That's the nature of inflation. Most things hit record highs every few years.
> While that $51,109 figure is an all-time high, that's only up 2.1% in the past year.
>
> "A 2.1% year-over-year increase is actually below inflation," said Erin Keating, an executive analyst at Cox Automotive who co-authored the report
People are implicitly voting for higher prices every time they buy something at a higher price. The average cost for a car would be lower if people always only bought the cheapest car on the market, but in practice many are willing to pay more.
People get really, really mad if wages don't go up either.
Inflation targeting is an awkward compromise involving keeping unemployment up to avoid wage pressure. Asking for nominal pricing to go down is even more miserable. Even before accounting for the war consuming a huge area of the oil producing world.
There's lots of room for wages to grow faster than prices. All you have to do is force high margin businesses to reduce their profits. Every supply chain has at least one of those. Oil is basically the best case scenario where a couple big suppliers dominate, so if you target them you can recover most of the inefficiency.
And the compromise only exists if all of a company's earnings are either reinvested or given away to workers, which is almost never true in capitalism. Eliminating shareholders would instantly make everything cheaper.
Even the part going to labor is very unequally distributed. If we paid executives less and everyone else more the median wage would go up, no other changes needed.
From what I've read, more of the profits were fed back to workers before stock buybacks made legal. Now they can indirectly feed excess profits to shareholders by artificially boosting the stock price.
It doesn't artificially boost the stock price. There is a fixed amount of stock. If you buyback some, then the remaining stock becomes worth more.
If there is an issue of new stock at whatever valuation, it dilutes the pool and makes each stock worth less, but often that influx of cash is to chase an opportunity that can make the stock paradoxically go up.
Stock buybacks show a stale industry or lack of creativity in leadership and shareholders should vote accordingly.
I never know how to think about things like this. Technology improves over time somewhat inherently, but the experience of getting in that 2001 $21k car and the 2026 $50k car are incredibly different. I'd guess the 2001 car didn't even have a backup camera and the 2026 car likely has enough technology that it can essentially drive itself in many situations. Safety improvements have also been very significant.
Cars lasting longer on average and getting better mpg means the TCO might be better even with higher up front costs. (Expensive repairs might bring that back down though).
They are only a little heavier on average. Steel and aluminum is relatively cheap so that isn't the main reason. The increased cost is due to a lot of different factors like increased dependence on technology and safety requirements. There's much more sales of larger SUVs/crossovers which get a higher markup despite often using the same platform as smaller vehicles. Materials may be more expensive now too. Another possibility is EVs driving up the average cost.
> They are only a little heavier on average. … There's much more sales of larger SUVs/crossovers
The weighted (pun intended) average size of car has definitely gone up in the US (those SUVs really are popular) to an extent where I could imagine a considerable average weight increase. But I suspect a lot of it also has to do with all the extra on-board computers, safety features and other doo-dads you're basically stuck with now.
Eyeballing the graph in the source [1] I'm seeing ~2.5% annual price increases from 2013 to 2020 (CPI-U all items averaged 1.6% in that time) and ~2.5% annual price from January '24 to September '26 (3.4%).
Yet Jan '20 to Jan '23 saw car prices increase at 9.3% a year (5.1%).
In summary, we had a long period of habituation of a rate to which we've returned. But in between we had a rapid step up. That jump produces continuous sticker shock at each new level (particularly psychologically-meaningful ones) even though we've returned to trend.
(The fact that China is making, and we're banning the import of, good and cheap cars, cars one can experience across either of our land borders, is probably rubbing some salt in the wound.)
That's one factor, but how much of the increase is actually attributable to inflation? Other possible factors could include increased demand for luxury vehicles or decreased supply of inexpensive vehicles for a variety of reasons.
It's this ^, and both, in the US at least, the makers want/need to make their margin. Inflation - they try to keep the sticker price similar to last year's, but jack up "destination fees". Ford, GM, Ram - up to $3K destination fee on top of the MSRP. And then... then paint protection, rubber mats, etc.
Meanwhile living car-free enables me to splurge on holidays and likely retire several years earlier than if I owned one. And I still drive! Just use hourly rental now and then.
Good for you! Unfortunately, it's not an option for me: I live in a suburb and have three young-ish kids - a good deal of the driving I do is getting them to their activities. Sometimes, that's not easy to coordinate even with two parents and two cars. :(
This is not a judgement of you as you’re pretty much in the default situation. But I think it’s a shame society in general has fallen in to this situation where parents are forced to drive their kids around to a bunch of activities.
Kid activities used to be riding bikes around the local streets or other things they could walk / bus to. And I think it’s putting a massive toll on parents who have to spend all this time driving their kids around.
Yeah, I live in a suburb with two young kids, but it’s extremely well designed (Houten, Netherlands). Suburban life can be very good for car-free living if it’s well designed.
I always found it funny (and a bit sad) how most of the finances-savy people on social networks explains how to become miserable by eating rice and chicken every single day to save a few hundred bucks a year, while they never ever consider going car free.
Even for your physical and mental health, not spending a big part of your life stuck in a metal box is so much positive!
