I would love to buy one of the Maruti Suzuki Jimnys. It's been sold in Europe, but you can't get one in Europe anymore because its not complying with arbitrary eco-guidelines (Which somehow a G-Wagon, a Defender or a Land Cruiser are).
Prices for 50K KM Used Cars are nearly double the price of new ones.
Since also LADA isn't on the European market anymore, you can't get a small off-road capable vehicle anymore.
Okay, there are no dedicated off-road vehicles anymore, only luxury SUVs that no one can afford and no one would take off road.
I guess it is because of EU fleet-wide CO2 averages. From next year on fleets must be below 93 g of CO2 per kilometer or the manufacturer is fined.
Suzuki has a very small fleet without any real low-emission cars, thus struggles to get below this new average. Combine this with the EU Jimny's four-cyclinder 1.5 l engine terrible gas mileage and it is easy to see why Suzuki is pulling this car (and many others) from the EU market.
That's why critics say that the fleet-wide CO2 average regulation favors manufacturer with large fleets. Since actual sales number do not factor into the equation low or no emission vehicles average out the wasteful SUVs and other big cars on a fleet average on paper only.
I'm not completely against fleet-wide averages, but I would like to see a competition. The fleet with the lowest average CO2 emission per kg sets the lower bound for a given year and all others are fined. This would cause a very fast scramble (just to catch up with Tesla, Jaguar, and Honda) and level the playing field for smaller manufacturers.
> I'm not completely against fleet-wide averages, but I would like to see a competition.
They seem absurdly silly. Just put a tax for each car of $$$ per g of CO2 per km. Then you're properly targetting the thing you care about rather than a lossy proxy. Or even better, increase tax on fossil fuels!
But only in the sense that manufacturers are pooled together to reach a certain volume and very small manufacturers are basically excluded from the regulation.
I just want to interject that "50K KM" was fun to parse out. I like the way two conventions collided here. 50Mm would have been correct, but confusing.50MM more so.
Jimny is in a completely different league than Panda 4x4, not even remotely close. Ladder-frame chassis, no center differential, beam axles, double-range gearbox — none of that typically applies to SUVs (especially cheap ones)
Eco guidelines apply to manufacturer's fleet sales as a whole, meaning a larger manufacturer which makes EVs and eco friendly ICE variants has the "budget" to offer models that are not eco friendly, such as your examples. Suzuki doesn't have offers on the market that would offset the Jimny's pollution so they can't sell it anymore.
Since we're on safety ratings; the Duster gets a 3/5 from Euro NCAP.
Many of Dacia's newer models get 1/5, some 2/5, and only the Sandero gets 4/5, their highest score (in this market).
In the UK, a Duster starts at £20k for the base model , while something equivalent with a 5 star rating like a Nissan Qashqai or Kia Sportage starts at £30k.
Only Lada Largus which is based on Dacia Logan MCV. There was also Lada Xray based on Dacia Sandero, but it's not produced anymore.
Lada Niva is essentially ancient car from 1977 which changed very little since then. It's awesome cheap car with extreme offroad capabilities, -1 star safety and poor reliability. Interesting and unique combination of properties in modern world.
There's also Lada Niva Travel which was developed in 1998 with a bit different market orientation.
Lada Vesta is most modern Lada development and it's not directly based on Renault tech. Lada Granta is a bit older Lada which is in-house development as well. Those are not 4x4, though.
I have no idea whether those cars are sold in Europe. Probably not.
Nivas (both classic/4x4/Legend niva and travel/chevrolet niva) are not based on Renault tech, they've been developed inhouse (with GM help on Travel one)
Yes, but if you look at the euroncap the low score is not for essential safety stuff, it's more because it doesn't have lane assist and other highly optional whistles and bells (in my opinion).
I believe that the Jimny is only sold as a "commercial" vehicle now, which in most EU countries precludes you from actually buying one unless you are a company (probably being sold to farmers and etc). At least, this is the case in Spain. I think it's to dodge some sort of emissions regulations, I guess commercial vehicles are at a lower standard.
Be aware that for global NCAP, safety ratings are dependent on the vehicle class. If a subcompact car receives 5 stars, this does not mean it has the same probability of survivability in full frontal crash as a large executive luxury sedan that received 5 stars.
In fact, if there was a head-on crash between this car and Mercedes E-Class, and you're planning to be in one of the cars, I would advise you to chose the Mercedes.
Yes. Anyone who has worked on conservation of momentum problems in high school physics should recognize this. Even at low collision speeds if there is a large disparity in mass between the vehicles then the lighter one experiences a lot of acceleration.
For an extreme case think of a low speed collision between a bowling ball and a ping pong ball.
Since the heavier vehicle has higher momentum, it would decelerate slower when hitting a semi-static-object, which decreases the forces on your body. The smaller vehicle would stop much quicker and you would jerk forward. So a heavier vehicle at the same speed would probably be better, all else being equal. And that's neglecting the additional material a larger vehicle typically has that deforms over longer distance than with a shorter car.
There are several things you can do to dramatically reduce your risk. Cycle during the day, while sober, with bright colors, with a helmet, and avoiding multi-lane roads. If you do these things you've statistical eliminated most of the risk.
> victim blaming
It's an exercise in reducing risk, not assigning blame.
> the law says I can cycle on those roads
The law can't bring you back to life, but if you want to take the risk that's your decision.
awesome, i will only buy ford f150s from now on so i can have the most mass during any collision and thus will never be on the worse end of a collision. is it really american if you aren't screwing over your peers?
I was curious (but also lazy) so I went and checked Wikipedia. According to that source, the newest model of Ford F-150 is the fourteenth generation one, so let's look at the numbers for the top-of-the-line Raptor (or what I assume is the top, I'm not a pickup person). Assuming largest manufactured dimensions in all cases for the truck and smallest for the tank:
I guess this means "vehicle safety ratings" only take into account the safety of those inside the vehicle? In a better world the safety of those outside of the vehicle would not only be taken into account but weighted more heavily, which would mean small cars that are safe for the occupants would get the highest ratings. Sadly we not live in that world.
I have a newer Suzuki Swift - great hatchback. All straightforward dials and knobs (no infotainment system, though it has Bluetooth) and no issues for the 4 years I've owned it so far. It was the cheapest new hatchback one could buy when I bought it.
I am an Indian living in Berlin. I always am surprised at the price differences between the countries. A new small SUV in India (e.g. Citroen Basalt) with all bells and whistles is less than 10k Euros (https://www.carwale.com/citroen-cars/basalt/) and here in Germany I cannot get a decent second hand car for less than 20K.
On the other hand, in India any car is probably unusable after 10-15 years, and here in Germany people buy a car for life.
In which Germany are you living? People change car pretty regularly, especially because of the maintenance cost for passing the TÜV. All small cars sold have distribution belt soaked in oil, so you have to change before 10 years, and by that time the cost of changing the belt is more than the car value.
For anyone wondering, a distribution belt is the timing chair (or timing belt in this example). GM has a Duramax 3.0 diesel engine with a timing belt instead of a chain and it’s on the back. People were so angry GM put out a warranty for 5 year 100k miles.
I’ve seen tear downs on YouTube and the Duramax people are livid about a belt.
People used to buy a car for life. These cars from the past were built differently and made a good name for German cars. Golf 4 is a legend. Now it’s crap made for 150000 miles and then time to buy a new one. All brands the same! Source: buddy from Bosch from ECU department sharing the requirements for modern car. And recent sad personal experience.
The requirements from all auto makers, not only for ECU, but every single part is 10 Years/ 100k km for low end, 15 Years 150k km for high end. I think that is no secret. And that is 100% the experience if you buy a car, there is a point where the maintenance per year is more than the value of the car itself. At that point the car is effectively 0 EUR value.
I hear in USA the Toyotas hold much longer... I'm not sure why, if it is true, and what are the conditions.
I’ve take a mid 2000s Corolla and a 4Runner to 250k. The Corolla was still running with a slight radiator leak. The 4Runner had a transmission banging noise I didn’t want to fix.
No salt on my roads and little to no rust on either.
The maintenance must be seen as per the service value, not the car value. If it's in good condition then maintain it and drive until pistons goes through the head. Keep this gray energy off the scrapeyard.
With all bells and whistles Citroen Basalt is 15k euro, which is still cheap. But for 15k euro you can get a new Citroen C3 in Germany as well, but with basic configuration.
>>in Germany I cannot get a decent second hand car for less than 20K.
You cannot compare Indian Citroen with German Mercedes.
Its actually sometimes more than 40% and that's not even for luxury cars.
Here's[1] an example for a car costing a million INR, taxes are more than 300K. That's not the final landing price. Final price adds up extra road tax component that is anywhere from 13 to 17%(or even more) which is calculated on top of the 1 Million.
In case you missed it, that's tax on tax i.e. double taxation! Some courts have ruled it illegal but majority of state governments act ignorant and just continue the practice.
Funny thing: during the pandemic, when no one was driving, New Delhi’s air cleared so much that the Himalayas could be seen for the first time in decades.
If pollution is caused by "crop burning", why is it that the worst pollution is in cities?
There are more factors than people not driving during those times:
> The phenomenon is made possible by a dramatic improvement in air quality in recent weeks, after industries shut down, cars came off the road and airlines canceled flights in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
> Delhi saw up to a 44% reduction in PM10 air pollution levels on the first day of its restrictions, India’s Central Pollution Control Board found. The PM10 standard measures airborne particulates 10 micrometers or smaller in diameter.
With all the "green" restrictions in place in many european cities - forbidding cars as recent as 2005 to enter them - cars are only for life if you live in the middle of nowhere or have a short life
You can usually retrofit a pre-2005 vehicle for a thousand or so euros. Approx the cost of the annual maintenance on a vehicle of that age, and certainly far less than the cost of a new or used car (either financial cost or embodied emissions cost).
The Dacia Sandero starts at around 13k in Europe and by all means a pretty good car. I have a friend who bought one new and told me it has been very reliable.
