It’s worth pointing out that the cost of a battery is effectively pre-paying for ~5 years of gas (how much you drive dependent). If you finance your used car (as many do when they buy used from a dealer) the lifetime costs and payment schedule would probably be about equivalent.

“Pre-paying” isn’t in the vocabulary for many though. You seem financially savvy, if you were to randomly sample the market how car buyers do you think have the level of resources and discipline to actually follow through with this?

New or used? In the US the realistic floor for a new car is 20k. A few smart cars and such for less, but not anything sold seriously.

Is this real? In Europe you can get a Fiat Panda, brand new, for 9k€. Smallish engine, barebones interior, but overall a pretty decent car.

Yes.

Cheapest Honda 21k https://automobiles.honda.com/tools/build-and-price#panel-so...

Cheapest Ford $19,995 https://shop.ford.com/showroom/?linktype=brand&intcmp=hp-sho...

Those budget brands generally don’t have dealers here.

Like I said you can maybe find a weird budget dealer somewhere, but it’s well under 1% if sales volume.

Low budget people typically buy 3-15 year old versions of these cars (which is easily under 10k cost).

You picked a brand that is a hallmark of upper middle class conspicuous consumption and a brand that doesn't make economy cars (for the North American market) anymore.

The Mitsubishi Mirage, Nissan Versa and Chevy Spark (hatchbacks comparable to the small European cars the GP mentioned) MSRP at under 15k.

No one buys those though

https://carsalesbase.com/us-chevrolet-spark/

What % of new car sales are under 20k? 5% maybe?

Honda fit? https://automobiles.honda.com/tools/build-and-price-trims?mo... "Starting at $16,190"

Nice, had to dig deeper to find it.

https://carsalesbase.com/us-honda-fit/

Only sold 32k cars in 2020, basically a rounding error compares to overall Honda sales. 260k civics and 200k accords.

>Is this real? In Europe you can get a Fiat Panda, brand new, for 9k€. Smallish engine, barebones interior, but overall a pretty decent car.

Mitsubishi Mirage and other ~15k hatches fly off the (metaphorical) shelves.

Just not in the kinds of neighborhoods HN tends to live in.

Also HN's househeeper tends to buy a used Corrolla (or some other hallmark of upper middle class conspicuous consumption) from one of their clients so HN doesn't have that sort of exposure vector either.

19k cars sold in 2020?

https://carsalesbase.com/us-mitsubishi-mirage/

That is a tiny tiny fraction of things like Corrola and Civic.

Used of course, you can't buy a new car for £1K anywhere.

nissan versa starts at $15k. it's a subcompact sedan that I would never want to own, but it has four doors and can fit two child seats in the back row.