Car prices seem to rise non-stop despite advances in manufacturing technology. But a TV, or smart home devices, or some other similar piece of home tech continually becomes cheaper from the time it is released. Why?
In: Economics
Because they keep adding stuff to cars.
Newer safety and reliability and fuel efficiency tech.
A lot of that stuff isn’t visible, but are both much less likely to get you injured or killed in a crash, and much less likely to have one in a newer car than an old one. Ideally they are also better integrated with tech and have more reliability monitoring etc.
Some markets (usually the developing world) have very cheap cars that might share a model name with a western car, but a lot of them have fewer crash protections or mitigations, slower tech etc.
You can make cheaper cars, but remember they need to exist in the whole markets. So the EU you need to do everything from the dense slow miserable streets of a big city, to 130km/h highways in France or the autobahns in Germany. In the US you have NYC and Los angles, and Texas highways that are like 135km/h speed limits.
My 2020 model year car has twice the engine displacement (and twice the horsepower) of my model year 2015 car, yet used about 60% the fuel/km as the old one. And that’s not even a full change in generation (granted, different cars, a bmw 328i to an m850i but same manufacturer).
Some of it is also just customer choice. People want more space, more speed, less maintenance headaches (my new car has laser headlights that should last more than 10 years, my 1993 dodge had headlights that lasted 2, but were 1/10th the price or less).
I don’t have time to look for a source, but years ago Tata made a car in India for 1500 bucks. It was… A car. That occasionally caught fire, but was cheap. To make it safe enough to sell in North America would have increased the price to something like 15k. You can have cheap, or you can have safe. Regulators have generally settled on safe. The EU values pedestrian safety more than the US, but since the big manufacturers want to make the same car for all markets those benefits tend to be spread out pretty well.
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