It's very hard to arrange your life that way, though. And if you have to be stuck in a metal box anyway, there's usually good reasons to prefer that metal box to be your private vehicle rather than a public subway or bus.
Rural here, and I gave up commuting to work when I realised that not only was I paying a huge amount of money for fuel and automotive overhead, there was the unpaid time driving, but the finnal insult was the realisation that durring the fall, winter and early spring, I would leave in, the dark, get home in the dark, so go to bed sunday night, and then see my place by the light of day, next saturday morning.
Took the property of grid, and work from my shop with my own business , but all the work goes to the city, and I can do multiple site visits and personal chores all in one trip. Now driving 20% max of previous situation, making more money, spending less, and the business write offs are considerable.
On topic, I will likely have to do a retro electric conversion to get the work truck/farm I need, there is nothing availible new and the price would be prohibitive even if it was availible.
"Rice and chicken every single day" is doing it wrong. A miserable existence is more like rice and beans. If you can budget for real meat on a regular basis, then you also have room to plan for considerable flexibility. Assuming you rarely eat out, pay attention to sales (it helps to have an idea of "baseline" prices for things you'd eat regularly) and avoid overpriced packaged food, you get pretty sharply diminishing returns after that.
But yes, that's still small compared to going car free. Or reconsidering your housing situation, for that matter. (For some people, it might also be worth auditing entertainment/hobby/clothing/etc. expenses.)
In my experience, the main opposition to this are the car owners themselves. Try to start a high speed rail project and they complain about the costs, how it needs to pay for itself, etc etc etc. Ask them if they would use the train, the answer is no with various dumb excuses like "too far to get to station without a car" "train doesn't go anywhere I need to" etc etc etc.
I'm car free and very smug about it because these people are the reason rail transportation isn't better funded. They are the first people to actively block it. So I make sure to wave at them and smile as my train passes them stuck in gridlock. I'm glad the price of cars nearly doubled in the last 5 years. I hope they double again in the next five years. The only way to fix this is to price them out.
With how horrible American has gotten at building any major infrastructure, high speed rail and cars are not comparable. Because I can reliably get a car in less than 10 years, for less than 10X its supposed complete price, without a long series of political dramas and lawsuits.
And even if America had a world-leading high speed rail network, that could not replace 95% of current car usage.
High speed rail is a distraction. Light rail, bike infra, metros, and infill are what can actually solve car dependency. I don’t own a car but I can still fly places after all (not great for earth, sadly, but still doesn’t require a car)
Boston to NYC to DC to Charlotte, or Seattle to Portland to San Francisco to LA aren't served by ebikes. People aren't going to stop traveling between places that distance apart. HSR solves for that kind of stretch in a way that airplanes don't.
Nobody ever said you'd ride an ebike for those distances, though. My point was that for someone to live car-free, local transit is much more important than high speed rail. And we don't always need to build _more_ transit, building more homes near the transit we already have would make a big difference! BART stations have a lot of pretty low density single family housing around them. Or even parking! Which could make sense at a terminus for park and ride but not for most stations. Sacramento's light rail similarly has a lot of stations where few people live or work.
For what it's worth, improving biking infra improves the catchment for existing rail too. Vacaville Amtrak is in an annoying location but would be easier to get to with proper separated bike infra, and make commuting to the bay easier.
Also, I've taken the train Seattle to Portland and Boston to NYC several times and both are pretty decent. HSR would help but not massively so I suspect. BOS-NYP is 4 hours.
For SF-LA, HSR would be nice but flying is also fine. Just having the coast starlight run _less horribly slow_ would help.
On the other hand, it always amused me that the best way to go from New York to Portland, Maine (I have family there) was to take the train to Boston south, get out and walk 20 minutes, and then get on the train to Portland. There's a lot of other examples of missing links and just plain deficient planning. Why is it you could only get light rail to LAX as of very recently?
I think I was lucky to get a taste of car free life in a -somewhat- bike friendly town (San Luis Obispo) in college and after that any place that I had to own a car in felt like crap. My wife and I tried car free life in San Diego even and it was sorta barely doable (we lived in South Park) with car2go and a Vespa.
Tragically, places that you can live without the expense of a car tend to be very expensive.
Of course (I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here but if you make it illegal to build new nice places, people will outbid each other as much as possible to live in one of the few pre-existing nice places)
Of course, the US did one better and destroyed most of their _existing_ nice neighborhoods in addition to making new ones illegal to build.
>Tragically, places that you can live without the expense of a car tend to be very expensive.
No, they're really not. Try Carbondale, IL. You can buy a whole ass house for less than the price of the average new car there. I know, I lived there in 2024. Try Pontiac, IL if you want to be close enough for a day trip to Chicago. Try Sedalia, MO. Belleville, IL. Dowagiac, MI. Michigan City, IN. Burlington, IA. The mid-west is FULL of very affordable places with rail transporation, WITH fiber internet. You can move to a place that allows you to live car free if you want to. Every one of these place I mentioned is 70+ very walkable, has a passenger rail station, has fiber internet, and has homes available in the five figures. I could be anywhere in Carbondale by bus in under an hour. There was web app and it could tell me where the bus was if it was behind schedule. I could take the Amtrak from there to Chicago or New Orleans. You could take the bus to Marion or Murphysboro too. And I did. I did all of this without owning a car. I was walking distance from an Enterprise rental car too, if I really needed to drive somewhere out in the sticks.
