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Smaller and cheaper is the direction I’d like to see cars, and especially EVs take. It seems so inefficient to proliferate large, very heavy vehicles, just to m

Smaller and cheaper is the direction I’d like to see cars, and especially EVs take. It seems so inefficient to proliferate large, very heavy vehicles, just to move one or two people around. Most people’s transportation needs almost certainly are to go to work and shopping, but vehicles seem optimized for family cross-country road trips. Smaller vehicles need smaller batteries, smaller motors, less energy to move, and put less wear and tear on public infrastructure. If the interiors are nice, I think there would be a market for them. Perhaps government policy could encourage efficient use of valuable resources too.

PaulHoule 1y ago
Dealers hate it because there's a certain kind of person who could afford a $50k vehicle but is perfectly happy to walk out with a $20k vehicle and drive it for 10 years until it gets totaled or completely falls apart and the dealer won't get another chance until then -- a tragedy from their point of view.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  Then the Yaris, Fit, and Accent wouldn't have been discontinued in the US and Canada, and the Nissa Versa would be selling like hotcakes like in Mexico. If most consumers can afford a large car, they ended up buying a larger car. The overlap of high income earners and those cars was not significant from a PMF standpoint. CUVs and Hatchbacks seem to be the best middle ground for both types of consumers.
  - PaulHoule 1y ago
    It's not just "high income" people who buy expensive cars, it is also "car poor" people that aren't saving for retirement or complaining that the rent is too damn high because they're paying another $400 a month on the car payment that they don't need to pay. Now maybe I live in an unusual area but all the time I have people park a Honda Fit that looks just like mine at a car parking lot. When my last Fit got totalled I found that (1) they didn't have any new Fits, (2) they had one used Fit that they had just bought that morning, and (3) they had a neat row of 50 or so HR-Vs that nobody wanted to buy. If you actually go to a car dealer looking for a size L car they will try to sell you an XXL car, if you go looking for an M car they try to sell you an XL, if you go looking for an S they will try to sell you an L. They have a lot of tricks they play to do this, not least a manipulation of the narrative, the threat of pulling away access to review vehicles from car publications that question their narrative, etc. Sure a lot of people are scared by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, other people really like a big car or would rather roll their car or crash through the guardrail than break their ankle in a crash. But no matter how big of a car you want, they want you to buy a bigger one.
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      The Fit, Yaris, and Accent would have seen significant uptake for over a decade if this hypothesis was true though - both amongst low income and upper income buyers. Yet the data just doesn't justify the narrative that "small cars" have a PMF in the US and Canada. I get that you and a subset of people really like small cars, but you cannot justify funding low uptake SKUs just because some people like something. > they didn't have any new Fits Because the Fit was discontinued in 2020 because most Americans and Canadians just weren't buying it.
      - PaulHoule 1y ago
        That's what the public relations people say. The evidence of my eye was that there 50 HR-Vs in a row that nobody wanted to buy and that the dealer's plan was to get me to buy one of those instead. Of course sales of the Fit are going to be low if they don't have any in stock and they pressure you into buying an HR-V. My dad had the exact same thing happen to him at American car dealers in the 1970s -- supposedly they had small cars for sale but actually they didn't. Today it is Japanese car dealers doing the same thing. Before the pandemic (discounts disappeared) I used to see big-ass trucks with decals advertising $7000 off. If people really wanted those cars they wouldn't have to discount them to sell them, instead you'd see $7000 discounts on the small cars that supposedly people don't want to buy.
        alephnerd 1y ago
        Is Ithaca representative of the American consumer? Conversely, is Tulsa? Using a single regional data point does not provide proof that there is a financial reason to start building Honda Fits again. And before the pandemic, the HRV began outselling the Honda Fit in the US by 2016 [0] [0] - https://www.honda.com/-/media/Honda-Homepage/PDF/DFB_2024_US_FNL%20_0625%20CONSUMER.pdf https://www.honda.com/-/media/Honda-Homepage/PDF/DFB_2024_US...
        PaulHoule 1y ago
        The industry has a lot of power to manipulate perception. Notably there has been a lot of complaint that cars are too expensive now and smaller cars could be an answer to that even if people like bigger cars. One of the biggest successes now is the Ford Maverick and like any other kind of sub-XL vehicle demand exceeds supply in the lot just about everywhere. That data is all bogus anyway, it reflects the cars that get made, not the cars that people want to buy because the cars that nobody wants to buy get bought by Hertz ina form of ‘demand laundering’. Of course it means you have a bd experience and think I’ll never by an American car though the reality is that I probably won’t buy another Honda because they canceled the fit although they have no data at all that can prove that. Just data that the dealer but 100 HR-Vs which are smaller in the inside and now it is the dealer’s problem.

