Car Affordability Has Nothing on Eggs

You can read this in the time it takes to soft-boil one of these treasures.

Sorry-not-sorry to hit the affordability question again, but the excellent Charlie Bilello posted this chart today, and it really supports my view (or reinforces my bias) that affordability is an issue in the American car world these days, but is far from a crisis. I point to stable sales volumes as the main piece of evidence for this view, but here’s another take: cumulative price increases over the last four years, for various goods:

New car prices are lagging the field. The chickens are way out ahead.

Anyway, if there is a price crisis here, it is in auto insurance, which we’ve all been reading about. It is fascinating to me that nowadays for millions of new car buyers their biggest annual cash expense (I am not talking about depreciation) is going to be insurance, not fuel. I sometimes wonder if this reality is part of the headwind that the EV transition is facing. Years ago the cost of fueling an ICE was so relatively high (taking into account both the gas price and the poor fuel economy of gasoline cars then) that an EV made great sense in terms of saving on your largest annual cash cost of ownership: gas. As that bill recedes in relative salience (thanks, insurance!) the urge to switch to electrons somewhat abates.

At least no car, as far as I know, is fueled by eggs. There are of course, attempts to enlist into the fuel business cows, who anyone who has ever walked across a pasture knows are… prolific… in their output.