Cars are just more expensive in Europe than in Australia. In Europe, cars are still a bit of a luxury, whereas in Australia, they’re an absolute necessity.

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jillesvangurp 28 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

There also higher tariffs and transport cost. Shipping cars from China to the EU can cost up to a few thousand per car. Local production seems less competitive. But the bottom line is that there are now a lot of relatively affordable EVs in the market. The cheapest cars in most markets now include EVs.

For example the Dacia Spring that is selling for around 17K Euros in Germany. And then there are tax rebates, discounts, etc. that are causing some of these cars to be available for a lot less occasionally in some markets.

Markets where EVs have been available in larger numbers for a while now have a sizable EV market. Australia is relatively early with its adoption, so the second hand market is a lot smaller there. The EU as a relatively early adopter has a lot of EVs from 2020 or earlier that are still under warranty and being traded in quite large numbers now. In the last few months these been a very hot commodity as lots of people are feeling the pain of high fuel prices.

All these new small cars will become a large part of the second hand car market in a few years. There will many be millions of them on the roads in a few years. And they last quite long.

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pjc50 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Isn't it just different levels of import duty and/or proximity to China?

(normally something being essential drives the price up)

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toddmorey an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Jeez, cars are absolute necessity in US, and yet still ave cost new runs $50,000 US or about 44,000 euros.

	▲	Hamuko 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I can assure you that a $50k car in the US is nowhere near 44k€ in Europe. You're lucky if it's below 54k€.

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ReptileMan an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Interesting in which part of Europe are you living to make such a statement for the bit of luxury. The only country I could think of is the Netherlands and probably Belgium.

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patall an hour ago | parent | next [-]

European cities are wastly more accessible as a pedestrian than australian or north american cities. And I count northern, southern, central, western and easterneuropenan cities in that.Thre other continents have some examples where the inner cities are also okayish from a pedestrian or cyclist POV, but a lot and especially suburbia is so much worse in pretty much all regions. A mining town in northern Sweden is better than suburbia on Long Island!

	▲	etatester 30 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Outside France people don't live in big clusters. Take a look at the night satellite view. All those small/continuous towns do not have (functional) public transport. In my 12k-people town we don't have buses other than school buses and long-distance ones. And unfortunately people don't really walk other than for leisure. As far as I know the closest city with public transport counts 100k residents, but there are 60 smaller towns in my province alone.
	▲	ReptileMan 31 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yes - car is a bit of a luxury in Europe if you don't do any of those things - live in the rural parts of the country, leave the urban core, have kids, visit parents, friends and grandparents, go to your rural property, go the mountains, the beach, buy bulky things, buy things in bulk, go to any other city just for exploration and fun, go outside the city to watch the milky way, do anything spontaneous, have job in the trades or have girlfriend.

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pjc50 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah. I was recently without a car for three weeks (bangernomics finally stopped winning) and decided that I'd learned the wrong lesson about car dependency: despite living in a city with a decent bus service, I really did benefit a lot from having a car and needed to buy a secondhand one as soon as possible, even though I am waiting for my leased EV to arrive in a few months.

You have to be quite central in quite a big city to not need a car. But that does cover quite a lot of people - I would say much of the population of London and the most central bits of Manchester and Birmingham, which is easily 10-20m people.

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monegator an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

about to say the same.

Because i don't live in a big city (and i would dread to) the 10km commute to work is either

1) 15-25 min by car

2) 25-30 min by bike

3) 40-60 min by public transport, with at least one change

And i'm lucky as we recently moved the office to be a good 4km nearer from my home. That was further out requiring 25min by car, and aobut 1h30min by public transport with at least two changes.

Also if i want to do anything beside going in my backyard on my free time, car is a necessity.

	▲	patall an hour ago \| parent [-]
		But you can walk to your neighbor 200m down the road. That feels (and actually may be) illegal on other continents.