years of manufacturing and design evolution with CAD will culminate in these super cheap car assembly “houses” springing up around the world.
Just make the cars physically the size the target market wants.
I would absolutely love to see a car factory made from an old mall: stamping plant in a Macy’s, welding in a food court, paint in a JCPenney, etc. I just hope the interior parts get stored in a Cinnabon to steep in that cinnamon roll aroma…
Perhaps you missed my point. The new model could be all parts arrive finished, or near finished, and they are assembled, basically anywhere there is space. We have moved to fully modular stuff at this point. A car is no different than a blender, just a bigger BOM. The “classic” car factory will still exist, but I bet you see things change real quick.
Besides that, having that Cinnabon smell would be awesome. Imagine the day when you finally notice it gone. So sad.
Yeah I know what you meant, and you’re right about plenty of open commercial space for pure assembly, not fabrication. I was just having some fun imagining a dead mall as a car factory. Of course, in an actual mall conversion, you’d just shell out the inside and build to suit.
People say they want cheap cars, but they still want features and comfort. If someone can offer a car that’s cheap enough, people will probably forgo some features they might have otherwise wanted, so you’ll sell plenty. If someone offers enough features in a comfortable, cheap car, they’ll probably sell as many as they make.
The problem is that the price delta is usually designed so that people want to move up to a more expensive vehicle. If it’s going to be a difference of a few dollars each month, why not be more comfortable and have better tech?
Tesla may have an additional problem, in that the bottom has fallen out of the used market. If the same money can buy a new econobox Tesla or a lightly used Tesla with all the features they cut out of the budget model, that used one might be what people buy. And if the used one is cheaper, it’s an even bigger draw.
The problem is manufacturers (at least here in the US) have spent so many years applying that “price delta” formula they’ve pretty much moved themselves so far up the ladder they’ve walked away from the lower end market.
The bean counters can argue there’s no real money to be made there, but they’re ignoring the fact someone else always seems to come along to step into the void and scoop up that market (and then move up market themselves). At this rate, this brilliant financial planning will eventually finish off the Big 3 for good.
It’s happened over and over again, with more and more distressing results for the ‘Murican brands each time (first the Beetle, then the Japanese, now South Korea, and possibly eventually the Chinese if the world holds together long enough).
Bean counters are great for driving companies right over a cliff, because they’re so focused on the ground right in front of them, they pay no attention to the horizon.
This is why I will never work for a company where the CEO came up through finance. You can’t put the bean counters IN CHARGE.
Walgreens did that (Greg Wasson). Now they’re selling to a private equity firm. It’s likely they’ll disappear in a few years…
I think a decontented Model Y might do OK. Strip everything out of it, seats, screens, entertainment bits, etc. Let the customer add back what they can afford/want. Call it the Model DIY.
Better budget for extra tinting so the driver doesn’t see all the extended middle fingers.
So, start with a clean Slate? Bezos appears to be beating him to it.
I see what you did there
Tesla needs to make its own take on the byd Seagull: a sedan or hatchback costing under $20,000 off the lot, that has at least 200 miles real-world highway range and can be fast charged.
It’s not rocket science, and the big 3 could have been making such a car since the late 1990s if they wanted.
Well for based on what the Seagulls CLTC rating is versus already not-dead-accurate EPA numbers, even the long rang Seagull can’t hit 200 real-world miles. And let’s not pretend that battery technology was even close to proficient for a 200mi+ range vehicle more than 30 years ago. Even the original Tesla Roadster from not even 15 years ago could barely eke out 200 real-world miles of range, despite being based on the diminutive Elise.
With a sufficiently streamlined and simple vehicle, 70 Wh/kg was enough to meet this benchmark. Current batteries are at roughly 220-280 Wh/kg.
That’s really not true though, the EV1 has a 0.19 CD, on par with the absolute best on sale even today, and the best they could manage was the low 100-range with the later longer range battery packs. Sure I could see a prototype packed to the absolute gills with batteries in an EV1 shell may have been able to crest that number back in the day, yet it was not feasible to produce a car that could hit that sort of range, certainly not with the cost of batteries back then. It was maybe possible to create the car, but absolutely impossible to doing it in any way that made business sense.
No to mention that the 1999 MY EV1 had at the time cutting edge NiMh cells that were in the low 50’s Wh/kg, which meant at it’s 24.6 kWh battery was about a perfect 1/3 of the vehicle weight. The EV1 was also estimated to have lost GM ~58k USD (about 115k in 2025 USD) each, meaning it lost more than the cost of a new EQS sedan, where a very large chunk of that cost was batteries, which it had right about half enough of to hit 200 miles.
Not to mention as you know, adding batteries is not a free 1-to-1 range extension, it would add another 1k lbs to the weight of the car to get an EV1 to nearly enough battery to hit 200 miles, but realistically less, and there was certainly no room in the vehicle to simple 2x the battery volume, the extra weight would have structural implications, size goes up, rolling resistance goes up, etc.
All of this is to say that “the Big 3 could have made a 200mi vehicle since the late 90s if they wanted” is patently and demonstrably false. GM Wanted to be on the cutting edge and the technology, even with a nearly cost-no-object loss leading product wasn’t even close to a 200 mile car at it’s absolute best in 1999.
24.6 kWh battery to get a 100 mile EPA range and 130 mile real world highway range is better than virtually anything you can buy today. For the time period, even better was possible. Consider the Solectria Sunrise(0.17 Cd), Ford Probe V(0.137 Cd), GM Precept(0.159 Cd), among others going as far back as the 1980s.
The platform engineering, and not the battery/components, was the big cost driver in the EV1. Not enough of them were going to be made to recover the NRE costs. In mass production, former ECD Chairman Robert Stempel claimed $150/kWh to mass produce the NiMH battery in volume for 20,000 cars per year, in like 1996.
50% more battery, in a mass-produced, 25% more aerodynamically slippery car, designed to seat 4 instead of two, maybe gaining 600 lbs unladen mass, would have probably done it and had a wider market than some low-volume two-seater.
Using Cd of concept vehicles is red herring, the lowest of the low of production vehicle across all time, including even the VW XL1, is the 0.19 range. The simple reality of production vehicles having countless baked in compromises concepts do not means that jsut because a pretty model on a stand can hit 0.14 does not mean that a production car can. Crash structure, lighting, serviceability, even mirrors and panels gaps are a fact of life that cannot limited as much as a hand built, nonconforming concept car.