I don't pity the car dependent. I actively despise them.
I'm sorry, did you live there? Did you look at the bus maps? There's four different city bus lines outside of the elementary school buses that can put you at the front of those schools. Fuck you CalRobert. Goalpost mover.
Man, I envy you, but sadly in the US it's nearly impossible unless NYC/Chicago/SF/Seattle. There is no way for me to take a bus or a train in Miami without first driving to the station. Yea, it's the municipalities, funds reallocation, but that's here to stay.
Walk... it's fine-ish. Driving - it's not "about", it is, it took gold this or last year for being the most dangerous city to drive in the US [0]. Not crashes though, but driver behavior.
There are a lot of other factors derailing (pun intended) such projects. It seems like choosing the route is a big one, as is acquiring the land/right-of-way. And of course, those two issues interact and complicate each other.
Of course car drivers think the train wouldn't work for them; they haven't seen good examples of it. Change takes time, especially when you have a bunch of buildings in the way in very inconvenient places. But yes, overall I still find them short-sighted; it seems like they expect to be able to park on narrow streets lined with small businesses and still be able to use those streets as roads with a high average speed. Then they'll blame everything that isn't a car for taking up space. (Not to mention how awful traffic lights are for the gridlock.)
Incidentally, it's definitely a thing around here (Toronto, Canada) for people to drive to a public transit station (certain subway terminus stations, as well as intercity rail) and proceed (especially downtown) from there. That avoids congestion and probably saves a bunch on parking, too. But that also has its drawbacks.
I’m “living the dream” in outer NYC, and I own a motorcycle for funzies. Best of both worlds. I do not have the blessing of children, so I expect that would change everything.
My 6 year old Toyota has only lost 10% of its resale value. They keep emailing and calling me, trying to convince me to sell it. The used car market is on fire right now, probably due to these inflated prices.
I still keep a 12 year old Honda, which is currently at 50% of the price as new. For the same timespan I had friends changing three vehicles and eating the massive depreciation.
Toyota dealers have become extremely good at capturing consumer surplus. It’s pretty rare for customers to actually save any significant amount of money compared to buying other less reliable cars.
Occasionally they make “inventory decision mistakes” and Toyota will offer incentives to dealers to clear them out at truly amazing prices. Their distribution network is also “unusual” and cross-region arbitrage can occasionally work well. Especially if you live in Florida, Texas or California, you can sometimes save many thousands by taking a one-way flight to Chicago or New Jersey.
For reference, the asp of cars in Germany was 44,560 Euro in 2025. That's about $49,300 USD. That was last year of course and we've had inflation as well. So, the US is about the same as Germany. We do have a growing number of Chinese cars here that are pretty competitive. But those cover the same price segments as other cars and while very attractively priced, they aren't necessarily that cheap. We also have tariffs on those though not as steep as the US ones.
That's just the average price of course. There are a few new models you can buy that are priced below 20K Euro. And you can get decent second hand ones below 10K.
More interesting thing is the shift to EVs and the fact that there are now cheap EVs. The cheapest new car is an EV. Roadside charging is expensive here. But with the high fuel prices still a lot cheaper than petrol.
People apparently feel pressured to buy expensive cars and spend all their money on those. It's a choice. I don't actually own a car. I don't see a good rational reason to spend hundreds of euros per month on having one, keeping it charged/fueled, maintained, parked, etc. All those things cost money. A couple of hundred per month adds up to a nice budget for public transport, taxis, and car rentals. I have a public transport card (Deutschland ticket) that costs me 65 Euro per month that covers most of my needs.
If I remember correctly I think 80 % of new car sales are through companies or leasing, so only relatively few consumers buy new cars. Right now lots of people buy electric cars as the government gifts you 6.000 € (not to me because I’m too “rich” apparently), you can get some of the smallest models for under 10.000 € which is crazy.
Chinese manufacturers indeed make good offers e.g. BYD Seal Touring hybrid with 20 kWh battery and all features for around 30 T€, at that price you won’t even find the barebones version of a comparable car by any German manufacturer. They’re doing all they can to discredit Chinese car makers these days, it’s hilarious all these YouTubers driving the new BYD and trying to find the smallest little details to complain about.
German car industry only survives because its heavily subsidized and the government destroyed the used cars market.
> Roadside charging is expensive here. But with the high fuel prices still a lot cheaper than petrol.
Roadside charging cost was about the same as the cost for gasoline/diesel before the war (cost per 10km). After the war it is around 30-40% cheaper than gaseoline/diesel.
But people forget that one seldom has to use roadside charging. It is mainly when going on vacation or longer weekend trips. For daily commute, shopping and regular weekly activities, you can charge at home or at work or at family.
Charging at home costs 1/3-1/6 of roadside charging. It's so cheap, but people don't seem to get it.
And as above comment says, EVs are also very cheap now. There are many smaller EVs, both Chinese and Europeans which cost around 20k EUR. Even a big ID.7 (Passat size) is not that expensive if you shop around a bit.
