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It's a $20k, street-legal, EV modding platform. Sounds like you can mount your own infotainment system. Just an electric motor, battery, and chassis, and the
by dogline 1y ago
It's a $20k, street-legal, EV modding platform. Sounds like you can mount your own infotainment system. Just an electric motor, battery, and chassis, and the rest is up to you. Isn't this what we've been asking for?
- ryandrake 1y agoYea, it's pretty exciting. I'd like to see how much more they could strip out to reduce the price and still have a viable commercial product. I guess I'm living firmly in the past, but $20K still seems to be a high price for a car. Then again, I haven't bought a car new since the 90s, so I'm probably just an old fart who hasn't grokked what things cost today. I still remember the day when the base-model Corolla started costing more than $9999 and I thought the world was coming to an end. EDIT: Yep, I'm just old. Another commenter linked to a "10 cheapest new cars" list and there seems to be a price floor of around $20K. No major manufacturer seems capable of making one cheaper! 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43794523 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43794523
- neural_thing 1y agoAccording to this, there is only one new car model of any kind selling for under $20K in the US these days https://www.carfax.com/rankings/cheapest-cars https://www.carfax.com/rankings/cheapest-cars
- ty6853 1y agoOne would be wiser to based on annual depreciation in real $ plus time value of purchase price. I suspect out of new trucks a tacoma would be the cheapest since the depreciation is low to negative (IIRC recently a Tacoma was worth more 1 year old than new).
- conductr 1y agoAll new car brands/models will not have comps for several years. Even folks buying Rivians, etc have no idea how the resale value will play out so you’re always going to have to take a gamble
- hbsbsbsndk 1y agoThis article is missing at least the Mitsubishi Mirage - the 2024 model year still seems to be available for 17k in the base trim?
- redditplebs 1y agoIsn't that the hydrogen fuel one? If so, that's the reason why it's only 17k..
- connicpu 1y agoAccording to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics[1], $9999 in 1995 is equivalent to $21,275.25 today, so it's a pretty spot on price for a barebones car. [1]: https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
- patagonia 1y agoExcept, with advances in computational design and engineering, manufacturing automation, and moving to plastic for the body I would expect a reduction in price, in real terms. Not impressed.
- kube-system 1y ago> moving to plastic for the body Some of those $10k cars in the 90s had more plastic in the bodies than cars today, e.g. Saturn S-series, where all body panels below the belt-line were plastic. It isn't necessarily the cost savings one might expect though, because steel panels can also be load bearing and part of the crash structure, which is not really practical with plastic panels.
- all2 1y agoThe Pontiac Fiero has notoriously bad plastic panels.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dogline 1y agoWith plastic panels, that means they're replaceable. Possibly even swappable (custom 3D printing?). This just adds to the "modding platform" they could be marketing to.
- kube-system 1y agoSteel panels can also be made to be replaceable. Plastic has to be because it can't be welded to the frame.
- jffry 1y agoKeep in mind $20k in 2025 dollars is the equivalent of ~$10k in 1997 dollars, if that helps set your frame of reference
- vaidhy 1y agoFor those price-comparing, it is $20K after the federal incentives. So, its real cost is around $27K which makes it way more expensive than what the article claims.
- dublinben 1y agoThe average price of new cars sold in the US last year was nearly $50k. The manufacturers make more money from expensive cars than cheap cars, and people keep buying them, so that's what they sell. Before they canceled the Fit, Honda was selling almost 10 times as many of the larger CR-V each year. You can find numerous new cars for sale in Mexico for under $15k USD.[0] Even Europe has several new cars under €20k.[1] These are the same manufacturers we have here, but lower cost models that are only sold in lower-income countries. [0] https://compra.autofact.com.mx/blog/comprar-carro/mercado/autos-mas-baratos https://compra.autofact.com.mx/blog/comprar-carro/mercado/au... [1] https://techzle.com/the-cheapest-new-cars-of-2024 https://techzle.com/the-cheapest-new-cars-of-2024
- dwood_dev 1y agoMost of those models are not real. They exist, but they don't make many of the base model and if you attempt to purchase one, it is a 4-18 month lead time. I was in the market in Mexico last year, just looking for a cheap city car with a warranty for when I am there. I test drove half the cars on that list, the other half I immediately eliminated after sitting in the driver's seat for under a minute. You can think of those base models like MSRP GPUs right now. They exist on paper, but good luck actually getting one for MSRP. In the end, I didn't purchase any of those and got a two year old certified preowned vehicle with the top trim and comfortable seats from a dealer with a warranty for about $3000USD more than the cheapest actually available model of those linked in your post.
