<story><title>2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV</title><url>http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2017-chevrolet-bolt-ev-test-review</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mevile</author><text>What is amazing to me considering these numbers is that there are enough people buying new cars every year to keep all these car manufacturers around. I&amp;#x27;m a pretty decently employed individual, doing better than most my family and I&amp;#x27;ve only bought one new car ten years ago for $15K a Mazda 3. Who are all these people buying new cars all the time?</text></item><item><author>simonsarris</author><text>&amp;gt; PRICE AS TESTED: $43,905 (base price: $37,495)&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; can be had for &lt;i&gt;less than the price of the average new car.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Emphasis mine and obviously they are factoring in the $7,500 tax credit which I guess is fine.&lt;p&gt;I dislike this &amp;quot;price of the average new car&amp;quot; line and it gets repeated a lot. Car manufacturers must love it since it tries to normalize that price as &amp;quot;average&amp;quot; when its not very representative. Grand total &amp;quot;average new car&amp;quot; price that the media is using everywhere is $33,666, but that&amp;#x27;s only because of the average price of luxury cars and trucks driving the number way, way up. There&amp;#x27;s a breakdown by sector in KBB&amp;#x27;s numbers:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mediaroom.kbb.com&amp;#x2F;new-car-transaction-prices-up-2-percent-march-2016&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mediaroom.kbb.com&amp;#x2F;new-car-transaction-prices-up-2-per...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scroll down to the second table for more realistic numbers. At any rate the &lt;i&gt;median&lt;/i&gt; new car price, if we could get it, would be much more telling. Sadly I can&amp;#x27;t find it anywhere.&lt;p&gt;After the tax credit the base model is the average cost of a Mid-size Pickup Truck ($30,045) or average cost of a sports car ($30,712)&lt;p&gt;But well above the average cost of a mid size car ($25,095) or crossover ($27,056) or subcompact ($17,218)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>linkregister</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m going to do some cocktail napkin math and see if it makes any sense.&lt;p&gt;The total amount of new vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2015 was 17.5 million [1].  Since the average is $33666, we can assume half are above, and half are below that price.  In reality, there are far fewer than half above that price, since an outsized sale price pushes that average up.&lt;p&gt;Half of 17.5 million is 8.75 million.  The U.S. Census estimates the 2015 population was 323,995,528 [2], with 116,211,092 households [3].  With every household replacing their car every five years or so (total guess), that leaves us 23.2 million households that should have been buying a car in 2015.  That means that about 37.7% of the eligible U.S. households bought a car worth over $33666.&lt;p&gt;That is bizarre enough that it leads me to believe there is a serious fault in my methodology or it just so happened that car sales were abnormally high in 2015 due to an enormous rise in consumer confidence.  Either way, I&amp;#x27;m more confused now than when I started scribbling on my metaphorical cocktail napkin.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.google.com&amp;#x2F;search?q=site%3Awsj.com+U.S.+Car+Sales+Set+Record+in+2015&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.google.com&amp;#x2F;search?q=site%3Awsj.com+U.S.+Car+Sale...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.census.gov&amp;#x2F;popclock&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.census.gov&amp;#x2F;popclock&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.census.gov&amp;#x2F;quickfacts&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.census.gov&amp;#x2F;quickfacts&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV</title><url>http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/2017-chevrolet-bolt-ev-test-review</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mevile</author><text>What is amazing to me considering these numbers is that there are enough people buying new cars every year to keep all these car manufacturers around. I&amp;#x27;m a pretty decently employed individual, doing better than most my family and I&amp;#x27;ve only bought one new car ten years ago for $15K a Mazda 3. Who are all these people buying new cars all the time?</text></item><item><author>simonsarris</author><text>&amp;gt; PRICE AS TESTED: $43,905 (base price: $37,495)&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; can be had for &lt;i&gt;less than the price of the average new car.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Emphasis mine and obviously they are factoring in the $7,500 tax credit which I guess is fine.&lt;p&gt;I dislike this &amp;quot;price of the average new car&amp;quot; line and it gets repeated a lot. Car manufacturers must love it since it tries to normalize that price as &amp;quot;average&amp;quot; when its not very representative. Grand total &amp;quot;average new car&amp;quot; price that the media is using everywhere is $33,666, but that&amp;#x27;s only because of the average price of luxury cars and trucks driving the number way, way up. There&amp;#x27;s a breakdown by sector in KBB&amp;#x27;s numbers:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mediaroom.kbb.com&amp;#x2F;new-car-transaction-prices-up-2-percent-march-2016&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mediaroom.kbb.com&amp;#x2F;new-car-transaction-prices-up-2-per...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scroll down to the second table for more realistic numbers. At any rate the &lt;i&gt;median&lt;/i&gt; new car price, if we could get it, would be much more telling. Sadly I can&amp;#x27;t find it anywhere.&lt;p&gt;After the tax credit the base model is the average cost of a Mid-size Pickup Truck ($30,045) or average cost of a sports car ($30,712)&lt;p&gt;But well above the average cost of a mid size car ($25,095) or crossover ($27,056) or subcompact ($17,218)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>phkahler</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; Who are all these people buying new cars all the time?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure where you&amp;#x27;re from, but this is Hacker News, so I&amp;#x27;ll just ask - Who are all these people who can afford to live in California?  ;-)&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s all relative. Remember, the annual new car market is the number of cars on the road divided by the life of a car. This accounts for the sale of used cars as well.</text></comment>