EDIT: And regarding roadside charging, with a subscription you can easily get 10-20% discount in case you do a lot of long distance driving.
Not disagreeing, but wanted to comment on the car pricing and not make this about how amazing EVs are. Which they are. Everything that you said. And then some. Low maintenance and service cost. The fact that the drive train comes with an eight year warranty, which means most second hand EVs are still under warranty (because most EVs on the road are not that old yet). And so on.
I live in a city (Berlin), charging at home is not a thing mostly. But there are plenty of slow chargers on the streets here. Those are a bit more affordable than the fast chargers. But still 55 cents per kwh is not that amazing. You might be able to get a better price. A 60kwh charge costs 33 euros at that rate. 11 euro per 100km give or take. Not that amazing compared to petrol. 5-6 liters of petrol is roughly the same. Domestic kwh rate is slightly better but still pretty steep. I think I pay between 35 cents and 40 cents per kwh or so. So, you could shave off 3 euros per 100km or so by charging at home.
If you live in a large house with solar panels, you might charge more or less for free obviously at least part of the year. In general, electricity is way overpriced in Germany which I think is a big economical challenge for the country. Mostly, it's a policy problem. Pricing, incentives, permitting, etc. they have problems across the board which keep prices high and solutions hard to implement.
EVs are great but they could be much better with lower kwh prices.
Too many people look at cars as a status symbol, especially people who consider home ownership out of reach. So there is an incentive to buy the most expensive vehicle they can afford.
While that’s true, I think the real insidious reason is payments (ie borrowing money and paying interest to buy a car)
I hear people say all the time “my payment only went up $50 a month to get THIS”
They have no idea how much the vehicle costs, and how much they’ll pay in interest over the term. They also don’t care, because it’s a forever loan. They’ll roll it over to a new vehicle in a couple of years and just have a car payment for life.
This isn’t just inflation. There’s an old saying “Our homes reflect who we are and cars who we want to be”. I’d say this is the case with many people in the US compared with other countries and are willing to spend more (80% of US new car purchases are financed compared with 50% of German)
It tracks income. I checked this in the UK a couple of years ago and the price of a median car in the UK increased by double the rate of inflation over the last fifty years, inline with wage increases.
Interesting how NPR downplays the systematic elimination of the most-affordable models of the 2010's. (At least in the U.S. They're still widely available in overseas markets.)
Though it otherwise doesn't pull the punch on corporate greed.
Related, the U.S. may soon allow imports of Japanese "Kei" vehicles:
But these days I’ve changed my tune. I seek reliability and decent operating costs. My Corolla hybrid foots the bill perfectly, and it was about as cheap as a brand new car gets. The gearhead part of me loves to watch the engine shut off as it goes into hybrid/EV mode.
I would agree with this minus the sarcasm. Some premium brands have gone off the deep end, but if you are buying anything at a CDJR dealership the opposite is true.
That's the nature of inflation. Most things hit record highs every few years.
> While that $51,109 figure is an all-time high, that's only up 2.1% in the past year. > > "A 2.1% year-over-year increase is actually below inflation," said Erin Keating, an executive analyst at Cox Automotive who co-authored the report
It's sort of combined with the idea that "things are still high", or "they shouldn't be this high".
Unfortunately "make prices higher" is part of the financial plan for most if not all governments. What we have is what we asked for.
What causes it? It must be an indirect effect, because people are certainly not voting for higher prices
Government spending and regulation. Wars too, but those are exceptional.
How many years in the last 40 has the US NOT been at war?
People are implicitly voting for higher prices every time they buy something at a higher price. The average cost for a car would be lower if people always only bought the cheapest car on the market, but in practice many are willing to pay more.
People get really, really mad if wages don't go up either.
Inflation targeting is an awkward compromise involving keeping unemployment up to avoid wage pressure. Asking for nominal pricing to go down is even more miserable. Even before accounting for the war consuming a huge area of the oil producing world.
Edit: while I'm here, some historical view from the UK https://www.parkers.co.uk/50-anniversary/costs-of-driving/
There's lots of room for wages to grow faster than prices. All you have to do is force high margin businesses to reduce their profits. Every supply chain has at least one of those. Oil is basically the best case scenario where a couple big suppliers dominate, so if you target them you can recover most of the inefficiency.
And the compromise only exists if all of a company's earnings are either reinvested or given away to workers, which is almost never true in capitalism. Eliminating shareholders would instantly make everything cheaper.
Even the part going to labor is very unequally distributed. If we paid executives less and everyone else more the median wage would go up, no other changes needed.
Shareholders are also another voter class (pensioners).
From what I've read, more of the profits were fed back to workers before stock buybacks made legal. Now they can indirectly feed excess profits to shareholders by artificially boosting the stock price.
It doesn't artificially boost the stock price. There is a fixed amount of stock. If you buyback some, then the remaining stock becomes worth more.
If there is an issue of new stock at whatever valuation, it dilutes the pool and makes each stock worth less, but often that influx of cash is to chase an opportunity that can make the stock paradoxically go up.
Stock buybacks show a stale industry or lack of creativity in leadership and shareholders should vote accordingly.
