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Comment by morshu9001 | Hacker News Reader

Not that many Americans are car enthusiasts. The most popular cars have been basic commuters for decades.

While that is true, the new car market has narrowed to the point where most of the buyers want something overpowered for their money. The most popular cars are actually buying these when they are 10+ years old.

(I śaw recently that the USA market is about 16M cars.. this would have been low figure years ago. But they are barely selling 'basic commuter cars'.)

I guess it depends on how you define car enthusiast.

A lot of Americans spend far more on their vehicle than they need to and so I would classify them as enthusiasts even if they couldn't tell you how many cylinders their engine has.

We often have very little choice about that, though. You can't buy something no one is selling.

I would define car enthusiast as someone who at least knows how many cylinders. For the purpose of the EV discussion, the people who don't know that aren't the people who want an ICE.

It's hard to get basic commuter without overload of tech these days

Certain tech is cheap. I wouldn't classify that as non-basic. Chuck a few screens in the cabin is cheap. Matrix LED headlights less so.

What do you mean? If you look at a Toyota Camry/Corolla, there is barely anything that is "techy" in 2026. (not in a negative way)

Aren't the most popular "cars" in the US actually SUVs and light trucks?

Mostly. The Camry, Civic, and Corolla are up there though.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g64457986/bestselling-cars...

A lot of them are those mini SUVs like the CR-V. The thing about that list is it's grouped by model, and the share of non-trucks is more fragmented.

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