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- Hacker News
- Regular people have less real disposable income than before, and risky financial products can only conceal the truth for a certain period.
Eventually, the truth will emerge, possibly with the collapse of the auto subprime loans and the car financing industry.
by whatever1 - > The traditional, reliable cycle of a new wave of teenagers getting their driver’s licenses and buying cars is shrinking.
Are these teenagers buying new cars in the room with us now?
by RealityVoid - The parents buy the new car and keep the older one for the teenager.
- It's about time they stop blaming us millennials for everything wrong.by lopis
- Will robotaxis actually reduce demand? A taxi that does 10X as many passenger miles a day as a normal car may theoretically replace 10 cars but because of dead heading might be traveling more than 10X as many miles.
Cars today have an approximate lifespan of 200,000 miles. It might take a set of conventional owners 20 years to hit that, or a taxi company 2, but either way it's getting replaced after 200,000 miles. The taxi might be in slightly better shape, but taxi customers have higher expectations than buyers of 15 year old cars.
Replacing 1/10 the number of cars 10x as often is the same demand.
With EV technology it should be possible to design a million mile car. Electric motors can easily do that, and LFP batteries can get close. But interiors and suspensions still cannot do a million.
When we see interiors made out of the same materials as subway cars, that might be a sign of future lowered demand.
by bryanlarsen - Technology is a fickle thing. The first production passenger car was created in 1886. The model t came out in 1908. We have had cars for 150 years, but that doesn't mean that they will be the standard for the next 150 years. In my life I have seen the land line telephone and radio go from core fixtures in a house to rare techno-memorabilia. (My house actually has a telephone nook. How many houses have tv nooks built for old CRT displays that will never be needed?) If you told me 25 years ago I wouldn't have a land line in the future I would have been shocked. Now it is ridiculous to even consider getting one and I haven't had one for a decade. Can you even buy a land line phone anymore?
Transportation is going through many massive changes right now. I haven't driven to the office in a decade. Huge segments of the workforce are migrating to exoburbs because they don't need to drive to work anymore. My son hasn't mentioned wanting to drive. My neighbor's kid flat out says she doesn't want to learn (both will be able to soon) and many of their friends don't want to learn either. There is a generation growing up far less invested in the car than the generation before them. Some of the points in this article may not be perfect, predicting the future is a fools bet, but it sure feels like the trend they are bringing up is real.
by jmward01 - Happy to live in a place where I can get anywhere without a car.by artisinal
- It was going so well until it mentioned VTOL aircraft. It's been 100 years of this sci-fi dream man... People need to understand that nobody wants drones or "flying cars" above their head or property...by mikelitoris
- Yes, it somewhat undermines the point that the auto industry is not realistic about the future.
Why consider flying cars when teleportation may be just a few more years away?
by Smoosh - Cars have become obscenely expensive and auto makers seem to be incorporating more and more planned obsolescence into their designs, so I've decided I'm just going to keep driving my aging car for as long as I can and maybe just get an e-bike for short trips to the market. It really feels like the auto industry is made up of dinosaurs who don't see the asteroid coming their way.by sohrob
- Cargo e-bikes seem like the ideal platform for fair-weather suburbia.by quantified
- A few points worth contending.
First, personal flying vehicles are definitely not going to be a common mode of transportation. If and when this happens, it will be for ultra rich, select few people, effectively replacing a private helicopter. We don't have the infrastructure, regulation or technology to have millions of people buzzing around in their astro-ford like the fifth element - this is still very much science fiction.
Second, scooters and bikes need infrastructure, which in 99.99% of the US, is not made for this. In fact, current infrastructure is very much hostile to bicycles and scooters, so in order for this to work, there's going to have to be a massive investment in new infrastructure all over the US. Is this very likely? I wouldn't say so.
The US locked itself into using cars through massive, expensive infrastructure and culture and I don't see this changing easily.
The population growth slowing might be true, but it's still growing, and there's still a profit to be made there.
The new factories are going to replace manufacturing in foreign countries. I'm not sure the effects on supply will be drastic. It's just a matter of building cars domestically, avoiding tariffs and securing domestic pipelines.
Finally, asking these corporations to "look 20 years ahead" instead of maximizing short term profits, is a common tradeoff that they are all aware of. Currently, short term gains is what's being preferred in almost every industry. I doubt any board members will vote to leave money on the table for long term benefits. More money now always wins.
- The automobile itself was initially nothing more than a toy for the rich and powerful.by jgilias
- > We don't have the infrastructure, regulation or technology to have millions of people buzzing around in their astro-ford like the fifth element - this is still very much science fiction.
If by flying cars you mean flying robotaxies, then all you need are landing pads. They can be easily accomodated on top of buildings. And regulation for what? We already know how to fky helicopters by autopilot, no need for innovation stiffling with more regulation.
- Amazon had approximately zero net profits for 20 years or so. It was a meme not too long ago--how much longer will investors keep pouring money into Amazon before either they stop or Amazon starts reaping a bounty they had been sowing for decades.
But everybody seemed to believe Amazon was building an insurmountable, monopoly-like position. That never happened. Then AWS came out of nowhere and that's when their profits finally took off, and investors won their bet, but in an unpredicted way.