The Dacia Sandero unfortunately gets a 2 star Euro NCAP rating (which is typical for Dacia cars). Not something I personally would feel safe putting my family into!
> The Jogger returned the equivalent of a four-star rating for adult occupant crash protection, and three stars for child occupants. Plenty respectable scores. The Jogger lost marks, however, for its lack of active safety equipment: it doesn’t offer lane-keep assist, pedestrian detection, or seatbelt warnings for the rearmost row. [0]
> The overall NCAP rating is dictated by the lowest score in any individual category, hence that headline one-star result for the Jogger.
Many people actively disable gimmicks like "lane-keep assist", so YMMV on such damning "1 star Euro NCAP rating".
In Germany, people may upgrade from their own will, but even from my window I can see a dozens cars parked which are more than 10 years old. Not to mention a new Merc or VW can probably be stil working well in 20 years (for example see autoscout24 for Mercs from 2014 still selling for 15K).
I have rarely seen a car becoming unusable after 15 years. I have seen taxis with more than 400,000 KM on the odo. Not that they never had issues, but they are pretty much usable if you replace parts.
The 15 year car rule is only applicable for New Delhi NCR Region. You still need to obtain fitness certificate for vehicles every 5 years after the 15th year, but they need not be dumped as long as it passes the evaluation.
You're making it sounds like 100% is the highest possible ceiling for a tariff, when it's a number arbitrarily set to fulfill a specific agenda and can be infinitely adjusted.
Of course if you protect your domestic car industry too much it will slowly become uncompetitive and irelevant on the international free market.
> You're making it sounds like 100% is the highest possible ceiling for a tariff, when it's a number arbitrarily set to fulfill a specific agenda and can be infinitely adjusted.
Yep, the tariffs Boeing got on Bombardier's C-Series that were the final nail in the coffin of that program and Bombardier as a serious player, and gifted a great new jet to Airbus, were 300%.
As your article points out, it sells for about $20k in Mexico and Brazil. They're dumping at $10k in China to destroy other Chinese car manufacturers and profitability is not required until subsidies run out. But in other countries those other Chinese manufacturers are mostly not even competing, allowing BYD to price higher and turn a decent profit. If a 100% tariff means they only make Chinese-level profit from US sales, it might not be worth it.
> to destroy other Chinese car manufacturers and profitability is not required until subsidies run out
So the Chinese government is subsidizing BYD in order for them to destroy every other Chinese car manufacturer? I think the Chinese government has far less convoluted and costly schemes to control which businesses live and which die.
If I understand it correctly, your theory is like saying the US set such high tariffs and sanctions so Chinese companies adapt and get so strong they can eventually outcompete any US company and break free of any dependency.
You misunderstand. It doesn't matter much for BYD's pricing whether they're subsidized or not, but it matters very much that their competitors are. They'll charge as much as they can get away with, and competing against other Chinese manufacturers, they need to go a lot lower.
Note that there's two different kinds of Chinese government involved here: the central government primarily wants to build up the EV industry and is mostly agnostic between manufacturers, hence the sales subsidy. Regional governments want to build up their own economy, so they give preferential treatment to companies that manufacture in their region.
So it's not, as you thought, that the central government is specifically subsidizing BYD in order for them to destroy every other Chinese car manufacturer, but that regional governments are subsidizing local competitors in order to protect them from being destroyed by BYD.
But those subsidies won't last forever, and once they run out, many manufacturers will go bankrupt (see original 2019 Zhidou bankruptcy). Once that happens, BYD will most likely be able to cement their market dominance and raise prices to finally be able to make a decent profit even on domestic sales.
I recently got a deal (under $100 for 5 days) on a car rental. After turning down all the offers to upgrade, they gave me a Versa. I loved it. It actually felt like a car again, not a computer on wheels, and I could actually see out the windows on all four sides.
I had a similar experience in a rental. The one feature I missed was a wireless key fob, which is not included in the base trim. I understand the relentless cost pressure in automotive mfg, but that seems like it would have been $2 worth spending.
Are you talking about "keyless ignition" or even for opening the doors?
If it's the former, why did you miss that? My dad's car and most recent rentals I've had were of the keyless go variety, and I don't really see how it's more practical. The one use where I can see it being better is with motorbikes, if you live in a location both with cold enough winters that you gain a lot by putting your thick gloves on while still inside and safe enough that you don't need to bother with a physical anti-theft device.
I've actually had a terrible scare with one such car rental, where the attendant brought up the car, left it running, and forgot to give me the key. My personal vehicles all have keyed ignitions, so to my mind, engine running = key in the ignition. 10 minutes later, the agency called me up, telling me not to turn off the engine because I didn't have the key. Bonus points for being in a foreign, dense city I didn't know during rush hour. Fortunately, it was pretty hot outside, so I didn't turn off the engine to keep the AC running.
I've only ever owned cars with keyless entry and push-start ignition; it's useful because you never actually have to get your keys out and risk losing them, also if your hands are full, you don't need to worry about finding them to open the boot, or worry whether the locks will freeze up in the winter and have to de-ice them.
My car will also not let you lock it, and beep at you like crazy if you leave your keys anywhere inside, so you can't lock yourself out. You also can't lock it from the outside while the engine is running, but I believe that's a safety feature.
I can throw my keys in my backpack, dump it in the boot and drive off, grab my backpack when I reach my destination and walk away.
> or worry whether the locks will freeze up in the winter and have to de-ice them.
A keyless entry is no better than a regular 'push to send unlock signal' fob in this regard. You have to go much further back for cars that require the key to be inserted into the door.
You say you've only ever owned cars that don't have key-turn ignition, but doesn't that mean the advantages you listed are just assumptions? Having used both, I can personally say I have never considered key-turn ignition a problem or disadvantage. I've never lost a car key the same way I've never lost a phone which I also take out of my pocket to use.
I know people who (for insurance compliance) must store their key inside a faraday box. So to use their keyless entry car they still have to "get the key out" anyway. Push button unlock and key-turn ignition are not vulnerable to those kind of attacks/thefts.
Keyless entry and ignition is extra thing you don't need. But then you get a new car, get used to it and go for a cheap rental and OMG how inconvenient is a legacy key and open with keyfob! Same story with other car upgrades: automatic gearbox, powerwindows, backup camera. You drive a lot without it and it feels okay. But once you got an upgrade...
Keyless ignition and backup cameras are the two recent tech features I think are worth having. Though the latter would be less necessary if cars had better visibility, but even then it’s still useful for things you couldn’t see in any car.
I will also keep power windows, steering, and seat adjustment.
I am not aware of any exceptions. I was speaking generally though about what I believe are car tech innovations that truly are improvements (unlike, say, touch screens).
Probably a remote with buttons to unlock the car (no keyless entry) and a key to insert into an ignition lock to turn it - that's what I've seen in today's entry-level cars.
> and I could actually see out the windows on all four sides.
I can't believe the modern style is to have the walls of the car so far away from the seats. I assume it fulfills some kind of crash safety mandate? It clearly isn't worth it.
We've gone from "pull up to the machine and take a ticket" to "pull up to the machine, park, get out of the car, take a ticket, get back in the car..."
I know, but the american market is gigantic, there is probably a sizable niche for economical vehicles.
And if nobody is selling cheap cars, how can we be so sure they won't sell?
They would sell, but there is less profit in them so the manufacturers have optimized for a market where they preferably service the wealthy and those willing to overextend themselves on an expensive loan or lease. The bottom end of the market is left to used vehicles.
And fuel economy regulations encourage larger vehicles with relatively more lenient emissions standards (moreso than the additional size would require) than is applied to smaller cars.
I doubt there are tighter regulation than in the EU. Americans just don't want to buy small vehicles with small motors. They want V8 with 300+hp to sit in the traffic jams.
For example there is a good inexpensive Reanult Clio with 1l 3-cylinder 90hp engine. I doubt any meaningful number of US customers want to buy such car, even if it is less than 20k USD.
You can’t drive a larger car on Medieval streets. US doesn’t have that problem. We also don’t like towing things like caravans and trailers behind sedans with bottomed out suspensions. BMW won’t even sell the EU stealth hitches in the US.
2.2m wide, In almost all road construction spots, the left lane is mostly only 2.2m wide. This is also the width measured in many small streets with cars parked on both sides.
Same here, our house was built in the early 80s and has a tiny garage. Theoretically you could fit our Skoda Octavia (2 kids) in it, but getting out would prove challenging, even if everybody exited on the same side. Also you wouldn’t be able to use the garage for anything else, like storing gardening tools, bicycles, skateboards, etc.
Part is due to people being fearful of buying something smaller since there are so many colossal vehicles on the road that would be considered military-tier equipment in other countries.
Safety ratings are nice and all, but when faced with the very real possibility that a vehicle 3 times the mass of yours will someday hit you at 80+ miles per hour, you just have to accept the fact that Newton's second law is something that is hard to win against.
Consumers don’t want tiny cheap cars. In the past few years, people have financed progressively more expensive cars over much longer periods, suggesting they don’t want the cheapest options.
Americans view cars as status symbols, not just transport. Hence, car companies sell cars as status symbols, not just utilitarian commodities.
I guess it's a bit of an arms race as well - if a heavier car hits a lighter car, the G forces in the lighter car will be higher, all else being equal.
The tragedy of commons is that if everyone bought a lighter car, everyone would be safer, not just the drivers but pedestrians and cyclists as well. Especially if "crash compatibility" was regulated and enforced.
That's, at least, how it seems to me while not actually living in the US - feel free to let me know if I'm completely off.
I'm living in EU and was fed up with SUV which have high positioned front lights which beam through my tiny car. Bought a small SUV instead to have a higher position and comfortable ride. What a tragedy, I've became the same person who pissed me off previously.
> suggesting they don’t want the cheapest options.
Suggesting that they have no financial education... The average loan duration is something like 70 months right now, with a mind boggling 7%-10% interest rate.
