Apparently, there’s something called the Aspen Ideas Festival, and for the 19th year in a row, my invite seems to have gotten lost in the mail. Typical. But Ford CEO Jim Farley’s invite made it to him just fine, and he took advantage of that by letting the world know some important things: It’s time for people to “get back in love” with small cars, and that Ford will have a smaller, $30,000 EV in the next two years or so. Good! About damn time.
Oh, and he wants it to be profitable, too, because – and get this – Ford seems to be a profit-oriented company. Huh! Who knew? I always assumed they were something like whatever the Red Cross is.
Much of this was said in an interview with CNBC’s Julia Boorstin, and you can hear some of it from Jim himself here:
I cued it up to the bit where he’s talking about the large, heavy EVs that currently dominate the market, and why those aren’t really sustainable:
“You have to make a radical change as an … to get to a profitable EV. The first thing we have to do is really put all of our capital toward smaller, more affordable EVs. That’s the duty cycle that we’ve now found that really matches. These big, huge, enormous EVs, they’re never going to make money. The battery is $50,000… The batteries will never be affordable.”
He’s absolutely right: the colossal batteries used to buy long ranges for huge trucks and SUVs are heavy, massive, expensive things, and getting those cheaper, at least with the current and near-future state of technology, is beating your head against a lithium wall.
But there’s another solution! We can embrace smaller, lighter cars. Not everything has to be a huge vehicle capable of doing absolutely everything and has a 300 mile range. There’s a term that David taught me from his engineering days at Chrysler, a term that refers to the amount of energy a given vehicle needs to just move itself around: Vehicle Demand Energy.
This term feels useful because it gets to the heart of the problem: big-ass vehicles with massive, expensive batteries have prodigious Vehicle Demand Energy, which requires more batteries which increases VDE which require more batteries which increases VDE which requires more batteries and on and on. And unlike gas cars, to get more range, you can’t just blow-mold a bigger tank for an extra $5; you have to pay thousands for a larger battery pack.
These big machines are hungry for electrons; you just end up in a miserable ouroboros of battery-weight-cost.
And, when you think about it, for most of what we do with our cars, it’s absurd. Taking an F-150 Lightning or a Cybertruck on a simple, daily errand is like getting ready to go to the grocery store by putting on a helmet, gloves, body armor, hiking boots, and a backpack filled with four gallons of water, 12 MREs, and a tent. Maybe there’s a couple laptops in there, too.
If you did that, everyone would think you’re an idiot. And yet we’re effectively doing that for most of what we use cars for. Remember, 99.2% of daily driving trips are under 100 miles. And yes, I firmly believe that going on longer trips should be easy and accessible, but that doesn’t mean it makes any sense to drag around a thousand pounds of under-utilized battery everywhere.
As Farley himself said:
“We have to start to get back in love with smaller vehicles. It’s super important for our society and for EV adoption. We are just in love with these monster vehicles, and I love them too, but it’s a major issue with weight.”
I think this is very achievable; some of us never fell out of love with smaller vehicles, and I can tell you that they are plenty lovable. A small car is nimble and fun to drive, it’s less hassle to maneuver and park, it feels like 30% less stressful just to drive around, especially in a city.
Small doesn’t mean useless; a cleverly designed smaller EV can still hold you, your friends, your stuff, and if it can have a range of, say, 150 miles or so, that would cover so much of what you need a car for. If there’s add-on range extender batteries or combustion motor solutions, even better!
Hell, I went through my ideal $16,000 EV dream car already, and you can read all about it. I think Farley’s plan for a profitable $30,000 car is great, though a $20,000 one would be even better. Still, I get that Ford’s in this for the money, so maybe $30,000 is the best we can hope for, at least right now.
I’m just happy to see the CEO of a major automaker talking some actual sense, and not just hoping for some battery breakthrough that will make colossal batteries cheaper and lighter. If it happens, fantastic, but until then, the best plan is to go smaller and smarter.
I say do it, Ford. There’s plenty of Ford small-car heritage to mine, too: Fiestas and Escorts and Kas and Aspires – well, maybe not Aspires. Fine.
