[johntdaly]

Honestly most chips in cars won’t have much to do with the infotainment system. One of the first places that chips got added to cars was fuel injection system. Most of the chips in cars are in there to micro optimize the way the engine runs so it runs cleaner and more efficient. That is pretty much why they are roiling back the emission standards because without chips for new cars or spare parts for existing cars those optimizations are going by by.

To your question about security, I’m sure they use microchips for modern braking systems too, so you would loose some security there.

When it comes to price, I don’t think you would win much there either. If you remove chips to make things more affordable you won’t save as much as you might think and have to come up with new solutions to problems that have been solved over the last 30 years with chips. Cheaper cars aren’t really getting produced much because they don’t get bought enough. To many people want to “represent” with their cars and spend more on them because of that. That sort of killed a wider selection of cheaper cars.

[spaniard89277]

As far as I remember Dacia has been the most sold brand for a bunch of years in Spain. And the second hand market is more active than new cars.

For the 2nd tier income countries like Spain there's definitely demand for cheaper cars. It's a constant complain in spanish forums how prices are ballooning.

I guess this is different in more wealthy countries.

[johntdaly]

I wouldn’t say it is different, but there is a certain amount of stigmatization associated with cheaper cars in richer nations that sort of forces people to pay more than they feel comfortable with to avoid it. And because this sort of thing is going on, most car companies don’t really produce that many cheap cars anymore. In a way, Dacia taking the top position makes sense because they are the only company that focuses on price point. Fiat once produced cheap cars, now they produce “lifestyle” vehicles. VW wanted to become a “premium” brand, worked on that and now it is.