It’s OK, we’ll just rent vehicles per journey, and in order to make things more efficient, put extra seats in and run bigger cars between popular destinations. Maybe even use rails for really popular places.
Maybe they’ll think of a name for this in the future.
Maybe if they had a line of them hooked together? A train of some sort?
No what if we sold everyone a new car, and then bored tunnels under the cities to run them super fast with computer control
Oh wait no that’s the dumbest thing ever sorry
only if we can call them “pods”!
Almost like Capitalism isn’t sustainable, right?
Cars are luxuries.
Without public transportation they aren’t. When you live 20 miles from your job in Bumfuck, USA how do you get there without a vehicle?
No, they still are. You can always turn a luxury into a relative need by stretching out resource intensity. I could easily make the case for commuting with rockets from the Moon to Earth and back, or for some billionaire commuting with a private jet. Doesn’t make it not a luxury.
If you hate it, protest against the car system and suburbia, and for dense urban development with public transit. There is no alternative.
Dude, I’m in the San Diego area. And if I had to rely on the bus, a simple grocery shopping trip would take at least 3 hours, not counting a mile and a half walk to and from the nearest stop. I did take a train and an express bus to work, because it happened to stop directly at my workplace.
He has been thinking about replacing his 2020 Ford F-150 pickup truck
Just… wtf… Your car is only 6 years old and it’s just so old that you really think to need to replace it? And your story is so relatable it lands in an article? How much difference can you even see between that 2020 and a 2026 model really?
I suspect it’s media lying again, in order to normalize replacing vehicles more often.
I don’t think it’s lying, I was in a lot in 2022 looking at a used 2021 with like 8k miles on it and wondered what they got bought after trading in. The guy said that he actually bought a 2022 of the exact same model, because he didn’t want to be seen driving anything but the current years model.
They certainly exist and can be found to quote, just seems out of touch to treat the situation as somehow “worrying” enough to make the cut. Figured you probably could have found someone with at least a decade old car to comment…
“I don’t want to be seen driving last years model” Rolls the $36k he still owns on that old truck into the $100k loan on the new one.
Nah, the guy is probably badly upside down on the loan, and the truck is depreciating so fast he won’t be able to roll the loan/trade-in over into another truck.
He needs more surveillance in his truck.
If they are a frequent driver, they could be putting 20k-25k a year on their truck. Like yeah I wouldn’t want a Ford with 120k miles on it either.
Yeah in 15 months I’ve put 35k on my car 😭😭 let’s not talk about what I’ve put on my work truck…
I mean, it’s a Ford tho.
Surprisingly, a majority of Fords made in the 90’s are still on the road today!
…It’s simply not worth the expense to haul them away. XD
Jk
How much difference can you even see between that 2020 and a 2026 model really?
I wonder if it was manufactured in that weird sweet (bitter?) spot where “supply chain issues” made everyone use cheaper parts and forego many chip-based components entirely.
Then maybe the auto industry should stop donating to Republicans.
The numbers don’t lie. Republicans are bad for our economy. Bad economy means people don’t buy the 1st or 2nd most expensive thing they’ll ever buy (since many will never be homeowners).
maybe stop making everything an apartment on wheels with ipads everywhere. 🤷
Maybe it is time to switch to communities built not around cars?
Maybe we could have 4 days weeks and more work-at-home to save gas?
cries in walkable cities with public transportation
Nobody asked for a 100k pickup truck. Who wants to throw boards and chains in that?
You want a V8, air suspension and 10 speed auto - you’re paying $100k.
I don’t want air ride and I don’t want 10 speed auto. My father got a 2020 F350 with a 10 speed auto and it turned itself to gravel. It’s a POS that I’m hounding him to sell once it’s payed off. Who the fuck thought a press on timing gear was a good idea?
My father is a boomer and can be shamed into vanity purchases. That’s who’s speeding 100k on trucks.
I do not understand buying a truck unless you need to haul shit for work. As a passenger vehicle, trucks are idiotic.
I haul shit for work.
Then it’s a tool for business. Hope you’re writing that shit off too.
I want a 200hp 4x4 with sealed beam headlights.
I have a 65 HP 4x4 with sealed beam headlights…
Corporations pay stagnant wages, raise prices, funnel money out of the economy to shareholders who hoard wealth, and then get worried when there’s no one left who can buy their products?
Tell me again why we think C-Suite folks are smart?
Right, because they’ll get bailed out again and stay rich. That’s why.
It’s a god damn disgrace.
I’m sure someone will come around and tell me how complicated economics is and why we should trust business and industry leaders who went to school for this sort of thing, like basic pattern recognition and common sense couldn’t have predicted that people who can barely afford groceries would stop buying cars…
Fuck.
Tell me again why we think C-Suite folks are smart?
Some weird fetiziation that financial accumen is somehow the ultimate mark of intelligence above all else.
Thanks the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993
Think you pretty much nailed it.
MAYBE if they Fired MORE Workers and RAISE Prices of their Cars all those Unemployed People can Purchase their Vehicles? Have they tried THAT yet?
Stellantis will remember this.
