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Re:The Average New Car Loan Is Now over 70 Months by AtlasBarfed on Saturday August 29, 2020 @10:32PM (#24320893)
The average selling price of cars, uh, I mean SUV/CUVs is getting higher and higher. Pickup trucks average selling prices are practically in luxury sedan ranges.

As stated in comments, cheap financing definitely helps this, as does the fact that current cars really are so much better than cars 20 years ago, to say nothing of cars from the 80s or (shudder) 70s.

A lot is the luxury feature set, but a lot is just people buying very gaudy horsepower drivetrains.

EV drivetrains will rapidly eclipse ICE drivetrains in price, and they are almost trivial to design for very good acceleration (which really is all that gets used daily for "sporty" cars). The joke is Americans buy horsepower but drive torque is very apropos. A simple EV drivetrain can deliver very high torque at the low end, while equivalent torque is really expensive for an engine.

So that will leave software (which commoditizes quickly as well) and luxury features. But I think the average price will come back.

Re:The Average New Car Loan Is Now over 70 Months by runamok on Sunday August 30, 2020 @03:18AM (#24321914)
I read recently there are less than 20 cars for sale in the US under 20k.

https://jalopnik.com/heres-all-17-cars-available-in-the-u-s-...

Re:The Average New Car Loan Is Now over 70 Months by brianwawok on Sunday August 30, 2020 @12:53PM (#24324038)
Very low for sure. If you bump it to 3-year old used cars under 20k, I think you can get a much bigger chunk of vehicles. In a car that will last 15 years, 3 years old is not a huge deal.