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!
Except with all the safety equipment, crumple zones, airbags, sensors, etc. I would expect an increase in price.
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.
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.
> The body shop owner told me that the epoxy is actually stronger than the factory weld.
Often this is because the special high strength steels used in vehicles today depend on proper heat treating to attain their strength, and welding can compromise this. Many OEMs even specify panel bonding for repairing particular crash-critical parts of vehicles now because of this.
1. because UHSS is sensitive to heat, and robots are much more accurate in how they heat than Jimmy with a tig torch, and they were programmed by a process engineer, where as Jimmy welds until 'it looks good'.
2. welding may compromise anti-corrosive treatments on the inside of inaccessible cavities, which can lead to corrosion issues
e.g. https://rts.i-car.com/crn-24.html
A crappy shop will certainly just weld panels in without any regard for materials engineering, but it results in a crappy repair.
The 1996 Ferrari F355 Spider and the 2025 Hyundai Elantra N both have a 0-60 time of 4.8 seconds.
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...
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.
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.
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.
(Hat tip to @vaidhy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43794867)
And it'll always be sold out.
Now there's the real price.
I do applaud the philosphy of cheap and barebones, and easily moddable, but my two cents is that trim is not the thing that's making cars expensive to make.
I am hoping like hell this ends up being the case. Give me power, a place to put my own stuff and some details on the CAN bus and leave me to it.
I do not want to pay a premium for your slow, locked down, buggy / seldom-updated touch screen.
No, because they knew what they were getting into when they bought this truck. And I'm sure there will be a dozen DIY ways to add a more traditional sound system.
If passengers want to DJ, you can get one of those little FM transmitter thingies that plugs into a phone/table headphone port.
A lot of Bluetooth speakers today can fill a car with a sound wall better rear speakers used to. Apple says you just need two of their Bluetooth speakers to fill a room in a house with great stereo and reasonably good surround sound. The square footage of a car is generally smaller than the supported room size.
edit to add: if Slate is successful, I wouldn't be surprised if a decently sized ecosystem pops up around easily installed custom sound systems and the tablets (possibly with headphone jacks!) to control them.
No stereo, but luckily they still found space for a few DNN accelerators that will slam on the brakes randomly when getting false detections. Likely still has a 4G uplink and all the modern car cancer to make sure they can datamine their clients as much as possible and offset the subsidized purchase cost.
Worst of both worlds?