In 2001 the average new price was $21,474 [1]; adjusted for inflation that's $40,924.40 [2], so new cars today are 25% more expensive.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20260311215431/https://www.energ... [2] https://www.calculator.net/inflation-calculator.html?cstarti...
I never know how to think about things like this. Technology improves over time somewhat inherently, but the experience of getting in that 2001 $21k car and the 2026 $50k car are incredibly different. I'd guess the 2001 car didn't even have a backup camera and the 2026 car likely has enough technology that it can essentially drive itself in many situations. Safety improvements have also been very significant.
Cars lasting longer on average and getting better mpg means the TCO might be better even with higher up front costs. (Expensive repairs might bring that back down though).
Wouldnt 40k vs 20k be almost 100% more expensive? It almost doubled. Or is there a typo somewhere?
I see, they are the same number and one is adjusted for inflation. The comparison is against another number. Missing coffee I guess
I'd say cars today are at least 25% bigger and heavier so it probably makes sense.
They are only a little heavier on average. Steel and aluminum is relatively cheap so that isn't the main reason. The increased cost is due to a lot of different factors like increased dependence on technology and safety requirements. There's much more sales of larger SUVs/crossovers which get a higher markup despite often using the same platform as smaller vehicles. Materials may be more expensive now too. Another possibility is EVs driving up the average cost.
> They are only a little heavier on average. … There's much more sales of larger SUVs/crossovers
The weighted (pun intended) average size of car has definitely gone up in the US (those SUVs really are popular) to an extent where I could imagine a considerable average weight increase. But I suspect a lot of it also has to do with all the extra on-board computers, safety features and other doo-dads you're basically stuck with now.
> That's the nature of inflation
Eyeballing the graph in the source [1] I'm seeing ~2.5% annual price increases from 2013 to 2020 (CPI-U all items averaged 1.6% in that time) and ~2.5% annual price from January '24 to September '26 (3.4%).
Yet Jan '20 to Jan '23 saw car prices increase at 9.3% a year (5.1%).
In summary, we had a long period of habituation of a rate to which we've returned. But in between we had a rapid step up. That jump produces continuous sticker shock at each new level (particularly psychologically-meaningful ones) even though we've returned to trend.
(The fact that China is making, and we're banning the import of, good and cheap cars, cars one can experience across either of our land borders, is probably rubbing some salt in the wound.)
[1] https://www.coxautoinc.com/insights/sept-2026-atp-report/
That's one factor, but how much of the increase is actually attributable to inflation? Other possible factors could include increased demand for luxury vehicles or decreased supply of inexpensive vehicles for a variety of reasons.
It's this ^, and both, in the US at least, the makers want/need to make their margin. Inflation - they try to keep the sticker price similar to last year's, but jack up "destination fees". Ford, GM, Ram - up to $3K destination fee on top of the MSRP. And then... then paint protection, rubber mats, etc.
Plus - Trump tax.
Using an inflation calculator and looking at an advertisement [1] for a Toyota Corolla from 1974—where is my $15K car?
[1] https://www.vintagepaperads.com/assets/images/AR0525.jpg
Just a few years ago there were choices in that price bracket: the Mitsubishi Mirage and Nissan Versa. Now there is nothing.
That's a main failure of journalism (often intended!): Presenting absolute numbers without context.
Meanwhile living car-free enables me to splurge on holidays and likely retire several years earlier than if I owned one. And I still drive! Just use hourly rental now and then.
I wish this option were available to all.
Good for you! Unfortunately, it's not an option for me: I live in a suburb and have three young-ish kids - a good deal of the driving I do is getting them to their activities. Sometimes, that's not easy to coordinate even with two parents and two cars. :(
This is not a judgement of you as you’re pretty much in the default situation. But I think it’s a shame society in general has fallen in to this situation where parents are forced to drive their kids around to a bunch of activities.
Kid activities used to be riding bikes around the local streets or other things they could walk / bus to. And I think it’s putting a massive toll on parents who have to spend all this time driving their kids around.
Amen to that. Literally moved to a new country so our kids could bike around safely.
It’s like a damn Norman Rockwell painting here. Kids biking in groups with fishing rods is one of my favourite sights.
Yeah, I live in a suburb with two young kids, but it’s extremely well designed (Houten, Netherlands). Suburban life can be very good for car-free living if it’s well designed.
Going car free dwarfs basically all budgeting advice. The amount of money you save is obscene.
I always found it funny (and a bit sad) how most of the finances-savy people on social networks explains how to become miserable by eating rice and chicken every single day to save a few hundred bucks a year, while they never ever consider going car free.
Even for your physical and mental health, not spending a big part of your life stuck in a metal box is so much positive!
It's very hard to arrange your life that way, though. And if you have to be stuck in a metal box anyway, there's usually good reasons to prefer that metal box to be your private vehicle rather than a public subway or bus.
In fairness mrmoneymoustache has always decried car dependency.
