Americans can no longer afford their cars | Hacker News Reader

Americans can no longer afford their cars

newsweek.com

34 pointsjbrins184 comments

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There is a conflation of factors that have lead to this.

1. Stricter safety and emissions regulations that make new cars more expensive to make.

2. Supply chain issues making new cars more expensive.

3. New cars are expensive so people are holding onto their used cars longer, shrinking that market.

4. Cars are much more computerized than before, so it's hard to fix up old cars and make them work again.

5. Teens used to be able to take auto-shop and learn enough to fix up an old shitbox to use for their first few working years.

6. It's hard to find an old shitbox anymore, even one that is easy to fix, because people are holding onto them until they die.

I'm not sure what the solution is here. The safety and emissions regs are there for a reason, but those are what lead to all the other problems.

We just need to design our society for fewer cars, but that change will take a while.

Many countries motorbike dominates. I only switched over due to infant safety restraint laws. Yes I lived somewhere in snow, motorcycle works in blizzards too.

Really only find motorcycle and heavy trucks useful though. If smug fucks in legislature gon make me have a cage, at least gon get something I can haul large loads with. Car is a weird in-between that inefficiently does both.

> 6. It's hard to find an old shitbox anymore, even one that is easy to fix, because people are holding onto them until they die.

It's also been made harder because of the insane Obama-era "Cash for Clunkers" [1] program that massive depleted supply of used vehicles in the US with the purported effect of an economic stimulus.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System

It was billed as a stimulus but it was really an environmental program to get people to exchange for more fuel efficient vehicles. See point 1. :)

Big fail if you consider the energy it takes to build a car. All the wasted energy to prematurely destroy those cars that still had years of use in them is mind boggling.

It created an economic stimulus for auto manufacturers by forcing new vehicles to be sold.

> are holding onto them until they die

Also because of anti-features in newer cars, like buttonless soft cockpits, dangerous shifters with no positional feedback, keyfobs that make it easy-ish for unsupervised toddlers to start the car along with thieves with radio proxies...

or the fact that small trucks don't exist anymore in favor if annoying to park gas guzzlers due to, ironically, fuel efficiency standards.

New cars are expensive because of feature inflation. We don't need all those features, we just want a basic cheap car.

This. A good reliable basic car without features just isn't a thing anymore. It's triple sunroofs and built-in arm-rest massagers and whatever crap they are putting into the "info-tainment" system.

And features are usually quite bundled. If you just want heated side-view mirrors you're probably stuck going up to a higher "trim" package level & also getting heated seats, etc.

Who is "we"? There are basic cheap cars available but few consumers actually buy them.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g39175084/10-cheapest-...

In my lifetime school stopped being about teaching life skills and started being about college prep. I never had home ec, wood shop, auto shop, any life skill class. Hell even drivers ed was privatized in my town. I understand that these programs are expensive to keep running but that slack was not picked up by other community resources like community colleges. (theres also a lot to be said about the stigmatization of community college and adult education courses)

The decline in public funding of education and public transit in my lifetime have gotten us to this point

FTA: "In November 2019, the average transaction price for a new vehicle was $38,500."

Let's be real, that was unaffordable to most Americans at the time. But, people are also buying what they want, not what they need. You need basic transportation? A used Honda Civic is a great bet. There are lots of used ones, less than 5 years old and many with fewer than 30K miles, available in my area for under $20K.

Was that hungry really accurate? I bought my last car in 2019 and it was 35k, cheaper than a luxury car but more expensive than the average car. I won't what the median price was? And is that price what people were spending, or the average price of cars that were available?

Used market is also bananas. I bought a 2013 Corolla in 2016 for $16k, inclusive of taxes and fees. Carvana took it off my hands early last year for $12.5k

The used car market has come down quite a bit since last year, especially since early last year.

Last I heard (admittedly, like 9 months ago) multiple dealerships were willing to buy our 2015 model year Honda Odyssey for more than we paid for it, when we bought it used in 2019. With like 90k more miles on it or something. And of course they'd mark it up farther.

WTF. I don't know what we'll do if this van dies. Paying about $20k for that thing already seemed super-expensive for a car, to me.

The problem is that most Americans view cars as status symbols and want them to be as luxurious as if they're buying a second home. Ironically according to AAA the average American spends about 300hrs a year behind the wheel. In other words about 3.5% of your time is spent actually driving while 96.5% it's garaged or parked. Spend money on a better a bed where you spend 33% of your life and buy a used 2009-2019 Toyota Yaris, agreed to be one of the most reliable commuter cars Toyota has ever made.