But still, this is the right path if we want EVs to actually, you know, work. And it’s not like big, 7,500 pound EV trucks or SUVs won’t exist, because of course they will – but it will be nice to have cheaper, lighter options, and, ideally, ones that can be just as fun and engaging as their elephantine siblings.
No shit sherlock. Who knew it would be EASIER to build a smaller car?! You can’t perfect something by attempting to reach perfection on the first try. The F-150 EV is dumb. The Mustang EV is dumb. The big three are just making dumbass electrification choices while using public moneys. It’s infuriating.
True, and America has been known to much prefer small cars over pickup trucks… right?
Yeah, electrifying the best selling vehicle in the world sure is dumb vs making an electric version of a car that fell out of favor long before (practical) EVs came around.
It’s more complicated than “dumbass electrification choices using public money” but you also hit the nail on the head with “can’t reach perfection on the first try.”
Ford’s strategy was to take existing platforms that can use as many existing parts as possible, use existing factories and tooling, to build the F150 and Mach E. They wanted to get products out ASAP
GM’s was to create a totally new platform (Ultium) and supply chain before build cars off of it and amortize the cost of the Ultium program over time, so that’s why there seems a slower rollout of new EV from GM
Supply chains for the batteries and the EV-specific electronics in the car, are still fairly new and the price of those things should come down over time as it becomes more established
Basically I think Farley has to say something to buy time with investors while all the pieces are falling in place EV manufacturing in the US
The F-150 Lightning was probably the best move on Fords part. It’s mostly an F-150 with an electric drive train. The frame allowed for the battery to be placed between the frame rails.
The small cars are also not as profitable. They are incentivized to sell fully loaded big trucks.
If Ford, addicted to marking up “premium” vehcles, doesn’t disrupt itself then BYD, or Tata, or VinFast (ok, probably not VinFast) will do it for them. I think he’s got the right idea, let’s see if he can really change the supertanker’s course.
Leave the tariffs on medium to large Chinese EV SUVs, cars, and trucks in place, but allow the smaller and cheaper models to come through without a tariff or a very small one. If people start snapping these up and revitalize the small car bracket, Detroit will have an answer as to what people want and how much to invest in small cars. If nobody buys them, then only China loses. Of course, it could be a repeat of the 60s and 70s when the US auto industry had to play catch up to the Japanese, but all the pissing and moaning about whether enough Americans will or won’t embrace small EVs will be settled. Remember, too, that with EVs, even big ones, the decision on what range is acceptable is just as important. If you can live with 150 miles of range or less between spark ups, you can have a humongous F 150 Lightning with a much smaller battery. So, almost like having your cake and eating it, too. Almost.
“Ford’s CEO Says We Need Smaller, Cheaper EVs And He’s Right”
I think he’s half right. Cheaper EVs? Yes.
Smaller EVs? Based on the ICE vehicles I see them selling, I’d say the answer to that is NO.
The BEVs Ford sells should be comparable in size to the ICE vehicles it sells.
Legacy OEM auto execs need to lose this stupid idea that BEVs only sell if they are “small and cheap”… something that has been proven wrong time and time again.
Because if it was true, then Tesla would have gone nowhere and the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-MiEV would have been top sellers.
The MieV and Leaf were very compromised. The late popularity of the Bolt shows promise.
Ford may have axed their cars, but the Escape has been trending lower and more ‘car-like’ for years now. I swear every other car in my town is a Ford Escape.
I totally agree nobody wants subcompact Micra, Mirage or even Fiesta-sized vehicles if they can avoid it, but the market is fully there for an actual compact crossover that will sit 4-5 in comfort and feel solid on the highway.
“The late popularity of the Bolt shows promise.”
But consider as well that the Bolt barely outsold the Tesla model S for years… so what does that tell us all? It tells us North Americans like their vehicles decently big and cheap.
So in my view, Ford shouldn’t bother with making any BEVs that are smaller than the smallest ICE vehicles they currently sell.
Well, if you consider the EcoSport that they managed to sell until 2022, (despite it being universally regarded as terrible) that could imply something as small as a jacked up Fiesta.
Realistically though, Farley is probably talking about something like the new Chevy Trax, which by most people’s standards for 2024 would be plenty compact, and still occupy a popular segment.
