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10ish years ago it was a conscious choice they made, the automakers.

Now?

They are trapped, they can only continue to exist if they have the margins from luxury car prices for basically standard cars.

The other thing that goes along with this is... horrendously shoddy construction and design, they're literally built to break down, intentionally.

They're not really automakers.

They're managers of very troubled tranches of debt obligations who happen to be in charge of auto plants.

We should have let them all die back in 09, but instead we bailed them out and their management became a punch of sycophantic 'dont rock the boat, we're experts' accountants, just like what happened Boeing after McDonnel Douglass bought them out, ousted their middle and upper managers, and wore the Boeing brand name like a skin suit.

They are completely incompetent, but even if they weren't, nobody could solve the mess they are in now after decades of coddling and kickbacks from the government, collusion with regulators... rotted them from the inside out, smothered themselves, not really caring because C suite gets golden parachutes no matter what happens.

Capitalism serves capital, not the needs of the people. And the free market of competition is just a convenient myth with which to distract people.

As someone who just bought car last year, I think Kia is the closest one serving that market. We made a list of potential cars that had what we wanted. It had to be under $35k and it had to have certain features without needing to subscribe to some service. We added a few Kiad to our list and I'll admit they were quite tempting as they had everything we wanted for less than all the other cars on our list. In the end we ended up getting a Prius, but the Kias were pretty close for us.

It's really because of tariffs.

China has EVs with 300km range that only cost $15,000. Can't buy them in the US, though.

Gotta give the Musks your money, instead.

Yeah that was my first thought. How much is this influenced by 7 or 8 year loans on $70,000 trucks?

They're not. Lots are full of old inventory. One superstore near me has "new" 2023 model year units in the lot. Still above MSRP.

Land Rovers. Why.

Crying over fewer high margin sales. They want the same number of sales but with more profit.

This is such a tired argument. Literally the only remaining US automakers are GM, Ford, and Tesla. A vast majority of car sales in the US are foreign brands not domestic. BYD is being propped up just the same as what you're claiming here, which is why no other automaker in the world outside of China is able to beat these Chinese prices, so how is this alternative better for anyone?

China is doing this in order to dominate the market wherever they're allowed to enter, and are well equipped to undercut those local markets for as long as it takes to put everyone else out of business. They control a majority of the minerals needed for EVs so they get to set the external and internal price. They have lax safety and environmental regulations. They already control much of the world's manufacturing capacity. They're a massive country with a massive workforce.

Allowing them to dominate the world auto market in order to buy one or two cheap new cars (before prices shoot back up because monopoly) is going to be bad for everyone.

Not only that, there's just so many huge vehicles full of tech. Not enough people want basic simple transportation anymore, or at least there aren't enough models to choose from.

There's a big diff between I need a car and I need a car that makes the median reach 50k

Edit: average, for some reason I assumed editors aren't huge assholes

Honestly, whatever.

Americans make shit cars anyways.