while id love a more affordable EV for sure I dont see that happening anytime soon in the US with current administrations hatred of electric vehicles. Second, i dont understand how a website dedicated to car news thinks a very small car will sell well in the US when it sadly seems clear to me that the vast majority prefer larger cars for at least the last 30 years.
That makes A LOT of sense. $30-40K for a behemouth, or $10+K for daily-duties stuff. I -suspect- the US market for this stuff has been there for many years ... like the market for the VW Bug in prior decades.
Smaller and cheaper is the direction I’d like to see cars, and especially EVs take. It seems so inefficient to proliferate large, very heavy vehicles, just to move one or two people around. Most people’s transportation needs almost certainly are to go to work and shopping, but vehicles seem optimized for family cross-country road trips.
Smaller vehicles need smaller batteries, smaller motors, less energy to move, and put less wear and tear on public infrastructure. If the interiors are nice, I think there would be a market for them. Perhaps government policy could encourage efficient use of valuable resources too.
Dealers hate it because there's a certain kind of person who could afford a $50k vehicle but is perfectly happy to walk out with a $20k vehicle and drive it for 10 years until it gets totaled or completely falls apart and the dealer won't get another chance until then -- a tragedy from their point of view.
Then the Yaris, Fit, and Accent wouldn't have been discontinued in the US and Canada, and the Nissa Versa would be selling like hotcakes like in Mexico.
If most consumers can afford a large car, they ended up buying a larger car.
The overlap of high income earners and those cars was not significant from a PMF standpoint.
CUVs and Hatchbacks seem to be the best middle ground for both types of consumers.
It's not just "high income" people who buy expensive cars, it is also "car poor" people that aren't saving for retirement or complaining that the rent is too damn high because they're paying another $400 a month on the car payment that they don't need to pay.
Now maybe I live in an unusual area but all the time I have people park a Honda Fit that looks just like mine at a car parking lot. When my last Fit got totalled I found that (1) they didn't have any new Fits, (2) they had one used Fit that they had just bought that morning, and (3) they had a neat row of 50 or so HR-Vs that nobody wanted to buy.
If you actually go to a car dealer looking for a size L car they will try to sell you an XXL car, if you go looking for an M car they try to sell you an XL, if you go looking for an S they will try to sell you an L. They have a lot of tricks they play to do this, not least a manipulation of the narrative, the threat of pulling away access to review vehicles from car publications that question their narrative, etc. Sure a lot of people are scared by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, other people really like a big car or would rather roll their car or crash through the guardrail than break their ankle in a crash. But no matter how big of a car you want, they want you to buy a bigger one.
There's plenty of choice in the Netherlands just for small electric cars:
Honda E, Fiat 500E, Corsa E, BMW i3, Mini electric, Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe (or even Twizy), Smart Fortwo EQ, Citroen C-zero, Dacia Spring
If that's not small enough there are city cars like Citroen Ami and others but those are more glorified golf carts with very limited range.
while id love a more affordable EV for sure I dont see that happening anytime soon in the US with current administrations hatred of electric vehicles. Second, i dont understand how a website dedicated to car news thinks a very small car will sell well in the US when it sadly seems clear to me that the vast majority prefer larger cars for at least the last 30 years.
That makes A LOT of sense. $30-40K for a behemouth, or $10+K for daily-duties stuff. I -suspect- the US market for this stuff has been there for many years ... like the market for the VW Bug in prior decades.
Smaller and cheaper is the direction I’d like to see cars, and especially EVs take. It seems so inefficient to proliferate large, very heavy vehicles, just to move one or two people around. Most people’s transportation needs almost certainly are to go to work and shopping, but vehicles seem optimized for family cross-country road trips.
Smaller vehicles need smaller batteries, smaller motors, less energy to move, and put less wear and tear on public infrastructure. If the interiors are nice, I think there would be a market for them. Perhaps government policy could encourage efficient use of valuable resources too.
Dealers hate it because there's a certain kind of person who could afford a $50k vehicle but is perfectly happy to walk out with a $20k vehicle and drive it for 10 years until it gets totaled or completely falls apart and the dealer won't get another chance until then -- a tragedy from their point of view.
Then the Yaris, Fit, and Accent wouldn't have been discontinued in the US and Canada, and the Nissa Versa would be selling like hotcakes like in Mexico.
If most consumers can afford a large car, they ended up buying a larger car.
The overlap of high income earners and those cars was not significant from a PMF standpoint.
CUVs and Hatchbacks seem to be the best middle ground for both types of consumers.
It's not just "high income" people who buy expensive cars, it is also "car poor" people that aren't saving for retirement or complaining that the rent is too damn high because they're paying another $400 a month on the car payment that they don't need to pay.
Now maybe I live in an unusual area but all the time I have people park a Honda Fit that looks just like mine at a car parking lot. When my last Fit got totalled I found that (1) they didn't have any new Fits, (2) they had one used Fit that they had just bought that morning, and (3) they had a neat row of 50 or so HR-Vs that nobody wanted to buy.
If you actually go to a car dealer looking for a size L car they will try to sell you an XXL car, if you go looking for an M car they try to sell you an XL, if you go looking for an S they will try to sell you an L. They have a lot of tricks they play to do this, not least a manipulation of the narrative, the threat of pulling away access to review vehicles from car publications that question their narrative, etc. Sure a lot of people are scared by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, other people really like a big car or would rather roll their car or crash through the guardrail than break their ankle in a crash. But no matter how big of a car you want, they want you to buy a bigger one.
Bring it to the Netherlands, too! We also need more smaller EV cars.
There's plenty of choice in the Netherlands just for small electric cars: Honda E, Fiat 500E, Corsa E, BMW i3, Mini electric, Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe (or even Twizy), Smart Fortwo EQ, Citroen C-zero, Dacia Spring
If that's not small enough there are city cars like Citroen Ami and others but those are more glorified golf carts with very limited range.