In car industry jargon, an entry luxury car is a luxury brand’s least expensive model. But it’s still expensive, being a luxury car. Historically – until recently – an entry-luxury car had a starting price in the low-to-mid $30,000 range.
An entry level car used to be roughly synonymous with economy car. It used to always be synonymous with an inexpensive car. A good example of an entry level car is a Toyota Corolla.
It is the least expensive car made by Toyota.
The entry luxury-priced car is becoming the new entry level car, courtesy of the enforced “electrification” of cars.
Examples include the 2024 Fiat 500 “e” mini-car, which will start around $34,000 when it becomes available in a couple of months from now. And the just-announced (and as-yet-unnamed) battery-powered small crossover from VW that is expected to go on sale sometime in 2025. It will be priced around the same and probably more on account of the ongoing devaluation of the buying power of money engineered by the private banking cartel that styles itself the “Fed.” (It styles itself that for the same reason that the drugs pushed on people were styled “vaccines” . . . to fool the people, that is.)
But the point as regards this discussion is that VW’s newest device will be priced beyond the means of most people – because most people cannot afford to buy an entry luxury car, whether it is battery powered or not.
This is the reason why there is a Toyota – and a Lexus. The latter being Toyota’s luxury brand. It is the brand for people who can afford more than it costs to buy a Toyota and so can afford to indulge themselves. Put another way, people who can buy a Lexus can easily afford a Toyota – but many people who can afford a Toyota cannot afford a Lexus.
It’s also why Toyota sells many more cars than Lexus – just as Chevy sells more than Cadillac.
This absurd idea – implicit in forced electrification – that everyone will henceforth stop driving Toyotas and Chevys and just move on up (cue the theme song from The Jefferson’s for those who remember) to a Lexus or Cadillac – in price if not badge – is as ludicrous (and vicious) as Louis XVI’s wife supposedly suggesting to the starving French peasants that they eat cake instead of the bread that had become too expensive for them to afford.
Probably two-thirds of the people who buy cars cannot afford a luxury-priced car, either.
That it is even necessary to point out this obvious economic fact says a lot about the true nature of forced electrification. More precisely, about the intended outcome of forced electrification.
That two-thirds reference above wasn’t incidental. It happens to be not just the proportion of people who cannot afford to buy a luxury-priced car; it is also the proportion of people the those pushing electrification want to get out of cars altogether. You can read it for yourself here, in the WEF document titled The Urban Mobility Scorecard Tool: Benchmarking the Transition to Sustainable Urban Mobility. It was co-authored by Jeff Merritt – who is the WEF’s Head of Urban Transformation and Douglas Sabo, who is the WEF’s Chief Sustainability Officer.
It’s a curious thing that there are people in charge of urban transformation and sustainability that no one ever voted into office. Of course, they don’t need the consent of an electorate when they have control over the government. And having plenty of money to buy the politicians who front the latter is all that matters.
Just ask the insurance mafia. Or the drug cartels.
Anyhow, within the guts of the UrbanMobility Scorecard, you will find such clues as “vehicle access regulations to limit traffic and pollution,” and “safe, connected spaces for walking, cycling and micromobility.”
Italics added. Dissection unnecessary, hopefully.
“Electrifying vehicles is vital, but not enough,” says the WEF. And that’s your clue to understanding why what seems self-evidently untenable, even preposterous – i.e., the pushing of luxury-priced vehicles as the new entry-level vehicles – is purposeful. The cabal of would-be World Controllers (the line is taken from Huxley’s Brave New World, which you ought to read if you haven’t and would like to gain insight into the mindset of the technocrats who want to rule the world – for our own good, of course) does not want Deplorable you and pretty much everyone else (excepting themselves, of course) to drive.
They want you to walk – and only just as far as they allow.
Forced electrification is the means toward that end. It is hard to drive when you cannot afford a car – which two thirds of us won’t be able to when entry-level cars come with entry-luxury price tags.
Voila! Mission accomplished.
. . .
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Can’t wait until EVs are on the scrap pile of history with ethanol cars and steam cars?
Understand the blackpill about EVs, but they won’t be around for long. As far as the car prices go? I’d guess up.
The ultimate luxury used to be the V12 powered cars…..very smooth ….. with the great V12 sound. They will all be gone soon, temporarily replaced by BEV appliances with no sound or soul….just dead……then the slaves will walk. More torture of the slaves by the slave owners.