Not to mention that stretching a car to add seats for an additional two people will inherently significantly compromise aerodynamics, and the EV1 was already pushed to the absolute limits of what GM could pull off for federalized vehicles. Nobody has looked at an EV1 and accused GM of putting form over function, and yet they ended with a 0.19. Sure a 4-door may have had more appeal, but the cost to get it even up to the EV1s limited range would have jumped it well out of the realm of affordability and marketability. EV’s today still carry a price premium over Hybrid or ICE or PHEV counterparts, and that’s with massive economies of scale, far more efficient powertrains, electronics, and the like.
Most of those “compromises” are for styling. Trim pieces, slight adjustments to the shape to make it “look better”, cladding, creases/vents that are unnecessary, oversized wheels/grilles, all make the car an inferior product from a performance, efficiency, cost, and practical perspective.
It is within the context of this current styling zeitgeist that we see a limit in production cars around this level. Throw it aside, and MUCH lower is possible for a ground vehicle.
The Aptera is a 0.13 Cd. I have a Milan SL velomobile with a 0.08 Cd that I can reach 50 mph in on flat ground with nothing but my own two feet. Cars CAN do this. The question is whether the auto industry will step up to the plate. Nothing is stopping them but themselves, and this has been the case since the 1930s.
The Aptera is not even legally classified as a car in the US, and a Velomobile is very much not classified as a car. And again, even when automakers do everything in their power to push Cd on a production vehicle low, like the XL1 that I see as a modern EV1 successor (yes it’s a Hybrid, but similar concept/aim) it couldn’t get a lower than 0.19 Cd, and it has every compromise imaginable.
So no, even modern production Cars cannot do this.
The wind doesn’t care much whether a shape has 3 wheels or 4 wheels on the road.
The Aptera has 3 wheels to get around regulations, because the cost of compliance is prohibitive for a startup without billions of dollars.
I mentioned these vehicles to demonstrate the physics of vehicle efficiency that is possible. A car that complies with modern safety standards has room to come a lot closer to these than where cars typically are at in the present, and this was every bit as possible 20+ years ago as today.
The XL1 has plenty of compromises, especially hose entailed by having to cool an ICE engine. As a EV chassis, eve maintaining the same CdA value, this is a car that as an EV could likely get 6 miles per kWh.
The Mercedes Vision EQXX concept is even more slippery at 0.17.
Aptera has as low a Cd as it does thanks to being a 3-wheeler, which allows the rear of the body to taper in a way that is impossible on a 4 wheeled vehicle. being a 3-wheeled vehicle means the Aptera is not legally classified as a car. This means that using the Aptera to argue production cars could be more efficient is a moot point.
If anything, having outboard wheels is a massive drag penalty, even faring them. Now it has more frontal area, and interference drag between the farings and the nacelle, plus exposed axles.
A 4-wheeled, 4 or 5 seater car, could get into the low 0.1X range if it was purposely designed for it without compromising it to conform to some CEO’s vision of brand identity or whatever fad styling zeitgeist the marketing people created.
The 1967 Panhard CD Peugeot 66C LeMans race car has a 0.13 Cd value with the long tail, as an example of 4 wheels demonstrating Aptera-like efficiency.
The VW XL1 had a CD of 0.186, a purpose built, efficient as humanely possible vehicle with a narrower rear track, staggered 2-person seating, wheel covers and the like. This was a production car.
Using designs from a 60’s race car has no bearing on what a production car in 2025 car pull off aerodynamically, modern vehicles have restrictions on things like lighting, bumpers, mirrors, and so much more that significantly impact how low a Cd can be. Mercedes threw out all the stops on the EQS sedan, and hit about a 0.20, and it’s been a commercial flop because the styling was so compromised for aero, that the buying public has not bought them, and Mercedes is moving to slightly less aerodynamic designs for EVs to boost styling. This is the reality of making cars.
That’s what “they” WANT you to believe!!
/tfh
That low 100-mile range was measured on an EPA highway test with lots of braking. Real-world highway range with speeds from 60-80 mph and minimal stops was about 130 miles. An aerodynamic car like the EV1 actually gets more penalized on the EPA test methodology for not being able to take advantage of its key advantage. Most people who do long distance highway driving tend to maintain a steady speed.
John Wayland reviewed one even, demonstrating its capability, and he did not drive it lightly, included some hard accelerations and a stop light drag on his drive. He got 130+ miles, not even hypermiling it.
https://www.portev.org/commentary/living_in_the_past.htm
I’d argue that proves my point even more. The absolute pinnacle of everything GM could produce saw a realistic, normal use case range of the low-mid 100’s, while losing about 3x it’s “retail” price while only ever being leased and recaptured. Sure it may have been capable of hitting 160, 170 mile if hypermiled, but hypermiling is not a figure worth a damn to about 99% of consumers. All this does is proves my point that no major automaker had the technology to produce a marketable 200+ mile car in the late 90s.The EV1 had every single thing in it’s favor, one of the lowet Cd of any vehicle ever produced, best available motor, inverter, battery technology, sub-compact size, the weight of GM R&D behind it, and yet it was still at least 30% short of 200 miles by 1999.
I maintain that a hypothetical EV2 from GM would’ve done more harm than good for advancing electric cars. The NiMH batteries were less dense and wore out far more quickly than the lithium batteries used in later years. Just to make a somewhat reasonable range the EV1 was compromised to the point of most Americans considering it impractical. The additude towards EVs at the time was they were glorified golf carts, small, slow, short range, batteries would go bad quickly and be expensive to replace. Even modern EVs struggle to overcome some of those ideas, but an EV2 would have essentially confirmed them. Tanking perception all while incinerating huge piles of cash for GM.
I agree absolutely with this. While GM got a massive tech head start, they also learned that while a very small sliver of the population adores this concept, they realized that the technology and market were very far from prime time. Tesla had the foresight to see the potential earlier than anyone else, and at the same time create some of that demand, but GM was correct to bow out when they did.
It’s fair to criticize American automakers of leaving behind good technology when they shouldn’t have, and it’s also fair to criticize GM for not capitalizing on market segment in time, including things like the Bolt and Volt, but dropping the EV1 and related development was reasonable, it was just a decade too early.
There were high school kids custom-building heavy lead-acid powered EVs for the Tour Del Sol throught the 1990s and early 2000s that matched or surpassed the NiMH GM EV1’s range(eg. “Solar bolt”, “Spyder Juice”, “Phantom Sol”). Dave Cloud also demonstrated a 200 mile range at 70 mph hauling around a ton of golf cart batteries in his custom-built “Dolphin” in the early 2000s, which would have gotten the same range at 1,000+ lbs lighter using NiMH.
There was still a lot of room for improvement regarding efficiency, even admitted in Michael Shnayerson’s book “The Car That Could”. The EV1 was slightly compromised for styling, costing it range.