Rural here, and I gave up commuting to work when I realised that not only was I paying a huge amount of money for fuel and automotive overhead, there was the unpaid time driving, but the finnal insult was the realisation that durring the fall, winter and early spring, I would leave in, the dark, get home in the dark, so go to bed sunday night, and then see my place by the light of day, next saturday morning. Took the property of grid, and work from my shop with my own business , but all the work goes to the city, and I can do multiple site visits and personal chores all in one trip. Now driving 20% max of previous situation, making more money, spending less, and the business write offs are considerable. On topic, I will likely have to do a retro electric conversion to get the work truck/farm I need, there is nothing availible new and the price would be prohibitive even if it was availible.
Glad you found something that works. It's generally said to be a lot harder out in the country, but.
"Rice and chicken every single day" is doing it wrong. A miserable existence is more like rice and beans. If you can budget for real meat on a regular basis, then you also have room to plan for considerable flexibility. Assuming you rarely eat out, pay attention to sales (it helps to have an idea of "baseline" prices for things you'd eat regularly) and avoid overpriced packaged food, you get pretty sharply diminishing returns after that.
But yes, that's still small compared to going car free. Or reconsidering your housing situation, for that matter. (For some people, it might also be worth auditing entertainment/hobby/clothing/etc. expenses.)
Interesting take, because, to me, people have the same bias toward meat that they have toward cars.
The fact that they are both huge industries with heavy lobbying is not a coincidence.
When you're on a budget, a meat-free diet seems like a healthier plan than insisting on meat and buying the worst kind of "real meat".
Strangely we’re at a point where chicken breast isn’t that far off whey protein in cost per gram. Dried bean curd remains a good choice though.
>I wish this option were available to all.
In my experience, the main opposition to this are the car owners themselves. Try to start a high speed rail project and they complain about the costs, how it needs to pay for itself, etc etc etc. Ask them if they would use the train, the answer is no with various dumb excuses like "too far to get to station without a car" "train doesn't go anywhere I need to" etc etc etc.
I'm car free and very smug about it because these people are the reason rail transportation isn't better funded. They are the first people to actively block it. So I make sure to wave at them and smile as my train passes them stuck in gridlock. I'm glad the price of cars nearly doubled in the last 5 years. I hope they double again in the next five years. The only way to fix this is to price them out.
With how horrible American has gotten at building any major infrastructure, high speed rail and cars are not comparable. Because I can reliably get a car in less than 10 years, for less than 10X its supposed complete price, without a long series of political dramas and lawsuits.
And even if America had a world-leading high speed rail network, that could not replace 95% of current car usage.
High speed rail is a distraction. Light rail, bike infra, metros, and infill are what can actually solve car dependency. I don’t own a car but I can still fly places after all (not great for earth, sadly, but still doesn’t require a car)
True. But which of those don't suffer from "how horrible America has gotten at building..." problems?
And beyond infill, there's simple density. If everyone's dream is a McMansion with a 2 acre lawn, there are precious few transportation infra options.
Boston to NYC to DC to Charlotte, or Seattle to Portland to San Francisco to LA aren't served by ebikes. People aren't going to stop traveling between places that distance apart. HSR solves for that kind of stretch in a way that airplanes don't.
Nobody ever said you'd ride an ebike for those distances, though. My point was that for someone to live car-free, local transit is much more important than high speed rail. And we don't always need to build _more_ transit, building more homes near the transit we already have would make a big difference! BART stations have a lot of pretty low density single family housing around them. Or even parking! Which could make sense at a terminus for park and ride but not for most stations. Sacramento's light rail similarly has a lot of stations where few people live or work.
For what it's worth, improving biking infra improves the catchment for existing rail too. Vacaville Amtrak is in an annoying location but would be easier to get to with proper separated bike infra, and make commuting to the bay easier.
Also, I've taken the train Seattle to Portland and Boston to NYC several times and both are pretty decent. HSR would help but not massively so I suspect. BOS-NYP is 4 hours.
For SF-LA, HSR would be nice but flying is also fine. Just having the coast starlight run _less horribly slow_ would help.
On the other hand, it always amused me that the best way to go from New York to Portland, Maine (I have family there) was to take the train to Boston south, get out and walk 20 minutes, and then get on the train to Portland. There's a lot of other examples of missing links and just plain deficient planning. Why is it you could only get light rail to LAX as of very recently?
I think I was lucky to get a taste of car free life in a -somewhat- bike friendly town (San Luis Obispo) in college and after that any place that I had to own a car in felt like crap. My wife and I tried car free life in San Diego even and it was sorta barely doable (we lived in South Park) with car2go and a Vespa.
Tragically, places that you can live without the expense of a car tend to be very expensive.
That's not a coincidence.
Of course (I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here but if you make it illegal to build new nice places, people will outbid each other as much as possible to live in one of the few pre-existing nice places)
Of course, the US did one better and destroyed most of their _existing_ nice neighborhoods in addition to making new ones illegal to build.
>Tragically, places that you can live without the expense of a car tend to be very expensive.