What small EVs are the Big Two selling? F-150 Lightning, Mustang Mach-E, Silverado EV, HUMMER EV, Equinox EV, etc are all on the bigly side
The Chevy Bolt doesn’t exist anymore, they stopped production back in December, a new one is coming in 2026, maybe. And that was also a huge hit, despite being literally the only small EV any domestic brand was selling, perhaps because it did have that segment all to itself.
I thought the bolt was a bit doofy when it first came out, but now I appreciate it as being an EV that’s pretty much “A fairly normal small car that’s also an EV” and it’s not awful like the Leaf
“Smaller EVs” in the sense that EVs currently for sale in the US & Canada are on the Large to Very Large end of the spectrum, and therefore smaller EVs are needed. E.g., an EV the size of a Honda Civic would qualify as a smaller EV in this market. I think the article established that point clearly enough.
I still feel like the issue is not really the size of the vehicles as much as the Static nature of the batteries.
a Big empty truck is still the seemingly ideal state of most Americans mindset, but I agree that lugging around thousands of lbs of battery all the time is unnecessary. I am amazed that range extender batteries like the ones teased by Rivian Back in the day are not an actual thing yet. If I were to say want to go from Chicago to Detroit for a weekend, it would make so much more sense to “rent” a battery that could be inserted into a big empty space by simply driving onto a rail like the car wash and then returning that when I got back. how it is charged could be determined by the user, but this method would definitely reduce the starting price of the vehicle in general and I think would definitely reduce range anxiety, especially if these could be swapped in 10-20 minutes at locations formerly known at Gas stations along the way.
I can charge enough to continue my trip in 10-20 minutes and its much less complicated than swapping in and out a battery pack.
Infrastructure. Infrastructure infrastructure infrastructure. Smaller more efficient vehicles with ~125-150 miles of (actual usable) range would work just fine if they were cheap enough and you could reliably charge them quickly anywhere.
And they actually went 125 miles with AC or Heat on and the batteries did not lose range in 3-4 years of charging cycles.
And of course for me it would require a relatively inexpensive range extender option, either a fuel powered generator to charge as you go, or a swappable 100 mile battery that could be exchanged inside 20 minutes.
Yes. I never need more than that range unless on a road trip. I live 30 miles outside Pittsburgh. I can run to about anything (shopping/sports/concerts/theatre) in the region in 100 miles. If I can charge there while doing what I need to do so much the better. If not, maybe a range extender. I make frequent long distance trips and my current daily is a hybrid.
Shout out for ouroboros reference.
I wholeheartedly agree with Farley that lighter, cheaper, simpler EVs (and PHEVs) are the path to the future. I don’t know how he intends to get people “back in love with smaller vehicles”, however. We, as a society, love big stupid vehicles and pretty much always have. It takes a gas crisis or a recession (or both) to reset that pattern for a while, but it always reasserts itself. As has been mentioned many times before, people will go up to their eyeballs in debt to buy an overstuffed three-row sofa on 22″ wheels because they feel “safer” or something.
Most people don’t particularly enjoy driving. Heresy around here, but still the truth. “Fun to drive” just doesn’t factor into the equation or if it does it’s somewhere around “Do the cupholders keep my iced latte iced?” in importance.
It’s especially ironic to hear this from the CEO of a company that decided to pivot wholesale away from cars so many years ago and concentrate on big vehicles with fat profit margins. I appreciate what Farley is saying, but the fact is that Ford is a major contributor to the current dystopian state of automotive affairs and it’s pretty tough to convince people that small cars are awesome when you’ve spent decades telling them that Bigger is Better.
Most people don’t particularly enjoy driving.
This is, sadly, it. For most buyers, vehicles are at best transportation; at worst, they’re private technology hubs or rolling status symbols.
And as you point out, they probably never really did. The enthusiast thing carried car culture for a long time, so much so that it often wasn’t even possible to talk about cars without stressing driving performance-related aspects of whatever sort.
But that link seems to have been severed at this point – I date it to the arrival of screens – and there’s no going back.