A chassis designed to fit more batteries, even less drag, coupled with mass production to get costs down, is what was necessary. And there was nothing in the laws of physics preventing any of it.
College projects that are pushing the limits of technology are awesome, but they are not production vehicles. The original argument I’ve been making is production vehicles at that time could not hit 200 miles, even if the company did everything they could. It’s also not fair to completely ignore that for something to reach production to a point of being successful, it has to sell, and to a lot of people, which requires things like styling, and technology, and safety, which all eat into range and cost.
These are projects done on a shoestring budget, without the aid of a wind tunnel or even engineers. Th automakers have all of he tools and billions of dollars a their disposal. Their vision isn’t making cars, it’s making money, and due to that, we never se an actual demonstration of what is truly possible in a production vehicle. he laws of physics don’t care whether the vehicle is a concept car or a product, or how much money went into designing it.
“what’s possible in a production vehicle” is inherently limited by what sells, and what is done in a hyper-focused undergraduate project does not reflect efficiency numbers that are comparable to production vehicles. It is not a like-for-like comparison.
Musk has been promising that this whole time, and some wishful thinkers have speculated that the Cybertaxi would be the platform for that. I don’t believe that is possible even in the alternate universe where Musk lived up to his hype and we had a White House who wanted to build on BBB/IRA.
Would love to see someone try though – welded sheet-steel passenger cell with plastic body panels on a skateboard in a CUV-coupe shape for good cD, minimal labor and materials. Basically, Model Y without the monster die castings.
Funny howo Tesla will offer a cheaper car just as Tesla’s CEO uses his political connections to ensure that very few Americans will be able to afford Tesla’s cheaper car.
Or any new car for that matter.
When you Wish upon a Star, crazy names for all these cars
Dolphins Surf and Seagulls
makebuild your dreams…come…trueI think tons of people want a cheap EV, but not TOO cheap. You can look at the relative flops of the eMini and eGolf and 500e to see how well small, short-range EVs have done here, and it goes back to the old adage about “once chance to make a first impression.”
In a very reddish area, I’ve watched Tesla go from a “rich people’s toy for centre-left people and environmentalists” to a mainstream brand in just the past couple of years — no showrooms, no marketing. To be fair, most of this is the proliferation of them on the used market, but Musk’s profile has NOT been a deterrent to these purchases (possibly the opposite from a few people I know well enough to ask). I’ve only seen one “We bought this before he went crazy” bumper sticker, and I expected a lot more.
A decontented Model Y sounds like a winner to me. But I’m not sure how much decontenting you can do, these things are already missing most of the parts that you’d normally decontent. That leaves…batteries? Then you have an uphill battle selling lower driving ranges to people who treat driving range like an EV pissing contest. It’s towing capacity for 90% of owners. They don’t need it, but it’s nice to know it’s there.
Simply being involved in politics wasn’t the issue. It was providing massive support for fascism, which is the issue. Those two things may be related, but they are by no means the same thing and shouldn’t be reported as such.
US fascism didn’t start with the current administration, and won’t disappear once its term ends regardless of who gets voted in after. US fascism has been entrenched since at least the early 1980s, arguably much longer. On the bright side, putting a face to it has at least woken people up to its presence, to some extent. About damned time.
Ah, yes, the peanut gallery has arrived to shout their false equivalencies as cover for being passive. It is mind-boggling to consider how many people can’t perceive things existing in various degrees and how much that matters.
No false equivalency or passivity. Just reality. Americans have been losing their civil liberties and individual autonomy in very egregious ways while power has continued to concentrate in fewer hands for many decades now, regardless of which party is in power.
Where we are at right now is no accident. It is the consequence of carefully crafted policy decisions, purchased by billionaires and multinational corporations, even decades before I was born.
Sure, but to suggest what we are now seeing isn’t any different is the mother of all false equivalencies. Every action has a precursor, and that doesn’t excuse any current action. To suggest otherwise is the core of passivity. “It was bound to happen so why bother calling it out.” Just the attitude of an angsty pre-teen.
It really isn’t any different. It’s more of the same, minus the window dressing. It’s the iron fist with the velvet glove removed. The facade of democracy taken off when the actual democracy hasn’t been there all along. I’m not excusing anything, just describing my observations based on what I know of history and the hundreds of books on the subject I’ve read.
Americans didn’t vote for this crap. From a practical perspective, voting is not going to get rid of it, because that option is never on the table in the reality that we live, just the appearance of getting rid of it.
People may vote to put the velvet glove back on the iron fist if it gives them closure or comfort. I’m advocating for getting rid of the iron fist altogether, something which the US political machine will not allow through any legal processes or redress as it is controlled by an unelected aristocracy, an aristocracy which has ownership of both parties, the media, the financial system, control of the presidential debates and even the Overton window of “acceptable” discourse.
So, basically, you are confirming the false equivalence claim by stating you find it all equivalent, willfully ignoring the fact that the variations still matter. It is as stupid as saying you can see you are going to drive into a brick wall, so why hit the brakes since, for you, that happening at 75mph or 10mph is no different. Real edgy.
If you cared, you would be fine calling out fascism in all its forms rather than simply adding a distraction and justification for it when other people do. But rather than condemning a clear and distinct escalation, you justify it. At best, you are a passive non-factor; more accurately, you are a stooge that actively normalizes fascism because you think it makes you sound smart.
You think list off ideas from a 100-level history course as if other people don’t know them. The issue is that other people learned from them and then continued to learn. They didn’t stop where you did, as the sophmore douche trying to sound smart to a bunch of drunk freshmen.
I’m stating that the equivalence isn’t false. Nothing meaningful has actually changed, only appearances and rhetoric.
Abbie Hoffman in “Revolution for the Hell of It” was pointing out many of the same problems we still face today, back in 1968. He went to prison for it.
The current administration didn’t get us, NAFTA/WTO, the CARNIVORE program, the erosion/elimination of various social safety nets, consolidation of the mass media through the Telecommunications Deregulation Act of 1996, and US participation in new wars in Somalia, bosnia, Haiti, and Kosovo in the 1990s.
Nor did the current administration give us the normalization and acceptance of torture(as long as the intelligence agencies call it something else), rapid expansion of domestic mass surveillance, TSA agents sticking their hands down Americans’ pants, widespread adoption of hydraulic fracking at the expense of unpolluted water sources and the environment, a US-backed coup in support of Neo-Nazis in Ukraine, persecution of journalists and whistleblowers(Stephen Kim, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, John Kiriakou, Chelsea Manning, barret brown, ect), execution of US citizens via drone without trial, normalization of mass arrest techniques of protestors during OWS, and new wars in Libya, Syria, Somalia, and other locales in he 2010s.