No, they're really not. Try Carbondale, IL. You can buy a whole ass house for less than the price of the average new car there. I know, I lived there in 2024. Try Pontiac, IL if you want to be close enough for a day trip to Chicago. Try Sedalia, MO. Belleville, IL. Dowagiac, MI. Michigan City, IN. Burlington, IA. The mid-west is FULL of very affordable places with rail transporation, WITH fiber internet. You can move to a place that allows you to live car free if you want to. Every one of these place I mentioned is 70+ very walkable, has a passenger rail station, has fiber internet, and has homes available in the five figures. I could be anywhere in Carbondale by bus in under an hour. There was web app and it could tell me where the bus was if it was behind schedule. I could take the Amtrak from there to Chicago or New Orleans. You could take the bus to Marion or Murphysboro too. And I did. I did all of this without owning a car. I was walking distance from an Enterprise rental car too, if I really needed to drive somewhere out in the sticks.
I don't pity the car dependent. I actively despise them.
I just looked for elementary schools in Carbondale, IL and they were at the edge of town on high speed stroads.
I'm sorry, did you live there? Did you look at the bus maps? There's four different city bus lines outside of the elementary school buses that can put you at the front of those schools. Fuck you CalRobert. Goalpost mover.
This is not the level of discourse expected on HN, and doesn't make your cause look good.
There is an implied desirable qualifier in that statement you quoted.
No one wants to live in bumfuck IL or MO. No one cares if they are walkable because there is no where worth walking to.
Man, I envy you, but sadly in the US it's nearly impossible unless NYC/Chicago/SF/Seattle. There is no way for me to take a bus or a train in Miami without first driving to the station. Yea, it's the municipalities, funds reallocation, but that's here to stay.
IIRC Miami is about the most dangerous city in the US to walk in. Stay safe :-\
Walk... it's fine-ish. Driving - it's not "about", it is, it took gold this or last year for being the most dangerous city to drive in the US [0]. Not crashes though, but driver behavior.
[0] https://lemonlawexperts.com/study-the-most-annoying-driver-b...
There are a lot of other factors derailing (pun intended) such projects. It seems like choosing the route is a big one, as is acquiring the land/right-of-way. And of course, those two issues interact and complicate each other.
Of course car drivers think the train wouldn't work for them; they haven't seen good examples of it. Change takes time, especially when you have a bunch of buildings in the way in very inconvenient places. But yes, overall I still find them short-sighted; it seems like they expect to be able to park on narrow streets lined with small businesses and still be able to use those streets as roads with a high average speed. Then they'll blame everything that isn't a car for taking up space. (Not to mention how awful traffic lights are for the gridlock.)
Incidentally, it's definitely a thing around here (Toronto, Canada) for people to drive to a public transit station (certain subway terminus stations, as well as intercity rail) and proceed (especially downtown) from there. That avoids congestion and probably saves a bunch on parking, too. But that also has its drawbacks.
I’m “living the dream” in outer NYC, and I own a motorcycle for funzies. Best of both worlds. I do not have the blessing of children, so I expect that would change everything.
Last time I was in Brooklyn I was delighted by how many kids in cargo bikes I saw!
My 6 year old Toyota has only lost 10% of its resale value. They keep emailing and calling me, trying to convince me to sell it. The used car market is on fire right now, probably due to these inflated prices.
Six year old cars will be in short supply because of what happened in 2020.
I still keep a 12 year old Honda, which is currently at 50% of the price as new. For the same timespan I had friends changing three vehicles and eating the massive depreciation.
Toyota dealers have become extremely good at capturing consumer surplus. It’s pretty rare for customers to actually save any significant amount of money compared to buying other less reliable cars.
Occasionally they make “inventory decision mistakes” and Toyota will offer incentives to dealers to clear them out at truly amazing prices. Their distribution network is also “unusual” and cross-region arbitrage can occasionally work well. Especially if you live in Florida, Texas or California, you can sometimes save many thousands by taking a one-way flight to Chicago or New Jersey.
For reference, the asp of cars in Germany was 44,560 Euro in 2025. That's about $49,300 USD. That was last year of course and we've had inflation as well. So, the US is about the same as Germany. We do have a growing number of Chinese cars here that are pretty competitive. But those cover the same price segments as other cars and while very attractively priced, they aren't necessarily that cheap. We also have tariffs on those though not as steep as the US ones.
That's just the average price of course. There are a few new models you can buy that are priced below 20K Euro. And you can get decent second hand ones below 10K.
More interesting thing is the shift to EVs and the fact that there are now cheap EVs. The cheapest new car is an EV. Roadside charging is expensive here. But with the high fuel prices still a lot cheaper than petrol.
People apparently feel pressured to buy expensive cars and spend all their money on those. It's a choice. I don't actually own a car. I don't see a good rational reason to spend hundreds of euros per month on having one, keeping it charged/fueled, maintained, parked, etc. All those things cost money. A couple of hundred per month adds up to a nice budget for public transport, taxis, and car rentals. I have a public transport card (Deutschland ticket) that costs me 65 Euro per month that covers most of my needs.
If I remember correctly I think 80 % of new car sales are through companies or leasing, so only relatively few consumers buy new cars. Right now lots of people buy electric cars as the government gifts you 6.000 € (not to me because I’m too “rich” apparently), you can get some of the smallest models for under 10.000 € which is crazy.
Chinese manufacturers indeed make good offers e.g. BYD Seal Touring hybrid with 20 kWh battery and all features for around 30 T€, at that price you won’t even find the barebones version of a comparable car by any German manufacturer. They’re doing all they can to discredit Chinese car makers these days, it’s hilarious all these YouTubers driving the new BYD and trying to find the smallest little details to complain about.