If I’m buying a car it would be a BYD, not some gas guzzler by an overpriced American manufacturer which are laughing stocks all over the world.
I’ll take a fifteen year old car with a manual transmission.
Without a network of super expensive proprietary sensors that need replacing every time it rains? How on earth will you manage?
Not just that it’s unaffordable but I’m not paying 60k for a car with a porcelain transmission that needs monthly software updates that might just brick the thing.
“Porcelain transmission” sent me.
Don’t forget the oil pumps driven by rubber belts that need half the engine disassembled to replace it.
This! When I was 16 I bought a P.O.S. Buick for 600 bucks. I did all the normal maintenance myself in my driveway. Oil, pads, filters, belts… Seems like you need a special tool for each part on new cars if you can even get to the part to replace without taking half the engine out.
Even the fuckin battery was bolted down with a long bracket that needed a special 18 inch socket extension to unfasten. Wtf
Wait till you hear about the BMW proprietary screws
It depends on the new car, I’ve found. A Mitsubishi Mirage is considerably easier to deal with than a BMW anything, because the people who designed the mirage had an eye toward maintenance because of the type of car it is. The BMW will go to the shop, while the Mirage will get it’s clutch changed in the driveway.
So they’re responding by making more affordable, efficient vehicles, right? Adopting new technology, right? Right?
Seriously, all they have to do is make an EV or hybrid under $20k and not try to push subscription BS.
But how will they make money next quarter if you spend money on them this quarter only???
People need to understand that money sitting around in a savings account is bad for the economy. You owe it to your country to be in debt. /s
businessman try not to peddle subscriptions challenge (level impossible)
No. Buy a ferd f150000 to stomp your neighbors and make liberals cry! Go on TOUGH mountain trails with 18 row seating and 13000 lbs of Karen fuelled road rage!
*note can only carry 1 person 99% of the time. Cannot touch a non asphalt road or warranty void. Must kill at least 3 cyclists/children monthly due to 0 visibility.
Just sign up for this $1,800 per month loan for the next 90 months.
Houses were more affordable than this when I was a kid.
No, they want everyone to have more money to give to them…
Reminded me of a UAW spokesperson being interviewed on tariffs…
When asked why he had advocated for auto tariffs before the tariffs came on, and now why was he complaining that the tariffs were unaffordable, his explanation was simple, he wanted tariffs only on the things that competed with them, and the rest of the economy left alone so that everything can be more affordable except the stuff they did.
They want to sell those high margin high priced cars and are grousing because the rest of the economy isn’t fueling the consumer budget enough to fulfill their ambitions.
Literally the same day this article was published, Hyundai decided to cancel their electric sedan in favor of an SUV-only lineup.
Crazy, because I’ve been praising them for their aesthetic design (polygonal angles done right, proving the kampfwagon didn’t ruin it for everyone) and cool electrics and wishing I could’ve got one, but…yeah.
The U.S car sitch is such a tragic joke.
So let in the 10,000$ Toyota EV1 and the like.
Any cars out there under 30k that are completely manual and don’t have a screen, that I can repair myself? No? Well, I’ll never buy a new car then, fuck you automakers.
We had millions of those types of cars 20 years ago, now they’re nonexistent.
I’ll even get an electric if its completely analog. But they refuse to do that even though it takes very very little effort. An electric car is (mostly) a voltage regulator a motor and a battery. Its not hard people.
There used to be a car like that, could get a manual and you could fix it yourself - on the rare occasion it needs work.
It was the 2014-2024 Mitsubishi Mirage, and the entire US made fun of it. That’s what happens when someone makes a cheap, dependable, simple car in the US, people act like it’s the worst vehicle ever made because you can see exposed screw heads when you open the door.
That sounds freaking rad to me. I want an open source car standard so bad. Exposed screwheads, teardowns galore, commonly available parts.
I’d even learn manual. I hear they’re fun.
The biggest con is we’ve been trained to see vehicles as fashion and status statements rather than their utility.
Sometimes a strange car will gain a sort of “cult” following, and that’s when you sometimes end up with a situation like you describe, where parts are made by many different 3rd parties. I have an old Japanese 4x4 that was so awesome that Mopar had to team up with consumer reports and the government to kill it. It’s 30+ years old and I can get parts for it as easily as I can an F150.
Notable past and current examples of this include:
Chevy Corvair
Geo Metro
Harley-davidson anything
Jeep wrangler
Suzuki Samurai
Toyota Supra
Edit: formatting are hard
Putting one of those together would be a pretty awesome highschool shop class.
don’t have a screen
Its not legal to make that car anymore in Canada/USA and likely other places. They are mandated to have a backup camera all over the place.
EU mandates an SOS call function as well, so a data connection is also basically mandatory.
Is it though?
I don’t suppose I know the EU situation, but at least in the US, cellular towers are supposed to accept an emergency call regardless of anything like a SIM susbscription, so if the car doest uses a cellular modem to dial emergency ervices, the car wouldn’t necessarily actually need a subscription active.
Maybe it doesn’t work that way in EU, but it seems like it should be the case that a mandatory emergency call function shouldn’t carry a subscription burden.