Nor did the current administration give us in recent years mandatory medical experimentation on people under duress(threat of job loss, loss of access to medical care, denial of participation in public life, ect. for non-participation), mass censorship of the internet via government collusion with tech companies, expansion of the fbi wiretapping program, yet thousands more political prisoners.
It is true hat the current administration has access to all of these same powers and is abusing them to the detriment of the American people. And so too did previous administrations, without nearly as much complaint or exposure. Think about why that is.
Again, you attempt to obfuscate with the obvious. All while ignoring the very real variations that improve or worsen the condition so you can remain lazy while attempting to sound smart.
Meanwhile, you only poke your head out to add useless noise and normalize all the conditions you pretend to care about. It would be hard to paint a more pathetic picture. One of a life that takes the “Life sucks, why bother.” mentality and makes it their entire personality.
If I didn’t care about these things, I wouldn’t have typed up a long-winded reply explaining some of the various events that led up to the current present, nor have done the research to be even aware of them.
What I mentioned is not noise. Without the aforementioned, the scenario we are living under today wouldn’t be possible.
Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Herbert Marcuse, C. Wright Mills, and so many others have been describing entrenched US fascism for very many decades before the present. I suggest you take a look at what they had to say, in order to better understand my perspective on the present.
Who knew giving an honest response could be so “edgy”… 🙂
Lots of people have been describing the U.S. foundation and continuation of fascist principles for centuries before it was called fascism. Great, take it as read. Repeating the obvious doesn’t sound smarter when you include a well-worn bibliography.
However, it doesn’t have anything to do with your comment. The one that only functions to normalize a clear escalation, just as it does for a reduction. Something takes being 100% willfully ignorant of variations within the topic.
It is the most pathetic and damaging type of “But Ackchyually..” You haven’t provided any new or helpful information; you simply justified fascism by claiming it is normal, so why bother?
I’ve just read your entire conversation. As a third party observer, I see Toecutter providing at least something that one might label as evidence. I have not seen you provide evidence that there has been an increase that is notable and dangerous. You have repeatedly accused him of saying nothing, but you yourself have not yet said anything except “you are still wrong”. Ok thats fine. But please show me how he is wrong, how the equivalency is false. He gave me data that could convince me he is right. Would you please do the same?
A very brief set of highlights, but you might want to review the fourteen points of fascism by Britt. It is the framework I used as a definition of fascism. It is long, but you asked.
Scapegoating and Bigotry: Trump and MAGA rhetoric has openly vilified immigrants, religious minorities, and other groups. He accused Mexican immigrants of being “rapists and other criminals” reuters.com and implemented a travel ban “tainted with animus toward Islam” reuters.com. After the 2017 Charlottesville rally, Trump infamously claimed there were “very fine people on both sides,” effectively equating white supremacists with their victims politifact.com. His administration banned transgender people from the military pbs.org and rescinded Obama-era protections for transgender students npr.org, using rhetoric (e.g. warning of “chemical mutilation” and “male[s] access to private spaces designated for females” whitehouse.gov) that dehumanizes LGBTQ+ individuals. These explicit attacks on marginalized groups echo fascist scapegoating (Britt’s #3 and #5) and far exceed the dog-whistles or coded language of previous presidents.
Cronyism and Nepotism: Trump installed family and loyalists in key roles in defiance of norms. Ethics watchdogs note that Trump “did not stop” at traditional limits – he appointed his son-in-law and daughter to senior advisory positions, moves that critics say “undoubtedly violate” the anti-nepotism statute citizensforethics.org. He also steered foreign and domestic business deals toward his family. For example, The Guardian reported that foreign governments essentially paid Jared Kushner to influence Trump’s policy (such as a $30 million investment right before Trump recognized Jerusalem) theguardian.com. Similarly, Trump funneled political influence into his own businesses (the Trump Hotel frequently hosts politically connected patrons). In line with fascist traits of “rampant cronyism and corruption” (Britt #13), he further used the pardon power almost exclusively for allies: he went “around the normal procedures” to pardon hard-line anti-immigrant Sheriff Joe Arpaio americanoversight.org, commuted Roger Stone’s sentence after Stone had protected him, and pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn – a pattern that observers note he pursued “only when he has something to gain personally or politically” americanoversight.orgamericanoversight.org. (No prior administration mixed family business with policy and insider rewards on this scale.)
Above-the-Law Rhetoric: Trump repeatedly asserted sweeping presidential authority. He told students that Article II gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president” washingtonpost.com. He even tweeted that he has the “absolute right to PARDON myself” npr.org (while claiming no wrongdoing). Such boasts echo fascist disdain for legal limits. In court, his lawyers have argued for unprecedented immunity – the Supreme Court in 2024 effectively granted Trump near-“absolute immunity” for official acts, a ruling critics say “places presidents substantially above the law”aclu.org. No previous U.S. president openly claimed such blanket immunity or explicitly placed himself outside constitutional constraint.
Undermining Democracy: After losing the 2020 election, Trump refused to concede and incessantly pushed baseless fraud claims, even as his own Justice Department concluded “there was nothing there…it was all bullshit” reuters.com. His false narrative (“stop the steal”) helped provoke the Jan. 6 Capitol assault. This assault on democratic norms – illegally attempting to overturn a free election – is unprecedented. Past presidents accepted and fortified election results; Trump’s campaign to subvert them contrasts sharply with any prior transition of power.
Together, these patterns map directly onto multiple traits of fascism – scapegoating, hate propaganda, consolidation of power, crony rule, and contempt for democratic process – at a level far more extreme than any U.S. administration before Trump.
Scapegoating, Xenophobia, and Bigotry
Fascist regimes unify supporters by demonizing “enemies,” and Trump embraced that playbook in plain sight. From the 2016 campaign onward he issued overtly racist and xenophobic statements with little apology. For instance, he accused Mexico of sending “rapists” and criminals into the U.S. (a claim widely denounced as inflammatory) reuters.com, and during a debate boasted: “We have some bad hombres…we’re going to get them out” reuters.com. Once in office, he imposed a travel ban on several majority-Muslim countries – a policy the Reuters news agency notes was struck down as violating the Constitution’s ban on religious discrimination reuters.com. In defending the ban, a federal appeals court even cited Trump’s own words, calling the order “unconstitutionally tainted with animus toward Islam” reuters.com. These moves gave official sanction to deep anti-Muslim bias, far outstripping the veiled rhetoric of previous administrations.