People make dumb decisions if they don't have the knowledge/education, by the time they're done paying their 40k car loan they paid 60k and the car is worth 20k.
"Consumers don’t want tiny cheap laptops. In the past few years, people have financed progressively more expensive laptops over much longer periods, suggesting they don’t want the cheapest options.
SWEs view laptops as status symbols, not just tools. Hence, tech companies, like Apple, sell laptops as status symbols, not just utilitarian commodities."
People in this thread seem to somehow think marketing is pushing people to want xyz.
That _cannot_ be the singular or even primary driver of a movement. Car manufacturers don't just make a car in a vacuum. They make what the market is asking for, and _then_ marketing steps in. Very few companies, like apple and Tesla, can foist weird stuff on consumers and have them like it. And even in those cases, they are really just building something they believe to be the faster horse.
There's a reason Tesla wanted to build and SUV and a model 3. There's a key target price point in the US for a car. No amount of marketing can make people buy a car they simply cannot afford.
Scion and Saturn were both recent entry level brands for major car manufacturers. Both of them were subsumed into their parent companies and most of their models were discontinued. If the models were good for business, those would have continued.
That Versa is the cheapest new car in the US, from any manufacturer. The comparison would be the Citroën C3 Origin at £14,150, so a smidge cheaper than that Versa.
(I don't know why Nissan isn't selling small cars in the UK any more - the Micra was very popular up until about a decade ago)
He’s so right though. They’re almost as poorly thought out as the RR Evoque. The visibility is bad, the clearance for entering and exiting in the rear seats is unnecessarily cramped, and it offers no more storage space than a Clio.
It’s a caricature of a toy 4x4 with all of the compromises that implies. Ecck.
Why? 20 ms is a very long time in the world of digital electronics. 1 MHz = 1 microsecond ticks, and most embedded MCUs run 10x to 100x faster than that. Sensors and ADCs commonly have microsecond-range response times, too.
The mechanical part (rapid inflation) is more interesting, but for a long time, they did it the "obvious" way: a precisely-calibrated explosive charge, just enough to fill the bag without tearing it apart. Now, I think they're moving toward compressed air, which probably requires some clever engineering to build a sufficiently responsive electronically-controlled valve.
20ms isn't all that long a window over which to filter all that sensor data and determine that you are actually in a crash (and didn't just take a speed bump a little too fast).
False-positive airbag deployments are not viewed very positively by the affected user (even if its strictly better than a single false negative)
I can speak for this. I've worked as a mechE on production lines in India.
The parts quality, worker treatment and environmental considerations are excellent (especially compared to what I came in expecting).
These are well-paying stable jobs for low-skilled labor. The plants were clean and significant precautions were taken before operating risky machines. Unionized plants tend to be more worker friendly but also worse run.
The thing about making $8k cars is they only make sense at scale. And effective operation at scale needs a well oiled workforce with little leeway for the kind of inefficiencies that come with haphazard work.
Now, 3rd party supplier conditions are more suspect. They can range from being at parity to looking like a proper sweat shop. But the mines where Apple's silicon is mined isn't that different either.
> I don't want to keep funding Ford and GM shareholder greed.
As a long suffering Ford stockholder, I'd like to understand what you mean by "shareholder greed." Go look at a 30 year chart of their stock price. It's barely changed. They do have a nice dividend. The company's PE ratio is appropriate for a very very mature industrial stock. Its market cap is $43 billion. That's about 20% of Toyota and 4% of Tesla.
Who are these greedy shareholders and why are they managing to extract so little value out of the company despite being so greedy?
You don't say. And maybe it would look a little less greedy if that dividend were slightly smaller, but you guys make them sell the Ford Fiesta in the US instead?
Hell, maybe the dividend wouldn't even be smaller! But nobody knows, since Ford doesn't sell cars for poor people anymore, not even the cars it makes in large numbers anyway.
> You don't say. And maybe it would look a little less greedy if that dividend were slightly smaller, but you guys make them sell the Ford Fiesta in the US instead?
What do you mean "you guys make them." Individual tiny shareholders have 0 ability to change what a company sells.
Also, why pick on Ford? It is one of the smallest of the "large" car manufacturers. As I mentioned in my original comment it's a fraction of the size of Toyota and Tesla in market cap. It has deliberately chosen a niche—trucks and SUVs—to survive. In my opinion, it does not have the brand, marketing, or research and development muscle to compete with Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, or Honda in the small sedan market and rightly exited it. Few in the USA thought Ford was making good small sedans in the late 2010s compared to their rivals, hence why consumers stopped choosing them and Ford stopped selling them.
> But nobody knows, since Ford doesn't sell cars for poor people anymore, not even the cars it makes in large numbers anyway.
As is stated in this thread, across all manufacturers, the cheapest car sold today in the US is about $20K (Nissan Versa). Ford sells the Maverick pickup for $24K and the Escape SUV for $30K. It chooses not to compete at the very lowest tier of the US market and no longer manufactures any small cars like the Fiesta in the US.
Is it Ford's responsibility to compete at every segment of the market? Or is it okay that they are specializing in trucks and SUVs where they have some competitive advantage and letting other manufacturers like Nissan have the small car market?
This isn't an attack on you personally. OP wrote about greedy shareholders, you said they aren't greedy. But shareholders can collectively direct a company to do something. Wanting an all-American company serve all Americans is understandable.
> It is one of the smallest of the "large" car manufacturers. As I mentioned in my original comment it's a fraction of the size of Toyota and Tesla in market cap.
Using market cap here is disingenuous. Ford sold 2M cars in the US alone last year. More than Tesla, only slightly fewer than Toyota.
> and no longer manufactures any small cars like the Fiesta in the US.
They're still making (and selling) them in Mexico. It would be a very short supply chain to get them to the US. Not great for local jobs, but Ford factories in Mexico shipping parts to the US are nothing new.
> It chooses not to compete at the very lowest tier of the US market
No doubt, the correct decision from a financial point of view. But we're arguing against being greedy here.
I don't know why you aim at them in particular. The only subcompacts left in NA I believe are the Nissan versa and the Mitsubishi mirage, and the Mirage gets killed next year.
They all killed their small cars. All of them.
No more Honda Fit, no more Mazda 2 / Yaris, Kia Rios, Chevy Spark, Chevy Sonic, Nissan Micra, Mitsu Mirage. In Canada at least, the Fiat 500 only exists as an overpriced BEV model with such a small range it's unusable except as a pure city car.
All joking aside, it is a factor to consider when you're looking at these much smaller cars from foreign markets how they're going to fare when you get t-boned by a lifted F-350.
This is not an argument against this car or others like it, mind you, this is if anything an argument for them and against bloated American status symbols and the less skilled and less empathetic drivers who find them so appealing.
I'd love a small car and do have a couple of options, but in an accident, I will lose so hard (see: die quickly), the risk just doesn't seem worth it. Until some intervention starts reducing car sizes en masse, this will just be true.
I'm loathed to even get a Prius with this being true.
It's just another tax on the working class. ~40% income tax, then on what's left you pay another ~20% VAT, then some luxury tax on top of that because how dare you afford more than bread and water you filthy feudal lord?
Billionaires who buy actual luxuries have a plethora of avenues of avoiding any kind of luxury taxes. Why do you think Monaco exists? Or Dubai?
The thing is that cheap cars don't sell well in the US. Are you buying a Nissan Versa for $18k? Are you willing to drive a manual transmission to save $1,500?
Car companies have tried selling cheaper cars in the US. The Suzuki Dzire is 152" long. A Nissan Versa is 177" long - more than 2 feet longer. Toyota pulled the Yaris from the US market because of poor sales (despite being a well regarded car as a rebadged Mazda2; 171" long).
The Suzuki Dzire is the same length as the smallest Mini Cooper - but without the sports-car appeal. It'll do 0-60 in 12 seconds (14 seconds if you want an automatic). Americans want cars that can do 0-60 in half that time.
Companies have attempted to bring cheaper and smaller vehicles to the US, but Americans won't buy them. Even today, Americans will spend an extra $5,000-10,000 to get an SUV. Americans complain non-stop about gas prices, but proceed to buy vehicles that guzzle gas. The average new car price in the US is over $47,000 - way above what you'd pay for a loaded Toyota Camry. Americans don't want a Suzuki Dzire. They want a pickup truck with all the luxury trimmings.
Part of the cost of US cars is regulatory compliance. As the article notes, this was tested by Global NCAP which tests cars from markets with weak or non-existent regulations. Part of it is going to be the cost of labor or import tariffs. Mexico has lower wages than the US, but part of USMCA/NAFTA trade agreement means that their auto industry wages are a lot closer to US/Canada wages. You aren't going to be able to build them in India and import them to the US without facing tariffs. Part of it is that Americans simply don't want a cheap car.
I totally get where you're coming from because I don't want to spend a lot on a car. I also want an iPhone mini. People continually say that a small phone would be a big hit. Companies have tried and failed. There are so many cheaper options for cars in the US and Americans are spending nearly fifty grand instead. And when you start talking about bringing a Suzuki Dzire up to US regulations, import taxes, distribution costs (and the American wages you need to pay to everyone importing, transporting, and selling your cars here), equipment you want, etc. does that $8,000 vehicle look more like $14,000? And then at that price, do you want something that's 80hp and 0-60 in 14 seconds or would you rather spend up for a Toyota Corolla and get a much larger car with a lot more power and an amazing track record?
Toyota sold the Yaris for $16,000, but people didn't want it. We're talking about a car that Car and Driver gave 9.5/10. It was a really good car at a great price and Americans wouldn't buy it. It's easy to think "I'd love an $8,000 car" when you aren't/can't seriously consider buying it. But maybe we're similar and we'd like more affordable cars and are willing to go with something basic.
But most Americans wouldn't be up in arms for this $8,000 car. They're spending double what many great cars cost and they'd rather moan about the cost of gas than drive something efficient. Hell, hybrids today like the Civic or Prius get better 0-60 times than the sports sedans from my youth - but that doesn't matter. Americans will moan about paying for stuff, but the second that you suggest they buy something efficient or affordable or make any compromise and they'll find any reason not to.
