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Comment by AnnikaL | Hacker News Reader

The article does say that the electric Corolla is to be priced at $30k, about $3,000 more than the hybrid and $5,000 more than the gas-powered one. That may not be objectively 'low cost', but it's comparable in cost to the lowest-cost new EVs, and probably similar total cost of ownership to the hybrid/gas cars when considering cheaper fuelling.

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Maybe they could shave $3-5000 off the cost by not giving it a "high-tech interior", going completely against the design philosophy of the car in the first place.

They absolutely could not, the high-tech interior is cheaper. A screen is cheaper than ten million tiny little buttons.

Incidentally, this is also partly why the interiors feel so egregious and cheap in the pieces of shit produced by Germans these days.

So… it’s not really high-tech, it’s just a screen? I guess I need to see what the actual offering is.

That's the entire modern, Tesla-inspired design ethos: remove all knobs, remove all buttons, remove all levers, remove the PRNDL, remove all the gauges, replace it all with controls on a big iPad in the center, and call the spartan interior "high-tech"

Omitting the cellular modem would be a nice way to save a few bucks, and would save me the effort of pulling the fuse or disassembling the dash in order to silence Internet traffic to and from the car. But how will Toyota sell my driving habits to car insurance companies then?

- prototypical car buyer (based on HackerNews bellybutton studies 2026)

I'm not in the US, but here in Europe Toyota's hold their value really well (too well I'd say). Is that reflected in the US financing rates, so you can get it for really low payments?

Not at all. % on cars in the US is derived from your credit score. Low credit score? You pay, and you pay a LOT.

Of course a dealership could offer low rates, but those are usually through the financing arm of the brand, not the dealership itself.

That's not bad. Those are going to be some fantastic value used cars, eventually.

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