Partially tariffs, but beyond that the article didn't really explain. Save your clicks.
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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It's complicated.
As someone who got to see this from the inside:
- When constructing a car, one of the key components is the wiring harness that bundles together all the wiring for the vehicle.
Surprisingly most wiring harnesses used to come from Ukraine of all places. So when Russia invaded Ukraine, that completely disrupted the wiring harness supply.
To work around that, manufacturers had to come up with either new, stable suppliers or invest in their own production lines.
- Covid. As mentioned in the article, but there were multiple impacts on that. For example, it made it incredibly difficult to do lease returns. If people leasing their cars can't return them, then they can't get into new vehicles. Similar, re-sellers of lease returns and fleet vehicles have no stock because nobody is returning their lease.
- Tariffs. Also as noted in the article.
This is compounded by Manufacturers and legislative bodies forcing driver assistance systems on everyone.
Back when I was a lad, I could drive my manual-transmission vehicle while reading a paper street directory, texting on one phone, talking on another and eating a cheeseburger., Kids nowadays don’t know how to drive.
I believe that the driver assistance systems encourage inattentive driving. Tesla rightly gets a lot of press for this, but when the car holds the lane and brakes for you 99.9% of the time, it sure seems safe to send that email, formatting and all.
But the problem is that one would require self-awareness to identify what degree of inattentiveness is OK (change the radio station) or not (review the PowerPoint Jane sent over). With our current technology situation, those systems probably are net positive for collision avoidance.
My kids get to learn to drive with all that shite disabled. Except the emergency stuff (auto braking), which seems like a good idea. Check your own blind spot, dummy.
Your sarcasm post is actually me xD . Cars should be cars, not computers or entertainment booths. But I actually like driving and mechanical things so im the .0000000001% of lemmy. All my cars are manual and few have AC or ABS. Just how I like it.
Just between you, me and the entire Fediverse, I put the sarcasm tags on just in case I offended anyone.
We need better public transport so that those people who are not confident drivers, or are not competent drivers, or are downright incompetent drivers don’t have to drive.
Less roads, less vehicles on the roads mean that those people who do enjoy driving for the sake of driving can still drive, but they are sharing the road with like-minded people. This is my selfish view with altruistic results.
Yep I agree!
They elude to it in the second line after the title but they never point it out:
Five years ago it was a lot easier to buy a car for less than $30,000.
...and later in the article....
New cars costing less than $30,000 were just 13.9 percent of all car sales in the first half of this year; for the first six months of 2019—before the pandemic drove up new car prices by so much—they made up 38 percent of new car sales.
I think the answer is simply inflation:
$30,000 in 2019 is worth $37,722.15 today
...and...
$24,000 in 2019 is worth $30,177.72 today
So for apples to apples comparison the question should be, "How many fewer cars costing $24,000 in 2019 are there that cost $30,000 today?", but the article doesn't ask or answer that question.
Probably because it's just a nice round tens of thousands that's the current benchmark. It wasn't long ago that similar articles mourned the scarcity of the sub-$20k car. I don't want to say it was a Scion, but I don't think the gap could be that big between the death of scion and the general loss of the $19, 999 car.
Tried to look up what I saw years ago and instead found there were still sub-$20k cars as of 2024. Hyundai Venue and Mitsubishi Mirage. And the venue just surpassed the mark.
Anyway, see you again in 2029-2035 when someone else writes about the loss of the $40,000 economy car
Tariffs are new.
They will push average prices even higher but the average new car price has been around 40k for a few years now.
Were putting the country that makes actual usable cars that don't cost more than a house under 240% tariffs.. That is against capitalism.
Main reason for me is tech i hate. I don't want any tech. Efi, and maybe AC. Maybe ABS for winter but not needed. Stop making me buy junk I don't want. I'll stick to old cars that aren't a rolling computer that is locked down by a dealer.
All the tech bullshit is obvious.
When you make a product and keep improving it, at some point you reach max level product and then what? People won't buy your new car if it doesn't have something amazing new that the competition has too, so you'll just start making bullshit features.
Then you figure out that with software you can sell the car AND charge a monthly subscription fee, so you can squeeze your ~~golden goose~~ customer even more
All this was inevitable since decades ago
Yay late stage capitalism
And that's why I'm only going to buy classic cars from now on. I can wrench on them myself and tariffs don't make a damn difference
Until you need to buy a parts, I’m rebuilding a truck and watching the prices go up
If you need parts, you go to a junk yard and get parts. No importing needed.
Assuming you drive something like an old civic or tercel.
Junk yards only carry parts for so long. They generally crush and recycle stuff after a certain time. Sure there are still some backwoods places that still have a decent collection, But the vast majority of yards don't have that 2003 pilot gt anymore.
Old cars are built in a way we can fabricate parts to fix them as well. No reliance on china parts to get an entire vehicle running (MAF sensor that only is made in a factory in some obscure country)
A parts, huh?
Still not going to cost me 40-50k and the subsequent stealership costs
If you are really good at what you do you could avoid a lot of the mess by driving a classic. (Scouring junkyards)
The real challenge though isn't just that the parts will have tariffs; It seems like auto parts in general have taken a massive hit in quality
Yep “a parts”, you don’t like it take it up with apples keyboard I’m done fixing it’s “corrections”. No one’s fighting you on new car prices, but just don’t pretend gonna get away without paying the tariffs keeping your classic running.
You paid premium for an iTurd, too, lol.
Great show of intelligence there
And you get to look at the Gulf of America on your equally shit device.
Edit: Apple really can go fuck its modern keyboard and corrections.
“Hey, something shitty is going on.”
“~~omw~~ On my way!”
The hubris is gross, from both major systems.
I just opened up CoMaps because I never actually checked before, and it is in fact the Gulf of Mexico, while google and apple both have "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)". I'm also learning that CoMaps is on the app store, so I guess my takeaway is you should try not to use the default apps on your device.
Keep your classic cars roadworthy and registered.
Legislative changes and requirements for useless and dangerous Advanced Driver Assistance Systems are making it more difficult to keep older cars on the road.
TLDR; Shit's expensive, wages not expansive.