The Withering Dream of a Cheap American Electric Car
廉价美国电动车的凋零梦想

The key problem: America doesn’t really sell cheap new cars anymore. 
关键问题：美国实际上不再销售便宜的新车。

Why would any automaker offer an EV—with all of that costly technology—at a price point that’s half of what the average new vehicle goes for these days? 
为什么任何汽车制造商会以当前平均新车价格一半的价格提供一款电动车——尽管这需要昂贵的技术？

“I think having a regular $25,000 model is pointless,” Musk said a few weeks ago. “It would be silly.” 
“我认为拥有一个常规的 25,000 美元的车型是毫无意义的，”马斯克几周前说。“这太傻了。”

Yes, the chief executive says Tesla TSLA -1.15%decrease; red down pointing triangle is still working on a $25,000 robotaxi to arrive in 2026. But for those who don’t think his driverless cars are actually going to happen by then or for Luddites who just want to buy a new $25,000 EV with a steering wheel and pedals—no luck.
是的，首席执行官表示，特斯拉仍在研发一款预计于 2026 年推出的 25,000 美元机器人出租车。但对于那些认为他的无人驾驶汽车在那时不会实现的人，或者那些只想购买一辆带方向盘和踏板的新 25,000 美元电动车的反对者来说——没有机会。

Musk isn’t alone in taking a sour view of making a cheap EV for the U.S.
马斯克并不是唯一对在美国制造廉价电动车持消极看法的人。

“That market sucks,” Peter Rawlinson, chief executive of Lucid Motors, told me and my colleague Christopher Mims for our new podcast, called “Bold Names.”
“那个市场糟透了，”Lucid Motors 的首席执行官彼得·罗林森在我们新的播客“大胆名字”中对我和我的同事克里斯托弗·米姆斯说道。

Lucid LCID -3.33%decrease; red down pointing triangle which has begun taking orders for its coming $90,000 version of the new electric SUV called the Gravity, aims to bring out a more affordable midsize vehicle to compete against the Tesla Model Y in late 2026. That vehicle is said to cost less than $50,000, but a cheap EV is something Rawlinson said he would only support by licensing his technology to another company.
Lucid LCID-3.33% 已开始接受其即将推出的 90,000 美元新电动 SUV 重力版的订单，计划在 2026 年底推出一款更实惠的中型车型，以与特斯拉 Model Y 竞争。据说该车型的价格将低于 50,000 美元，但 Rawlinson 表示，他只会通过将其技术授权给其他公司来支持一款廉价电动车。

Tech News Briefing

Bold Names: Why This Tesla Pioneer Says the Cheap EV Market 'Sucks'

Tesla, and its CEO Elon Musk, are the big names in electric vehicles, but a lot of competitors are nipping at their heels, including one led by a former top Tesla engineer. Peter Rawlinson is the CEO of Lucid, a billion-dollar auto startup he says has better technology than its rivals. The company recently completed a $1.75 billion stock offering, and has backing from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Now, as major automakers such as Volkswagen, General Motors and Ford pull back on their EV ambitions, find out why Rawlinson says Lucid’s all-in on luxury vehicles with a high price tag and, eventually, smaller batteries. Plus, why he says he won’t be building a $20,000 EV any time soon. He speaks to WSJ’s Tim Higgins and Christopher Mims in episode one of our interview series Bold Names. Further Reading Why Elon Musk’s Robotaxi Dreams Are Premature Elon Musk Plays a Familiar Song: Robot Cars Are Coming Ultralong-Range Electric Cars Are Arriving. Say Goodbye to Charging Stops. Used EVs Sell for Bargain Prices Now, Putting Owners and Dealers in a Bind Sign up for the WSJ's free Technology newsletter.Read Transcript

24:58

1x

Subscribe

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

iHeartRadio

TuneIn

RSS

Amazon Alexa

Explore Audio Center

“That market is notorious because you get into mass manufacture—terrible, low margins,” he said of the low-price EVs. “To install the manufacturing base for millions of these units makes little sense to me.”
“那个市场臭名昭著，因为你进入了大规模生产——利润低得可怕，”他谈到低价电动车时说道。“为数百万个这样的单位建立制造基地对我来说毫无意义。”

Abandoning the idea of a $25,000 car comes as a blow to those who were betting that the electrification of the automobile was on track to happen seemingly overnight—with EVs for every pocketbook replacing the tens of millions of vehicles on the roadways. 
放弃 25,000 美元汽车的想法对那些原本寄希望于汽车电气化会在一夜之间实现的人来说是一个打击——他们认为各种价位的电动车将取代数千万在道路上行驶的汽车。

Instead, we’ve swung back to a belief that the transition, at least in the U.S., is going to be slower. 
相反，我们又回到了一个信念，即在美国，过渡将会更慢。

Musk upended the car industry almost two years ago with his incredible claims about Tesla’s ability to slash costs as it sought to develop a lower-priced EV while at the same time starting a price war by cutting the prices of the Model 3 sedan and Model Y sport-utility vehicle.
马斯克在近两年前颠覆了汽车行业，他声称特斯拉能够降低成本，致力于开发一款低价电动车，同时通过降低 Model 3 轿车和 Model Y 运动型多用途车的价格发起了一场价格战。