Insanely enough a luxury trim is often cheaper than base trim 8+ years used. The target luxury buyer market is vaporized by the time it reaches moderately used.

I've given up my car for over a year now. I put roughly 200 miles on my bike every month, and I utilize transit when unwilling/unable to bike. It's very stress-free not needing to park/store, insure, and maintain a machine that largely sits idle. I can do most bike maintenance myself, and for anything I can't manage myself, there's a half-dozen bike mechanics within a 10 minute bus ride of my apartment.

I've also never been healthier.

If everyone does that the system collapsed, as you're free riding on gas and registration fees that fund road you bike on.

Because the wear and tear of a bicycle on a road is anywhere near that of a car? Roads would last forever if they only had bicycles on them.

A study by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) determined that the road damage caused by a single 18-wheeler was equivalent to the damage caused by 9,600 cars. ... The study found that essentially, road damage was related to the 4th power of the relative loads. https://www.denenapoints.com/relationship-vehicle-weight-roa...

A road, totally unused, still requires construction and maintenance. Even simple walkway last 50-100 years. My claim is not the cost of cycle only road would be the same, it is the free-riding aspect vs cost to build and maintain cycling road.

What you're citing is only the fraction from axle weight, exclusive of other damage impactful including weathering.

You would only need to build it once and not resurface and pave it every 5-10 years. So yes we'd still need people to pay for roads.

But for the current roads we already paid for, the average car is apparently around 4100 lbs whereas the average bicycle weight is 30 lbs, so 30^4/4100^4 means that a bicyclist should be paying around 1/350,000,000 of the cost comparable to the average car driver... so litterally a rounding error down to zero.

If you look at Chernobyl (search "Chernobyl parking lot" https://www.vecteezy.com/photo/3732091-pripyat-ukraine-2021-... ) you'll see even 40 years later with no care paving is actually completely usable.

Again you've fallen into fallacy of excluding weathering and construction costs not 4th order to axle weight. Your calc safely discarded.

But wait, it's even worse. Cyclists and drivers are benefactors of 18 wheelers. So the cyclist is the worst of all. He gets same benefit of 18 wheelers bringing him goods while offloading unequal axle damage costs on car drivers taxes. Cyclist is ultimate leech in this equation you present.

So your argument is that we have a moral imperative to drive cars in order to pay taxes to support the roads that are mainly damaged by... cars?

As opposed to simply changing the tax code to better reflect road usage and wear and tear?

No I'd say we have a moral imperative to auction off the roads for privatization to let market force us to efficient transport options and more accurately capture their costs. I believe this will also reduce pedestrian and bike fatalities by pushing people to smaller vehicles and stuff like commuter rail.

Weathering is marginal as the Chernobyl photos are proof of.

Car drivers don't pay for the damage that 18-wheelers do to the roads in any different way than bike drivers.

>Car drivers don't pay for the damage that 18-wheelers do to the roads in any different way than bike drivers.

When taxes are approximated as first to second order of weight and damage is fourth, the calculus is lower weight cars are shouldering unequal cost of 18 wheelers vs everyone else including cyclist consumers. Effectively part of this is shouldered of free riding cyclists consumption of 18 wheeler goods.

Weathering varies widely by climate. Drive around Michigan in the early Spring and look how badly damaged the roads are due to frost heaves.

Interesting. EV are 10 to 20% heavier than a comparable ICE vehicle. So, if we follow this 4th power law, an EV impact on the road would be 50 to 100% more than its equivalent ICE. For me that's yet another new data to factor in the equation EV vs ICE.

Basically all of that's a rounding error compared to commercial traffic (heavy trucks). They're heavily subsidized by non-commercial drivers, and a Tesla being 20% heavier than a Mustang (or whatever) isn't really making a big difference in that balance.

Commercial traffic is basically the consumer goods be it groceries or ipads, so taxing it is basically a sales tax which is almost always regressive against the poor.

The worst offender here is cyclists, who eat up road space and then buy goods offloaded from 18 wheeler, massively transferring axle weight portion of damage cost to the poor dude in beat up civic.

what are your thoughts on road shoulder parking lanes?

Hurr durr you guddurn hippies not paying your ROAD TAX

Car infrastructure is stupidly expensive. The dutch save SO much money by building simple bike paths.

