They elude to it in the second line after the title but they never point it out:
Five years ago it was a lot easier to buy a car for less than $30,000.
…and later in the article…
New cars costing less than $30,000 were just 13.9 percent of all car sales in the first half of this year; for the first six months of 2019—before the pandemic drove up new car prices by so much—they made up 38 percent of new car sales.
I think the answer is simply inflation:
$30,000 in 2019 is worth $37,722.15 today
…and…
$24,000 in 2019 is worth $30,177.72 today
So for apples to apples comparison the question should be, “How many fewer cars costing $24,000 in 2019 are there that cost $30,000 today?”, but the article doesn’t ask or answer that question.
Probably because it’s just a nice round tens of thousands that’s the current benchmark. It wasn’t long ago that similar articles mourned the scarcity of the sub-$20k car. I don’t want to say it was a Scion, but I don’t think the gap could be that big between the death of scion and the general loss of the $19, 999 car.
Tried to look up what I saw years ago and instead found there were still sub-$20k cars as of 2024. Hyundai Venue and Mitsubishi Mirage. And the venue just surpassed the mark.
Anyway, see you again in 2029-2035 when someone else writes about the loss of the $40,000 economy car
When constructing a car, one of the key components is the wiring harness that bundles together all the wiring for the vehicle.
Surprisingly most wiring harnesses used to come from Ukraine of all places. So when Russia invaded Ukraine, that completely disrupted the wiring harness supply.
To work around that, manufacturers had to come up with either new, stable suppliers or invest in their own production lines.
Covid. As mentioned in the article, but there were multiple impacts on that. For example, it made it incredibly difficult to do lease returns. If people leasing their cars can’t return them, then they can’t get into new vehicles. Similar, re-sellers of lease returns and fleet vehicles have no stock because nobody is returning their lease.
This is compounded by Manufacturers and legislative bodies forcing driver assistance systems on everyone.
<sarcasm> Back when I was a lad, I could drive my manual-transmission vehicle while reading a paper street directory, texting on one phone, talking on another and eating a cheeseburger., Kids nowadays don’t know how to drive.</sarcasm>
Your sarcasm post is actually me xD . Cars should be cars, not computers or entertainment booths. But I actually like driving and mechanical things so im the .0000000001% of lemmy. All my cars are manual and few have AC or ABS. Just how I like it.
Just between you, me and the entire Fediverse, I put the sarcasm tags on just in case I offended anyone.
We need better public transport so that those people who are not confident drivers, or are not competent drivers, or are downright incompetent drivers don’t have to drive.
Less roads, less vehicles on the roads mean that those people who do enjoy driving for the sake of driving can still drive, but they are sharing the road with like-minded people. This is my selfish view with altruistic results.
I believe that the driver assistance systems encourage inattentive driving. Tesla rightly gets a lot of press for this, but when the car holds the lane and brakes for you 99.9% of the time, it sure seems safe to send that email, formatting and all.
But the problem is that one would require self-awareness to identify what degree of inattentiveness is OK (change the radio station) or not (review the PowerPoint Jane sent over). With our current technology situation, those systems probably are net positive for collision avoidance.
My kids get to learn to drive with all that shite disabled. Except the emergency stuff (auto braking), which seems like a good idea. Check your own blind spot, dummy.
Partially tariffs, but beyond that the article didn’t really explain. Save your clicks.
They elude to it in the second line after the title but they never point it out:
…and later in the article…
I think the answer is simply inflation:
$30,000 in 2019 is worth $37,722.15 today
…and…
$24,000 in 2019 is worth $30,177.72 today
So for apples to apples comparison the question should be, “How many fewer cars costing $24,000 in 2019 are there that cost $30,000 today?”, but the article doesn’t ask or answer that question.
Probably because it’s just a nice round tens of thousands that’s the current benchmark. It wasn’t long ago that similar articles mourned the scarcity of the sub-$20k car. I don’t want to say it was a Scion, but I don’t think the gap could be that big between the death of scion and the general loss of the $19, 999 car.
Tried to look up what I saw years ago and instead found there were still sub-$20k cars as of 2024. Hyundai Venue and Mitsubishi Mirage. And the venue just surpassed the mark.
Anyway, see you again in 2029-2035 when someone else writes about the loss of the $40,000 economy car
It’s complicated.
As someone who got to see this from the inside:
Surprisingly most wiring harnesses used to come from Ukraine of all places. So when Russia invaded Ukraine, that completely disrupted the wiring harness supply.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/ukraine-invasion-hurts-flow-wire-harnesses-carmakers-2022-03-02/
To work around that, manufacturers had to come up with either new, stable suppliers or invest in their own production lines.
https://www.carscoops.com/2024/07/dealers-brace-for-the-next-pandemic-related-supply-issue-fewer-lease-returns/
This is compounded by Manufacturers and legislative bodies forcing driver assistance systems on everyone.
<sarcasm> Back when I was a lad, I could drive my manual-transmission vehicle while reading a paper street directory, texting on one phone, talking on another and eating a cheeseburger., Kids nowadays don’t know how to drive.</sarcasm>
Your sarcasm post is actually me xD . Cars should be cars, not computers or entertainment booths. But I actually like driving and mechanical things so im the .0000000001% of lemmy. All my cars are manual and few have AC or ABS. Just how I like it.
Just between you, me and the entire Fediverse, I put the sarcasm tags on just in case I offended anyone.
We need better public transport so that those people who are not confident drivers, or are not competent drivers, or are downright incompetent drivers don’t have to drive.
Less roads, less vehicles on the roads mean that those people who do enjoy driving for the sake of driving can still drive, but they are sharing the road with like-minded people. This is my selfish view with altruistic results.
I believe that the driver assistance systems encourage inattentive driving. Tesla rightly gets a lot of press for this, but when the car holds the lane and brakes for you 99.9% of the time, it sure seems safe to send that email, formatting and all.
But the problem is that one would require self-awareness to identify what degree of inattentiveness is OK (change the radio station) or not (review the PowerPoint Jane sent over). With our current technology situation, those systems probably are net positive for collision avoidance.
My kids get to learn to drive with all that shite disabled. Except the emergency stuff (auto braking), which seems like a good idea. Check your own blind spot, dummy.
Tariffs are new.
They will push average prices even higher but the average new car price has been around 40k for a few years now.