It maybe changed further back, ca mid 1970s, when high insurance rates, the oil embargo, and new safety and emissions regs combined to kill off performance for the first time. In the economic boom years of the mid 1940s to early 1970s, car culture was so huge, so pervasive, that even people who didn’t particularly like cars or know anything about them still kind of went along with the flow and pretended so as not to seem left out (like all those kids who dressed like SoCal skaters in the late ’90s/early ’00s despite not knowing how to skate, it was just the style to look like you knew how). Once even car enthusiasts were no longer enthusiastic about new cars, the car scene became more niche
This is really insightful – I like it!
Building on it, the ’80s was when we saw the obsession over stereos take off (Blaupunkts! Graphic equalizers with their bars jumping!), then in the ’90s, it started to become hard to have sportscars that weren’t also luxury cars.
So perhaps my thought on screens actually represents just the latest distancing of buyers from driving as the primary purpose of their vehicles.
I think the reason for that is a complicated and difficult to distill into a few words
I think affordability plays into it. Real income hasn’t kept up with inflation for a lot of folks, and housing has taken up more of peoples’ income, so that’s less disposable income for a fun car
If someone can only afford to purchase a single new car, crossovers starts to look appealing because they’re a good “do everything” car. Fits stuff, comfortable, roomy, don’t have to bend over to get in or load groceries, etc.
Car seats, elderly parents, are among things easier to manage with a crossover vs a low sitting sedan.
The Emperor has no clothes.
Agreed with you.
The irony here is that a truck is a great choice for most of us. Just does almost everything.
We were sold the corporate bs by Ford, et al, that we all need a huge vehicle, and as you mentioned these are the high profit vehicles.
But again smaller, more weight efficient designs will do a lot to solve these issues. And Torch is right. We don’t require a constant 300+ mile range for a vehicle to meet everyday needs.
I don’t know how he intends to get people “back in love with smaller vehicles”, however.”
Advertising. Good faith effort advertising making the small cars desirable, not “wouldn’t you really rather have an F950 TeraCanyonero for just a few bucks more?”
A Festiva PHEV at 25k would be a best-seller.
Don’t forget to offer an SHO version
Ford isn’t going to make them, but we do need them.
Hybrids please. Small EV range with range extender engines. Engines can then gradually be phased out completely as battery tech inevitably improves.
See yesterday’s article on Chinese range extended BEVs. This is what we need
My understanding has always been that part of why automakers are gravitating toward big, expensive vehicles is that the profit margin is so much bigger. If the profit margin of an F-150 can’t absorb the cost of electrification, how are they going to squeeze it into a Fiesta? They already weren’t making enough on those to justify continuing to build them and now they’re going to put a more expensive drivetrain in it that appeals to a smaller audience?
Don’t get me wrong, I daily a Prius because for around town trips it’s much better than my truck, so I’m living the argument for smaller cars. But I’m also not convinced Ford is suddenly going to become profitable on EVs because they build a Fievsta and he’s delusional if he thinks that’s the answer to their EV woes.
Props for Fievesta! It’s just as fun as the original—and isn’t just random characters or some new brand letter tacked on
I still have a soft spot for the recently suggested alternative, better name for the Mach-e…the Ford E-bird!
“Don’t get me wrong, I daily a Prius because for around town trips”
And there’s your answer.
By making it viable. The F-150 is not viable for typical F-150 buyers. It’s not that complicated. If a single mom could buy a $25K 150 mile Fiesta EV, she’d buy that. She’s not going to buy a Mustang Mach-E or F150 EV. She can’t afford it and doesn’t need or want it. Then, mustang and F150 buyers don’t want the EV versions either. You have to build a product people want. Not just a product that has high margins and is kind of like something else that sells well with high margins.
Will she? The Nissan Leaf exists and starts at $28k. People aren’t exactly rushing out to buy one. Maybe as a second car, but I doubt many single moms can afford that.
Short-range EVs only work if you have a longer range, and often larger, other car to fall back on when you need to. I’m sure they’ll sell some smaller, cheaper EVs, but I’m dubious that you can bet the future of the company on it.
“If a single mom could buy a $25K 150 mile Fiesta EV, she’d buy that”
How many single moms are buying new cars?