The problem with the car industry is that, excepting Tesla for 5-10 years, nobody believes there are outsized profits to be made, and other than Musk (once upon a time), nobody with the personality to convince them otherwise. Though Amazon didn't need a personality; everyone just sort of assumed Bezos was an evil business genius biding time.
by wahern - > First, personal flying vehicles are definitely not going to be a common mode of transportation. If and when this happens, it will be for ultra rich, select few people, effectively replacing a private helicopter.
I wonder what it would be like for most cars to be replaced with flying cars (i.e. helicopters). I think the noise alone would be a huge issue. Helicopters can be heard from extremely far away and are quite noisy. If you multiply that by like 1 million in a metropolis, I think that would approach unbearable, specially at nighttime, etc.. Also I don't think noise can be reduced too much, including electric propulsion. Propeller engineering would give you some reduction but still I think too much for near universal usage.
But I think the main thing is just cost. Electric aircraft like that would really be just too expensive for everyone to have em. Not everyone can afford a good old (electric) automobile today.
There's also battery technology needing a significant improvement.
Regulation and infrastructure is comparatively solvable I think.
- If your theory is true we might see an era where supply vastly exceeds demand and car manufacturers will need to offset brand new vehicles to keep cash flow going. Sounds great to me, sign me up for 20$k brand new Ford when the time’s ready.
- An ad in a 1972 Race Program touts a brand new Toyota for $1200 (for a sedan, not including tax, freight and handling, etc.).
I ran an inflation calculator and… where are the $10K cars for sale today?
(To be sure, I know there are safety standards, other things that will make the Datsun sedan un-sellable today, but come on, can't we get even close to $10K?)
by JKCalhoun - $20k with $250 in subscriptions each month to keep your seats, mirrors, and radio working...by Arainach
- > If your theory is true we might see an era where supply vastly exceeds demand and car manufacturers will need to offset brand new vehicles to keep cash flow going. Sounds great to me, sign me up for 20$k brand new Ford when the time’s ready.
The car manufacturers could have staved this off - they keep developing new models with little to no marginal improvement. Once we got seatbelts, airbags and similar in cars, there's literally no reason for a new model to drop, but here we are with new models dropping every 5 years, using parts that don't fit the old model!
Maybe if they were dropping only new types of cars (say, EVs), I could see a need, but there's no reason a 2010 Toyota has to be replaced by a 2024 - you have the jigs, the factory, the supply chain for parts already. Just keep making it and charge less.
by lelanthran - "Vertical Takeoff and Landing aircraft are on track to provide urban air transit within the next few years, targeting the high-margin commuters who traditionally buy premium vehicles."
Okay. So... flying cars? Don't think so. Robotaxis make sense where taxis make sense and you can get by without a car already. The demographic decline is real.
by owyn - They are talking about unmanned drones that operate as flying taxis. They have them in China. We will never have flying cars after 9/11 showed how flying objects can damage property.by justaman123
- There's the simple physics of a vtol craft when landing needing to push down a lot of a air very fast just to lift an average human - plus the weight of the craft itself. There's a reason helicopters today don't land on street corners even if there's no rotor clearance issues. And these "personal" VTOLs don't seem any lighter than a helicopter of a similar size - for example the "Air One" is twice the mass of a Robinson R22 - ~400 vs ~970 kg empty.
The idea that they would be common enough to seriously disrupt "personal transport", even restricting to the "premium" market as it's known today is crazy. Imagine a fancy party where every 10 seconds everyone on the red carpet is being blown away by the backwash of someone landing - also disrupting everyone else trying to land there at the same time.
by kimixa - All the major US OEMs are dead companies walking. Even the CEO of Ford said if Chinese automobiles are allowed into the US it will be the death of US manufacturing.
Total acknowledgment US vehicles are inferior, but no desire or drive to compete, only stifle.
It’s sad, and the outcome is entirely predictable.
by testing22321 - ... and inevitable.
It's even predictable and inevitable based on that fundamental tenet of capitalism: the market.
It's weird kinda knowing what the outcome is going to be, but not knowing exactly how we're going to get there and how long it's going to take. Feels like it's all in slow motion.
by BLKNSLVR - It will be interesting to watch such predictions play out.
I'll guess that it's not quite like that.
First, propaganda is powerful, and people buy based on what they believe. And right now, U.S. car buyers do not universally believe that EV is better than gas/hybrid, nor do they believe the cheapest car is best, or that features are the only thing that matters.
In fact, they go to a dealership, probably for a brand they are already somewhat loyal to, or the marketing worked. And they buy whatever their monthly payment allows, even if it's a lot more car than they need.
Second, they like big "American" cars like pickup trucks and huge SUVs. Take a look at how many full-sized pickups are sold every year in the U.S. Until the foreign-made full-sized electric trucks are palatable and competitive with what U.S. buyers are currently buying, those OEMs will continuing making and selling them.
by neogodless - You sell less to people living in the cities but maybe you sell more to the operators of fleets of rental cars, even self driving if that really becomes mainstream. Not enough to match the decrease of sales.
You keep selling to people living in countryside, where you don't go anywhere without a car and where fleets of cars would have to be very large to be able to cover the territory in a meaningful way. There will be less and less people living there but it could affect the kind of cars that are manufactured. By the way, a self driving car would be very useful to elderly people living in their house far away from the nearest town.
In any case, less cars.
by pmontra - People in cities decided they wanted less car-centric infrastructure.
People in cities demanded EVs, yet didn't show up to keep buying them.
People in cities apparently know best what car companies should build, yet they don't buy the cars.
Car companies build for suburbanites.
Suburbanites buy cars.
by echelon