It’s more expensive because you pay US wages to make the car. PPP is the real reason why it’s cheaper to build in a country where a $1000/month is a really good salary that will afford you a comfortable lifestyle on 1 income.
The reason costs are low is because of scale and automation. Suzuki exports it's India manufactured cars and components across Asia and Africa which helps drive costs down drastically, and leadership make a strategic decision to pivot towards automation.
Maruti Suzuki has been heavily automated for almost 2 decades now, especially after the union killed a plant manager and burnt down the Manesar factory in 2012 [2]
Already in 2017 Maruti Suzuki had 2000 installed units for 10000 employees [0], but the US still had around 1300 installed units for 10000 employees in 2021 [1].
Also, salaries in Maruti Suzuki Manesar and Gurgaon (the flagship factories in suburbs of Delhi) are similar to Dacia's in Romania and the CoL in Delhi NCR is comparable to Eastern Europe in general, yet similar cars in Europe will cost around $10-15k.
My dad logged every single fuel stop with amount, price, odometer, trip when he got his 1990 geo metro xfi. He commuted 120 miles for work and wanted the cheapest new car he could buy to do it in. IIRC the sticker said it got 52mpg highway but he was always bragging that he never got that low of gas mileage in it. We had that car until it was well over 300k miles when it got rear ended.
Yes, it's worth noting for those that are less aware that the Suzuki Dzire in the article is a close relation to the Suzuki Swift, which comes in a 5 door hatchback configuration and is not _quite_ as budget minded.
The Swift is quite popular in many countries outside the USA, being a common choice for both first time car owners and seniors in Australia and New Zealand (and no doubt a number of other countries).
Love my 2015 Suzuki Swift Sport bought new here in New Zealand. Fantastic car. Fun to drive, comfortable, practical, performant, reliable. Surprisingly spacious. Cost $NZ30K ~=~ $US18K.
One thing which helped mine quite a bit was that when I needed tires the correct size wasn't available, so the shop put on tires which were one R-factor larger, resulting in slightly greater ground clearance, and everything which went with that --- looked a lot better too, with more normal proportions.
Because there are different plants which build a different spec for different markets to lower the cost as much as possible. The one sold in Colombia is built to local regulations in the Bogotá plant, but they aren't road legal here in Chile so we get the Jimny from Japan.
If they try to bring it to the US, it will need to weigh 4,300 lbs and cost $39,900. There are no more cheap, small, light, or basic cars in sold in the US.
Crash rating are "per class". So a 5-star for a mini car is VERY different from a 5-star SUV.
There was once they frontally test crashed the safest mini car against the safest SUV and the mini car kind of evaporated while the SUV had a broken bumper/headlight but still could drive.
It feels almost selfishly evil to buy cars that increase your safety at the expense of others. It also promotes a race to the top, bigger and bigger cars over time, which is indeed what we have seen in the US market over the last 30 years. Does SUV safety ratings include the likelihood of killing others?
I feel the "Race to the top" is also happening with car head lights. They are much brighter nowadays. It's nice for the driver of such a car, but super nasty for other road users. It's almost as if you need tainted glass to go with it (but then you dont see the road users that do not have these super bright lights)
Nope. Only safety for the people in the car is considered. Volvo is quite vocal about wanting to produce a car that is safe for the people outside the car. They have a target that no one should die from a (new) Volvo crashing into them by some year in the future. They want to use auto-braking systems and external airbags iirc.
May I suggest replacing the URL with the actual article at https://www.motor1.com/news/740524/suzuki-dzire-five-stars-c...
The current link is an ad-infested repost.
That link has just as many ads... /shrug
I would love to buy one of the Maruti Suzuki Jimnys. It's been sold in Europe, but you can't get one in Europe anymore because its not complying with arbitrary eco-guidelines (Which somehow a G-Wagon, a Defender or a Land Cruiser are). Prices for 50K KM Used Cars are nearly double the price of new ones. Since also LADA isn't on the European market anymore, you can't get a small off-road capable vehicle anymore. Okay, there are no dedicated off-road vehicles anymore, only luxury SUVs that no one can afford and no one would take off road.
I guess it is because of EU fleet-wide CO2 averages. From next year on fleets must be below 93 g of CO2 per kilometer or the manufacturer is fined.
Suzuki has a very small fleet without any real low-emission cars, thus struggles to get below this new average. Combine this with the EU Jimny's four-cyclinder 1.5 l engine terrible gas mileage and it is easy to see why Suzuki is pulling this car (and many others) from the EU market.
That's why critics say that the fleet-wide CO2 average regulation favors manufacturer with large fleets. Since actual sales number do not factor into the equation low or no emission vehicles average out the wasteful SUVs and other big cars on a fleet average on paper only.
I'm not completely against fleet-wide averages, but I would like to see a competition. The fleet with the lowest average CO2 emission per kg sets the lower bound for a given year and all others are fined. This would cause a very fast scramble (just to catch up with Tesla, Jaguar, and Honda) and level the playing field for smaller manufacturers.
It got canned because it doesn't meet the new Vehicle General Safety Regulation laws from the EU. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_...
> I'm not completely against fleet-wide averages, but I would like to see a competition.
They seem absurdly silly. Just put a tax for each car of $$$ per g of CO2 per km. Then you're properly targetting the thing you care about rather than a lossy proxy. Or even better, increase tax on fossil fuels!
It appears volume is somewhat accounted for: https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/co2-perform...
But only in the sense that manufacturers are pooled together to reach a certain volume and very small manufacturers are basically excluded from the regulation.
The engine is beside the point, it's the square unaerodynamic shape that's penalized.
This averaging doesn't make any sense, they allow a G600 (13l/100km) while disallowing the 7l/100km Jimny.
> This averaging doesn't make any sense, they allow a G600 (13l/100km) while disallowing the 7l/100km Jimny
Who do you think lobbies the EU ? /s
I just want to interject that "50K KM" was fun to parse out. I like the way two conventions collided here. 50Mm would have been correct, but confusing.50MM more so.
To be fair, 'kk' is often used as an abbreviation for million in some countries.
Fiat Panda 4x4 isn't a bad off-road option.
Jimny is in a completely different league than Panda 4x4, not even remotely close. Ladder-frame chassis, no center differential, beam axles, double-range gearbox — none of that typically applies to SUVs (especially cheap ones)
I don't believe it's being built anymore - the target audience go for Dusters
Dacia duster 4x4 is nowadays answer indeed
Yes, the current Fiat Panda Cross is no longer 4x4. Wanted to buy one new, but they aren't available anymore here in Austria.
Eco guidelines apply to manufacturer's fleet sales as a whole, meaning a larger manufacturer which makes EVs and eco friendly ICE variants has the "budget" to offer models that are not eco friendly, such as your examples. Suzuki doesn't have offers on the market that would offset the Jimny's pollution so they can't sell it anymore.
I would love one of these too. However, being in Singapore I was not in position to drop 152k (SGD) or 113k (USD)[0] on one.
[0] https://www.sgcarmart.com/new_cars/newcars_listing.php?MOD=S...
There is the Dacia Duster if your off-road needs are not really hardcore.
Since we're on safety ratings; the Duster gets a 3/5 from Euro NCAP.
Many of Dacia's newer models get 1/5, some 2/5, and only the Sandero gets 4/5, their highest score (in this market).
In the UK, a Duster starts at £20k for the base model , while something equivalent with a 5 star rating like a Nissan Qashqai or Kia Sportage starts at £30k.
But they compare with Lada Niva. Does it have any stars in EuroNCAP?
Lada Niva has a benefit of making sure you don't suffer for long in case of a crash.
The Ladas break down before you get in a crash. Can't get injured if it was parked at the mechanics.
Aren't modern Ladas based on Renault tech (so essentially the same as Dacias)
Only Lada Largus which is based on Dacia Logan MCV. There was also Lada Xray based on Dacia Sandero, but it's not produced anymore.
Lada Niva is essentially ancient car from 1977 which changed very little since then. It's awesome cheap car with extreme offroad capabilities, -1 star safety and poor reliability. Interesting and unique combination of properties in modern world.
There's also Lada Niva Travel which was developed in 1998 with a bit different market orientation.
Lada Vesta is most modern Lada development and it's not directly based on Renault tech. Lada Granta is a bit older Lada which is in-house development as well. Those are not 4x4, though.
I have no idea whether those cars are sold in Europe. Probably not.
Nivas (both classic/4x4/Legend niva and travel/chevrolet niva) are not based on Renault tech, they've been developed inhouse (with GM help on Travel one)
Yes, but if you look at the euroncap the low score is not for essential safety stuff, it's more because it doesn't have lane assist and other highly optional whistles and bells (in my opinion).
https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/dacia/duster/51909
Adult Occupant: 70%
It's crap.
Not great, not terrible.
Better than the likes of Suzuki Swift, Ford Turneo etc.
But Suzuki Jimny is still being sold in Europe. Sure it's a bit pricy, but so are all cars these days
I believe that the Jimny is only sold as a "commercial" vehicle now, which in most EU countries precludes you from actually buying one unless you are a company (probably being sold to farmers and etc). At least, this is the case in Spain. I think it's to dodge some sort of emissions regulations, I guess commercial vehicles are at a lower standard.
> [...] its not complying with arbitrary eco-guidelines [...]
Anyone know what these are?
"arbitrary" means the poster doesn't know what there is actually, but wants to blame EU anyway
Any rule that allows G600s and disallows Jimnys is arbitrary. The G600 doesn't become any more eco-friendly if you also sell an electric car.
It's a regulation which is, let's say, "mindful of social hierarchy".
Be aware that for global NCAP, safety ratings are dependent on the vehicle class. If a subcompact car receives 5 stars, this does not mean it has the same probability of survivability in full frontal crash as a large executive luxury sedan that received 5 stars.