The problem that Farley ha finally seems is the problem that the bigger your EV, the mor e battery you need and the less efficient your vehicle. Am ICE f150 gets ~15-20 mpg. An ICE ecpnobox gets ~35-40 mpg. Double the fuel demand in the truck is fine because you can add a monster 35 gallon gas tank that cost a bengi to refill. But EV are MUCH more affected by the poor efficiency because 1 gallon go gas is about 35KW of energy. A typical EV car will get about 4 miles per KWh, the big trucks get 2 or fewer miles per KWh because of their large frontal area and high weight.
Put another way, a f150 Lightning or Module S100 have about 3 gallons of gas in energy storage. Sure, the efficiency is closer to 90% rather than 30% of an ICE, but even with that factored, that is like a 9 gallon gas tank in an f150. You would need to stop every 180 miles to refill your ICE pickup in that case, and that isn’t even towing, which can more than double your energy consumption. The only way to solve that problem in a big Barn shaped trick is to load up a larger battery, like the REV has, double the size of the one in the Tesla x or F150, and as a result, weighs double and costs double. The biger battery more than eats up the profit margin that a truck normally carries over a car.
Meanwhile an efficient form factor with the frontal area smaller than a barn and a Drag CD smoother than a sheet of plywood can get by will only a “7 or 8 gallon tank”. Of energy because they are so efficient. And because they are efficient, they need smaller batteries, which cost less, which let’s you sell at higher profit margins.
This is why Farley is worried. Ford went all in on big expensive EV. Now he realiSea that 30-50k per battery isn’t profitable. The solution is selling small cars with affordable batteries and selling PHEV will small battery and a cheap ICE to round out the energy demand shortfall of big trucks while still making a few bucks.
They’re not going to be profitable on EVs overnight. They either have to partner with another company and use economies of scale to force the price down or develop a very compelling global model so they can generate a sales volume large enough to sell at the 30k price
Detroit learned from selling oversized cars in the 60s/70s that when an outside player gets ready to provide what the underserved smaller/cheaper market wants, it had better move fast or it will be left behind. China is eager to repeat Japan’s success, and Detroit needs to pivot ASAP.
When my father was looking to get a new car a few years ago, he wanted a hybrid, particularly a plug-in hybrid as it offered more rebate options than a non-plug car. I helped him search and because of cost and location and availability he ended up with a 2020 Ford Fusion Titanium, the last model year of that car. He’s had it since May 2021 and finds it meets his needs perfectly. While the trunk space is compromised by the battery and at best he gets 30 miles electric-only when it’s warm out, just about all of the driving he and my mom do is local. He works a few days a week out of his office but the rest is at home. Now his office is about an hour away from their home, but he’s still averaging over 65 mpg so far this year, if not better. They occasionally do a long drive to South Carolina from Pennsylvania to visit family, but he says the car is very comfortable and the drive is easy, basically straight down 95.
I’ve been driving a MINI Cooper Coupe since December 2012 and most of my driving is likewise local. I have absolutely no desire to drive anything larger. On the few times I need to move something large, I’ll just rent a truck. I don’t even like 4 door cars. I don’t have kids and my girlfriend and I can fit everything we need in my car when we go on a long trip. Or if we need a bit more room we can take her Vilkswagen Jetta.
I recently drove a rental Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe when my sister and brother-in-law were visiting and that thing seemed enormous to me, compared to my MINI or girlfriend’s Jetta. Even the Fusion seems small compared to it. I don’t know what the GC 4XE weighs but it’s not something I’d ever want to drive again. Just Too BIG. If I was in the market for a new car, it has to be a hybrid at minimum, and no SUVs, CUVs, or anything big. Sedan is the biggest I’ll go but that would also not be my choice unless I had no option. Four doors are two doors too many! ????
So basically a competitor to the Chevy Bolt, that was discontinued by their competitor, ok then.
I’ve said it before but the compliance cars should still be a thing. Like if they did the same thing with an Escape as the did to the Lightning, put a bunch of batteries and a motor in it, maybe get 150 miles of range, sell it for $30k, see what happens. Saves on engineering an entirely new platform, quick to market, comparable parts for repairs, easy peasy.
Ideally the Focus EV shouldn’t have been discontinued but they killed all their cars so that’d still be a separate platform to support, and have to be built here for the credits. With some more battery tweaks a Focus electric could probably get near 150 miles of range, which is plenty for the 2nd car he’s talking about.