I have a feeling we would change the tax structure long before the system "collapsed".

Few questions:

How do you get the groceries? Just buy a day or two's worth at a time?

How do you keep from stinking all the time?

I used to ride a motorcycle in the US and other drivers were dangerous as hell. It's even worse for bicyclists. How do you deal with that?

Serious questions, not being sarcastic.

Yes I get groceries from popping into the whole foods one block away, or get them delivered from amazon fresh or whole foods.

You don’t really sweat on an ebike.

It’s trivial when you live in a dense city where drivers don’t feel entitled. They are rather respectful of pedestrians and cyclists here.

Even after factoring those risks in, cyclists on average live longer than non-cyclists.

As well as people who drinks expensive whiskey

> How do you get the groceries? Just buy a day or two's worth at a time?

In Holland (and in fact much of Europe) huge malls are rare, cities a structured as shops intermingled with housing. In fact it's often shops on the ground floor, housing above them. So buying a day or two's groceries one the trip home is a matter of turning into a door on the way home.

Also they have "cargo bikes", which is a push bike designed like a kangaroo (google it). The cargo space in the front is mum's taxi, used for groceries and kid transportation.

> How do you keep from stinking all the time?

Holland and many of these places are cool and flat. But if you go to Asia it's the same deal. I don't recall anyone stinking there.

> I used to ride a motorcycle in the US and other drivers were dangerous as hell. It's even worse for bicyclists. How do you deal with that?

No one travels far (because of the city design described in 1st para), so no one has to travel fast. Literally. In places like the USA and Australia even the push bikes move at 20..30km/hr. Not in these places. It's one of the things that stick out when you visit, actually. In non-bike countries the bikes you do see are fancy, the riders dress in Lycra to suit the sporty image, and they ride fast. But in bike countries the bikes are boring, people ride them sedately, and women in evening dress on a push bike is a common sight [0]. Push bike accidents do happen all the time, but aren't serious because of the low speeds.

Another way to explain your puzzlement: Cities in Australia, Canada and USA are designed for cars. Cities in other places are designed for bikes and walking. These are two Nash equilibrium's to the transport problem. Once a system has settled into a Nash equilibrium it's very hard to change. So in a place designed for cars, riding a push bike is taking ones life into your own hands so everyone buys a car. In a place designed for push bikes, trying to drive a car is an exercise in frustration: you drive as slow as a push bike, and there is nowhere to park when you get there. You are living in one Nash equilibrium, but there is another. Try travelling for a bit.

Try googling "airbag bicycle helmet". They are a thing. Why are they a thing? Initially it was because a traditional bicycle helmet mess with a woman's hair do, and these things are worn around the neck. When you are dressed to the nine's riding your bike to the opera, you don't want your hair messed up after all. But it turns out they are safer than regular helmets.

i cook a decent amount, because it's easier to get bulk stuff that fits in my combo pannier-backpack from the grocers, than say frozen pizzas or boxes of cereal. even eggs seem to have less spoilage due to transport by bike than via car!

i live in Minneapolis, so when it's hot i just take it a little easier so as to not work up a sweat, and in the winter biking is shockingly warming (i am consistently surprised to be able to bike in subzero temps with my normal jacket, jeans and long underwear on)

as for automobile drivers, it's kinda a combo of defensive driving tactics, along with knowing bike lanes, bike boulevards, and parkways. (bryant ave and the midtown greenway are pretty nifty for all cardinal directions of travel)

Don't know where you live, but in many of the places I have lived it would not be stress-free owning a bike considering how often they get stolen and how little the police care.

Minneapolis, MN!

fwiw, a stolen bike is about 500usd to replace (i have my dad's 1970s Schwinn as a backup for when i am doing maintenance or loaned out my daily rider) vs a stolen car... i know a half-dozen people who've had their kia or hyundai cars stolen in the last 2 years, usually the car is completely totalled, one of those people had their same car stolen 3 separate times before it was finally totalled, and in some cases a friend (doordasher) lost their job and then housing due to not having transportation.

> at least if they're following standard budgeting advice

Well, many don't. I would be curious what percentage Americans are actually spending on their cars and whether it is actually as little car as they truly need. Monthly payments might be that low if they are spread out enough.

> That means that more than 60 percent of American households currently cannot afford to buy a new car, based on Census data.

Would be curious what the car dealer financing agents have to say about that, as there are 120 month car notes now.