In fact, if there was a head-on crash between this car and Mercedes E-Class, and you're planning to be in one of the cars, I would advise you to chose the Mercedes.
Hence the "arms race" of ever huger cars, yes. And, if you value your life, don't even think about cycling or going by foot with such cars around...
Yes. Anyone who has worked on conservation of momentum problems in high school physics should recognize this. Even at low collision speeds if there is a large disparity in mass between the vehicles then the lighter one experiences a lot of acceleration.
For an extreme case think of a low speed collision between a bowling ball and a ping pong ball.
I'd rather be in a small car and hit a tree/electrical pole than in a massive vehicle.
Since the heavier vehicle has higher momentum, it would decelerate slower when hitting a semi-static-object, which decreases the forces on your body. The smaller vehicle would stop much quicker and you would jerk forward. So a heavier vehicle at the same speed would probably be better, all else being equal. And that's neglecting the additional material a larger vehicle typically has that deforms over longer distance than with a shorter car.
Interesting to hear the rationale in this choice ?
Might save the tree...
There are several things you can do to dramatically reduce your risk. Cycle during the day, while sober, with bright colors, with a helmet, and avoiding multi-lane roads. If you do these things you've statistical eliminated most of the risk.
> victim blaming
It's an exercise in reducing risk, not assigning blame.
> the law says I can cycle on those roads
The law can't bring you back to life, but if you want to take the risk that's your decision.
Why don't you paint your car fluo yellow and put a big fluffy bumper around it?
Since it's your car that does the killing in an accident, not the cyclist. Right?
awesome, i will only buy ford f150s from now on so i can have the most mass during any collision and thus will never be on the worse end of a collision. is it really american if you aren't screwing over your peers?
Should probably go for an F-450 in that case.
you should lookup the size comparison of a sherman tank and a modern f150, it's crazy
I was curious (but also lazy) so I went and checked Wikipedia. According to that source, the newest model of Ford F-150 is the fourteenth generation one, so let's look at the numbers for the top-of-the-line Raptor (or what I assume is the top, I'm not a pickup person). Assuming largest manufactured dimensions in all cases for the truck and smallest for the tank:
Ford F-150 Raptor length 232.6" width 118" height 80.7" curb weight 5,540 lbs.
Sherman Tank length 247" width 103" height 108" mass ("curb weight") 66,800 lbs.
So in terms of size, sure, they're kind of comparable, although in a head-on collision I think I'll still take my chances with the F-150.
I guess this means "vehicle safety ratings" only take into account the safety of those inside the vehicle? In a better world the safety of those outside of the vehicle would not only be taken into account but weighted more heavily, which would mean small cars that are safe for the occupants would get the highest ratings. Sadly we not live in that world.
Pedestrian safety is a factor in the ratings.
I have a newer Suzuki Swift - great hatchback. All straightforward dials and knobs (no infotainment system, though it has Bluetooth) and no issues for the 4 years I've owned it so far. It was the cheapest new hatchback one could buy when I bought it.
Looks like it only gets three stars in the Euro NCAP tests though.
I am an Indian living in Berlin. I always am surprised at the price differences between the countries. A new small SUV in India (e.g. Citroen Basalt) with all bells and whistles is less than 10k Euros (https://www.carwale.com/citroen-cars/basalt/) and here in Germany I cannot get a decent second hand car for less than 20K.
On the other hand, in India any car is probably unusable after 10-15 years, and here in Germany people buy a car for life.
>and here in Germany people buy a car for life.
In which Germany are you living? People change car pretty regularly, especially because of the maintenance cost for passing the TÜV. All small cars sold have distribution belt soaked in oil, so you have to change before 10 years, and by that time the cost of changing the belt is more than the car value.
For anyone wondering, a distribution belt is the timing chair (or timing belt in this example). GM has a Duramax 3.0 diesel engine with a timing belt instead of a chain and it’s on the back. People were so angry GM put out a warranty for 5 year 100k miles.
I’ve seen tear downs on YouTube and the Duramax people are livid about a belt.
People used to buy a car for life. These cars from the past were built differently and made a good name for German cars. Golf 4 is a legend. Now it’s crap made for 150000 miles and then time to buy a new one. All brands the same! Source: buddy from Bosch from ECU department sharing the requirements for modern car. And recent sad personal experience.
>People used to buy a car for life.
When? The 1940s?
We know this isn't true, based on the existence of older cars, today.
I'd put money on a barebones car of today outlasting nearly anything of the past.
The requirements from all auto makers, not only for ECU, but every single part is 10 Years/ 100k km for low end, 15 Years 150k km for high end. I think that is no secret. And that is 100% the experience if you buy a car, there is a point where the maintenance per year is more than the value of the car itself. At that point the car is effectively 0 EUR value.
I hear in USA the Toyotas hold much longer... I'm not sure why, if it is true, and what are the conditions.
>but every single part is 10 Years/ 100k km for low end, 15 Years 150k km for high end
Every car I've owned has gone well over 150,000 km without anything but regular maintenance. It's really hard to kill a modern engine.
Yes, things wear out and need to be replaced.
I’ve take a mid 2000s Corolla and a 4Runner to 250k. The Corolla was still running with a slight radiator leak. The 4Runner had a transmission banging noise I didn’t want to fix.
No salt on my roads and little to no rust on either.
The maintenance must be seen as per the service value, not the car value. If it's in good condition then maintain it and drive until pistons goes through the head. Keep this gray energy off the scrapeyard.
With all bells and whistles Citroen Basalt is 15k euro, which is still cheap. But for 15k euro you can get a new Citroen C3 in Germany as well, but with basic configuration.
>>in Germany I cannot get a decent second hand car for less than 20K.
You cannot compare Indian Citroen with German Mercedes.
Mercedes have a pretty terrible reputation these days. A mechanic friend of mine rates them as one of the most unreliable new cars you can buy.
>here in Germany I cannot get a decent second hand car for less than 20K.
Then you're doing something very wrong. There are literally thousands of cars for sale that are reliable and well maintained for half that.
Hell, these days even a sub 1K eur can get you by in a pinch, if you choose carefully enough.
And it could even cheaper since like about 40% of price of many cars in India is reportedly taxes and duties.
Its actually sometimes more than 40% and that's not even for luxury cars.
Here's[1] an example for a car costing a million INR, taxes are more than 300K. That's not the final landing price. Final price adds up extra road tax component that is anywhere from 13 to 17%(or even more) which is calculated on top of the 1 Million.
In case you missed it, that's tax on tax i.e. double taxation! Some courts have ruled it illegal but majority of state governments act ignorant and just continue the practice.
1. https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/235811-query...
The average age of cars on the road in Germany is almost certainly lower than 15 years. I believe I remember it was something like eight years.
It's because we don't want to end up like this: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/mumbais-air-qualit...
Most of the extra price goes into emissions reduction.
Nopes. Bharat stage 6 and eu6 norms are exactly same. https://gomechanic.in/blog/bs6-vs-euro6-what-is-the-differen...
Moreover, we are really really mileage conscious so our cars are very fuel efficient, leading to lower emissions.
India's AQI issues mostly stem from crop burning. AFAIK cars have to comply with BS6 which is pretty similar to Euro 6.
Funny thing: during the pandemic, when no one was driving, New Delhi’s air cleared so much that the Himalayas could be seen for the first time in decades.
If pollution is caused by "crop burning", why is it that the worst pollution is in cities?
> If pollution is caused by "crop burning", why is it that the worst pollution is in cities?
The worst pollution is not in any cities. It's a problem specific to North Indian cities and regions in Pakistan.
No city in South India is even remotely as polluted as the NCR.
There are more factors than people not driving during those times:
> The phenomenon is made possible by a dramatic improvement in air quality in recent weeks, after industries shut down, cars came off the road and airlines canceled flights in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
> Delhi saw up to a 44% reduction in PM10 air pollution levels on the first day of its restrictions, India’s Central Pollution Control Board found. The PM10 standard measures airborne particulates 10 micrometers or smaller in diameter.
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/himalayas-visible-loc...
I've no idea, but I think they will also cut some corners in safety, like 2 instead of 6 to 8 airbags, ABS, ESP, etc.
With all the "green" restrictions in place in many european cities - forbidding cars as recent as 2005 to enter them - cars are only for life if you live in the middle of nowhere or have a short life
You can usually retrofit a pre-2005 vehicle for a thousand or so euros. Approx the cost of the annual maintenance on a vehicle of that age, and certainly far less than the cost of a new or used car (either financial cost or embodied emissions cost).
> You can usually retrofit a pre-2005 vehicle for a thousand or so euros
Not in every Country.
That was nearly twenty years ago, a very high lifetime for a car.
The roads, weather, driving habits etc in India play a role.
The Dacia Sandero starts at around 13k in Europe and by all means a pretty good car. I have a friend who bought one new and told me it has been very reliable.
The Dacia Sandero unfortunately gets a 2 star Euro NCAP rating (which is typical for Dacia cars). Not something I personally would feel safe putting my family into!
> Not something I personally would feel safe putting my family into!
From https://www.topgear.com/long-term-car-reviews/dacia/jogger/r...
> The Jogger returned the equivalent of a four-star rating for adult occupant crash protection, and three stars for child occupants. Plenty respectable scores. The Jogger lost marks, however, for its lack of active safety equipment: it doesn’t offer lane-keep assist, pedestrian detection, or seatbelt warnings for the rearmost row. [0]
> The overall NCAP rating is dictated by the lowest score in any individual category, hence that headline one-star result for the Jogger.
Many people actively disable gimmicks like "lane-keep assist", so YMMV on such damning "1 star Euro NCAP rating".
> and here in Germany people buy a car for life
The average age of a car in Germany is 10 years so I guess this was sarcasm?