Trump also dog-whistled at or blatantly stoked racial fears. When white supremacists marched in Charlottesville in 2017, Trump’s equivocation – telling reporters there were “very fine people on both sides” – was widely condemned. As Politifact chronicled, critics like Joe Biden pointed out that Trump’s words “assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it” politifact.com. This remarkable invocation of uncertainty about neo-Nazis marked a stark departure from the clearer condemnations of hate groups by past presidents.
The pattern extends to sexual minorities. Trump repeatedly used homophobic or transphobic framing as policy tools. He personally rescinded guidance that allowed transgender students to use school restrooms matching their gender identity npr.org. In 2017 he announced (via Twitter) a ban on transgender military service, insisting the military must be “focused on decisive and overwhelming victory” and implying that trans soldiers were “too costly and disruptive” aclu.org. The ACLU noted he concocted a false readiness justification for the ban, saying trans service members undermine discipline – language akin to demonization. After reelection, Trump’s new administration went even further: an executive order on K–12 education purported to fight “radical, anti-American ideologies,” warning that some schools were forcing children to feel “victims or oppressors” by race, or even “made to question whether they were born in the wrong body” whitehouse.gov. It alarmingly characterized transgender healthcare as “surgical and chemical mutilation” and suggested bans on teaching about “White Privilege” whitehouse.gov. This is textbook scapegoating – portraying equal-rights education as dangerous indoctrination – and no prior president ever signed such sweeping denunciations of LGBTQ+ identity or racially inclusive curricula.
Overall, Trump and MAGA figures have normalized open bigotry that was not seen in modern presidencies. They frequently label inner-city crime as an “invasion” of “violent gangs” (sometimes explicitly racialized), or denounce minority-led social movements (e.g. Black Lives Matter as “thugs”) without equivocation. He calls major media outlets “fake news” and “the enemy of the people,” an explicitly fascist tactic of undermining dissenting voices cpj.org. Combined with the other examples, this constitutes a sustained propaganda campaign of hate and division, far exceeding previous administrations’ dog-whistling at best.
Overt Alignment with White Supremacist and Fascist Rhetoric
In May 2025, during a meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Trump reiterated the debunked “white genocide” conspiracy theory, claiming that white farmers in South Africa were being systematically targeted. He cited false statistics and misleading images to support these assertions, which align with white nationalist narratives and have been strongly disputed by South African officials and scholars. The Atlantic+5Axios+5The Guardian+5
Appointments of Individuals with White Nationalist Ties
Trump’s administration included several individuals with documented connections to white nationalist ideologies: America’s Voice+1Hartage Report Magazine+1
Engagement with White Supremacist Figures
Trump and his administration engaged with known white supremacists:
Retweeting White Nationalist Content
Trump has amplified white nationalist content on social media, including retweeting accounts associated with white supremacist ideologies. The Atlantic
Policy Decisions Reflecting White Nationalist Ideals
Under the influence of advisors like Stephen Miller, the Trump administration implemented policies such as the “Muslim ban,” which restricted travel from several Muslim-majority countries, reflecting a broader agenda aligned with white nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiments. Forbes
These examples illustrate a pattern where the MAGA movement and Trump’s administration have not only tolerated but actively engaged with white supremacist and fascist ideologies, marking a significant departure from previous U.S. administrations.
Rampant Sexism, Homophobia, Transphobia
Laurence Britt’s list notes that fascist regimes enforce strict gender roles and codify homophobia. In Trump’s America, antigender attitudes became explicit policy. The administration codified anti-LGBT discrimination in multiple ways: it tried to undo the Obama-era Civil Rights Division guidance on transgender bathroom access npr.org, overrode local school protections, and rolled back policies protecting LGBTQ+ students. Meanwhile, at the federal level Trump and his allies filled the government with leaders known for anti-LGBT views (e.g. Vice President Mike Pence’s vocal record). Although Trump has sometimes offered momentarily conciliatory rhetoric (e.g. telling Politico in 2019 “I think [Buttigieg being onstage with his husband] is good” politico.com), his administration’s actions consistently targeted LGBT rights.
The school executive order in January 2025 exemplifies this radical shift: it explicitly invited states to restrict discussion of race and LGBTQ issues. It warned that schools forcing children to question gender identity “may contravene” laws like Title IX whitehouse.gov, effectively encouraging schools to bar transgender students from appropriate facilities. By contrast, previous administrations took neutral or protective stances toward transgender and gay Americans. No prior president formally depicted LGBT-inclusive education as “perverse” or “anti-American.”
In other ways, the Trump era saw a permissiveness for sexist harassment by leaders. Trump’s own language (e.g. “Grab them by the p***y,” “nasty woman”) and personal conduct drew widespread attention. While such behavior is abhorrent, what is novel is the tolerance and even encouragement of it in public life – embodying the “rampant sexism” Britt describes. Fellow MAGA politicians have echoed these themes, for instance by dismissing transgender healthcare as “mutilation” or lecturing women on traditional roles. The net effect has been a mainstreaming of homophobic and sexist tropes by those in power – a phenomenon with no clear precedent in recent U.S. presidential history.
Cronyism, Nepotism, and Self-Enrichment
Fascism thrives on the “mutually beneficial business/government relationship” (Britt #9) and rule by “groups of friends” (Britt #13). Trump’s tenure saw an extraordinary intertwining of family, business, and state that critics uniformly labeled corrupt. Trump refused to divest from his business empire; The Guardian notes it is “an open secret” that foreign diplomats and lobbyists pay luxury rates at the Trump Hotel, hoping for favors theguardian.com. Internally, he outsourced major policy to his own family. Shortly after the 2016 election, Trump appointed his son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka as senior advisors. Ethics watchdogs note this defied the spirit of the anti-nepotism law (passed after JFK appointed his brother) – a statute expressly intended “to prevent the president from appointing family members” citizensforethics.org. In effect, the White House became a family-run enterprise. This level of nepotism, combined with revenues funneling back into the president’s pockets, is without precedent in U.S. history.
Beyond family, Trump favored political cronies. He lavished government contracts and meeting access on major campaign donors and loyalists. The clearest examples are his use of the pardon power as a personal reward system. Government records and watchdog investigations show he “rarely” granted clemency unless it served a personal or political motive americanoversight.org. His very first pardon was given to Joe Arpaio – a notorious former sheriff known for racial profiling – bypassing the Justice Department’s usual vetting entirely americanoversight.org. He then commuted the sentence of long-time ally Roger Stone after Stone refused to testify against him, and last-minute pardoned Flynn just before Thanksgiving americanoversight.orgamericanoversight.org. Even mainstream press were stunned by the outsized role personal connections played in these decisions.