The compliance cars were built under duress (hence the name) and lost tons of money. Remember Marchionne telling people not to buy the 500e?
Yep, and that was 10 years ago, I’d hope by now they could at least break even.
But how am I supposed to go anvil shopping in Alberta with my family of eight?!
I don’t know why but I laughed hard at this.
Amazon Prime:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Anvil&rh=p_85%3A2470955011&dc&crid=3716VMD2137W0&qid=1719948143&sprefix=anvi%2Caps%2C495&ref=sr_nr_p_85_1&ds=v1%3A7o3ayY2MudhsEgMMZ%2FoNmg3ZryRF4kHYoRu2fQrLlLU
Now you’re going to be seeing anvil advertisements for six months.
Good! I can always use another anvil.
You mean you go to that Anvil shop that’s at the top of a class 8 trail that you can only reach by fording a river too?
Moving anvils around…wait, are you my upstairs neighbor?
Pop in a range extender while you’re at it Ford.
I thought the lesson from the current market was that anything is affordable if you stretch the loan far enough. Major out of pocket repairs while you still owe more on the vehicle than it’s worth is a problem for future you to figure out. Today you needs that $75,000 truck for commuting and buying groceries.
…says the guy who runs the company that discontinued the Fiesta and Focus, as his predecessor said they weren’t profitable.
I’d love to hear more about how they can make a small EV profitable if they couldn’t do it with gas-powered vehicles.
Profitability is at least partly about demand. The market stopped having demand for any real volume of small ICE cars. Their data may be showing that the market is now actively demanding a real volume of small EV cars.
No demand for Focus or Fiesta and high demand for small EV can both be true at the same time.
I’ll grant that it’s hypothetically possible, but current EV demand vs comparably priced ICE vehicles doesn’t really support the idea.
Given the continual proliferation of Civics, Corollas, Fortes, and the fact that I sold plenty of Focuses up until they got the axe, I’m not sure I can completely agree with you. I think Ford’s problem was they couldn’t figure out how to make money on them…or they didn’t want to so as to have an excuse to kill them.
Maybe this time around they’ll figure it out? We’ll see.
“I think Ford’s problem was they couldn’t figure out how to make money on them…”
Part of the reason they didn’t make money on them is way too much product overlap and too many options.
If they paired it down to just the Focus hatchback and limited the engine options to a hybrid version and the ST, I bet it would have been solidly profitable.
Precisely. The KISS method.
For all we know, they may have made money. But they were chasing more money, instead.
Everything I heard in the lead-up to the Detroit 3 abandoning small & midsize cars was that they were less profitable, not unprofitable.
There is never enough money. Profit per unit produced can not remain static or the corporate equation will not work.
But here’s my beef. When they can afford to put 10K on the hood just to move a slow seller, it becomes obvious that the “required profit per unit” is an obscene amount.
“The market stopped having demand for any real volume of small ICE cars. Their data may be showing that the market is now actively demanding a real volume of small EV cars.”
That demand was always there. They just did their best to actively kill and ignore it.
“No demand for Focus or Fiesta and high demand for small EV can both be true at the same time.”
Oh there was demand. Problem was there was too much product overlap between the two models. And each of those models had way too much variation which drove up costs.
They should have paired it down to just the Focus hatchback offered in two versions… the hybrid and the ST.
And their reliability woes. Why get a Focus or a Fiesta with its shuddering “PowerShit” (PowerShift) transmission when you could just go snap up a Corolla that’ll putter along for 250,000 trouble-free miles?
Oh yeah… that definitely didn’t help the product reputation or the warranty claims costs.
Incidentally, if they would have just offered an ST and a hybrid, there would have been no need for the Powershit.
The hybrid powertrain Ford uses is similar to Toyota in principle… a reliable eCVT.
And the ST would be a manual.
$30k minus $7500 is $22500. A lot of people can swing that.
Due to inflation a car that cost $20k in 2011 now costs about $30k.
Assuming it’s built with batteries not sourced from China so it can take advantage of the federal tax credit. Not even the Mach E is doing that currently.
Would be great if it happens, though!
More PHEVs would be just fine by me. That’s, at least, realistic.