Rivals, lest they be left behind Tesla and its now-discarded claims, have aimed for cheap EVs of their own. But their broader efforts to electrify have been running into trouble. Ford Motor, for example, last month said it was pausing production of its electric F-150 Lightning, which starts at around $63,000, in the midst of slumping demand. 
竞争对手们，担心自己会被特斯拉及其现在被抛弃的主张甩在后面，纷纷推出自己的廉价电动车。然而，他们在电气化方面的更广泛努力却遇到了麻烦。例如，福特汽车上个月表示，由于需求下滑，它暂停了电动 F-150 Lightning 的生产，该车型起售价约为 63,000 美元。

A slowdown in the rate of EV sales growth has complicated the picture. So has the growing anticipation that the new Trump administration will eliminate federal tax credits that have made EVs more affordable for buyers. The cheapest car Tesla currently sells in the U.S. starts at around $43,000—or $35,500 with a federal tax credit of $7,500. 
电动车销售增长速度的放缓使情况变得复杂。同时，人们对新特朗普政府将取消联邦税收抵免的预期也在增加，这些抵免使电动车对买家更具可负担性。特斯拉目前在美国销售的最便宜的汽车起价约为 43,000 美元，扣除 7,500 美元的联邦税收抵免后，价格为 35,500 美元。

Building and selling a cheap car for the U.S.—EV or not—was already difficult. 
在美国制造和销售一款廉价汽车——无论是电动车还是其他类型——本就困难重重。

To start, profits can be thin. And that’s before adding expensive batteries to the equation, before inflation jacked prices up for everything, and before Chinese rivals got really, really good at making really, really inexpensive EVs of their own.
首先，利润可能很微薄。这还不包括昂贵的电池成本，在通货膨胀将所有物品价格抬高之前，以及在中国竞争对手在制造自己非常便宜的电动车方面变得非常出色之前。

A lot of attention has focused on the fact that new cars, like everything these days, just cost way more than they used to. 
许多人关注到，新车的价格就像如今的所有事物一样，远远高于以前。

The average transaction price for a new vehicle sold in the U.S. last month was $48,623, according to Kelley Blue Book, roughly $10,000 higher than in 2019, before the pandemic. 
根据凯利蓝皮书，上个月美国新车的平均交易价格为 48,623 美元，比 2019 年疫情前高出大约 10,000 美元。

A decade ago, about 40% of the new-vehicle transactions in the U.S. were less than $25,000, including incentives and discounts, according to the researcher J.D. Power. This year, that figure is 9%. 
十年前，美国约有 40%的新车交易价格低于 25,000 美元，包括激励和折扣，研究机构 J.D. Power 表示。今年，这一数字降至 9%。

In 2020, when Musk fanned the flames of excitement for a $25,000 car that he said was in the offing, the new-vehicle market in the U.S. was a much different thing. Even then, roughly a quarter of the new-vehicle transactions were for less than $25,000. 
在 2020 年，当马斯克激发了对一款他所说即将推出的 2.5 万美元汽车的热情时，美国的新车市场却大相径庭。即便在那时，约有四分之一的新车交易价格低于 2.5 万美元。

A year later, according to J.D. Power, it was 15%. It then fell to 6% before slightly rebounding this year as car companies offered deals to help move vehicles as higher interest rates made buying a car harder for some.

What happened? The pandemic. Prices shot up—first in the midst of supply shortages, and then they stayed high as automakers adjusted their lineup to cut out low-profit vehicles. 

“As automakers were profit maximizing during the supply chain crisis era, you are going to prioritize the bigger vehicles, the more expensive vehicles with their higher margins,” Tyson Jominy, vice president of data and analytics at J.D. Power, told me. “Now we just don’t have” these cheaper models. 

Today, just four models account for more than two-thirds of all vehicles with suggested retail prices of less than $25,000 in the U.S.—Toyota’s Corolla, Kia’s Forte, Nissan’s Sentra and Chevrolet’s Trax.

It isn’t as though people don’t want cheap cars. Now, many are just left buying used cars. 

What has Western automotive executives’ stomachs churning is that they might have inadvertently left a huge opening for Chinese rivals who have shown an ability to build inexpensive EVs that consumers outside the U.S. are gobbling up. 

While Trump has promised even heftier tariffs to effectively keep Chinese imports out, the president-elect has suggested he might be open to Chinese automakers’ setting up factories in the U.S.—though such a move would mean their labor costs would surely increase compared with what they’re accustomed to back home. 

Even for Musk, though, the world seems to be shifting quickly. He has said Tesla sales could rise as much as 30% next year by offering cheaper versions of existing models. 

“The amount of work required to make a lower-cost car is insanely high,” Musk told analysts in October. “It is harder to get like 20% of the cost out of a car than it is to design the car and build the entire factory in the first place—it’s like excruciating.” 

He added: “There’s not a lot of movies made about the heroes who got 20% of the cost out of a car, but let me tell you, there should be.”

Write to Tim Higgins at tim.higgins@wsj.com

The EV Transition

More coverage of the auto industry's challenging shift, selected by the editors

China’s EV Makers Set Sights on Latin America in Global Expansion

China’s BYD Dominates Foreign Rivals With $14,000 Plug-In Hybrid

China Seeks to Dominate Autonomous Driving

Auto Industry’s EV Retreat Hastens