The Record High Cost of Automobiles

[Fedorgasm]

So, I don’t know if this is the case in the automobile industry specifically. But much of the high cost for everything we still see is simply corporations refusing to lower their prices because they know that consumer expectations now are that prices are higher due to inflation. In other words, they are artificially inflating the price of products and enjoying record profits because they can. Because they know most consumers don’t know that there is no reason, in many cases, for the price to be so high. And that accounts, in most cases, for about half of the increase in prices you see for products (60% across all industries).

For instance, if the prices of the average car increased by $20k since Covid, you can bet that $10k of that is nothing but profiteering, that is if the automobile industry is doing what every other industry is doing, which they probably are.

Competition is supposed to prevent that, but it doesn't work if all the car companies agree to keep prices high.

And they don't need to have a meeting for this collusion either. I think they just keep an eye on each other's prices and as long as no one else is dropping prices then they won't either.

Sometimes it takes one scrappy competitor that would rather steal market share than go with the crowd to drop their prices, and then everyone else will have to follow suit to stay competitive.

 

[AFanNotAFighter]

Do you know how many chips a car actually has? Lots and lots, depending on the car, and they each control something different. Like you said, cars are selling for a lot of money and inventory is low. Despite what the media tells you about inflation and people not making ends meet there are a lot of people out there who have money and can afford cars. No reason for manufacturers to retrofit their assembly lines. Legally, I'm not sure they can, especially since police will look at a car's computer following a suspicious accident.

 

[jefferz]

American tastes have switched to more expensive SUVs and pickups. Between the big 3, they only make 3 cars that aren't muscle cars. There's the Chevy Spark and Malibu. Dodge makes the Charger. Even the small pickups like the Ranger aren't a small pickup anymore.

I do not know if that is true. Old cars from the 50's and 60's were built to last, and many of them are still alive and well in Cuba.

Those cars in Cuba are cobbled together garbage. If you get up close to them, you'll notice they're barely hanging together. They'll have a boat motor, plaster body work, wire pulls for door handles, etc.

 

[RedBeard_]

American tastes have switched to more expensive SUVs and pickups. Between the big 3, they only make 3 cars that aren't muscle cars. There's the Chevy Spark and Malibu. Dodge makes the Charger. Even the small pickups like the Ranger aren't a small pickup anymore.

You can't taste what you can't afford.

Those cars in Cuba are cobbled together garbage. If you get up close to them, you'll notice they're barely hanging together. They'll have a boat motor, plaster body work, wire pulls for door handles, etc.

That is because they are 70 years old. I am referring to making new cars with simple technology and design (which wouldn't necessarily mirror 1950's/1960's technology exactly) to market to working class people who can hardly afford a car right now. There are a great many of those people.

 

[jefferz]

That is because they are 70 years old. I am referring to making new cars with simple technology and design (which wouldn't necessarily mirror 1950's/1960's technology exactly) to market to working class people who can hardly afford a car right now. There are a great many of those people.

Cars from the 50's and 60's weren't built to last. Hitting 100,000 miles was very unusual.

What technology would you omit on a cheap car? How would you build a car "for the people"?

 

[RedBeard_]

Cars from the 50's and 60's weren't built to last. Hitting 100,000 miles was very unusual.

That still sounds better than buying a car from Carvana that breaks down every few months.

What technology would you omit on a cheap car? How would you build a car "for the people"?

Anything that requires technology like microchips, lithium, or the like that would be more likely to cause a shortage. Simply what is essential. Would you say it just can't be done?

 

[jefferz]

That still sounds better than buying a car from Carvana that breaks down every few months.

Anything that requires technology like microchips, lithium, or the like that would be more likely to cause a shortage. Simply what is essential. Would you say it just can't be done?

So you want to go back to carburetors, no anti-lock brakes, and no airbags. Good luck passing emissions and crash tests.

 

[Jack Reacheround]

Competition is supposed to prevent that, but it doesn't work if all the car companies agree to keep prices high.

Correction: Perfect Competition conditions would prevent it. But the automobile industry is an oligopoly due to both the natural barriers to entry, and the ones created by the incumbent companies themselves.

There is collusion there, of course. But they don’t have to collude to Jack up prices these days. Each firm figured out it’s what is in their best interest, so they all did it. It’s possible they did it independently, and also possible they signaled to one another that this was the plan. It’s also possible they directly told each other this was the plan and colluded. Either way, there are very few markets in the US that would satisfy the conditions for perfect competition. That is why so many companies were able to get away with profiteering off of Covid and the war in Ukrain.

 

[RedBeard_]

So you want to go back to carburetors, no anti-lock brakes, and no airbags. Good luck passing emissions and crash tests.

I didn't suggest there should be no electronics of any kind. Automobiles have had electronics in them since the 1940's and anti-lock breaks since the 1960's. But, if we reach a point where regular working people cannot afford cars (which many are having a tough time doing right now) some standards might just end up changing.