By contrast, prior presidents generally used pardons for traditional justice reasons (like commutations for war deserters or drug policy prisoners). None before Trump treated pardons as a near-guaranteed reward for political loyalty. Likewise, the incoming administration’s wholesale ejections of non-MAGA officials (from career diplomats to inspectors general) and replacement with partisan loyalists evoked old-world crony regimes more than American cabinets of the past.
Demonization of Political Opponents as “Communists”
A hallmark of fascist regimes is the portrayal of political adversaries as existential threats to the nation. Trump has consistently labeled his opponents as “communists,” “Marxists,” and “radical-left thugs,” aiming to delegitimize dissenting voices. This tactic mirrors historical fascist propaganda, notably that of Nazi Germany, where figures like Joseph Goebbels depicted communists as enemies of the state to justify authoritarian measures. The New Yorker+1The Atlantic+1Alternet.org
In a 2023 speech, Trump referred to his adversaries as “vermin,” a term historically used by fascist leaders to dehumanize groups and justify their persecution. Such language is not merely rhetorical; it lays the groundwork for policies that suppress opposition and erode democratic norms. The New Yorker
Promotion of State Violence and Militarization of Law Enforcement
Trump’s approach to law enforcement has included explicit endorsements of violence against suspects. In a 2017 speech to police officers, he encouraged them to be “rough” with individuals in custody, suggesting they should not protect suspects’ heads when placing them into vehicles. The Washington Post+2The Washington Post+2NAACP Legal Defense Fund+2
During the 2020 protests following George Floyd’s death, Trump tweeted, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” echoing a phrase historically associated with aggressive policing tactics against civil rights activists. This statement was widely interpreted as an incitement to violence against protesters. Wikipedia+1American Civil Liberties Union+1
Furthermore, Trump has advocated for the use of military forces in domestic law enforcement roles, including deploying the National Guard for immigration enforcement and protest suppression. Such actions blur the lines between military and civilian law enforcement, a characteristic move in authoritarian regimes seeking to consolidate power and suppress dissent. WSJ
These developments underscore a concerning shift towards authoritarianism, characterized by the vilification of political opponents and the endorsement of state-sanctioned violence.
Authoritarian Impunity: Above the Law
A core fascist claim is that the leader is above criticism or legal constraint. Trump repeatedly advanced precisely this idea. In July 2019 he stood before an auditorium of teens and bluntly asserted: “Then, I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president” washingtonpost.com. He also mused on social media that he has the “absolute right” to pardon himself npr.org (even while disingenuously claiming no need to do so). Such statements – by a sitting president – flew in the face of the Constitution’s checks and balances. No past U.S. president publicly declared that they could ignore the Constitution or federal laws at will.
Trump’s legal team likewise pursued extraordinary immunity claims. At his second impeachment trial, his lawyers argued (as then-Deputy AG Dan Coats recounts) that nothing Trump did to obstruct the 2020 vote could be illegal for a president. And in court, Trump sought dismissal of criminal election-interference charges by claiming former presidents have blanket immunity unless actually impeached and convicted – a position the Supreme Court ultimately rebuffed. Yet the Court did rule in 2024 that Trump is presumptively immune for his official acts, affirming “at least presumptive immunity” for the former president’s core actions aclu.org. In the words of the ACLU, this decision “for the first time in history places presidents substantially above the law” aclu.org. (By contrast, the Nixon and Clinton administrations never made such broad immunity claims, and neither Ford nor Carter urged above-the-law authority.)
Trump’s rhetoric extends beyond immunity. He attacks judges, career lawyers, and even Congress when they check him. He has advised supporters to “go into the midterms full of vengeance” and publicly mulled jailing political opponents – talk unheard from American leaders before. His unbending stance during impeachment or criminal probes, combined with virulent attacks on officials, conveys the fascist notion of a ruler unconstrained by normal rules.
Assault on Elections and Democratic Norms
Fascist movements often subvert or sham the electoral process (Britt #14). Trump did so openly. After losing to Joe Biden, he refused to concede and amplified lies of massive voter fraud. His claims were repeatedly rejected by courts, state officials, and even his own attorney general, William Barr, who said of Trump’s fraud allegations: “If there was evidence…my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit” reuters.com. Yet Trump’s false narrative spurred 147 Republican members of Congress to object to certification of their own election, and incited the January 6, 2021 insurrection – a violent bid to overturn a free election.
No previous U.S. president has challenged a legitimate election so directly. Historically, even deeply contested elections (e.g. 1876, 2000) were resolved by courts or bipartisanship. Trump’s playbook – declaring the outcome “rigged,” pressuring state officials, and calling on supporters to “fight” — is unprecedented. By Johnson’s 14-point mark of “fraudulent elections,” Trump checks every box: he has promoted smear campaigns against rivals, pressured judiciaries, and outright lied about vote counts to subvert democracy reuters.comreuters.com.
Conclusion
Donald Trump and the modern MAGA movement have exhibited a startling number of fascist hallmarks, far beyond anything in previous U.S. administrations. They have wielded nationalism and fear to rally supporters against scapegoated minorities, normalizing racism, xenophobia, and anti-LGBT bias in official rhetoric and policy reuters.comwhitehouse.gov. They have prized loyalty and blood ties over competence, embedding family and cronies in power and dispensing justice to allies while enriching themselves citizensforethics.orgamericanoversight.org. They have brazenly challenged the limits of the Constitution – with Trump declaring he can do “whatever I want” as president washingtonpost.com, and his team seeking near-total immunity in court. And they have attempted to nullify free elections through lies and violence.
For each of these traits, prior presidents have either refrained or operated within stronger legal norms. The aggressive bigotry (e.g. the travel ban, public attacks on minorities), the flagrant nepotism, the self-pardoning talk, and the election-day coup attempt mark a sharp break with past practice. As observers have warned, the degree and combination of these traits under Trump and MAGA make it historically unprecedented. In sum, the movement’s mix of hate, cronyism, and contempt for law mirrors the 14 facets of fascism Britt identified – suggesting that, unlike anything before, Trumpism has slid dangerously toward authoritarian nationalism reuters.comamericanoversight.org.
Sources: Credible analyses of Trump’s tenure and MAGA rhetoricreuters.com washingtonpost.com citizensforethics.orgwhitehouse.gov reuters.com, including court records, news reports, and watchdog investigations, document each of the above claims.
The MAGA movement, under Donald Trump’s leadership, has increasingly embraced rhetoric and policies that align with several characteristics of fascism, particularly through the demonization of political opponents and the promotion of state violence.
