[ryandrake]

Yea, it's pretty exciting. I'd like to see how much more they could strip out to reduce the price and still have a viable commercial product. I guess I'm living firmly in the past, but $20K still seems to be a high price for a car. Then again, I haven't bought a car new since the 90s, so I'm probably just an old fart who hasn't grokked what things cost today. I still remember the day when the base-model Corolla started costing more than $9999 and I thought the world was coming to an end.

EDIT: Yep, I'm just old. Another commenter linked to a "10 cheapest new cars" list and there seems to be a price floor of around $20K. No major manufacturer seems capable of making one cheaper!

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43794523

[connicpu]

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics[1], $9999 in 1995 is equivalent to $21,275.25 today, so it's a pretty spot on price for a barebones car.

[1]: https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

[patagonia]

Except, with advances in computational design and engineering, manufacturing automation, and moving to plastic for the body I would expect a reduction in price, in real terms. Not impressed.

[Suppafly]

>Except, with advances in computational design and engineering, manufacturing automation, and moving to plastic for the body I would expect a reduction in price, in real terms.

Except with all the safety equipment, crumple zones, airbags, sensors, etc. I would expect an increase in price.

[Spivak]

And this back-and-forth here is why the folks at the BLS have a hard job. Both options— a car in 1990 is a car in 2025 and real value/utility is unchanged and price should be compared 1-1 ignores that cars are actually better now. But at the same time you literally can't buy a new car at 1990's quality so the additional value/utility might not actually be wanted by some and so this in effect makes real price go up.

[kube-system]

> moving to plastic for the body

Some of those $10k cars in the 90s had more plastic in the bodies than cars today, e.g. Saturn S-series, where all body panels below the belt-line were plastic.

It isn't necessarily the cost savings one might expect though, because steel panels can also be load bearing and part of the crash structure, which is not really practical with plastic panels.

[KerrAvon]

Cost savings wasn't the reason for the Saturn plastic panels, IIRC -- they were intended to make the car more durable; they were hard to dent. Some Saturn salespeople would kick the side of the car, hard, to demonstrate their resilience.

[kube-system]

Those cars always looked great on the used car lot because they never had any door dings.

[dogline]

With plastic panels, that means they're replaceable. Possibly even swappable (custom 3D printing?). This just adds to the "modding platform" they could be marketing to.

[kube-system]

Steel panels can also be made to be replaceable. Plastic has to be because it can't be welded to the frame.

[riehwvfbk]

In fact, on modern cars many times these panels are replaced.

If you get a big enough dent in a door, a good body shop will offer to replace the outer skin instead of filling with bondo. They cut the weld on the inside of the door all the way around, take off the shell, and epoxy a new one on. The body shop owner told me that the epoxy is actually stronger than the factory weld.

[all2]

The Pontiac Fiero has notoriously bad plastic panels.

[kasey_junk]

Modern cars are almost universally safer and more fuel efficient than the older models. And in many cases faster.

[kube-system]

In nearly all cases they're faster. 10+ second 0-60 times used to be pretty normal for "regular" cars. Now days, people will complain that a car is slow if they can't put down 7 second 0-60 times. And "quick" boring cars of today are as fast as sports cars of the past.

The 1996 Ferrari F355 Spider and the 2025 Hyundai Elantra N both have a 0-60 time of 4.8 seconds.

[dublinben]

The average price of new cars sold in the US last year was nearly $50k. The manufacturers make more money from expensive cars than cheap cars, and people keep buying them, so that's what they sell. Before they canceled the Fit, Honda was selling almost 10 times as many of the larger CR-V each year.

You can find numerous new cars for sale in Mexico for under $15k USD.[0] Even Europe has several new cars under €20k.[1] These are the same manufacturers we have here, but lower cost models that are only sold in lower-income countries.

[0] https://compra.autofact.com.mx/blog/comprar-carro/mercado/au...

[1] https://techzle.com/the-cheapest-new-cars-of-2024

[dwood_dev]

Most of those models are not real. They exist, but they don't make many of the base model and if you attempt to purchase one, it is a 4-18 month lead time.

I was in the market in Mexico last year, just looking for a cheap city car with a warranty for when I am there. I test drove half the cars on that list, the other half I immediately eliminated after sitting in the driver's seat for under a minute.

You can think of those base models like MSRP GPUs right now. They exist on paper, but good luck actually getting one for MSRP.

In the end, I didn't purchase any of those and got a two year old certified preowned vehicle with the top trim and comfortable seats from a dealer with a warranty for about $3000USD more than the cheapest actually available model of those linked in your post.

[mikestew]

I guess I'm living firmly in the past, but $20K still seems to be a high price for a car.

You're not even living in the past. Our 20 year old Scion xB cost us $20K out the door new (granted, that's with most of the paltry list of options added, $15K base). And that was a cheap car at the time, Toyota marketing to "the kids".

The last time $20K was "a high price" for a new car was probably before most HN folk were born.

[vaidhy]

For those price-comparing, it is $20K after the federal incentives. So, its real cost is around $27K which makes it way more expensive than what the article claims.

[jffry]

Keep in mind $20k in 2025 dollars is the equivalent of ~$10k in 1997 dollars, if that helps set your frame of reference

[neural_thing]

According to this, there is only one new car model of any kind selling for under $20K in the US these days

https://www.carfax.com/rankings/cheapest-cars

[ty6853]

One would be wiser to based on annual depreciation in real $ plus time value of purchase price. I suspect out of new trucks a tacoma would be the cheapest since the depreciation is low to negative (IIRC recently a Tacoma was worth more 1 year old than new).

[conductr]

All new car brands/models will not have comps for several years. Even folks buying Rivians, etc have no idea how the resale value will play out so you’re always going to have to take a gamble

[hbsbsbsndk]

This article is missing at least the Mitsubishi Mirage - the 2024 model year still seems to be available for 17k in the base trim?

[redditplebs]

Isn't that the hydrogen fuel one? If so, that's the reason why it's only 17k..

[MetaWhirledPeas]

> $20K still seems to be a high price for a car

Keep in mind this price is before the USA federal tax credit. So we're potentially talking about a $12,500 car. And consider inflation.

[mikestew]

After federal tax credit, ergo $27K.

(Hat tip to @vaidhy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43794867)

[MetaWhirledPeas]

Well dang.