this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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[Dormant] Electric Vehicles
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Why did Ford dump all of the models that offered a variety of price points ?
Because they could afford to be profitable and not care about 90% of the US consumer body.
Same with GM and Dodge RAM. They quit making lots of cars to save money for themselves. And now the US has betrayed the US consumer again pushing a green agenda while maintaining OIL hegemony in vehicles for the masses.
Now we have fewer types of vehicles, lower inventory, higher prices, 10 year car loans, and restrictions on getting the green vehicles that we were encouraged to want. American Dream has become the American Delusion.
It's the same cycle we had from back in 2002, under the Bush Hummer tax cut. Government subsidized light trucks and made gasoline artificially cheap, so people went out and bought these enormous vehicles and dumped millions of gallons into them for power.
Then 2008 hits, gas prices go vertical, car loans go bust, and the Big 3 are out begging for bailouts. Obama delivers (while Mitt Romney signs his own death warrant in Michigan by telling Detroit to go bankrupt) and rides a popular wave of support for saving the American auto industry from itself. But he doesn't bother to do any kind of regulation or curb the consumption of fossil fuels, because that would make soccer moms still driving their 10 ton vehicles sad.
Then the bubble pops in 2020 thanks to COVID and everyone runs into receivership again and we've got to flood the zone with taxpayer bailout money.
But that's okay, because COVID actually gave us cheap gasoline again! So we get another era of cheap gasoline and big cars and a brand new automotive industry bubble.
Gee, I hope history doesn't repeat itself.
:/ sorry bro
The funny thing is y'all in the US still have a better selection of vehicles available than we do in Europe, it's just mostly not from American marques.
I recently got my hands on a USDM Subaru. It has more options than the EU spec one so I figured I'd look at the US Subaru website and yup, even for current model years, they have WAY more options available in terms of both models and trims. Y'all still get the WRX sedan, we only get the Impreza hatchback with a naturally aspirated engine. We don't get the Ascent either.
You guys also get things like the Toyota 4-runner, Volkswagen Atlas, etc in terms of SUVs that are pretty big, but not gigantic.