Quote:
Originally Posted by RH77
...the advantage would be that cheaper vehicles are generally more efficient, and appeal to the masses....
Observation: the public isn't buying new cars, and probably won't for a while. What can we do to help the Citizen and Manufacturer both? Sending them a pile of cash gets us what? Not loaning them money gets us what, also?
I'm just brainstorming an alternative.
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Rick, so first - you are to be applauded. Unlike so many others, you're laying out a solution rather than saying the somewhat cliche "something should be done" or the very obvious "we need to create [noun]s."
Allow me, for a moment, to offer a counter ripple to the cheaper vehicles (as I read, smaller) appeal to the masses... In very recent history, small cars were not appealing to the degree of large ones - for both mfr and consumer. That's why we have so many large vehicles on the road at the moment. I believe (feel free to poke holes), that smaller cars are becoming appealing
mostly if not only due, to operations costs (essentially, cost of fuel becoming the largest cost of a vehicle).
Fuel is currently 2.314 according to AAA - and prices are falling. That $10,000 would buy 4,321 gallons of gasoline... At 15 mpg, that equals 64,822 miles
18mpg = 77,787 miles
20mpg = 86,430 miles
I foresee the consumer interpreting the 10,000 as roughly 5 years of free gas, deciding that they can now buy the bigger vehicle... Effectively putting a delay on the current issue - these cars and the economy they are building are not sustainable.
It comes down to the cultural fundamentals. At some point, we lost the ideology that better = better and replaced it with more = better, among other things.
I think we are more in a dire need for a cultural revolution rather than an economic one. Somewhere along the lines, a sense of nationalism became synonymous with entitlement (beyond the nationalist entitlement to a sovereign country). One could blame marketing and advertising - but ultimately, it's the consumer that's wooed.
If the consumer is incapable of determining that they can't afford and go through with it anyway - it's the consumer that has a problem. That applies to automakers too, as consumers of resources.