Chapter 1
Chapter 1
The Basic Transportation Vehicle Act A Framework for an Affordable American Car, Built at Scale Draft policy framework | William Foster Wood | September twenty twenty-six
Summary
The United States no longer sells a new car for under twenty thousand dollars. The Nissan Versa, the last one, has been discontinued, and the average new vehicle now sells for about forty-nine thousand dollars. Millions of working families depend on aging used cars whose failures they cannot afford to fix. When the car breaks, the job, the doctor's appointment, and the school pickup go with it.
This framework creates a new federal class of vehicle, the Basic Transportation Vehicle: simple, durable, repairable by any mechanic, and sold new for roughly nine thousand to twelve thousand dollars. It is designed not as a niche product but as a mass-market category capable of reaching one-third of U.S. new-vehicle sales, about five million vehicles a year.
The model is the nineteen sixty Ford Falcon: an engine, a transmission, a body, seats, and parts that bolt on. The Falcon's base price of just under two thousand dollars equals roughly twenty-two thousand dollars today. Modern factories, with automated stamping and welding and far higher labor productivity, can build a comparable car for about half that once the regulatory costs now attached to every vehicle are removed.
Part One. The Problem
Part One. The Problem
Entry-level cars have disappeared because automakers earn far more on large trucks and SUVs, and because every new vehicle must now carry the same regulatory and electronic content regardless of price. A modern economy car contains dozens of networked computer modules running its windows, locks, sensors, displays, and driver aids. Each is a point of failure, and each failure costs hundreds of dollars to diagnose and replace. For a family living paycheck to paycheck, a single failed module can take a car off the road for good.
The burden falls hardest in rural America, where public transit runs hourly or not at all and a car is the only way to reach work. There is no product on the market for these families. The used cars they can afford carry the same complexity as new ones, only older and closer to failure.