- mikestew 1y agoI guess I'm living firmly in the past, but $20K still seems to be a high price for a car. You're not even living in the past. Our 20 year old Scion xB cost us $20K out the door new (granted, that's with most of the paltry list of options added, $15K base). And that was a cheap car at the time, Toyota marketing to "the kids". The last time $20K was "a high price" for a new car was probably before most HN folk were born.
- MetaWhirledPeas 1y ago> $20K still seems to be a high price for a car Keep in mind this price is before the USA federal tax credit. So we're potentially talking about a $12,500 car. And consider inflation.
- mikestew 1y agoAfter federal tax credit, ergo $27K. (Hat tip to @vaidhy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43794867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43794867)
- MetaWhirledPeas 1y agoWell dang.
- stefan_ 1y agoIs it? They show speakers mounted in the front as a "soundbar". Will people figure out there is a reason cars with good sound systems have them mounted all around the vehicle?
- hugs 1y agoon long car trips, it seems like everyone in the car (except, me, the driver) has headphones on. no one will miss the lack of rear speakers.
- euroderf 1y agoSounds very twenty-first century. No shared music recognition, no sing-alongs. If passengers want to DJ, you can get one of those little FM transmitter thingies that plugs into a phone/table headphone port.
- zanecodes 1y agoWhat phone still has a 3.5mm headphone jack? Sincere question, I'd like to buy one.
- hugs 1y agoSamsung Galaxy A Series (A15 / A15 5G, A14 / A14 5G, A25) all have headphone jacks. These are their "lower-end" models, though. The higher-end ones don't. And of course, iPhones haven't for a long time, too. Alternatively, for other phones with just a USB-C port, you could get a USB-C to headphone jack adapter. edit to add: if Slate is successful, I wouldn't be surprised if a decently sized ecosystem pops up around easily installed custom sound systems and the tablets (possibly with headphone jacks!) to control them.
- zanecodes 1y agoThank you! I'm not a huge Samsung fan, their Android flavor doesn't appeal to me much, but I'm glad that someone is still making phones with headphone jacks. USB-C adapters are mostly fine, but I like being able to charge and listen to music at the same time without a clunky adapter, it's yet another thing I'll lose.
- gaws 1y ago> It's a $20k, street-legal, EV modding platform. And it'll always be sold out.
- 542354234235 1y agoI'm sure you can get on the waiting list (for a lead time of 3-40 years) or buy it from a reseller for $70k. Problem solved.
- gaws 1y ago> buy it from a reseller for $70k. Now there's the real price.
- torginus 1y agoThis is an $27k car, with $7.5k rebate, so much for the unfairly competing Chinese. The MG4 is £22500 in the UK before tax, which is about $30k in USD, and that's a full-featured 5 door car, with double the range. I do applaud the philosphy of cheap and barebones, and easily moddable, but my two cents is that trim is not the thing that's making cars expensive to make.
- moffkalast 1y ago> a comprehensive active safety system that includes everything from automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection to automatic high beams No stereo, but luckily they still found space for a few DNN accelerators that will slam on the brakes randomly when getting false detections. Likely still has a 4G uplink and all the modern car cancer to make sure they can datamine their clients as much as possible and offset the subsidized purchase cost. Worst of both worlds?
- eightys3v3n 1y agoAnother comment said there is no cellular modem; updates come through the app using a phone.
- moffkalast 1y agoThat's exemplary if true, though it's a bit hard to believe.
- kachurovskiy 1y agoThat's with federal incentive and likely before they factored in the tariffs. Those 500 parts aren't all coming from US. I wouldn't expect any usable version of it to be below 30k once it's actually available.