Demonization of Political Opponents as “Communists”
A hallmark of fascist regimes is the portrayal of political adversaries as existential threats to the nation. Trump has consistently labeled his opponents as “communists,” “Marxists,” and “radical-left thugs,” aiming to delegitimize dissenting voices. This tactic mirrors historical fascist propaganda, notably that of Nazi Germany, where figures like Joseph Goebbels depicted communists as enemies of the state to justify authoritarian measures. The New Yorker+1The Atlantic+1Alternet.org
In a 2023 speech, Trump referred to his adversaries as “vermin,” a term historically used by fascist leaders to dehumanize groups and justify their persecution. Such language is not merely rhetorical; it lays the groundwork for policies that suppress opposition and erode democratic norms. The New Yorker
Promotion of State Violence and Militarization of Law Enforcement
Trump’s approach to law enforcement has included explicit endorsements of violence against suspects. In a 2017 speech to police officers, he encouraged them to be “rough” with individuals in custody, suggesting they should not protect suspects’ heads when placing them into vehicles. The Washington Post+2The Washington Post+2NAACP Legal Defense Fund+2
During the 2020 protests following George Floyd’s death, Trump tweeted, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” echoing a phrase historically associated with aggressive policing tactics against civil rights activists. This statement was widely interpreted as an incitement to violence against protesters. Wikipedia+1American Civil Liberties Union+1
Furthermore, Trump has advocated for the use of military forces in domestic law enforcement roles, including deploying the National Guard for immigration enforcement and protest suppression. Such actions blur the lines between military and civilian law enforcement, a characteristic move in authoritarian regimes seeking to consolidate power and suppress dissent. WSJ
If you think the above is business as usual or doesn’t represent a directional change, there is no action that would move you.
Most of those 14 traits could be applied to all previous administrations dating back to Woodrow Wilson, and even all of those points applied for some previous administrations.
It was the George W. Bush administration that was in place when as a teenager I first read an article titled “The 14 Characteristics of Fascism” by Lawrence Britt, which most of your list is derived in some form from(with some notable additions made). And all 14 characteristics were every bit as relevant/applicable back then as it is today, and most of those traits were still applicable to the two Democratic administrations that came after bush as well.
I didn’t “justify” fascism either. I merely pointed out that this is all business as usual in the USA. I wish that weren’t the case, but it is why we are in such a sorry state. We were in such a sorry state that a significant percentage of the nation were desperate enough to support a charlatan that promised to disrupt the fascistic status quo that was ruining them in the first place.
And you obviously know how that turned out.
Vote harder I guess?
“Most” is doing a whole lot of heavy lifting in your efforts to stand by your glaringly obvious false equivalence. Each of those 14 points existing together at the same time, to exponentially bigger degree than has been seen is meaningful. All you are doing is admitting that you have zero ability to identify a change in direction or degree. As if jumping off a step is the same thing as jumping off a thirty-story building. That is a lot of effort to excuse your lazy passivity.
Promising to use the military against citizens, a desire to use the Insurrection Act (the most ironic piee of politics in a long time), openly embracing and promoting white-supremecy, illegally arresting and deporting people without regard to citizenship status, ignoring all court orders including the supreme court, indicating a clear intent not to allow future elections, etc, etc. All within a few months. Anyone who considers that to be status quo is truly damaged beyond all usefulness to society.
Historic American tendencies toward fascist ideology are well-documented and clear. The slow, diffused, halting, and often counterproductive attempts to move away from those ideals face enough challenges. The first are people like Trump, Musk, and the MAGAts who openly want fascism. The second are irredeemably lazy people like yourself, who have zero desire to put in any effort and instead sit back, making excuses like a high school freshman who read Camus for the first time. Fine for a 14-year-old, pathetic in an adult.
Your actions are de facto justifications, as they serve no other purpose and are clearly structured to do so. You provide the cover for overtly fascist MAGA. You are overtly normalizing fascism by letting them feel that their behavior is acceptable and feeding their “traditional American” rhetoric. You are handing the alcoholic another drink before they get in the car to go home because it entertains you.
Again, the equivalence isn’t false. The USA met all 14 characteristics during previous administrations, and 12 out of 14 during many so-called “liberal” administrations(eg. Obama). The direction hasn’t changed, even if the degree may have. The direction has been a century or more in the making, and the USA did not reach its current state because of one man being placed in the oval office.
The USA has actually used the military against its own citizens many times in the past(eg. Kent state massacre). Trump doing so would not be the first time, and so far, he hasn’t(not that I expect for that to hold true into the future). You know who codified use of the military against US citizens into law? Obama, under the guise of destroying the Islamic State. Obama had a 16 year old US citizen murdered via drone strike. The Obama administration repeatedly ignored multiple court orders(example of one: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/obama-administration-defies-courts-directive-settles-syrians-texas-without-advance-notice-or) and the USA has a long history of doing so stretching back decades. I already listed some journalists that have been arrested(some illegally) in a previous post, and it wasn’t the Trump administration that pushed that.
I’m not covering for MAGA, I’m not making excuses for MAGA, I don’t support and never did support MAGA, and I’m against fascism, even when it ALSO comes from the so-called “opposition” party. I’m simply telling the truth. I’ve realized over the years that it hasn’t made me many friends, especially with people who believe their authoritarian leaders of choice are preferable over the other authoritarian leaders of choice, because one is a covert fascist instead of an overt one as if it changes the direction of this country. It doesn’t. I’d argue the latter has the advantage of forcing the common people to confront what is actually going on, for better and for worse..
Americans aren’t allowed to go against fascism by voting, because non-fascist options aren’t on the table. They’re filtered out prior to a single vote being cast. THAT is why we have Trump.
Your desperate attempt to portray me as supporting or excusing this along with your constant barrage of unprovoked petty insults says a lot more about you, than it does me, but this is just some backwater comment section on a car blog and this discussion has strayed far from the intended subject matter.
Cheers.
You continually showcase your inability to understand the degree or direction of something. The fact that something has existed to some degree at some point doesn’t mean that it isn’t growing or getting worse. You entire argument is truly that of a simpleton who vastly overestimates their intelect and therefore stagnated at the brooding teenager stage of development.
Your argument undoubtedly excuses things going in the wrong direction because it pretends that everything is static and hopeless. Your entire personality is based on making pseudo-edgy comments and then excusing your abject laziness, passivity and cowardice. You are a truly pathetic creature that offers nothing of value.
True, the history of fascism in the US goes back to the 30s, but this current moment is remarkable enough that historical comparisons sometimes seem dismissive to me.
(For the record, that particular line was my edit).
Backing AfD (Arschlöcher für Deutschland) certainly helped!
I’m a big fan of more sub-$25K everything, but I still wouldn’t buy a Tesla.