PaulHoule 1y ago

Dealers hate it because there's a certain kind of person who could afford a $50k vehicle but is perfectly happy to walk out with a $20k vehicle and drive it for 10 years until it gets totaled or completely falls apart and the dealer won't get another chance until then -- a tragedy from their point of view.

alephnerd 1y ago
Then the Yaris, Fit, and Accent wouldn't have been discontinued in the US and Canada, and the Nissa Versa would be selling like hotcakes like in Mexico. If most consumers can afford a large car, they ended up buying a larger car. The overlap of high income earners and those cars was not significant from a PMF standpoint. CUVs and Hatchbacks seem to be the best middle ground for both types of consumers.
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  It's not just "high income" people who buy expensive cars, it is also "car poor" people that aren't saving for retirement or complaining that the rent is too damn high because they're paying another $400 a month on the car payment that they don't need to pay. Now maybe I live in an unusual area but all the time I have people park a Honda Fit that looks just like mine at a car parking lot. When my last Fit got totalled I found that (1) they didn't have any new Fits, (2) they had one used Fit that they had just bought that morning, and (3) they had a neat row of 50 or so HR-Vs that nobody wanted to buy. If you actually go to a car dealer looking for a size L car they will try to sell you an XXL car, if you go looking for an M car they try to sell you an XL, if you go looking for an S they will try to sell you an L. They have a lot of tricks they play to do this, not least a manipulation of the narrative, the threat of pulling away access to review vehicles from car publications that question their narrative, etc. Sure a lot of people are scared by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, other people really like a big car or would rather roll their car or crash through the guardrail than break their ankle in a crash. But no matter how big of a car you want, they want you to buy a bigger one.
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    The Fit, Yaris, and Accent would have seen significant uptake for over a decade if this hypothesis was true though - both amongst low income and upper income buyers. Yet the data just doesn't justify the narrative that "small cars" have a PMF in the US and Canada. I get that you and a subset of people really like small cars, but you cannot justify funding low uptake SKUs just because some people like something. > they didn't have any new Fits Because the Fit was discontinued in 2020 because most Americans and Canadians just weren't buying it.
    - PaulHoule 1y ago
      That's what the public relations people say. The evidence of my eye was that there 50 HR-Vs in a row that nobody wanted to buy and that the dealer's plan was to get me to buy one of those instead. Of course sales of the Fit are going to be low if they don't have any in stock and they pressure you into buying an HR-V. My dad had the exact same thing happen to him at American car dealers in the 1970s -- supposedly they had small cars for sale but actually they didn't. Today it is Japanese car dealers doing the same thing. Before the pandemic (discounts disappeared) I used to see big-ass trucks with decals advertising $7000 off. If people really wanted those cars they wouldn't have to discount them to sell them, instead you'd see $7000 discounts on the small cars that supposedly people don't want to buy.
      - alephnerd 1y ago
        Is Ithaca representative of the American consumer? Conversely, is Tulsa? Using a single regional data point does not provide proof that there is a financial reason to start building Honda Fits again. And before the pandemic, the HRV began outselling the Honda Fit in the US by 2016 [0] [0] - https://www.honda.com/-/media/Honda-Homepage/PDF/DFB_2024_US_FNL%20_0625%20CONSUMER.pdf https://www.honda.com/-/media/Honda-Homepage/PDF/DFB_2024_US...
        PaulHoule 1y ago
        The industry has a lot of power to manipulate perception. Notably there has been a lot of complaint that cars are too expensive now and smaller cars could be an answer to that even if people like bigger cars. One of the biggest successes now is the Ford Maverick and like any other kind of sub-XL vehicle demand exceeds supply in the lot just about everywhere. That data is all bogus anyway, it reflects the cars that get made, not the cars that people want to buy because the cars that nobody wants to buy get bought by Hertz ina form of ‘demand laundering’. Of course it means you have a bd experience and think I’ll never by an American car though the reality is that I probably won’t buy another Honda because they canceled the fit although they have no data at all that can prove that. Just data that the dealer but 100 HR-Vs which are smaller in the inside and now it is the dealer’s problem.