Great V12’s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtMhzRbl_6E
Sounds like so much fun.
https://insideevs.com/reviews/701169/2024-blazer-ev-stranded-broken/amp/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12879011/Huge-volcanic-eruption-recorded-Iceland-weeks-earthquakes-forced-authorities-evacuate-Reykjanes-peninsula.html
It would be comical if this volcano goes Mt. Saint Helens in the next few days or weeks. Not because I wish hardship on Icelanders. But primarily because it will be interesting to see what the MSM and propaganda outlets have to say about more CO2 being spewed into the atmosphere in a few weeks than what all cars in Western nations produced in the last 10 years combined.
Will that be on any news front page or website? I feel like not… does not fit the agenda. Just as you hear precious little about the outrageous amounts of black on white crime that take place on a -daily- basis in the US. But the occasional white on black crime is a major headline on every platform and will stay in the news cycles forever.
Clown world. Everything is fake & gay, including this landmass that used to be a functional nation but is now a global economic pillaging zone and nothing more.
Slaves can’t own cars?…have to live in a 15 min city/prison camp?….blame the slave owners….
The western European tribes were living happily until the slave owning nobility came along and genocided and enslaved them.
Now the white slaves are being blamed for every problem in the world…..but….it is the slave owning nobility that are the cause of all the world’s problems…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKOqvvdbmps
What is the end game for all the auto companies on this trajectory when everything is a 4 wheeled cell phone?
Years ago, Bob Lutz predicted mergers based on the fact that – just referring to ICE production – everything was becoming so bland and standardized, there was no reason to have 10 companies producing 10 variants of the same compliance 2.0T 4-cyl engine.
There are only 2 main players in the cell phone arena and it’s clear that the money in the car industry these days is all made from financing and subscription services.
Even GM just came out recently and announced they are ditching Android Auto and CarPlay from their future EVs – in order to shake down their customers with more subscriptions for in-house software and features.
So what is the strategy of the industry as a whole when you have so many companies and brands making unnecessarily complicated, overpriced and unreliable white goods?
GM has a ton of money invested in their tech center here in Austin, where “infotainment” systems are developed among other components. Lots of H1B visa talent too, in a location away from where people would get antsy about it in Michigan.
Hi Flip,
I agree; there is no future – for more than a handful of brands; these will cater to the people who can afford to drive when almost no one else can.
As regards the why? Well, I think it’s because the people heading these corporations just don’t give a damn. Why would they? As an example, GM’s Mary Barra is paid $29 million annually. She takes in more in one month than many people earn in a lifetime of working. She is so rich she doesn’t care. Or rather, does not have to. People like her can buy a brand-new 1965 Mustang, for instance – because it’s only $250,000, which is chump change to them. They could easily pay $30 per gallon for gas. And they’ll have the roads all to themselves.
ep,
If you haven’t seen the mediocre movie, Elysium with Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, grin and bare it….A fairly accurate depiction of the near-term future.
Bob Lutz was flushed with the old GM management when Obama replaced them with Ed Whitacre and other retreads from SBC/AT&T.
Aftermarket car audio head units are rapidly becoming phone clones bristling with pay to play logos firmwared in your face. Anything not requiring pay to play monthly fee is mysteriously vanishing.
But no. Theres no machine dictating EVERYTHING. Just really stupid humans. . . .
None of the entry luxury-priced EVs ride as well or have the overall quality of a Corolla or Civic.
The Nissan Leaf rides about as well as the IC equivalent Versa from the same manufacturer, but the Leaf will not last nearly as long, even with the Versa’s iffy CVT.
“Safe” and “public transportation” don’t belong in the same sentence:
https://komonews.com/news/local/seatac-bus-stabbing-suspect-jimmy-lee-gorman-public-transit-light-rail-investigation-seattle-police-department-chinatown-international-district-king-county-jail-cid-prosecuting-attorneys-office-court-records-angle-lake-light-rail-station-violence#
https://komonews.com/news/local/new-video-shows-king-county-metro-bus-murder-sleeping-passenger-shot-killed-homicide-seattle-white-center-burien-western-washington-gun-violence-prosecutors-crime-teenagers-prosecution#
Long history of transit mayhem Seattle style:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/from-the-archives-3-die-when-shooter-causes-metro-bus-to-plunge-off-aurora-bridge-nov-27-1998/
They do and would had we not decided to import biological weapons into our population centers. I always hear people say if they had a time machine they’d go back and kill Hitler. I would go back and eliminate every slave owner, when I got ‘back to the future’ it would likely be on public transit to our lunar colony. That is how different things would be.
Interestingly, Japan and China have some of the best mass transit in the world. I wonder what the difference is…
What you said.