> whether it is actually as little car as they truly need

Part of the reason why everyone is buying an SUV instead of a small sedan, is that you just feel unsafe driving next to a jacked up truck, nevermind a Cybertruck. There is a ton of YouTube videos that will readily show that one have no chance against those in an unfortunate encounter…

As if a cybertruck is somehow more dangerous than other trucks? It’s neither the heaviest, nor does it have the highest hood (the #1 pedestrian death rate predictor). Trucks are awful but CT is not the biggest offender lol.

It's an arms race. People are being killed.

Ban air bags in SUVs. Mandate a driver-facing spike in the middle of the steering wheel.

yeah with those ridiculous loans a car becomes dramatically more expensive while appearing to be affordable. It's very triggering to me when I ask a salesman about the price of a car and they reply with "what do you want your monthly payment to be?". Interest rates and those long term auto loans are just gas on the debt fire.

And I imagine most measure affordability by that payment rather than the total price.

Just sold my 22 Tacoma for what I bought it for and picked up an 89 hilux with almost 300k on it. I wanted out from the loan and cash on hand for a down payment on a condo. I had planned on gettin a 10 year old Tacoma with moderate miles but the market was so terrible I decided to just buy a truck that was older than me.

Neither can Europeans - even the cheapest cars are around 15k€, which is like a year of salary in some countries of the EU.

You can't buy cheaper, older cars because they don't let you in the city with them. Fuck poor people.

So basically they are telling you to fuck off and stay at home or something.

Turns out cars don’t belong in cities, so efforts are made to undo the damage of 1960s car centric urban planning. That includes disincentivizing car ownership in cities in favor of bike lanes and transit.

https://m.youtube.com/c/notjustbikes has some great content about the issue.

TLDR: too much space wasted, too many deaths, too much noise, pollution, unpleasant neighborhoods, never-ending traffic leading to hours of labor wasted, lower tax base due to parking, sprawl, higher healthcare costs, lower access to services, extremely expensive infrastructure, etc

It’s funny how poor people are always the victims in these schemes. In the USA many places let people in electric cars ,that mainly only rich people could afford, into the carpool lanes so they could travel without congestion. Of course the poor bastard in the 16 year old beater had to sit in traffic as they traveled to their second low paying job.

If anything we should let high emissions cars access to low congestion lanes so they spend less time polluting.

>It’s funny how poor people are always the victims in these schemes.

Working as intended.

It's worse than that. If you're rich you can pay to use the 'car pool' lane to get down to the googleplex.

> If anything we should let high emissions cars access to low congestion lanes so they spend less time polluting.

That's excellent thinking. I do wonder though if the number of high emissions cars isn't such that those 'low congestion lanes' would immediately become congested.

Personally I don't think any kind of vehicle once approved for road-worthiness should get an advantage over other road-worthy vehicles. Especially not if it ends up being a wealth inequality thing in disguise.

Which cities are doing this which don't have good mass transit options as one of the "or something" ways to get into town?

In 1965 in the UK average annual income was about 750 GBP [1]. A medium priced car was about 700 GBP [2].

Sounds pretty similar to the situation you describe today.

I suspect that in the countries where annual income is only 15 kEUR now that in 1965 hardly anyone could afford a car at all.

At least in the UK the reason people can't afford a car might have more to do with the price of housing reducing their disposable income.

[1] https://www.measuringworth.com/datasets/ukearncpi/result2.ph...

[2] https://www.retrowow.co.uk/transport/60s/motoring/60s_cars_c...

What exactly is the argument here? That since in 1965 people could barely afford a car it's okay if now we've regressed to the point where 60 years later people can now again barely afford a car?

The argument is that from a purchasing power perspective the price of cars in Europe has been more-or-less constant over the years. I think that they've gone up a bit, actually, but you get a lot more car for your money now than you did in the 60's and the 70's. Those cars were death traps, high maintenance and roadside breakdowns were very common.

Which is not true since car prices have dramatically risen these last years.

Prices in an absolute sense will always rise, especially when inflation is high but you have to compensate for purchasing power, wages and so on. Effectively, from today to 1970 the price of cars has probably dropped in terms of what you get for your money and that includes 'these last years'. When looking at EVs it is true that they are still more expensive, but then again, they didn't exist at all back in the 70's so we can't really compare, and as volumes ramp up the price will come down. The bigger issue will be to match growing grid capacity to growing number of EVs because if those too get too far out of phase there won't be enough power available in some locations.

