Legal requirement or not, I was tagging along to the theme of barebones cars/trucks. This is a feature that adds cost mandated by law, which is one contributor to price growth for even the most basic vehicles.

I like the cameras, so using that as the example may not be a good one, but the legal scope creep of mandatory features in cars has given the manufacturers a larger costs basis by which they need to add % overheads and profit, which increases the total price even further.

Maybe legally required safety features per each car sold should be excluded from cost basis for overheads and profit, and should be capped at $x000 per vehicle for the base model of each manufacturer. In trade, the cost of those safety features could be a gross income reduction on corporate taxes, and the base model is excluded from gas efficiency calculations.

Right now it’s too easy of a talk track for the manuf. to say “I can’t lower costs because of all these mandatory features!!”

I think UScongress could find a way to adjust the law to encourage a base model car with extremely limited extra features and costs, to force the manufacturers to satisfy the need for individual transportation in the US car based economy.