No sarcasm. In India cars are pretty much unusable after 15 years due to wear and tear, not to mention laws like - https://www.hizuno.com/blog/motor/15-years-old-car-rules-in-... (tldr: cars older than 15 years have to be dumped)
In Germany, people may upgrade from their own will, but even from my window I can see a dozens cars parked which are more than 10 years old. Not to mention a new Merc or VW can probably be stil working well in 20 years (for example see autoscout24 for Mercs from 2014 still selling for 15K).
I have rarely seen a car becoming unusable after 15 years. I have seen taxis with more than 400,000 KM on the odo. Not that they never had issues, but they are pretty much usable if you replace parts.
The 15 year car rule is only applicable for New Delhi NCR Region. You still need to obtain fitness certificate for vehicles every 5 years after the 15th year, but they need not be dumped as long as it passes the evaluation.
How does that square with Ambassador taxis still being a thing in some cities? Do they just look ancient?
Sure, but "for life" could reasonably be expected to cover 50 or 60 years, if you buy your first car as a young adult.
The US don't have cheap cars because dealers and automakers prefer the high margins of more expensive cars.
In basically any other market in the world, the Nissan Versa is definitelly beyond the entry level and not the cheapest and smallest car.
> The US don't have cheap cars because dealers and automakers prefer the high margins of more expensive cars.
While BYD is quietly taking over in every country that doesn't have a domestic auto industry.
When BYD starts selling their $10,000 car Seagull car [1] in the US, even with a 100% tariff, it will be cheaper than anything Detroit makes.
[1] https://electrek.co/2024/05/22/byds-10000-seagull-ev-worryin...
> even with a 100% tariff
You're making it sounds like 100% is the highest possible ceiling for a tariff, when it's a number arbitrarily set to fulfill a specific agenda and can be infinitely adjusted.
Of course if you protect your domestic car industry too much it will slowly become uncompetitive and irelevant on the international free market.
> You're making it sounds like 100% is the highest possible ceiling for a tariff, when it's a number arbitrarily set to fulfill a specific agenda and can be infinitely adjusted.
Yep, the tariffs Boeing got on Bombardier's C-Series that were the final nail in the coffin of that program and Bombardier as a serious player, and gifted a great new jet to Airbus, were 300%.
As your article points out, it sells for about $20k in Mexico and Brazil. They're dumping at $10k in China to destroy other Chinese car manufacturers and profitability is not required until subsidies run out. But in other countries those other Chinese manufacturers are mostly not even competing, allowing BYD to price higher and turn a decent profit. If a 100% tariff means they only make Chinese-level profit from US sales, it might not be worth it.
> to destroy other Chinese car manufacturers and profitability is not required until subsidies run out
So the Chinese government is subsidizing BYD in order for them to destroy every other Chinese car manufacturer? I think the Chinese government has far less convoluted and costly schemes to control which businesses live and which die.
If I understand it correctly, your theory is like saying the US set such high tariffs and sanctions so Chinese companies adapt and get so strong they can eventually outcompete any US company and break free of any dependency.
You misunderstand. It doesn't matter much for BYD's pricing whether they're subsidized or not, but it matters very much that their competitors are. They'll charge as much as they can get away with, and competing against other Chinese manufacturers, they need to go a lot lower.
But many of those competitors would be completely unable to operate without subsidies. Take Zhidou, which went bankrupt in 2019 after sales of EVs with range under 250 km were no longer subsidized. https://web.archive.org/web/20240926235216/https://carnewsch... They relaunched in 2024 with some help from the Lanzhou city government, offering the Zhidou Rainbow at a subsidized sales price of $3,800 to $5,500. https://web.archive.org/web/20240512094644/https://k.sina.cn...
Note that there's two different kinds of Chinese government involved here: the central government primarily wants to build up the EV industry and is mostly agnostic between manufacturers, hence the sales subsidy. Regional governments want to build up their own economy, so they give preferential treatment to companies that manufacture in their region.
So it's not, as you thought, that the central government is specifically subsidizing BYD in order for them to destroy every other Chinese car manufacturer, but that regional governments are subsidizing local competitors in order to protect them from being destroyed by BYD.
But those subsidies won't last forever, and once they run out, many manufacturers will go bankrupt (see original 2019 Zhidou bankruptcy). Once that happens, BYD will most likely be able to cement their market dominance and raise prices to finally be able to make a decent profit even on domestic sales.
How much subsidy are they receiving?
O(10^9)
That's a cute way to write O(1) :)
USD or CNY? Tbh neither of those numbers is very large for a car company.
I recently got a deal (under $100 for 5 days) on a car rental. After turning down all the offers to upgrade, they gave me a Versa. I loved it. It actually felt like a car again, not a computer on wheels, and I could actually see out the windows on all four sides.
I had a similar experience in a rental. The one feature I missed was a wireless key fob, which is not included in the base trim. I understand the relentless cost pressure in automotive mfg, but that seems like it would have been $2 worth spending.
> The one feature I missed was a wireless key fob
Are you talking about "keyless ignition" or even for opening the doors?
If it's the former, why did you miss that? My dad's car and most recent rentals I've had were of the keyless go variety, and I don't really see how it's more practical. The one use where I can see it being better is with motorbikes, if you live in a location both with cold enough winters that you gain a lot by putting your thick gloves on while still inside and safe enough that you don't need to bother with a physical anti-theft device.
I've actually had a terrible scare with one such car rental, where the attendant brought up the car, left it running, and forgot to give me the key. My personal vehicles all have keyed ignitions, so to my mind, engine running = key in the ignition. 10 minutes later, the agency called me up, telling me not to turn off the engine because I didn't have the key. Bonus points for being in a foreign, dense city I didn't know during rush hour. Fortunately, it was pretty hot outside, so I didn't turn off the engine to keep the AC running.
I've only ever owned cars with keyless entry and push-start ignition; it's useful because you never actually have to get your keys out and risk losing them, also if your hands are full, you don't need to worry about finding them to open the boot, or worry whether the locks will freeze up in the winter and have to de-ice them.
My car will also not let you lock it, and beep at you like crazy if you leave your keys anywhere inside, so you can't lock yourself out. You also can't lock it from the outside while the engine is running, but I believe that's a safety feature.
I can throw my keys in my backpack, dump it in the boot and drive off, grab my backpack when I reach my destination and walk away.
> or worry whether the locks will freeze up in the winter and have to de-ice them.
A keyless entry is no better than a regular 'push to send unlock signal' fob in this regard. You have to go much further back for cars that require the key to be inserted into the door.
You say you've only ever owned cars that don't have key-turn ignition, but doesn't that mean the advantages you listed are just assumptions? Having used both, I can personally say I have never considered key-turn ignition a problem or disadvantage. I've never lost a car key the same way I've never lost a phone which I also take out of my pocket to use.
I know people who (for insurance compliance) must store their key inside a faraday box. So to use their keyless entry car they still have to "get the key out" anyway. Push button unlock and key-turn ignition are not vulnerable to those kind of attacks/thefts.
Keyless entry and ignition is extra thing you don't need. But then you get a new car, get used to it and go for a cheap rental and OMG how inconvenient is a legacy key and open with keyfob! Same story with other car upgrades: automatic gearbox, powerwindows, backup camera. You drive a lot without it and it feels okay. But once you got an upgrade...
When you get used to 360 camera, even backup camera starts to feel lacking...
Keyless ignition and backup cameras are the two recent tech features I think are worth having. Though the latter would be less necessary if cars had better visibility, but even then it’s still useful for things you couldn’t see in any car.
I will also keep power windows, steering, and seat adjustment.
As of 2018 all US cars have backup cameras as a required safety feature. I'm not sure if there are any exceptions.
I am not aware of any exceptions. I was speaking generally though about what I believe are car tech innovations that truly are improvements (unlike, say, touch screens).
So it had a normal key, for unlocking the doors and turning the ignition?
Probably a remote with buttons to unlock the car (no keyless entry) and a key to insert into an ignition lock to turn it - that's what I've seen in today's entry-level cars.
I prefer that (and its what my fairly old car has).
Smaller attack surface. There have been lots of issues with keyless.
> and I could actually see out the windows on all four sides.
I can't believe the modern style is to have the walls of the car so far away from the seats. I assume it fulfills some kind of crash safety mandate? It clearly isn't worth it.
We've gone from "pull up to the machine and take a ticket" to "pull up to the machine, park, get out of the car, take a ticket, get back in the car..."
It's also because American consumers, on average, absolutely without question prefer larger vehicles.
I know, but the american market is gigantic, there is probably a sizable niche for economical vehicles. And if nobody is selling cheap cars, how can we be so sure they won't sell?
They would sell, but there is less profit in them so the manufacturers have optimized for a market where they preferably service the wealthy and those willing to overextend themselves on an expensive loan or lease. The bottom end of the market is left to used vehicles.
And fuel economy regulations encourage larger vehicles with relatively more lenient emissions standards (moreso than the additional size would require) than is applied to smaller cars.
I doubt there are tighter regulation than in the EU. Americans just don't want to buy small vehicles with small motors. They want V8 with 300+hp to sit in the traffic jams.
For example there is a good inexpensive Reanult Clio with 1l 3-cylinder 90hp engine. I doubt any meaningful number of US customers want to buy such car, even if it is less than 20k USD.
You can’t drive a larger car on Medieval streets. US doesn’t have that problem. We also don’t like towing things like caravans and trailers behind sedans with bottomed out suspensions. BMW won’t even sell the EU stealth hitches in the US.
It’s safe to assume that these regulations have largely been shaped by car manufacturers.
Also, even if Europeans would like the look of larger cars, our roads are not built for it lol. Definitely not in cities.
Almost every European road can fit cars up to 2.5 meters wide and about 6 meters long. Parking spaces not so much.
2.2m wide, In almost all road construction spots, the left lane is mostly only 2.2m wide. This is also the width measured in many small streets with cars parked on both sides.
The garage we have, as part of a coop, was built for a 60s European car. Think good old VW Beetle.
While there are a fair number of cars we could park, like the VW ID.4, we couldn't get out of them while parked.
