New car buyers are different. You wouldn’t pay a premium to get a new car, if you didn’t value certain advantages. With cars having become so amazingly reliable even at high ages/mileages, this divergence has become ever more pronounced. And with cars becoming ever more software-defined, the difference in marginal cost of a fully optioned car v. a “no frills“ one is getting ever smaller. Meaning that it doesn’t really make sense to target “no frills“ customers outside of very special cases like small, light sportscars.
People keep saying this but then they don’t sell.
Consumers want bigger and nicer.
Have they tried to sell one?
Nope
Have they tried to sell an electric golf? Yes, that’s the e-golf but it was a lot more than $22k
The bolt is on pace to sell nearly 80,000, and if it were able to charge at 120 kW, they wouldn’t be able to make enough of them.
New car buyers are different. You wouldn’t pay a premium to get a new car, if you didn’t value certain advantages. With cars having become so amazingly reliable even at high ages/mileages, this divergence has become ever more pronounced. And with cars becoming ever more software-defined, the difference in marginal cost of a fully optioned car v. a “no frills“ one is getting ever smaller. Meaning that it doesn’t really make sense to target “no frills“ customers outside of very special cases like small, light sportscars.