In 1998 a Chevrolet Metro could be optioned without a radio or rear defogger, even. New purchase price was about $9k (equivalent to $14.5k today). Somebody was buying those, enough for it to be worth the manufacturer’s effort to produce it.
I suspect a whole segment of people would be willing to consider a no-frills EV at a comparable price point. Hell, if somebody made something new like a base model 90s Civic into a $15k EV without extra luxury nonsense I don’t actually need, I’d be in the dealership tomorrow.
Not new, but does that matter so much?
GM made that play with the Bolt. It was routinely available for just over $20K. Still sat on lots, not getting a lot of love. People shopping for new cars want nicer toys, people who cannot afford new shop used and enjoy getting those nice toys at a discount. I bet the subset of buyers looking for a bare bones no frills brand-new car is quite small.
It is worth recognizing the role that ZIRP played in all of this. Artificially low interest rates allowed payments on more expensive premium vehicles to be much more manageable for a much larger portion of the population.
That assumption has been dead since cash for clunkers. Even American made cars will hit 200k miles. There's ZERO value to a "new" car. You would be outright stupid to pay $10k for some probably not possible "bare bones" car when you could just buy the decade old Corolla down the street with 100k miles that's only $5k. It will even have fairly modern safety. This is true even in the modern post-COVID hyper contracted used car market.
I think you're correct; we're probably talking about a portion of the weirdly minimalist and frugal crowd pursuing FIRE. Also, most folks in that small subset wouldn't even consider buying a GM product; it's going to be either a Toyota or Honda for them.
Source: I'm one of them, still driving my base-level trim 2008 Prius.
As an aside, I'm reading that the new Bolt sold nearly as well as the Tesla Model S in 2017. Before that, I think the similarly basic Nissan Leaf was the best selling EV. Since then, however, my sense is that EV purchases became more about "fun" (which Tesla has emphasized and provided) than anything else.
It might sound silly, but not everyone looks at things through a utilitarian view.
Hell, if somebody made something new like a base
model 90s Civic into a $15k EV without extra
luxury nonsense I don’t actually need
The cost of much of the "luxury nonsense" like power windows and heated seats is heavily amortized since the tooling etc. is shared with the more expensive vehicles, and the actual material costs are low.
Think about it; heated seats are just some simple heating coils. You can get something functionally equivalent that plugs into your cigarette lighter adapter for like $10 from Amazon. It ain't adding that much to the cost of your car.
Electrifying the locks led to the idea of RF transmitters as a secondary switch. Now there’s hardware for that, and a radio receiver. Gotta make it flash the lights, so that’s another relay and a wiring harness to the lighting system. Gotta beep the horn too, more wires. Maybe make it so you can hold the button to crack the power windows on a hot day; it’s just wire.
Fast forward 30 years, now everything talks to everything and I’d argue they don’t want to have to maintain a bunch of different firmware configurations to support fine-grained dealership options.
That’s my hunch anyway.
With the move to trucks and ethanol credits, those hacks are no longer cost-effective.