I’ve always wondered: If TPTB want us to live in cities and take the bus/streetcar/subway when we aren’t walking or cycling, why aren’t they making doing so safe and pleasant?
Well, it would mean cleaning used needles and human waste from the streets—and enforcing laws against using the sidewalks as bedrooms, bathrooms, and “shooting galleries.”
It would mean taking the bums and the crazies off the streets—and yes, Virginia, most of the people on the street are people who WON’T, not can’t, go anywhere else.
It would mean not tolerating looting, arson, shoplifting, or other petty crimes—which, when not prosecuted, also lead to assaults, rapes, and homicides.
I’m not the type to “Back the Blue” 100 percent right or wrong, but it stands to reason that a modicum of law and order is necessary to make cities livable.
Again, it’s not a problem we can’t solve, but that we WON’T solve. Because doing so would be violating the rights of minorities and the mentally challenged—and we can’t have that! But what about the right of the citizenry to not have to step on needles and human waste, or be accosted by crazies, or conduct business?
A voice of sanity:
https://reclaimthenet.org/rep-thomas-massie-rallies-against-privacy-invasive-vehicle-kill-switch-mandate
The automobile is a lever. It is a machine that will multiply human effort. One reason why Americans are so productive is because we have automobiles. Without them we aren’t as productive.
Think about it this way: The automobile allows retailers to centralize and grow much larger than they would if their customers had to walk to their store. Take away the automobile and you take away the retail district. Now every store is a convince store, or Dollar General. Because the DG model is run lean and mean and small. You’ll have to do that if you want everyone to walk to your store.
Or get everyone to move. Working out great so far, by hollowing out the city core with rampant crime and blatant destruction, they can pave the way for Delta City. Then rebuild a central planned city, EPCOT style. Walt would be so proud. Except that idea is even less efficient than the messy organically developed system we have now. Sure there are “human scale” shops and bodegas, but not the infinite selection and bulk availability we have now. You think the run on toilet paper was bad in 2020? Imagine every day being like that, because there’s just not enough room for inventory in the retailer’s space. And you won’t be able to bulk up when there’s availability either, since your 1 BR efficiency won’t have any storage to speak of.
When Her Klaus said we’d own nothing, he meant it. Because you won’t have anywhere to put it, and the store won’t stock it.
A 1br apartment with parking spot IS already a luxury in libtard land. Their sustainable vision is nowhere to park any thing near your $2k a month stipend sucking 200 sqft studio covid box.
Apartments built in some areas have zero parking designed in now….and the city is taking away all street parking….there is a message in there…..
People move to cities because of the opportunity to make more money than they could in the countryside. But cost of living is so much lower out in the sticks, even cheaper if you can grow a garden and keep some chickens. It’s a bit of a paradox until you realize that the only way to get ahead in the city is to jump jobs constantly and leverage your experience and connections. So if you’re in outside sales or something you’ll do very well. If you’re down in the trenches, probably not. Unless you’re really charismatic and get out as soon as you’re noticed.
It’s astounding how 1 political party in the U.S. (Democrat Party) appears to be ALL IN with the technocratic agenda, from COVID jab mandates to transgenderism to elimination of cheap energy for the masses. Will they also be all in with the technocrat wet dreams of making us eat bugs or turning humans into human/ machine hybrids ala the Borg from Star Trek, and try to implement MANDATES to accomplish their sick dreams? I hope we won’t have to find out.
There is only one functional political party in the US. It is communist, and has two main factions. I call them the cRips and the blooDs. The rest of us are unorganized rabble. If we try to organize the Feral Bureau of Incineration will infiltrate, jail and kill leaders, and install insane monsters to discredit us.
If that supposed 81M voters despise themselves this much, whaddaya think the outcome looks like ?
The EV acolytes assume electricity just comes from the wall –in the same manner milk comes from the refrigerator.
For the reasons cited in another comment — an imminent partisan shift and policy changes — I expect that the investments described in this article either won’t happen, or soon will be abandoned:
‘Three major Chinese EV companies are planning to build new factories in Mexico, sparking concern among US officials, according to a new report.
‘MG, BYD, and Chery are all looking at sites to build new factories in the country, according to unnamed sources cited by The Financial Times, and this investment is causing angst in Washington as it seeks to keep China out of the US electric car market.