 

[Renard]

They don't want people to own cars, period. In the future the only people they'd like to own cars is rich people, and those cars will be electric ergo easy to control by disabling the ability to recharge them, for example if your social credit goes red. That's what the UN's agenda 2030 is all about: everyone piled into large cities, under constant surveillance, with no property, no independent means of making a living AKA totally dependent on government and large corporations thus easy to control, with no guns, and lacking independent means of transportation. If you look at what they did in the past two years, it's all about making very large steps towards that. Destroying small businesses, destroying the middle class, getting people used to a rudimentary QR code-based social credit system (that's what vaccine passports were), phasing out certain products deliberately with engineered shortages. All of that is continuing with the supposed 'response' to Putin (Putin is a WEF Global Young Leader, he's on the same team) with escalating prices across the board, using climate change as the excuse for an 'energy transition'. Then using the pathogen hysteria, they're putting down millions of poultry and livestock to hike up food prices. Food processing plants burning like Christmas trees. Government setting up regulation to bankrupt farmers and Vanguard and BlackRock sweeping in to buy up all the farmland AKA total control of the food supply and what you put in your body. I shit you not they're literally working on vaccines that can be eaten (vaccine spinach and lettuce); having the psychopaths control the entire food supply is not good. It's been the same scam the entire time, it's just continuing.

 

[RedBeard_]

They don't want people to own cars, period. In the future the only people they'd like to own cars is rich people, and those cars will be electric ergo easy to control by disabling the ability to recharge them, for example if your social credit goes red. That's what the UN's agenda 2030 is all about: everyone piled into large cities, under constant surveillance, with no property, no independent means of making a living AKA totally dependent on government and large corporations thus easy to control, with no guns, and lacking independent means of transportation. If you look at what they did in the past two years, it's all about making very large steps towards that. Destroying small businesses, destroying the middle class, getting people used to a rudimentary QR code-based social credit system (that's what vaccine passports were), phasing out certain products deliberately with engineered shortages. All of that is continuing with the supposed 'response' to Putin (Putin is a WEF Global Young Leader, he's on the same team) with escalating prices across the board, using climate change as the excuse for an 'energy transition'. Then using the pathogen hysteria, they're putting down millions of poultry and livestock to hike up food prices. Food processing plants burning like Christmas trees. Government setting up regulation to bankrupt farmers and Vanguard and BlackRock sweeping in to buy up all the farmland AKA total control of the food supply and what you put in your body. I shit you not they're literally working on vaccines that can be eaten (vaccine spinach and lettuce); having the psychopaths control the entire food supply is not good. It's been the same scam the entire time, it's just continuing.

I was hoping for this thread not to get political, which is why I posted it in the Mayberry. I was only interested in the feasibility of creating vehicles that are less expensive to produce and less likely to run into shortages.

We are not yet at the point you referenced, so it doesn't seem impossible for someone entrepreneurial to pursue alternatives.

 

[deviake]

They don't want people to own cars, period. In the future the only people they'd like to own cars is rich people, and those cars will be electric ergo easy to control by disabling the ability to recharge them, for example if your social credit goes red. That's what the UN's agenda 2030 is all about: everyone piled into large cities, under constant surveillance, with no property, no independent means of making a living AKA totally dependent on government and large corporations thus easy to control, with no guns, and lacking independent means of transportation. If you look at what they did in the past two years, it's all about making very large steps towards that. Destroying small businesses, destroying the middle class, getting people used to a rudimentary QR code-based social credit system (that's what vaccine passports were), phasing out certain products deliberately with engineered shortages. All of that is continuing with the supposed 'response' to Putin (Putin is a WEF Global Young Leader, he's on the same team) with escalating prices across the board, using climate change as the excuse for an 'energy transition'. Then using the pathogen hysteria, they're putting down millions of poultry and livestock to hike up food prices. Food processing plants burning like Christmas trees. Government setting up regulation to bankrupt farmers and Vanguard and BlackRock sweeping in to buy up all the farmland AKA total control of the food supply and what you put in your body. I shit you not they're literally working on vaccines that can be eaten (vaccine spinach and lettuce); having the psychopaths control the entire food supply is not good. It's been the same scam the entire time, it's just continuing.

Go touch some grass

 

[preppypyro]

I'd love if they made simple stuff like the 50s and 60s cars. They were built simple and so a person could rebuild and repair the entire car. Unlike now a days when a sensor controls so many things and they are quite a bit harder to diagnose and repair.

I do dig the newer technology though. I always though it would be cool to use modern technology to build a simple engine would be neat to see how fuel efficient it could actually be.

 

[kahiljabroni]

Yeh vehicles are absurd. 50-60k easy for trucks/suvs

 

[JoeyJoeJoeJr]

i bought my car for 10k a year ago, the prices were pretty normal

 

[7even]

How much would a 1970 Dodge Challenger cost fresh out of a factory today?

 

[TeTe]

So, I don’t know if this is the case in the automobile industry specifically. But much of the high cost for everything we still see is simply corporations refusing to lower their prices because they know that consumer expectations now are that prices are higher due to inflation. In other words, they are artificially inflating the price of products and enjoying record profits because they can. Because they know most consumers don’t know that there is no reason, in many cases, for the price to be so high. And that accounts, in most cases, for about half of the increase in prices you see for products (60% across all industries).

For instance, if the prices of the average car increased by $20k since Covid, you can bet that $10k of that is nothing but profiteering, that is if the automobile industry is doing what every other industry is doing, which they probably are.

I agree that at this point it's just businesses gouging.

Hate to say it but that's kind of why I hope we go into a recession.

 

[RedBeard_]

i bought my car for 10k a year ago, the prices were pretty normal

You didn't buy a new car for 10 K.

 

[RedBeard_]

I agree that at this point it's just businesses gouging.

Hate to say it but that's kind of why I hope we go into a recession.

Why? That doesn't punish the wealthy like it does the working class.

 

[Jack Reacheround]

I agree that at this point it's just businesses gouging.

Hate to say it but that's kind of why I hope we go into a recession.

I am not hoping for a recession. We just need everyone to be aware of the fact that they are doing that and I think things will change one way or another. At least when it comes to goods that are not absolute necessities.