$1000 in tariffs can pay an American factory worker’s total compensation for something like 15-20 hours.
The Suzuki Samurai’s cult following is irrelevant to this discussion, which is about vehicles that will sell in high quantities in the United States. You might as well tell me that Disney should start making biopics about famous computer scientists instead of their next Marvel movie.
I am talking about the cars that are the bread and butter of the business of the global automakers.
Also, if your “disrupt the industry” plan is to sell cheap stuff, you’re basically dooming yourself to have the lowest margins. A $5,000 car can only make $5,000. So you sell 10 shit boxes and Ford sells one F-150 and makes the same amount of money but on a higher profit margin because they only had to make one vehicle.
And again, the US market has spoken on cheap shitty vehicles. City cars struggle to survive and most have exited the market.
Ask all your family and friends what they think about their next car being a Nissan Versa or Chevy Spark with no options. How many of them drive something nicer and larger?
I would be highly surprised if the raw ingredients for any car would be more then 4k, but that's also not a very useful metric.. i guess a cpu Would be a few cents
Now, I'm skeptical that, after all the US safety regulations are met, that it could still be made for $4,000, but the utter manufacturing advantage of paying Chinese workers in Chinese factories local wages is not to be underestimated.