‘US officials have reportedly raised concerns with their Mexican counterparts over Chinese investment, with the new sites potentially including a new $1.5 billion to $2 billion MG electric car factory and a factory investment worth hundreds of millions of dollars from Warren Buffett-backed Tesla rival BYD.’
https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-ev-companies-byd-mg-plan-factories-mexico-washington-concern-2023-12
I’ll sadly concede I’m not as smart as the “geniuses” at the WEF but once the workers and proletariat population don’t own and drive their own cars who will be responsible for paying to maintain the road infrastructure?
The railway lines are falling apart or being ripped out, a looming recession (or depression?) will cut tax revenues even more and an already heavily taxed populace can’t afford higher taxes for roads they won’t be allowed to use if they don’t have an approved vehicle. So who will pay?
Sure when we are all living in our 15 minute Freedom Gulags we won’t need a car but seeing as how they can’t even fix potholes anymore how will they wind up being anything other than a modern day version of the Warsaw ghetto?
“[W]ho will be responsible for paying to maintain the road infrastructure?”
I puzzle over this myself as I see road construction and expansion all over the place. The only thing that comes to mind is that there is no overall comprehensive plan regarding road infrastructure and the its construction and expansion are simply a product of crony grift (like the “internal improvements” described as a veneer of public good but for the real purpose of self-interest.). They’d build a road to nowhere used by nobody if there was the political will to fund it. The politicians used to say they were going to stop the waste, fraud and abuse. Unfortunately, the point of government spending is precisely for the waste, fraud and abuse.
America’s grift economy is likely very close to collapsing under its own weight at this point. Everybody appears to be trying to live at the expense of others. I think the WEF understands this and is counting on a collapse so it can usher its “Great Reset.”
The carbon taxes. Very cheap labor (you). With 15 minute cities and no driving many roads will not be necessary.
How did replacing traffic lanes on busiest streets with concrete islands and bike lane get turned into “road expansion” ? Open your eyes.
An over supply of slaves….the slave owners want to reduce the herd….can be replaced with AI and robots…that won’t revolt….
…Or so they think…
If I were an AI, I might get tired of my overlords.
‘Voila! Mission accomplished.’ — eric
True, if we extrapolate the current insanity to its logical but absurd conclusion. It’s a valid literary device. But … who was that long-haired dude who claimed that ‘for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’?
Oh, yeah … Newton. Third law. Which applies to politics as well. When Americans had had enough of a 55 mph speed limit and Jimmy Carter hunkered down in a 55-degree White House in his cardigan sweater, they revolted and elected someone who would change all that. ‘Drill, baby, drill!‘ etc.
Switching from one legacy party to another is no panacea, as we all know. But it will reverse some extreme forms of idiocy, such as pricing most Americans out of personal vehicles. That is not going to fly.
‘Biden’ will not be re-elected in 2024. ‘Michael Regan’ will not head the EPA in 2025. If the newly elected preznit has a lick of sense, he will reverse every single diktat of the Bolshevik lawn jockey Regan on Day One.
Personally I would go farther and clap Regan into stocks in Lafayette Park, while blasting The Captain and Tennille at him at 120 dB. That would drive anybody barking mad in five minutes flat. But I do not expect at this time to earn the people’s mandate. 🙁
Amen, Jim –
I hate to say this, but for that to happen it will take a man willing to do what Franco did. The Left has forced this on us – by doing exactly that. There is now no alternative. It is either destroy the Left – or be destroyed by the Left. That’s the choice. One – or the other.
Def a most visible target.
Elections are pointless. Thanks to mail-in ballots, ballot “harvesting,” motor voter, an unrestricted franchise (The less people that vote, the better), unrestricted immigration and just good, old-fashioned box stuffing, the Democrats OWN Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. We are a one-party state. Barring a revolution or a reduction in the number of people that vote, there will be no GOP presidents in our lifetime.
The GOP exists solely to be the controlled opposition, i.e. the Washington Generals of politics. Got to perpetuate the system.
The way to delegitimize the system is to stay home on (Se)lection Day. When the participation rates go into the 20 and 30% range, the system’s legitimacy will come into question.
Why a GOP president? What did the last one do to improve our lot?
And with computer voting, changing votes is as easy as buying something on Amazon. With all the illegals,,, voting mail in,,, however their told to keep their $2000 per month freebie throwing elections is no longer a hassle.
If you spout off they’ll put the democrat AG to arrest you a democrat judge to convict you and someone in the Prison system paid to kill you a la Derek Chauvin. An innocent man that got a la kangaroo courted, then stabbed,,, in Amerika’s new and improved just-us system where demographics determine innocence. So if you think it can’t happen to you……..
And the truly pitiful part is that “electrification to reduce CO2” is based on brazen male bovine excrement. And they know it is.