I think a lot of people *say* they want a $25,000 vehicle, but picture a vehicle that cost $25,000 in their youth, rather than one that can be profitably sold now (ie the Sentra reviewed earlier). In other words, people aren’t willing to make the sacrifices required to live with such a vehicle daily.
That goes double for an EV that still needs an expensive battery.
Call me crazy if you want, but I do not believe those Chinese companies are profitably selling vehicles for $10,000. There isn’t some magic wand that could be waved to get an ultra-cheap vehicle for sale here, even if all the typical objections (safety standards, slave labor, etc) were ignored.
I’m with you on China, the deep pockets and political will of the CCP are such that they’ll probably take many years of voluntary losses to saturate the world’s markets rather than let Tesla try to do it the old-fashioned way. There have to be subsidies flying around like crazy. We like to pretend that the leadership wants free markets, but I’m convinced their auto industry is quasi-nationalized already.
I’m not sure what you mean by Tesla going it “the old-fashioned way”. Tesla gets a ridiculous amount of government aid in the form of sellable emissions credits, like $200 million a year. (Funny how DOGE didn’t go after that particular government fraud and abuse.)
A better analog for them would be Airbus, which has received a tremendous amount of government support since its inception.
In the auto realm, we probably have to go all the way back to old Henry, the Dodge brothers, and William Durant for American examples of doing it the old-fashioned way.
It’s all relative…yes, Airbus is a great example, or maybe even Amtrak or the USPS depending on your angle. And yes, the irony is not lost on me that Musk was put in charge of cutting government waste 🙂
I just meant that they’re at least trying to sell cars (ostensibly) that can sustain the business and be profitable…in theory.
Agreed (with Cybertruck not withstanding the “profitable in theory” part – that’s turned into their version of the A380).
You guys always throw around the whole, “China has affordable cars because the government helps out!!” as a criticism, but that sounds better than our current alternative of not being able to afford anything.
Key to the understanding of this point though is that the Chinese govt is not doing so to help its citizens but rather to crush foreign competitors, at which point the prices will presumably be allowed to rise significantly.
Sounds a lot like the robber barons before the Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890. And AT&T before it got broken up into the baby bells. In other words, capitalism.
Funny how a communist regime is using our favorite tool against us.
Whatever you want to call an autocratic government putting its finger on the scales for favored players, it’s not capitalism.
Agreed. My point was they’re using the tool (or tools) of capitalism against us, by making things artificially cheap and we lap it up because it’s in our own (short term) interest to do so.
What’s good for me isn’t necessarily what’s good for the whole (and vice versa). China has been using that to great effect against us – we’re addicted to cheap goods.
Perhaps “consumerism” would have been a better word for me to use.
It’s worse than that – our government gives bailouts to the manufacturers and we still don’t have affordable alternatives.
So then after we negotiate trade deals with our neighbors to facilitate some attempt at keeping the prices lower, the government kneecaps them with tariffs, thus driving up the cost of the lower end offerings (looking at you, Ford Maverick). It hurts affordability across the board, but has bigger impact on the lower end of the market.
These Chinese built cars are only “affordable” to the export markets. Median salaries in China are sub $20k/year, and workers in China have far fewer rights than we do here.
China competes so well on the global scale because it’s very good at exploiting its citizens. Unfortunately for us, the current US administration is working hard to “help” us be competitive in the same ways (see gutting of NLRB and OSHA for just one example of many).
Ford has shown there is a demand for cheap, cheerful vehicles with the Maverick. Unfortunately not as cheap any more, but it was sold out for a long time (pandemic “fun” notwithstanding). It could be done, but the margins aren’t tenable to the shareholders, unfortunately.
I’m not sure it could be done to that level with EVs without the tax breaks.
What percentage of the Maverick wait list was for true bare bones $20K models though?
Honest question, I don’t know. It’s easy to jump at a flashy low base price online, then go for a nicer trim level (or even the next size up) when you actually lay eyes on them.
Yeah, I really think the XLT was the bulk of the waitlist, at least if the Mavericks I see around here are any indication. You see some Lariats, but not a lot of XLs outside of some fleet use.
I agree that people say they want a $25,000 car, but once they see how spartan it is, they will either buy used or pony up for a pricier model. The Sentra in that review is fine as a car. People would eat up an EV Sentra at that price. But I don’t think you could ever build an EV with 300-mile range and that level of equipment for under $25k.
It’s the same argument I have had a number of times when people bring up sub compacts in the US. People say they want them, but when it comes time to look at that 5+year loan amount and the goofy little thing they’d be paying for with it, they choose to buy something a little more expensive (and larger) that they’re more proud to have. Which brings me to: think of the low tech and low quality offerings the OEMs have been putting out in the subcompact price range (was sub $20k, now sub $25k) and they couldn’t sell in the quantities needed to make the margins that made them worthwhile to build. And people expect BEVs, which cost more to build, to be in that same price range? Even if one is fine with slave labor building them, labor isn’t that significant a cost of production to account for the low prices they’re asking. Of course, I’m also comparing them to cars that don’t merely pass US crash standards, but try to do well in the more stringent IIHS rankings and the Chinese OEMs haven’t been tested here. I strongly suspect they wouldn’t do well.
YT has plenty of Chinese EVs in Euro NCAP tests. The new ones tend to do very well. 5 stars is almost a given.
I don’t doubt they can build safe cars, but are those that pass the Euro NCAP the same ones they’re selling in China for the sub-$20k prices? I also wouldn’t be averse to buying a car with some reduction in safety as long as it’s explicitly marketed that way to the customer. Like, maybe there should be a minimum of meeting the 2012 safety standard if a car retails below a certain amount (that adjusts with inflation), but not the latest standards, to get costs down. I use that year as an example, but it probably shouldn’t be too far backwards and probably wouldn’t be very salable if it were as I think even most customers who would be OK with less safety would be unwilling to forgo too much and I’m not really sure they’d sell enough. I also don’t even know if it’s necessary to go back at all since I don’t really know and don’t feel like researching the delta between the current minimum federally required safety and the more stringent IIHS testing that almost all manufacturers are actually building to. If they felt there was a market for, say, ignoring the IIHS’ small frontal overlap tests as they aren’t federally required (or are they now?), they’d probably be building such a thing (then again, something like that could also work like a reverse halo, tainting the whole brand as one that doesn’t care about safety and turning people away from their more expensive cars that do rate highly).
I think people want sub-25k cars, or sub-35k anyway. I also think the car market is one that rewards refreshing and new stuff. Tesla, with all it’s distractions, has blown a lot of first to market advantage.