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Comment by vincent-toups | Hacker News Reader

For the masses? My family is doing fairly well for people in my generation and I've never ever briefly considered buying a car for more than 10k.

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That’s a nice anecdote. The average new car selling price is over $30k (in the US).

I think the point is a used 10k car will almost always be more cost effective.

Of course it will be, but isn’t that totally irrelevant? You can’t release a new type of used car!

It's difficult to generalize. A 10k luxury car is a high-risk proposition, unlikely to be cost effective. (cost of maintenance, insurance, etc.)

These might be 10k when you buy them used...

Bangeronomics make most sense only if you are willing to work on your own car.

They make even less sense for complex, proprietary EVs.

Not really. For $10k, I got a car in really good condition with ~$60k miles, and most cars don't have issues until at least 100k miles, if not closer to 150k miles. My car has ~120k miles right now, and I've done very little aside from getting oil changes and having the factory service around 90k miles.

My car cost ~$20k new, and I could sell it for $3-5k, so I'm already ahead if I sold and bought another $10k car today.

Buying a new car only really makes sense if you're really interested in cutting edge technology or are very particular in the options you want. You can't really get a reasonable electric car used, so new is going to be your best bet there. However, you will pay more than if you buy a quality used car.

And what is the median? Is it for new cars only?

The median figure doesn't exist. I've looked for it for ten years, it never gets reported anywhere.

The $34,000 figure (2019) is the average for all new consumer passenger vehicles, including SUVs, trucks (eg F-150), luxury, etc.

A typical mass market vehicle will more often be in the $22,000 to $26,000 range. From a Honda Civic around $19k, to high volume trucks around $26k-$32k (all base model prices). The Ford Explorer is one of the only vehicles on the top 20 best selling list where the base model well exceeds $30,000; it starts at $36k, versus the F-150 that starts at $28k.

At least for Germany, it is pretty much impossible to really know the average price of a new car. This is mostly due to so called "Händlerzulassungen", which means the dealer will actually buy the car, register it for a day, and then sell it as officially "used". This is why at least in the official statistic, only 30% of all new cars in Germany are sold to private citizens. Dealers do this because they are then more flexible w.r.t. pricing, and also they often get bonuses for registering a certain amount of cars in a quarter.

I don’t think that’s done in the US. At least I’ve never heard of it, and if a dealer tried it with me I’d probably walk out, assuming they were scamming me somehow.

Generally states require a vehicle to be driven for a certain amount of time before it can be sold as used. I'm also not sure that dealers are permitted to register cars that they are not using as service loaners.

That's a nice anecdote. What's the average new and not new car selling price?

> For the masses? My family is doing fairly well for people in my generation and I've never ever briefly considered buying a car for more than 10k.

Identify your reasons for that and ask yourself if they're representative of how "the masses" tend to think about their purchases.

(the average used car price in the US is over $20k)

This was my thoughts exactly. I am fairly well off comparatively I make way over minimum wage and there is no way I would consider a car that expensive. Affordable to the masses is more like $20,000 Canadian. That would be the price I could call affordable to the masses. Even a 20,000$ purchase would be hard for most people in my town. As someone who has not looked at EV car prices if this is what they call affordable I guess am still a long way off from owning an EV.

EVs will not be affordable for the masses even if they are able to get under $20k since home ownership is still effectively a prerequisite for owning an EV right now.

10k for a new car is possible but you are quite limited. I am not even sure that Volkswagen has a single car under that price point, except maybe for end-of-life entry-level models.

Dacia prices start at 8k, and their cars are decent, but they are comparatively old tech. It means they won't get the latest advances regarding fuel economy and the low price is partly offset by higher fuel costs.

All in all, expect to pay around 15k for a no-thrills new car.

Obviously, used cars are cheaper but that's apple to oranges comparison. We don't know how much the ID.3 will cost used, so it's pointless.

And in a few years time, used ID.3's will be available for under 10K.

Probably more than a "few" I think that you will be looking at 5-7 for the cars to fall to under a third of new value. Although that depends on your definition of "a few"* I guess.

* https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2010/05/how-much-is-a-few...

Conventional wisdom seems to be that at best electric cars will depreciate at the same rate as ICEs or at worst their values will fall off a cliff, the reality is very different, at least in the short run * obviously this will change as production of newer cars ramps up.

* https://fullycharged.show/blog/surprisingly-positive-news-on...

The thing I'm curious about is how they will age

I would guess the mechanical components, motors etc will potentially be more reliable than ICE

But I worry about the batteries, if my laptop is anything to go by it seems like they will eventually die and will be expensive to replace

Today's ICEs are very reliable and generally outlast the car body - assuming your follow the maintenance schedule. All the wear on the body will be the same: pot holes, salt, accidents... Motors won't have nearly as much maintenance (you still need to lube bearings), but the car will die based not on the method of motor power in most cases even if you don't do the maintenance.

Batteries are a worry. Price has come down, but used electric cars are very cheap compared to the ICE cars because of this very reason. Until the market figures out how to replace the batteries at scale, and then buyers figure out how to account for the battery this will not change.

Used Nissan Leaves seem to fall off a cliff. 2016 ones are already visible on ebay for under £10k.

Yeah they have two things not going for them. Limited range and battery degradation issues.

Also EV's tend to have rebates and tax write offs that reduce their actual purchase price significantly. Which probably also depresses resale prices.

Not having thermal management on the batteries does not work for an EV.

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