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Comment by beretguy | Hacker News Reader

Tangential but related:

There are full parking lots with brand new cars that go under press or get disassembled for parts because dealership don’t want sell them at a cheaper prices.

https://www.costulessdirect.com/blog/where-brand-new-unsold-...

From article:

> the unsold cars that are older than two years old, will have no alternative but to be either crushed, dismantled and/or their parts recycled. Want to see for yourself? Do a quick search on Google Maps of Baltimore, Maryland, looking south of Broening Hwy in Dundalk, there you will see a massive expanse of space where many unsold cars are currently parked.

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That lot in Baltimore is a vehicle processing lot for the Port of Baltimore. Cars manufactured overaseas usually come by boat and delivered to places like that. The lot they're referencing is owned/managed by Wallenius Wilhelmsen which specializes in this RoRo style of logistics that are common with overseas car shipping. They'll sit there for a short period of time as all the customs work takes place and then shipped out all over the country after by rail or truck. Seeing a single snapshot in Google Maps of hundreds of new cars tells you nothing, you'd have to actually analyze how long those cars are staying there.

Seeing a lot with a lot of new cars with delivery wrap still on Google Maps isn't indicative of some new car graveyard, its just showcasing the ignorance of how car imports work. What, did they think a car manufacturing plant in Germany just suddenly teleports cars into dealer lots in the US? Did they think they were delivered by plane?

I'm pretty sure every Mitsubishi car sold in the US is imported, and there are quite a few Mirages and Outlanders on the road.

Every day in the United States, a large number of cars are being produced. Most of these cars never get sold to customers because people just can’t afford them.

Oh yes, that makes perfect sense, every day they make 100 cars and then scrap more than 50 of them.

The car manufacturing industry can’t stop producing new automobiles because they would have to close their factories and lay off thousands of their workers.

Right, layoffs, that never happens.

Yeah, I thought the actual premise was interesting (I'm sure there is a good amount of unsold inventory that is recycled/destroyed/etc., just like in any goods industry) and was interested to learn more about the mechanics of the process, but that article was just ridiculous - 0 actual numbers and it felt like it was written by a third grader.

Layoffs do happen, but they are hard to do because the auto makers are selling some cars. The factory works at one speed, and so if they sell 100 cars but make 200 what can they do.

The above is why companies try to do just in time manufacturing. However this is always easier on paper than the real world. Those factories need to shutdown for a week-several months every year to repair tools and rearrange for the next model year, and they need some cars saved up for that. In addition other disasters mean sometimes they can't get parts and so there is more reason to have a buffer of unsold cars.

Sometimes car manufacturers overproduce and you can see giant fields of cars on satellite imagery.

> currently, there are 6 billion people on our plant, and 10 billion running cars. This is because most families own an average of two to three cars

False and false. According to more reputable sources, there are only ~ 1.5 billion cars in the world. And to the many families that own two or more cars in the US, there are many more families that own 0 cars elsewhere in the world...

Not to mention that families are composed of more than one person, so families owning more than one car doesn’t get you to more cars than people.

That doesn't make sense. A family is by definition at least 2 people, so if they own two cars that's still one car per person.

>Every day in the United States, a large number of cars are being produced. Most of these cars never get sold to customers because people just can’t afford them. The car manufacturing industry can’t stop producing new automobiles because they would have to close their factories and lay off thousands of their workers.

That is an obvious lie. It is obviously more expensive to produce and scrap a car than to not produce one at all. What you do if demand is low is you produce less. It is economically more viable to pay workers for standing around than to pay them to build and scrap a car. So the excuse about jobs is another lie.

>Want to see for yourself? Do a quick search on Google Maps of Baltimore, Maryland, looking south of Broening Hwy in Dundalk, there you will see a massive expanse of space where many unsold cars are currently parked.

Which is evidence of what exactly? That cars exist that aren't sold? Surely that is no surprise.

FWIW, Snopes says that story is false.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/unsold-cars/

Snopes itself, ironically, is quite unreliable.

Sure. But is there another source that says that brand new unsold cars are routinely scrapped?

Please, set this clickbait car insurance ad on fire, and blackhole whatever "source" you got this from so it doesn't push junk on you again.

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