Most will have an active subscription even if you aren’t using it, because it’s cheaper to have basically a bulk subscription service than to administer single accounts.
The moment you spend the money putting in a cellular connection that can make a call (SOS) and be connected to a mic and speaker system, you start asking how can we recoup that cost.
We already have a backup screen mandated by law.
We can show maps on it and stream music from their favorite music service!
You can put that extra stuff behind a paid sub.
Doesn’t apply to motorbikes, and they get crazy high fuel efficiency to cars.
If you want to raise your chances of dying substantially over a backup camera you can go right ahead. Please sign your organ donor card first though.
I normally cycle instead. Even fewer regulations and taxes.
Cycling is great ya. Every city should be working towards adding more and more cycling infrastructure.
A lot of people will complain, but its worth it.
I’ll cycle with or without it, I don’t really have a choice. Gotta buy food.
The things you seem to think are making cars more expensive, are actually the cost-cutting measures.
The screen is cheaper than a myriad of buttons. Which is literally why Ferrari hired Apple’s Jony Ive to design their upcoming EV’s interior… with physical controls (it’ll still have a screen, but the important features have buttons and knobs and shit and they’ll be made of metal and/or glass). To stand out from the crowd, as even premium manufacturers are using cheapo touchscreens instead of making proper interiors anymore.
As for “completely manual”, if you mean manual transmission, those are gone because of low demand and the fact that it just costs more to support multiple options. Plus modern autos can actually be incredible. If you actually listen to the transmission manufacturer NOT the car manufacturer for maintenance schedules, they last longer than the clutch tends to do on most manuals and while a clutch job is easier than an auto trans rebuild, it’s still not easy. Either one is going to total a 20 year old car for most people (not you or me if we work on our own cars, of course). Oh and automatic transmissions are now more fuel efficient than mediocre drivers with manual transmissions (not necessarily as fuel efficient as great drivers with manual transmissions though).
Anyway, screens themselves aren’t bad. The best car I ever owned was (admittedly not under 30k new, but under 30k when I got it used) a 2019 Mercedes C-Class which had a nice screen with Apple Carplay and Android Auto support, but NO touch. There were physical buttons for everything you’d generally want, and you could control the screen with either the rotary knob, the touchpad in front of the armrest, or the steering wheel buttons. But you literally could NOT finger the screen itself to do anything. They changed that with the next generation a few years later, unfortunately. But for me this was perfect because I had a way to control navigation and the music on my phone that did not involve looking at my phone, or interacting with a touch screen.
In fact I don’t think any of these features are what makes cars more expensive compared to 20-30 years ago. Screens are cheap now. Automatic everything has been figured out already, the R&D costs for most things already recuperated. It’s the size creep if anything. They’ll sell exclusively crossovers and SUVs because these are “premium” and margins are better. And even “small” cars, if they still exist, are bigger than the same model used to be. Oh and let’s not forget that if you’re in the US, everything needs to have like 500 horsepower now, while emissions and fuel efficiency goals dictate smaller engines, so everything HAS to have a turbo now.
In Europe, cheap cars still exist, though they’ve doubled in price over the last 2 decades (but what hasn’t). You CAN still get a Dacia Sandero for 15k. It’s so bare bones that to inflate the list of installed equipment, they list things like “fuel tank cap” and “front seat belts” among others. Even that comes with a 10" touch screen as standard because it’s just so cheap to add one and it’s much easier for them to design than a classic head unit with buttons.
A friend of mine’s first assignment as a senior engineer was to find ways to eliminate more moving parts and metal fasteners from cheaper spec products, because removing a dozen two cent screws would save the company tens of millions over the life of the design. Not just in parts, but because they’re more complicated and take longer to install than just snapping and glueing a plastic shell together.
With the scale of manufacturing at companies like GM and Ford, saving a few thousand per car on parts and labor with a touchscreen infotainment system is a massive, massive amount of money. The R&D costs of converting from knobs to touchscreens would probably be covered in the first few months.
Precisely. And keep in mind that the buttons and knobs would usually be different on the different models, but with the touchscreen OS you have one OS you keep developing and just hide some of the features in some of the models. So there’s less model-specific R&D and more common R&D for all products
Also maintenance is cheaper when you reduce things that can break, so lower warranty costs as well.
It’s the size creep if anything
I don’t know. My brother works for a legacy manufacturer and claims the difference in material cost between small and large vehicles is minimal. Assembly cost is far more than material cost. He used this to justify why they couldn’t make a small truck: it’s equally complex to assemble and the materials cost difference is minimal so they couldn’t make it enough cheaper that anyone would buy it.
Up to you whether to buy the company line but that’s the claim
Slate promises to be analog
sounds like you want a miata
Is there anything like a miata for bigger people? One of these days I plan to own a home and would love a project car. People always seem to suggest a miata because they are cheapish, repairable, and have a huge community modding them. The problem? I am 6"4’. Maybe I could go with a convertible miata and wear goggles.
I have a 99 loll. Peak car
I drive a 2013 Miata with 6 speed manual rear wheel drive configuration and it has no tracker and no screen.
