I can see autoparts stores buying these to replace the bare bones Rangers and Colorados they buy to run parts all over town. We'll see if consumers actually warm up to something like this. I suspect they are a really vocal minority of buyers.
When do you think you will buy a 100% pure electric vehicle?
- Thread starter dmclone
- Start date
You make a great point. A lot of us need to look at the "mission"/normal use you need. How often do I really travel outside of a 50 mile radius? Alone is maybe 2-3 times a year. Maybe I should trade in my Passport for something like this.
You are on to something
The market doesn't provide a low cost option. This seems like it fits the niche, but does it?
When it gets down to it will the American consumer want to weigh the cost-benefit of an electric window? Will they be ok with pricing out every option that is typically standard? Do I need a radio?
Consumers could have choice overload or find their final product in the same ballpark as a Maverick or other vehicle.
do these slate trucks offer a 4wd/AWD option? I'm guessing not. I like the idea of what they are trying to do. It will be interesting to see if consumers actually go for it.
The American consumer says one thing, but it's not reality. Sports car people say they want a manual transmission, but if you look at something like the corvette, less than 25% choose a manual. Customers say they want the no frill/cheap models, but the Honda Accord LX makes up less than 20% of Accord sales, and even it is well equipped. People say they just want a car, but SUV sales have been wiping out car sales for decades now. It's no just cars either.
Fuel cost is a massive component. I genuinely think it now costs extra to chose a gas car in CA if you’re shopping for a new model or a lease. Trucks are more tricky but for cars or SUVs where I live it’s already to the point I’d have to spend extra if I want to go back to a gas car. If tax credits went away it might be a push to buy new but on a lease I still think I’d save leasing an EV and fueling for $1.10 vs fueling for $5 even without tax credits. I just paid my $200 hit on registration, that only takes up like a month of my fuel savings for the year.
The other tricky thing is nobody can realize how convenient home charging is vs gas stations until they have it. People were not groaning about having to go to blockbuster twice to get a movie, they didn’t know it was a hassle. If you asked people to drive to a store twice to get 4 episodes of “The Pitt” the way people were renting Sopranos on DVD they’d probably riot.
Why pay $20 for a small when you can get 4 times as much pizza for only $10 more? The large is a great value!
We could already all be driving utilitarian cars at much less cost and impact
But we don’t want that, and manufacturers/dealers don’t make money on those
Consumers demanding range they rarely need is one of the bigger cost drivers on current EVs. It also is a huge waste of storage/battery resources
Panda Express is $11 for the small one entree meal or $13 for the giant plate that can feed 3 adults. If I’m there by myself I am tempted to ask a stranger if they want to split it.
Only positive out of the large inflation was several places shrunk their portions while holding price. Helped some over eating I assume.
We had a vacation in Newport recently. The number of Tesla vehicles is much higher than here in Chevy Malibu land.
The BMW driver seems to have moved over to Tesla. At $5+ a gallon it makes complete sense.
SoCal ******* rocks.
This always seems like a chicken vs egg argument though. In theory you can buy a new Tacoma with a Manual transmission. In reality they're impossible to actually get. If you look at Cars.com for available Tacomas there are less than 300 manual transmission Tacomas available and just using the first page as a swag 75% of them aren't on a lot yet. That tells me out of the 20k Tacomas on sale in the US there are only 75 of them with a manual available in the whole country. Now you can look at this one of two ways. Either Toyota doesn't build many of them because nobody really wants them or it's a huge untapped market because Toyota doesn't really want to build them.
I personally know somebody who tried to buy a bare bones Colorado with no options, you can't find those on dealer lots and he had to special order it. It took 9 months for him to take delivery.
Automotive companies usually don't like to produce bare bones models because the premium options is where they make their money. The margins are smaller on bare bones vehicles.
The mfrs yes, but the dealers even moreso. Dealers don't typically make a ton on new cars. Unless they pile on $7k worth of floormats and undercoating and crap with 50% margins. And since they only get so many new cars to sell they really don't want to waste one on a bare bones.
Additionally, they know most buyers buy one on the lot, so they guess for the most popular versions (more add-ons) and then put a couple other add-ons with it as well.
They basically make most of their money by upselling you "fries with that".
Recently bought and got out ahead of this with standing firm on not wanting any add-ons.
I still bought some all-weather mats online that weren't cheap but I think good quality and I think still far less expensive than the 'complimentary' ones they would have tried to throw in there.
Our 21 year old Prius has never been more than probably 25 miles from our home. We only drive it once or twice a month so something like this, assuming it has air conditioning, would be perfect for us when the Prius finally dies. It even handles that once a year thing where it would be nice to have a pickup. In reality we should probably be a one car household but I just can’t shake the desire for a “backup” just in case.