Incredible how the article and I are both talking about the rise in prices since 2020 and you two are being intentionally obtuse talking about the 60s and the 70s.

It doesn't matter at all how things were in the 70s. What matters is that car ownership is much harder than it should be, NOW. It was cheaper, so it could be practically as cheap as it was a few years ago, but it's not.

Nobody that wants to drive / needs to drive needs to buy a brand new car per-se. For 5K and up you can get a perfectly serviceable car that has more life left in it than a brand new car from the past and that will pass emissions tests for various environmental zones. My daily driver is 25 years old and I can drive it anywhere. I've owned quite a few vehicles, some new, some old and in spite of the cars sticker price being lower in the 70's and 80's I was very far removed from being able to buy a new vehicle when I got my license first (in '86 or so). You are constructing a whole pile of arguments that have a poor or even no foundation and I'm saying that as a EU driver who could afford a brand new car now but that's mostly because of my increase in income. New car ownership historically wasn't a thing that 'the poor' engaged in and with prices being roughly steady at 1 years worth of income it's clear that you either need to borrow money or save a lot of money to buy a brand new car, unless your boss is friendly enough to provide you with a brand new lease vehicle (which in software circles isn't rare at all).

If you evaluate the cheap cars from the past (say, 1986: Mini, 2CV to a lesser extent the 2CV and really cheap options such as Yugo, Zastava and the Fiat Panda of the day) you'll find that they were very slow and underpowered, consumed quite a bit of fuel, were super dangerous to drive (both the Mini and the 2CV were essentially driving coffins, I should know, I've had both) and were comparatively high maintenance. They were also about 10K guilders at the time, which today would be approximately 11500 euros give or take. That's order of magnitude equivalent but your 15K car today is much safer, sips fuel in comparison and will go three times as far between service intervals.

Car ownership right now is very easy, new car ownership is harder, but it always was, and if you want to compare apples-to-apples you need to compare much higher class vehicles from the 80's with the present low end because the low end from back then has simply disappeared: nobody would buy a 1 star NCAP vehicle even if it was cheap and available, the market simply isn't there anymore. Maybe you're the exception but if that's so then I'm sure you can find a nicely restored 1980's mini for that kind of money. But please don't, they're more dangerous than they even were back then because a modern 'cheap' vehicle will drive right through a 1986 Mini in an accident.

> That means that more than 60 percent of American households currently cannot afford to buy a new car, based on Census data. For individuals, the numbers are even worse, with 82 percent of people below the $100,000 line.

Did I miss the actual sales figures in this article? Here are some:

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/total-vehicle-sal...

https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/usa-auto-industry-total-sales-...

You don't see a pronounced long-term decline here. It looks like people are buying them anyway.

52% increase in US population 1980-2023 vs essentially flat growth in total vehicle sales

This might be one case where a very long term look (43 years) is misleading. "Last 10 years" might be more instructive.

Cars have gotten much better. Back in 1980 it was very unusual for a car to go 100,000 miles.

This data suggests Newsweek has a non-story: the number of carless households has not gone up at all.

https://www.thezebra.com/resources/research/car-ownership-st...

https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter8/urban-trans...

Perhaps a lot of car sales were actually additional cars for a household that already had one or more, and now that desire has been satiated.

With modern cars regularly lasting into 300,000 miles, it makes sense that we would see fewer people buying new cars. There are a lot of used cars with plenty of life left in them. Most people also buy used homes instead of new.

a 1-3 year old used car with low'ish miles and decent gas milage is the sweet spot. You save a new car off the assembly line, you save an old car from the junk yard, price is considerably lower than a new car, and it will probably be perfectly functional long after you've paid it off.

This. It's not only reliability at high mileage, but also as they age. Driving a 2012 and a 2014, both seem to still be 100% mechanically and electrically sound without any major repairs, with only minor body dings that are more related to parking lot negligence than engineering. Totally reliable, no major body issues, nothing. In the past, I've never had any other car go more than 8 years without a major repair, some annoying series of endless minor repairs, or the development of annoying behaviors. Things have changed.

I can afford a new car, but any car buying on my part is being delayed by these cars being effectively free (with insurance, license and fuel costs, yes) at a point while car prices are high. It's also being delayed by the knowledge that if mainstream cars can be this trouble-free with typical maintenance, I'll need to choose my next car(s) carefully, since I like to buy my cars outright, and will be effectively stuck with it for over a decade, so it has to be something I like much more than these old ones.

