u/Many_Bedroom_2014

Been digging into why new cars have gottenso unaffordable and the numbers are honestly worse than I expected.

Average new car price: $49,220

Average monthly payment: $777 (a record)

Nearly 1 in 5 buyers now pay over $1,000/month

Only 7 new car models left under $25,000

Median household income only grew 2.6% in real

terms since 2020 — car prices grew way faster

Made a full video breaking down the price story,the loan-term stretching, who's actually stillbuying new cars (spoiler: it's increasingly justhigh earners), and what you can actually do about

it if you're car shopping right now.

https://youtu.be/3R_mCMPBSZs

Curious what people here paid for their last car vs a decade ago.

$67 billion in combined EV losses across

Honda, Ford, GM, and Stellantis. Toyota: record revenue, record US sales, hybrids at all-time high market share.

Full story on how this happened and what Toyota's new challenge is now that they've won the EV debate: https://youtu.be/vXdzUxrDmSU

Been researching the full story of how new car prices got to $50,000 average and the dealer markup section was genuinely surprising to me.

During the shortage, dealers were adding $5,000–$10,000 market adjustments above MSRP on popular trucks and SUVs. Some were going higher. Average buyer discount went from 20% below MSRP to literally zero overnight.

Dealers had record profit years in 2021 and 2022 while selling fewer cars than ever. That's an extraordinary business outcome.

Now that inventory has recovered the markups have largely gone away and incentives are back ,Cox Automotive says average discount returned to about $3,958 per vehicle by late 2024.But prices never came back down. The market found a new floor during the shortage and stayed there.

From people who work in the industry ,how much of the current $50,000 average is structural vs cyclical? Is there any realistic scenario where prices return to pre-pandemic levels?

Gas hit $4.48 this week and traders are betting $5.60 before it peaks. Made a full breakdown of exactly why trumps may 11th refusal and the Strait of Hormuz closure means prices won't drop even after the war ends — curious what people are paying locally right now