Better yet, a $3,990 Yugo would be $11,400 today, let’s target that. I don’t even need another new car, but if someone sold one that cheap, I’d pick it up for cash as a cheap runaround/beater/leave at the airport/lend to out of town visitors car
But if I can see a pedestrian over the hood I don’t feel safe. Also, you’re just jelly of my Big Demand Energy…
$30,000 is too much. The bottom 80% of Americans are priced out of that unless they go into crippling debt. That’s just going to feed the repossession market.
We need something that can compete with a BYD Seagull, or at least fall within less than double the Seagull’s $11,400 MSRP with similar specs.
I’m not arguing with you, but your comment made me think “What is the correct % of American’s who should be able to comfortably own a new car?” Is that everyone? What does a high percentage do to the resale market? Would cars actually be used for less time because new ones are more affordable? Whats the environmental impact of selling more new cars and retiring used cars more readily? Where is balance achieved?
Can a comparison be made to the housing market? They build new houses all the time, but you can buy an existing house that’s well made and will last a long time, frequently for less money. People don’t blink at buying a “used” house, nor is it seen as something only “poor” people would do.
Cars have gotten more and more reliable, durable and long lasting, and while I wouldn’t expect one to have the longevity of a well built house it also means that the demographic that would have bought a new car every three years is just as as well served buying a used car now. 40 years ago there were serious issues with keeping a car past 50k or 100k miles, whereas today that’s “barely broken in”.
In short, do we need to reconsider how much of the marketplace the average new car manufacturer should be targeting?
Unfortunately, capitalism dictates that the average new car manufacturer should be targeting 100% of the marketplace.
True, but the marketplace is quite diverse. And some of them want a car smaller than an SUV or even CUV.
Only comparison to the housing market is that housing is about location, and if you live too far from your workplace, you’ll need a car.
I would say as many Americans as possible should be able to afford a vehicle with a warrantee. When you need to be able to make it into work every morning, that counts for a lot. Having reliability also prevents failures from eating away scarce free time, something Americans don’t have a lot of.
The resale market would also get cheaper as a result in the long run.
As for environmental impact, more reliable, longer-lasting cars will generally reduce the amount of cars sold in the longer run. The cars need to be built in a manner where they can be kept for longer when desired, and easily repaired. There will always be people willing to upgrade to the latest and greatest just to have it, but that is not everyone. The initial concern is getting as many people into EVs as possible to save them money and reduce overall energy/resource consumption.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, even without the new tariffs, the BYD Seagull would not cost $11,400 if they could sell it here, it would be much closer to $20k if not a bit over.
A couple months ago I got to see a Seagull on display at a conference (it was also quite amusing that the first thing I saw walking into an exhibit hall in Detroit was a bright yellow Chinese car), and found it more impressive than the cybertrucks and other large, heavy beasts there. I only briefly sat in it, but I’m 6″5′ and fit fine in the front seats with about 1″ of headroom to spare, and even decently fit in the back seats, but with my head touching the roof. Making a small but functional, simple, light (<3000 lbs) car that is cheap is way more useful and impressive than the direction most of the industry is going of how to make a 7000-9000 lb passenger vehicle accelerate at supercar rates.
Agreed.
I want to see a “small but functional, simple, light car that is cheap” which retains that same formula, while ALSO developing supercar acceleration, and increasing its EV range through drag reduction.
If such a thing were available, it would probably shift the market away from the existing CUV/SUV/truck paradigm. And good riddance.
Huh. Turns out there aren’t as many people as we thought that can afford/want to spend $100k on a car. Welcome to reality, I guess? Glad to have you here.
You stopped selling all of your smaller vehicles in the US so you could push us into these behemoths. This is your fault, numbnuts.
This is from the guy who leads the company that discontinued all passenger cars (outside of China) to focus exclusively on pickup trucks and SUVs, and he’s talking about something that sounds an awful lot like what a next generation electric Ka, Fiesta, or Focus would be
It seemed like Ford hinted at electrics with the sendoff video they did for the Fiesta when they announced its discontinuation.
He said we need them, not that they need to sell them. That’s where chinese cheap cars come into equation, but US goverment keeps blocking.
And whose fault do you think that is?
At this point, shouldn’t Toecutter get at least a shoutout somewhere in this piece?
That was my first thought when I read the headline.