There is a niche for an affordable car that is made at a large scale in the U.S. Manufacturers stopped selling low-end options such as the Kia Rio, Hyundai Accent, Mitsubishi Mirage, and Nissan Versa in the U.S. or globally. The most common options now are often crossovers or small SVUs paired with complicated transmissions.
With Japan, Germany and South Korea looking to phase out gas/diesel-only cars or cars with emissions at all, an economy car coming here from these places probably won't happen again for a while. The cheapest electric car available here right now is close to 30K. Considering most places aren't really designed around public transit and the fact that most households still need a car, people need a practical vehicular option.
A better option for many buyers could still be built here. It could even be built in Detroit, where there's affordable land and all kinds of talent familiar with the industry. The major universities educate students looking to work in this field. Also, there's the potential for affordable housing to be put into surrounding areas.
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A good design would include rear wheel drive with limited slip differential; relatively simple manual and automatic transmission options; one 4 cylinder engine option; minimal color and vehicle options; 2 doors, 4 seats and a hatchback. Serviceability, design precision and quality control would be priorities. For instance, it's easier to change out a clutch or transmission on rear-wheel-drive cars.
This would be one mass-produced car, with a design that doesn't change for many years. Interchangeable parts would be built into the concept, because there aren't all of the parts associated with a changing product line, and down the road used parts would accumulate. So this would be a good used car option in the future.
The company could have one factory here for final assembly, one for the engine and one for the transmission. Other components could be sourced internally or externally. With today's manufacturing, this wouldn't create a lot of assembly jobs, but it's still a lot of jobs, and it's domestic. Someone still needs to make the robots and all of the parts.
The key here would be finding people who really want to do this kind of work and keeping greed out of the way of smart, efficient business practices. A Saturn-like sales network could be set up, or the traditional dealer model could be used. A simple design and minimal service requirements would make existing dealer networks more accessible. This would be initially intended for domestic sales.