Do you have any examples of cars that "regularly" last 300,000 miles (480,000 km)?

I have an old VW Passat TDI with 300,000 that I am working to restore, but it definitely didn't "last" that long. Our Jetta TDI "lasted" 240,000 miles, but it's definitely on its absolute last legs and not regular. The difference between them is stark: the early 90s Passat is bolted together; the newer Jetta is (was) glued. The Passat has electrical plugs and components can be replaced; the Jetta wiring is largely routed through the unibody (which has been welded shut). Cracked wires (of which there are many) cannot be easily replaced or repaired. It's got bean counters' fingerprints all over it.

If anything, I would expect to see the same thing happen in cars as which happened everywhere else in consumer appliances: manufacturing processes are cheapened to the absolute limit of acceptable warranty repairs.

I'd put a randomly chosen Honda Civic or CR-V or Toyota Camry or Prius from a non-snowbelt area as a slight favorite to be able to reach 300K. We've got a 2005 CR-V with 235K miles on it that will need to be retired due to rust in the next few years. Mechanically, it's still dead nuts reliable.

> ...from a non-snowbelt area ... We've got a 2005 CR-V with 235K miles on it that will need to be retired due to rust in the next few years. Mechanically, it's still dead nuts reliable.

I had a 2004 Honda Pilot that was still mechanically good at 240k miles, but the salt melt that gets put on the roads in Minnesota ate through the rear suspension mount points to the frame. My auto repair shop wouldn't even quote me a repair on that, which I assume would have basically been to replace the frame and rebuild the body for $20-30k.

You're right, cars manufactured recently could be worse. Here's a related statistic that shows things headed in a good direction: "Average Age of Light Vehicles in the US Hits Record High 12.5 years" https://www.spglobal.com/mobility/en/research-analysis/avera....

"But car buyers' preferences have also shifted dramatically to larger trucks and SUVs in the past 10 years or so, and even more towards high-tech and comfort amenities in the form of cameras, sensors, radars and large infotainment screens,"

Which buyers? Everyone in my circle does NOT want this exact list of features.

Where is the $5000 electric city car? Oh, in China. No wonder we need trade embargos...

People in your circle will be aligned with you on many things, that's how they got in your circle in the first place. Here is a list of 10 best selling vehicles in 2022 [0], only two of these are sedans, but both of those come with screens, radars, cameras, and sensors [1,2].

0. https://www.statista.com/statistics/239229/most-sold-car-mod...

1. https://www.caranddriver.com/toyota/camry-2021

2. https://www.caranddriver.com/toyota/corolla-2021

"while used car prices fell by only 2 percent to an average of $31,030."

This is simply not true--average used car prices are well under $31,030. They get these high numbers from car dealers who only deal in fairly new used cars as that is what is profitable for them.

There are a huge number of much cheaper, older used cars available directly from private parties--on venues like Craigslist.

Also, a used Porsche 911 GT2 RS is a lot more expensive than a used Toyota Corolla. "Average" isn't the right way to look at this.

Car prices have been falling regularly for the past ~2 years: https://site.manheim.com/en/services/consulting/used-vehicle...

It is time for companies to bring prices down or for competitors to enter the market with lower prices. Enough is enough. The current set of executives and shareholders need to take a cut.

The car industry went through an inflection point going on 10 years now.

Ford and GM got on board with the changes but changes to a big high momentum corp like that came at a cost. So they have a market cap around $40 billion. Stellantis decided against existing and are dinosaurs.

Tesla obviously is the disruptor whose marketcap is >500 billion for sure, probably more legitimately around a trillion. Tesla could issue some new stock and effectively buy both ford and gm.

So obviously the car industry is having its pain points.

'afford' is the other side of this equation. Lets compare the USA and Canada.

GDP per capita

USA: 62,000

Canada: 44,000

That's practically a 50% difference... That's crazy.

Households Debt to GDP

USA: 70%

Canada: 170%

That's a huge difference. Greater then 50%.

Interest rates are about the same. 5.5% vs 5%. But arguably sky high given we're in a boomer retirement phase and we ought to be negative interest rates.

Private Debt to GDP

USA: 215%

Canada: 270%

North Americans cant afford ANYTHING. Not just their cars. Canada's debt to income is 180%. The soft limit of 100% matters a ton. North America is broke...

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