Same here, our house was built in the early 80s and has a tiny garage. Theoretically you could fit our Skoda Octavia (2 kids) in it, but getting out would prove challenging, even if everybody exited on the same side. Also you wouldn’t be able to use the garage for anything else, like storing gardening tools, bicycles, skateboards, etc.
Part is due to people being fearful of buying something smaller since there are so many colossal vehicles on the road that would be considered military-tier equipment in other countries.
Safety ratings are nice and all, but when faced with the very real possibility that a vehicle 3 times the mass of yours will someday hit you at 80+ miles per hour, you just have to accept the fact that Newton's second law is something that is hard to win against.
american pickup trucks are literally as large or larger than ww2 tanks:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9823577/Road-warrio...
It's also because American consumers, on average, are large
On average they're only average - unless you're comparing them with another consumer dataset.
43% obesity rate in 2024 according to the WHO.
They're larger than people from Asian countries.
Partially true.
Consumers don’t want tiny cheap cars. In the past few years, people have financed progressively more expensive cars over much longer periods, suggesting they don’t want the cheapest options.
Americans view cars as status symbols, not just transport. Hence, car companies sell cars as status symbols, not just utilitarian commodities.
I guess it's a bit of an arms race as well - if a heavier car hits a lighter car, the G forces in the lighter car will be higher, all else being equal.
The tragedy of commons is that if everyone bought a lighter car, everyone would be safer, not just the drivers but pedestrians and cyclists as well. Especially if "crash compatibility" was regulated and enforced.
That's, at least, how it seems to me while not actually living in the US - feel free to let me know if I'm completely off.
I have at least one friend with an SUV for that exact reason.
The great irony of that arms race is that the bus or tram will almost always win.
I'm living in EU and was fed up with SUV which have high positioned front lights which beam through my tiny car. Bought a small SUV instead to have a higher position and comfortable ride. What a tragedy, I've became the same person who pissed me off previously.
> suggesting they don’t want the cheapest options.
Suggesting that they have no financial education... The average loan duration is something like 70 months right now, with a mind boggling 7%-10% interest rate.
People make dumb decisions if they don't have the knowledge/education, by the time they're done paying their 40k car loan they paid 60k and the car is worth 20k.
I love this narrative that marketing teams don't push things on customers
"Consumers don’t want tiny cheap laptops. In the past few years, people have financed progressively more expensive laptops over much longer periods, suggesting they don’t want the cheapest options.
SWEs view laptops as status symbols, not just tools. Hence, tech companies, like Apple, sell laptops as status symbols, not just utilitarian commodities."
I'd buy one of those tomorrow if they were sold here (i.e. in the USA).
People in this thread seem to somehow think marketing is pushing people to want xyz.
That _cannot_ be the singular or even primary driver of a movement. Car manufacturers don't just make a car in a vacuum. They make what the market is asking for, and _then_ marketing steps in. Very few companies, like apple and Tesla, can foist weird stuff on consumers and have them like it. And even in those cases, they are really just building something they believe to be the faster horse.
There's a reason Tesla wanted to build and SUV and a model 3. There's a key target price point in the US for a car. No amount of marketing can make people buy a car they simply cannot afford.
> No amount of marketing can make people buy a car they simply cannot afford.
And yet here we are and marketing has convinced people in the US to borrow $1.6 trillion to buy cars they cant afford.
I'm sure the advertisement done by those companies have nothing to do with them being seen as status symbols (and preferring bigger cars in general)
Scion and Saturn were both recent entry level brands for major car manufacturers. Both of them were subsumed into their parent companies and most of their models were discontinued. If the models were good for business, those would have continued.
Not being "good for business" doesn't mean customers don't want them.
Exactly this. It's the marketing
The marketing that works on people who then buy cars?
It's also because the used car market in the US is strong.
> The US don't have cheap cars
They absolutely do. The cheapest Nissan in the UK is a Juke at $29,775 ( per xe.com conversion rate ). A US-market Nissan Versa starts at $17,995.
Even removing taxes the Juke costs around $24,800.
That Versa is the cheapest new car in the US, from any manufacturer. The comparison would be the Citroën C3 Origin at £14,150, so a smidge cheaper than that Versa.
(I don't know why Nissan isn't selling small cars in the UK any more - the Micra was very popular up until about a decade ago)
But it's a Juke.
https://youtu.be/PWHYZrnxJmQ
He’s so right though. They’re almost as poorly thought out as the RR Evoque. The visibility is bad, the clearance for entering and exiting in the rear seats is unnecessarily cramped, and it offers no more storage space than a Clio.
It’s a caricature of a toy 4x4 with all of the compromises that implies. Ecck.
For the last 40 years, cars sold in the US have really been a way to profit from high-margin auto loans.
No wonder this is the favorite car of taxi drivers and widely used car in India.
The speed at which airbags deploy is mind blowing. In the video, the steering wheel air bag starts deploying around 20 ms after impact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRKAR0IZlgE
> around 20 ms after impact.
that's the standard for all airbags
https://www.iihs.org/topics/airbags
Why? 20 ms is a very long time in the world of digital electronics. 1 MHz = 1 microsecond ticks, and most embedded MCUs run 10x to 100x faster than that. Sensors and ADCs commonly have microsecond-range response times, too.
The mechanical part (rapid inflation) is more interesting, but for a long time, they did it the "obvious" way: a precisely-calibrated explosive charge, just enough to fill the bag without tearing it apart. Now, I think they're moving toward compressed air, which probably requires some clever engineering to build a sufficiently responsive electronically-controlled valve.
20ms isn't all that long a window over which to filter all that sensor data and determine that you are actually in a crash (and didn't just take a speed bump a little too fast).
False-positive airbag deployments are not viewed very positively by the affected user (even if its strictly better than a single false negative)
It's like you answered your own question.
The parent described it as "mind-blowing"; I was curious about that.
Maybe they meant it literally, if your head's in the wrong place.
Passenger and pedestrian safety is very important, and this is quite an achievement.
I do wonder about the manufacturing and supply chain, and how environmentally (and worker) friendly it is given the extremely low price.
I can speak for this. I've worked as a mechE on production lines in India.
The parts quality, worker treatment and environmental considerations are excellent (especially compared to what I came in expecting).
These are well-paying stable jobs for low-skilled labor. The plants were clean and significant precautions were taken before operating risky machines. Unionized plants tend to be more worker friendly but also worse run.
The thing about making $8k cars is they only make sense at scale. And effective operation at scale needs a well oiled workforce with little leeway for the kind of inefficiencies that come with haphazard work.
Now, 3rd party supplier conditions are more suspect. They can range from being at parity to looking like a proper sweat shop. But the mines where Apple's silicon is mined isn't that different either.
It’s cheap because PPP. The same reason it is cheap to get a Chinese EV than it is to get an American EV.
Purchasing power parity? Public private partnership? Paycheck protection program? Pextreme Pertical Pentigration?
Can we get some of these cheap cars here? I don't want to keep funding Ford and GM shareholder greed.
> I don't want to keep funding Ford and GM shareholder greed.
As a long suffering Ford stockholder, I'd like to understand what you mean by "shareholder greed." Go look at a 30 year chart of their stock price. It's barely changed. They do have a nice dividend. The company's PE ratio is appropriate for a very very mature industrial stock. Its market cap is $43 billion. That's about 20% of Toyota and 4% of Tesla.
Who are these greedy shareholders and why are they managing to extract so little value out of the company despite being so greedy?
> They do have a nice dividend.
You don't say. And maybe it would look a little less greedy if that dividend were slightly smaller, but you guys make them sell the Ford Fiesta in the US instead?
Hell, maybe the dividend wouldn't even be smaller! But nobody knows, since Ford doesn't sell cars for poor people anymore, not even the cars it makes in large numbers anyway.
> You don't say. And maybe it would look a little less greedy if that dividend were slightly smaller, but you guys make them sell the Ford Fiesta in the US instead?
What do you mean "you guys make them." Individual tiny shareholders have 0 ability to change what a company sells.
Also, why pick on Ford? It is one of the smallest of the "large" car manufacturers. As I mentioned in my original comment it's a fraction of the size of Toyota and Tesla in market cap. It has deliberately chosen a niche—trucks and SUVs—to survive. In my opinion, it does not have the brand, marketing, or research and development muscle to compete with Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, or Honda in the small sedan market and rightly exited it. Few in the USA thought Ford was making good small sedans in the late 2010s compared to their rivals, hence why consumers stopped choosing them and Ford stopped selling them.
> But nobody knows, since Ford doesn't sell cars for poor people anymore, not even the cars it makes in large numbers anyway.
As is stated in this thread, across all manufacturers, the cheapest car sold today in the US is about $20K (Nissan Versa). Ford sells the Maverick pickup for $24K and the Escape SUV for $30K. It chooses not to compete at the very lowest tier of the US market and no longer manufactures any small cars like the Fiesta in the US.
Is it Ford's responsibility to compete at every segment of the market? Or is it okay that they are specializing in trucks and SUVs where they have some competitive advantage and letting other manufacturers like Nissan have the small car market?
> What do you mean "you guys make them."
This isn't an attack on you personally. OP wrote about greedy shareholders, you said they aren't greedy. But shareholders can collectively direct a company to do something. Wanting an all-American company serve all Americans is understandable.
> It is one of the smallest of the "large" car manufacturers. As I mentioned in my original comment it's a fraction of the size of Toyota and Tesla in market cap.
Using market cap here is disingenuous. Ford sold 2M cars in the US alone last year. More than Tesla, only slightly fewer than Toyota.
> and no longer manufactures any small cars like the Fiesta in the US.
They're still making (and selling) them in Mexico. It would be a very short supply chain to get them to the US. Not great for local jobs, but Ford factories in Mexico shipping parts to the US are nothing new.
> It chooses not to compete at the very lowest tier of the US market
No doubt, the correct decision from a financial point of view. But we're arguing against being greedy here.
I don't know why you aim at them in particular. The only subcompacts left in NA I believe are the Nissan versa and the Mitsubishi mirage, and the Mirage gets killed next year.
