There is a fundamental truth you have to understand about car companies:They do not exist to make cars. They exist to make money. That distinction, analyst Kevin Tynan tells me, is why they’re not really interested in making affordable electric vehicles.

Perhaps that’s an oversimplification. Tynan is the director of research at an auto-dealer-focused investment bank, the Presidio Group, with decades of experience as an analyst at firms like Bloomberg Intelligence. What he means isn’t that automakers have no interest in affordable products. It’s that their interest begins and ends with winning customers who will eventually buy more expensive, higher-margin products.

One of the auto industry’s dirtiest secrets is that at scale, it doesn’t cost that much more to make a bigger, more expensive than a smaller and cheaper one. But they can charge you a lot more for the former, which makes this a game of profit margins and not just profits. In recent years especially, that’s a big part of why your new car choices have skewed so heavily toward bigger crossovers, SUVs and trucks.

  • @[email protected]
    10•3 months ago

    I up voted you because the weights aren’t that drastically different rn, but a Chevy Bolt is 3500lb while a larger civic with more cargo and passenger room is 3000.

      • @[email protected]
        1•3 months ago

        But the bolt ev is a hatchback. The bolt EUV which is a small crossover is 3700lb, so comparing it to mid and large size crossovers is unfair to them, as they have more cargo and passenger room.

        The CX3 weighs 3000lb, the Crosstrek is 3300lb, Honda HRV is 3200, the Taos is 3200lb, the Corolla cross is 3200lb, etc.

        In the category of mid/large crossovers, a Model Y is 4200lb, an ID4 is 4500lb, and ioniq 5 is roughly 4200lb, an ev6 is 4200lb etc. and most of these go way higher too with long range options.