Final vehicle built at factory in Cologne as carmaker moves over to electric vehicles

  • RidcullyTheBrown@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is interesting:

    “That’s because there isn’t much margin in small, cheap cars any more. Right now, Fiesta isn’t viable, and the same will be true for other brands.[…]”

    I wonder why. Are young people not buying cars anymore?

    • chris@fedia.ioOP
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      1 year ago

      I think the key is “not much margin” - they just aren’t making enough profit and presumably don’t want to put the price up.

      • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Rather, they already have put the prices up as high as the market is willing to bear.

    • theinspectorst@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      The shift towards bigger cars has been noted as a Europe-wide phenomenon, albeit we’re nowhere near the US scenario where a Ford 150 pickup truck is the best-selling car: https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/06/21/a-farewell-to-small-cars-the-industrial-icons-that-put-europe-on-wheels

      Tl;dr / if you don’t have Economist access - the reasons they give for this shift are: it’s easier for manufacturers to pass on costs with bigger cars; there are fewer good small electric cars anyway, and electric is becoming increasingly important given forthcoming climate policies; modern booster seat regulations have pushed families towards larger cars; and people have more money nowadays so tend to buy bigger cars.

      I don’t think we’ll ever end up in a US situation though given how our towns and cities are designed. I hugely value having a small B-segment car (e.g. Fiesta/Polo/Fabia/Yaris) for parking in London and don’t think I could see myself going larger than a C-segment (e.g. Focus/Golf/Octavia/Corolla) in the future unless I moved fully out of London.

    • mackwinston@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      They likely are - there likely never was much margin in them.

      The reason manufacturers are pushing SUVs so hard is that they are cheap to build but can be sold at premium prices.

    • omgarm@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      I’m from the Netherlands but buying a new car here.is crazy. It’s so much more than buying second hand. I think lease cars are most of the new models.

    • Xeelee@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It’s mainly because of emission standards. Those require extra technology that serves up the cost. That makes smaller cars more expensive and this it’s attractive. This will change, once batteries become cheaper. Putting together a small EV is much easier and you don’t have to worry about emissions. We will see that within the next five years or so.

      • HumanPenguin@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        While that def increases cost. Safety standards have much more to do with it. As these also make a huge difference to size and weight of cars.