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Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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!

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

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.

They make even less sense for complex, proprietary EVs.

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...

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

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