The Cost of Car Ownership is About to Go Way Up
// Has Donald Trump declared a War on Cars? That's the name of a podcast, well-known to urbanists and transportation types, whose name was inspired by late Toronto mayor Rob Ford's paranoid whining about streetcars and bike lanes robbing street-space from drivers. When Trump announced a 25% tariff on imported automobiles, and many imported auto parts, some people on social media—I was one of them—jauntily posted: "Donald Trump, welcome to @thewaroncars." Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon, the podcast's hosts, were quick to reject the US president as any kind of ally.
There is a case to be made, however, that Trump's tariffs might do more to reduce car use in North America than what we could hope to achieve under the policies of an aggressively pro-environmental administration. Even before the tariffs, which went into effect on April 9, the costs of car ownership on this continent were absurdly high. The average cost of a new car in the United States, according to the Kelley Blue Book site, is now $49,470. (That's the equivalent of one million Canadian dollars. OK, slight exaggeration: it's actually about, let's see, $68,000.) If you drive that car 15,000 miles a year, you'll be forking out $1,024 a month to keep it on the road. On average, an American will be forced to pay $12,297 a year to keep a new car on the road. Between 2017 and 2023, the cost of owning a new car rose an astonishing 44 percent. Very few people in the rest of the developed world pay that much for the privilege of getting around. In many European countries, an annual rail-and-transit pass, can cost as little as $4,000; Austria's KlimaTicket, which gives users total mobility on a national scale, costs the equivalent of $1,340 US.
The tariffs are going to make a bad situation even worse. The default car in North America used to be the sedan. But 80 percent of sales are now of pick-ups and SUVs, which, in addition to being bigger, and less fuel-efficient, are far more expensive. As MIT transport scholar David Zipper has pointed out, the big-three Detroit automakers, General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis don't even make sedans any more: "Last year," Zipper wrote on the Fast Company site, "GM announced it was ending production of the Chevrolet Malibu, Detroit’s last non-luxury sedan sold in the U.S."
The only sedan-like car you can get your hands on these days is a Tesla, and that brand, thanks to the Nazi-adjacent behaviour of CEO Elon Musk, has become kryptonite. People stuck with the "Swasticar," as campaigners in the UK have dubbed the Tesla, are hard pressed to find suckers to sell their computers-on-wheels to.