They all killed their small cars. All of them.
No more Honda Fit, no more Mazda 2 / Yaris, Kia Rios, Chevy Spark, Chevy Sonic, Nissan Micra, Mitsu Mirage. In Canada at least, the Fiat 500 only exists as an overpriced BEV model with such a small range it's unusable except as a pure city car.
No you have to buy a puffed up SUV or truck!
All joking aside, it is a factor to consider when you're looking at these much smaller cars from foreign markets how they're going to fare when you get t-boned by a lifted F-350.
This is not an argument against this car or others like it, mind you, this is if anything an argument for them and against bloated American status symbols and the less skilled and less empathetic drivers who find them so appealing.
> t-boned by a lifted F-350.
I'm not sure how a Ranger would fair getting t-boned by a lifted F-350...
I think the bigger problem for these smaller cars are the (much more numerous) mid-sized SUVs.
I'd love a small car and do have a couple of options, but in an accident, I will lose so hard (see: die quickly), the risk just doesn't seem worth it. Until some intervention starts reducing car sizes en masse, this will just be true.
I'm loathed to even get a Prius with this being true.
Yeah, starting to think we're getting screwed in the U.S.
I kind of think if more people in the U.S. knew what the rest of the world were paying for cars they might take up arms.
Same here in Australia. We also have a 5% tariff, and an additional 33% on so called "luxury cars", even though we don't have a car industry anymore.
The luxury car tax is such a scam. There’s no luxury boat tax. No luxury plane tax, no luxury watch or diamond or pool or McMansion tax.
>The luxury car tax is such a scam.
It's just another tax on the working class. ~40% income tax, then on what's left you pay another ~20% VAT, then some luxury tax on top of that because how dare you afford more than bread and water you filthy feudal lord?
Billionaires who buy actual luxuries have a plethora of avenues of avoiding any kind of luxury taxes. Why do you think Monaco exists? Or Dubai?
We still have the tariff?
Fucks sake shitty Australian governments on both sides. How long have Holden and Ford been gone now? Seven years!
The thing is that cheap cars don't sell well in the US. Are you buying a Nissan Versa for $18k? Are you willing to drive a manual transmission to save $1,500?
Car companies have tried selling cheaper cars in the US. The Suzuki Dzire is 152" long. A Nissan Versa is 177" long - more than 2 feet longer. Toyota pulled the Yaris from the US market because of poor sales (despite being a well regarded car as a rebadged Mazda2; 171" long).
The Suzuki Dzire is the same length as the smallest Mini Cooper - but without the sports-car appeal. It'll do 0-60 in 12 seconds (14 seconds if you want an automatic). Americans want cars that can do 0-60 in half that time.
Companies have attempted to bring cheaper and smaller vehicles to the US, but Americans won't buy them. Even today, Americans will spend an extra $5,000-10,000 to get an SUV. Americans complain non-stop about gas prices, but proceed to buy vehicles that guzzle gas. The average new car price in the US is over $47,000 - way above what you'd pay for a loaded Toyota Camry. Americans don't want a Suzuki Dzire. They want a pickup truck with all the luxury trimmings.
Part of the cost of US cars is regulatory compliance. As the article notes, this was tested by Global NCAP which tests cars from markets with weak or non-existent regulations. Part of it is going to be the cost of labor or import tariffs. Mexico has lower wages than the US, but part of USMCA/NAFTA trade agreement means that their auto industry wages are a lot closer to US/Canada wages. You aren't going to be able to build them in India and import them to the US without facing tariffs. Part of it is that Americans simply don't want a cheap car.
I totally get where you're coming from because I don't want to spend a lot on a car. I also want an iPhone mini. People continually say that a small phone would be a big hit. Companies have tried and failed. There are so many cheaper options for cars in the US and Americans are spending nearly fifty grand instead. And when you start talking about bringing a Suzuki Dzire up to US regulations, import taxes, distribution costs (and the American wages you need to pay to everyone importing, transporting, and selling your cars here), equipment you want, etc. does that $8,000 vehicle look more like $14,000? And then at that price, do you want something that's 80hp and 0-60 in 14 seconds or would you rather spend up for a Toyota Corolla and get a much larger car with a lot more power and an amazing track record?
Toyota sold the Yaris for $16,000, but people didn't want it. We're talking about a car that Car and Driver gave 9.5/10. It was a really good car at a great price and Americans wouldn't buy it. It's easy to think "I'd love an $8,000 car" when you aren't/can't seriously consider buying it. But maybe we're similar and we'd like more affordable cars and are willing to go with something basic.
But most Americans wouldn't be up in arms for this $8,000 car. They're spending double what many great cars cost and they'd rather moan about the cost of gas than drive something efficient. Hell, hybrids today like the Civic or Prius get better 0-60 times than the sports sedans from my youth - but that doesn't matter. Americans will moan about paying for stuff, but the second that you suggest they buy something efficient or affordable or make any compromise and they'll find any reason not to.
> The thing is that cheap cars don't sell well in the US.
Pretty much.
They lack too many features that the price just isn't worth it.
It’s more expensive because you pay US wages to make the car. PPP is the real reason why it’s cheaper to build in a country where a $1000/month is a really good salary that will afford you a comfortable lifestyle on 1 income.
Purchasing Power is not enough to tip the scales.
The reason costs are low is because of scale and automation. Suzuki exports it's India manufactured cars and components across Asia and Africa which helps drive costs down drastically, and leadership make a strategic decision to pivot towards automation.
Maruti Suzuki has been heavily automated for almost 2 decades now, especially after the union killed a plant manager and burnt down the Manesar factory in 2012 [2]
Already in 2017 Maruti Suzuki had 2000 installed units for 10000 employees [0], but the US still had around 1300 installed units for 10000 employees in 2021 [1].
Also, salaries in Maruti Suzuki Manesar and Gurgaon (the flagship factories in suburbs of Delhi) are similar to Dacia's in Romania and the CoL in Delhi NCR is comparable to Eastern Europe in general, yet similar cars in Europe will cost around $10-15k.
[0] - https://www.livemint.com/Companies/0qexlea1C0MelXiAXcveOJ/Ro...
[1] - https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/us-robot-density-in-...
[2] - https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/verdict-today-for-maruti-wor...
Companies sell what people buy. There's no car company conspiracy to keep small cars away from you.
Actually there is it’s called CAFE and tariffs
There are many small cars following CAFE rules(like 50+mpg), people just don't want to buy them.
Car dealership owners are a staple of state legislatures for a reason.
Really miss my Geo Metro (re-badged Suzuki Swift)....
My dad logged every single fuel stop with amount, price, odometer, trip when he got his 1990 geo metro xfi. He commuted 120 miles for work and wanted the cheapest new car he could buy to do it in. IIRC the sticker said it got 52mpg highway but he was always bragging that he never got that low of gas mileage in it. We had that car until it was well over 300k miles when it got rear ended.
Yes, it's worth noting for those that are less aware that the Suzuki Dzire in the article is a close relation to the Suzuki Swift, which comes in a 5 door hatchback configuration and is not _quite_ as budget minded.
The Swift is quite popular in many countries outside the USA, being a common choice for both first time car owners and seniors in Australia and New Zealand (and no doubt a number of other countries).
Love my 2015 Suzuki Swift Sport bought new here in New Zealand. Fantastic car. Fun to drive, comfortable, practical, performant, reliable. Surprisingly spacious. Cost $NZ30K ~=~ $US18K.
A friend of mine had one when we were teenagers. It was fun in a way that only a cheap, tiny car can be. More go-kart than car.
The whole frame became a crumple zone in a low-speed collision with a Lexus. Fortunately, he escaped injuries in the way only the young can.
One thing which helped mine quite a bit was that when I needed tires the correct size wasn't available, so the shop put on tires which were one R-factor larger, resulting in slightly greater ground clearance, and everything which went with that --- looked a lot better too, with more normal proportions.
To think the Jimny originally has 5 airbags but here in Colombia is being sold with only two...
Because there are different plants which build a different spec for different markets to lower the cost as much as possible. The one sold in Colombia is built to local regulations in the Bogotá plant, but they aren't road legal here in Chile so we get the Jimny from Japan.
If they try to bring it to the US, it will need to weigh 4,300 lbs and cost $39,900. There are no more cheap, small, light, or basic cars in sold in the US.
Crash rating are "per class". So a 5-star for a mini car is VERY different from a 5-star SUV.
There was once they frontally test crashed the safest mini car against the safest SUV and the mini car kind of evaporated while the SUV had a broken bumper/headlight but still could drive.
It feels almost selfishly evil to buy cars that increase your safety at the expense of others. It also promotes a race to the top, bigger and bigger cars over time, which is indeed what we have seen in the US market over the last 30 years. Does SUV safety ratings include the likelihood of killing others?
Euro NCAP does. The safest car right now if you care about pedestrians/cyclists appears to be the Toyota CH-R.
https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/toyota/c-hr/51098
I feel the "Race to the top" is also happening with car head lights. They are much brighter nowadays. It's nice for the driver of such a car, but super nasty for other road users. It's almost as if you need tainted glass to go with it (but then you dont see the road users that do not have these super bright lights)
Nope. Only safety for the people in the car is considered. Volvo is quite vocal about wanting to produce a car that is safe for the people outside the car. They have a target that no one should die from a (new) Volvo crashing into them by some year in the future. They want to use auto-braking systems and external airbags iirc.
I believe that has changed for the new EuroNCAP which does consider pedestrian safety in the score.
Should be sold in Europe!
That is legitimately impressive. The only excuse I can see not to allow it is if it fails emissions and/or fuel efficiency tests.
I don’t mean to boast, but I found the “continue reading“ button in under five minutes. Bow before me, plebs.
The fine article opens with:
It then continues: Am I missing something, or were the facts bent for journalistic effect, or is this not the contradiction I think it is?I think they mean that it's not a new model its a refresh of an older model.