German car industry only survives because its heavily subsidized and the government destroyed the used cars market.
> Roadside charging is expensive here. But with the high fuel prices still a lot cheaper than petrol.
Roadside charging cost was about the same as the cost for gasoline/diesel before the war (cost per 10km). After the war it is around 30-40% cheaper than gaseoline/diesel.
But people forget that one seldom has to use roadside charging. It is mainly when going on vacation or longer weekend trips. For daily commute, shopping and regular weekly activities, you can charge at home or at work or at family.
Charging at home costs 1/3-1/6 of roadside charging. It's so cheap, but people don't seem to get it.
And as above comment says, EVs are also very cheap now. There are many smaller EVs, both Chinese and Europeans which cost around 20k EUR. Even a big ID.7 (Passat size) is not that expensive if you shop around a bit.
EDIT: And regarding roadside charging, with a subscription you can easily get 10-20% discount in case you do a lot of long distance driving.
Not disagreeing, but wanted to comment on the car pricing and not make this about how amazing EVs are. Which they are. Everything that you said. And then some. Low maintenance and service cost. The fact that the drive train comes with an eight year warranty, which means most second hand EVs are still under warranty (because most EVs on the road are not that old yet). And so on.
I live in a city (Berlin), charging at home is not a thing mostly. But there are plenty of slow chargers on the streets here. Those are a bit more affordable than the fast chargers. But still 55 cents per kwh is not that amazing. You might be able to get a better price. A 60kwh charge costs 33 euros at that rate. 11 euro per 100km give or take. Not that amazing compared to petrol. 5-6 liters of petrol is roughly the same. Domestic kwh rate is slightly better but still pretty steep. I think I pay between 35 cents and 40 cents per kwh or so. So, you could shave off 3 euros per 100km or so by charging at home.
If you live in a large house with solar panels, you might charge more or less for free obviously at least part of the year. In general, electricity is way overpriced in Germany which I think is a big economical challenge for the country. Mostly, it's a policy problem. Pricing, incentives, permitting, etc. they have problems across the board which keep prices high and solutions hard to implement.
EVs are great but they could be much better with lower kwh prices.
Too many people look at cars as a status symbol, especially people who consider home ownership out of reach. So there is an incentive to buy the most expensive vehicle they can afford.
While that’s true, I think the real insidious reason is payments (ie borrowing money and paying interest to buy a car)
I hear people say all the time “my payment only went up $50 a month to get THIS”
They have no idea how much the vehicle costs, and how much they’ll pay in interest over the term. They also don’t care, because it’s a forever loan. They’ll roll it over to a new vehicle in a couple of years and just have a car payment for life.
You’ll own nothing and like it
We thought that referred to greedy corpos and Ubers and the like, but really they just meant banks (per usual)
I don’t mind the “own nothing” when you aren’t burdened by anything either. Getting an uber occasionally is a nice way to not have to own a car.
But buying one on debt it’s the worst of both worlds.
I feel like anyone who finances a car and also rents ought to be able to put those numbers side by side and ask some questions.
Indeed. Americans vote with their wallets on this. They also vote with, you know, actual votes, to prevent cheaper goods being allowed.
This isn’t just inflation. There’s an old saying “Our homes reflect who we are and cars who we want to be”. I’d say this is the case with many people in the US compared with other countries and are willing to spend more (80% of US new car purchases are financed compared with 50% of German)
Text only version: https://text.npr.org/nx-s1-6026659
doesn't seems very high consider the income?
It tracks income. I checked this in the UK a couple of years ago and the price of a median car in the UK increased by double the rate of inflation over the last fifty years, inline with wage increases.
Interesting how NPR downplays the systematic elimination of the most-affordable models of the 2010's. (At least in the U.S. They're still widely available in overseas markets.)
Though it otherwise doesn't pull the punch on corporate greed.
Related, the U.S. may soon allow imports of Japanese "Kei" vehicles:
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/11/toyota-resurrects-scion...
I am a bit of a gearhead, and I’ve owned some interesting vehicles:
1994 Ford Lightning, a factory ‘tuner’ truck
2004 WRX STi, in the proper garish blue and gold
2008 Lexus ISF, a 400 hp luxury hot rod
Kawasaki H1, a 3 cylinder 2 stroke motorcycle. Wildly unpredictable throttle!
But these days I’ve changed my tune. I seek reliability and decent operating costs. My Corolla hybrid foots the bill perfectly, and it was about as cheap as a brand new car gets. The gearhead part of me loves to watch the engine shut off as it goes into hybrid/EV mode.
And the quality of said new vehicle is also at a record high. /s
Well, they are safer
Car safety is way past the point of diminishing returns. Both in terms of cost and reduced driver freedom.
Perhaps. But anyone looking at the leading causes of death & major injury in America can see why "make you safer" is an easy sell.
Absolutely! The user experience kinda sucks though, way to many glitches!
I would agree with this minus the sarcasm. Some premium brands have gone off the deep end, but if you are buying anything at a CDJR dealership the opposite is true.
wages going down prices going up !