On Sat, Sep 20, 2014 at 3:35 PM, Orionworks - Steven Vincent Johnson < orionwo...@charter.net> wrote:
> Hopefully economies of scale will eventually lower the entry level price > to around $10k. That would give the Smart Car a run for its money. > Even 10k dollars feels steep for a car that was manufactured out of plastic with a 1 million dollar printer and assembled with minimal labor. Once this technology is more widespread, a company like Google will get irritated at the steep markup and begin to look into what it would take to offer them at 2-4k. Note that cheaper cars means more drivers and more fuel consumption. Perhaps there are not enough people in absolute terms that fit that demographic in North America and Europe to matter. But there could be plenty in China, India and Africa in the medium term. European cities were largely in place before cars came along, and they have pleasant, dense city centers and viable mass transportation. North American cities came along just as cars were being widely adopted, and they are spread out and unattractive for that reason. In many European cities you can get along just fine without a car for much of the time. In many North American cities you pretty much need a car, and viable mass transit is hard to put in place because the population density is fairly low. Eric
