Quote:
Originally Posted by Iron Lung Jimmy
There are very real differences between now and the 80's.
People in the 80's didn't flock to small Japanese cars because they suddenly thought it would be fun to drive them, or that they were impressively stylish, or for whatever other fashionable reasons people choose a car. They flocked to small Japanese cars because gasoline had gotten very expensive and Japanese cars got much better fuel economy. Not only that, but the Japanese cars cost less. There was a very real financial incentive, both immediate and long term.
Then, having bought them for those reasons, they discovered that the build quality was far, far superior to the crap the Big 3 was selling and the rest is history.
Today's push to EV's is largely government, not consumer driven. And instead of a fuel shortage which was costing real people real money, the reason is nebulous climate change warnings which, if we are being honest, are way down the list of most regular people's concerns. Way down the list.
And the government knows this.
So, in order to get people to buy cars they don't really want in order to solve a problem they don't really care about, it does two things - puts harsh regulations on the type of car they do not want to be sold - and threatens even harsher ones - and financially incentivizes consumers to buy the type of car they, the government, wants them to buy.
In a vacuum you are correct about the intent of the IRA incentives, but there were government incentives going back to practically the first Tesla that rolled off the line. Those incentives were for the sole purpose of making EV's more competitive with ICE so people would buy them and, to my way of thinking, today's incentives are no more than that.
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Quality of Japanese cars wasn't all that. They were in fact worse in many cases. Americans bought Japanese cars because of High gas, then they found insurance was much lower, the fake news hyped the japanese car because they were positioned to benefit financially along with politicians. Notice how as soon as japanese cars began being dumped on us shores just as the fake gas crises hit. Perfect and planned timing. Everyone in the know, politicians, media were all position to make money. Notice how everyone loved American cars, then almost over night the media began trashing them. The government began slamming them with mandates forcing them to cut corners to stay in business. Meanwhile quality did go down, then the japanese cars that were trash began improving because the US was buying them, then the japanese quickly reinvested to improve their quality as US makers were still struggling with the mandates, there reputation was being damaged. The small underpowered go kart like japanese car did not have to meet the same EPA as America because they were small 4 bangers that already met the requirements, easily competing against gas guzzling V8s that were just fine a few years earlier when gas was just 32cents a gallon. Lots of people got rich back then from that scam and still are benefiting to this day.