Part of the problem is that carmakers refuse to sell small cars. If you don’t believe me try to buy a small car at a car dealership in America.
Consumers are angry about rising costs, particularly for automobiles, and having a choice to buy an affordable vehicle could be surprisingly popular.
For instance I think electric vehicle adoption is stalled because there aren’t many people who can afford a $105k pickup truck with limited range while towing (e.g. you might really need a big-ass vehicle if you trailer your horse to Ocala, FL every year, but no way you are going to make your animals sit through 20-30 charging stops). A $20k electric with (say) a 60 mile range would get me to and from work and able to do shopping and would be a great second or third car for many households.
All it takes is asking BYD what they need to enter the market.
>Part of the problem is that carmakers refuse to sell small cars. If you don’t believe me try to buy a small car at a car dealership in America.
>Consumers are angry about rising costs, particularly for automobiles, and having a choice to buy an affordable vehicle could be surprisingly popular.
Consumers may claim they care about rising costs, but the fact that more expensive SUVs are outselling sedans makes me think it's the consumers who are refusing to buy small cars, rather than carmakers refusing to sell them.
> it's the consumers who are refusing to buy small cars
I think it's more complicated. Consumers are stupid, or rather, easily manipulated.
SUVs and Trucks have much higher margins than sedans and other small cars. It is advantage to any car manufacturer to sell mostly SUVs and Trucks because you get more money per unit of work. Essentially, you do 110% of the work of a sedan but charge 150%-200% as much. It's a no brainer.
So of course the advertisements primarily focus on SUVs and Trucks. I don't know how much free will consumers truly have in a system with such intense advertising.
Poor people would like smaller cars, but they buy used cars, not new cars. Affluent people buy new cars and want big SUVs. Of course, then that's what ends up on the used market after a few years.
Try buying a sedan. Most of them have been discontinued by the manufacturer as of 2024 or the dealer won’t have one in stock or if they do have one in stock it won’t have power windows or they’ll have some excuse why they can’t sell you one.
They did it to my dad when he tried to buy a small car in he 1970s and it was a policy of American car dealers except around a short period after he 2008 financial crisis. What is relatively new is that Japanese car dealers started doing the same after the 2008 crisis abated.
>Try buying a sedan. Most of them have been discontinued by the manufacturer as of 2024 or the dealer won’t have one in stock or if they do have one in stock it won’t have power windows or they’ll have some excuse why they can’t sell you one.
>They did it to my dad when he tried to buy a small car in he 1970s and it was a policy of American car dealers except around a short period after he 2008 financial crisis.
What you said about sedans being hard to procure might be true today, but there's no way it was an issue back in the 70s. Eyeballing the chart in the article[1], 3 in 4 cars produced were sedans. It strains credibility to claim that it was hard to buy a sedan. Even today, sedans account for 1 in 4 cars produced. That's a huge drop, but there's no way that the buying experience is as difficult as you make it out to be.
The problem in the 1970s were bloated FR sedans that had a huge engine compartment but a relatively cramped passenger compartment partitioned by the transmission and driveshaft. Got 12mpg under good conditions, the more you spent the more likely you blew the head gaskets at 20k miles or had intermittent problems with the automatic transmission that no amount of rebuilding would fix.
Japanese FF sedans and hatchbacks were a breath of fresh air because they fixed all those problems. Volkswagen also made RR vehicles like the bug that were radically simple, affordable and reliable but never made the investment to make the comply with new emissions regulation and instead they came out with the Rabbit which was initially OK but the price went up and quality went down and now you have the Golf which appeals to people hypnotized by the German nameplate.
Myself it’s not a sedan that I want but a hatchback. I currently drive a Fit, but since they quit making it I will think more than twice before getting another Honda.
> or the dealer won’t have one in stock or if they do have one in stock it won’t...
This bit of American instant-gratification-addiction has always felt weird to me, and I think most Europeans (at least those who even know of this difference). Like, a new car is a pretty huge purchase. Why would you ever buy one that isn't exactly the way you want it, when all you have to do is order it with the exact options you want and then wait a few weeks?
There are Nissan Leafs available for consumers who want a relatively cheap small BEV. But the average new car transaction price is now about $47K so it seems most buyers are willing to pay more for something larger and nicer.
There's no way that BYD will be allowed to sell many cars in the USA regardless of potential benefits to consumers. It's too risky to increase our economic dependence on a country which is at best a strategic competitor and at worst perhaps an adversary. Both of our main political parties are now generally aligned to that viewpoint and it won't change at least as long as Chairman Xi remains in power.
>Part of the problem is that carmakers refuse to sell small cars. If you don’t believe me try to buy a small car at a car dealership in America.
Driving a small compact car on an American freeway would be terrifying. I have a small (by US standards) car at home, but I hired a big (by European standards) car when holidaying in the US.
It is notieable that there are more and more huge SUVs and pickups appearing in the UK, even though our roads and parking spaces are not designed for them.
You’re not wrong. But only because Democrats are terrible at messaging (and seem allergic to getting better at it). “We’ll get you needlessly dead for our own power” isn’t exactly a popular policy position if someone is willing to call it what it is.
