Why aren't cars less expensive?

[Furcifer]

Now days, pretty much all machining is CNC

Kinda. It's computer controlled at least. That may have been what PT meant in his first post. We have (well used to) a lot of machine shops here in Windsor. Some of the best in the World. CNC is still pretty much 1 offs and precision work as it much more expensive.

 

[Shrike]

As I said in my response to timhau, cars today use less steel and more aluminum/plastics in manufacturing, so while the amount may be at or near the same, the materials themselves are not. Also, cars are smaller, though they may weigh the same or near the same.

OK, I'll try to respond more, but start here.
Today's steel is incomparable with 1960's steel. Yes, less is used, but it's high-quality high-tensile steel.

 

[jayh]

Mandated items contribute as well. In the US, stability control is now mandated, which adds all sorts of things to each car.

This is why tire pressure monitoring is now common. You need properly inflated tires for the stability control to work properly.

Several thousand dollars if if you add in the the required ABS brakes to accomplish that. Wasted money for a competent driver.

Airbags were mandated, which added expense and complexity. Then the mandate was changed to accomodate small people, which added more expense and complexity.

Another example of dimishing returns for higher expense. Seatbelts, simple, inexpensive, contribute far more to saving lives than airbags (which are expensive to buy and very expensive to replace after even a modest collision... paid from insurance rates)

Emission controls get tighter and tighter.

ironically with all the concern about fuel consumption, the US EPA's constant moving of the goal posts especially on diesels has relegated the engines of even a couple of years ago to the scrap pile. Not only are the new ones vastly more complex, but consumers are paying for the expensive redevelopment processes. When Dodge trucks went to the 2010 standards (they did a bit early) there was an additional $1000 above and beyond the existing costs just for equipment to meet the 2010 standard.

Crash testing gets harder and harder to pass.

Much of that is probably not too expensive when buying the car but it does increase the cost of collision repairs enormously. Modern cars are far more difficult to repair properly.

I think government mandated equipment plays a big role.

Damn right, but partly consumers too. Air conditioning, sound systems, fancy exteriors, interiors, gadgetry are willingly added to the cost.

 

[stevea]

Perhaps I I'm giving you more credit than you deserve, but I figured that if you didn't know what Moore's Law was, you could look it up or something.

Snicker - what a goose ! I don't need to look up ML, and nor is it helpful to this discussion. ML is an OBSERVATION, so it has no value as an explanation. To answer the OP you must explain why autos haven't followed the same trajectory - as semiconductors or disks and apparently you don't understand.

Technology makes things cheaper --- that's its job.

No - it mostly makes preferable products at acceptable prices - it is not fundamentally about "cheaper", tho 'that is sometimes the case. Is your carbon fiber framed road bike cheaper than a 1960s Schwinn ? Is your electric toothbrush cheaper than a basic one ? Is your smartphone cheaper than a "dial" phone; similarly for the service. Is a vacuum cleaner cheaper than a broom ? Is a photo quality digital camera cheaper than a film based one ? Is your new AMD CPU chip cheaper than the 1985 one ? Of course not. Technology offers different trade-offs - which is why it's disruptive.

The development of the assembly line and mass production, for example, made hard goods much cheaper because labor costs dropped dramatically. The Green Revolution (and specifically the development of HVY maize ["corn"], wheat, and rice) made food much cheaper. The development of antibiotics (and before that, sulfa drugs) made antibacterial treatment more effective, and hence made "health" much cheaper

No - AntiBios made health more common at a modestly increased price - not cheaper. You've missed the mark. Factory methods and crop development are fundamentally about productivity. Pharma is not.

But all three of these were relatively one-off events; we haven't really seen the sort of continuous geometric improvement in antibacterial drugs; modern antibiotics aren't 1000x cheaper and more effective than pencillin (as penicillin was over its competition).

Which say a ZERO about WHY these three were "one off" and why semiconductor and surface sciences advances have been more regular over a long period of time. You are dancing around the core topic without touching it.

We could probably develop a new unobtainium-based alloy (or plastic or something) that cut the cost of cars in half if we worked on it long enough and were very lucky. What we couldn't expect to do is to develop another alloy that cut costs in half again only two years later, and yet another cost-cutting alloy two years after that.

That's the significance of Moore's law in this context. Technology tends to dominate inflation, but technology rarely has such a long and productive run.

Off-the-rails WRONG ! Since the materials cost is only a small fraction of auto cost, the discovery of some new material cannot have more than a marginal impact on price.

A decreased semi line width is a single parameter that improves transistor density and doing so has a salutory effect on all the other important factors (except for power conrtol). If the entire goal in auto making was to make the auto lighter, and no other parameter was of concern, then we'd have 40kg autos next year. But vehicles have numerous complexly intereacting requirements ... safety, ergonomics, visual appeal, fuel efficiency price, cargo capacity, and dozens more. There is a vast amount of design tension in autos and the design features directly impact price. Yes CPUs also have a lot of design tension, but this tension doesn't greatly impact the cost model - you'll still get twice as many CPUs on on a wafer 2 years downstream.

No - there is no single parameter that can cut auto price in half and leave you with an acceptable product. We'd need to learn to make autos in an entirely different way OR accept some very different functional specs.