Millennials Don't Care About Owning Cars, and Car Makers Can't Figure Out Why

I would much rather own a car, then have to deal with ZipCar.

I'm an example of that; since I never planned to own a car, I never got a license, and it's very hard to justify that time and expense when you can just take an Uber for a couple of bucks more.

That is assuming the article is correct at all.

Is it because many of them are having kids much later in life and don't need a car for all the reasons one would want or need one when they do have kids (school, travel, vacations, trips to grandmas, ski trips, Sunday drives, sports activities, club events, youth groups, pet vet trips, doctor trips, dentist trips, dinner night out, day hike, picnic in the park...shall I go on). Each and everyone one of us can say "I can take the bus to that", but would you or even can you load up your family of four to each and everyone one of those?

And in summary, maybe the automakers should adjust their expectations of anyone < 35 years old. Or maybe they should of all went bust in 2008 instead of being bailed out and let market forces reset the playing table resulting in better products and possibly more jobs, but that's another story.

The article also points out that driving licenses have dropped significantly, so it's not just a matter of buying cheaper cars.

Maybe for the bare minimum liability. But if there's a lien on the car (because it's leased or financed) then you're required to have comprehensive insurance. Combined with the fact that a new driver will have higher rates and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a rate below $150 a month.

>oh wait! theres also the various fees

And maintenance. 4 oil changes a year, tires, brakes, belts and other things that need to be replaced regularly probably adds another $1000 per year.

Cars are definitely an excessive expense. I know because I've owned (at least) one my whole life. Then again, my car affords me the ability to live in an area where the cost of living is far below New York, San Francisco, Vancouver or Toronto.

I grew up in the sticks, so of course I got a car the second I could to get around.

Then I moved to an actual city (i.e., 250k population) and I spent more time hunting for parking spots than actually driving, and when I moved to an even bigger city, I left my car with my parents because I was fed up with how inconvenient cars were.

I don't see how car manufacturers are going to "fix" being worse than public transit.

However, I literally would not have been able to have done any job I've ever had without the ability to drive. (I'm not talking about commuting although that's been the case, but driving to customer sites, driving to remote transportation with one job, etc.)

To say nothing about countless travel experiences which wouldn't have been possible without driving. Even my friends in cities like SF who don't own cars and use Uber extensively, still rent cars and use Zipcar on a regular basis.

Counterpoint: I LOVE cycling. Do it all the time. I love riding anywhere I can make it my main mode of transport.

When I lived in LA, this was rarely. I rode down Lincoln Blvd. several times and still remember the sound of tires squealing from the pickup behind me. My best guess is that the driver looked up from their phone and saw me with about 0 seconds to spare, given that they came to a stop about an inch from my rear wheel.

I like cycling so much, in fact, that I moved to a European city where I can cycle to work, to the shop, to my friends' places, every day. There were other reasons too of course, but that was one of the biggest.

Living in a European city where things can be reached by cycle meant that really, I don't even need a car, so I don't own one.

Anyway, there are outdoor activities that don't require a car.

I don't know if this is true. I think I agree with you, but have no idea if the data supports it. Sports and outdoor leisure activities sometimes seem more accessible than ever.

Not having a car limits my outdoor locations to what I can reach by bike and public transport (and my holiday travel locations), but it's hard to justify the hassle of a car just for that. Still enough interesting locations around.

Not sure what the overall hiking stats are. I can say that a lot of national park visitation (such as to Acadia in Maine) is up. https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/SSRSReports/Park%20Specific%20Rep... (I'm told it's way up this year. The speculation is that Americans are putting off travel to Europe for various reasons.)

That hasn't changed one bit in the midwestern United States. People go 'up north' or 'to the lake/cabin' for the weekend, every weekend. So you need a camping trailer (huge monstrosities in their own right), or a trailer + boat, jetskis, 4-wheelers, dirt bikes, or maybe just some road bikes or canoes/kayaks.

If you have a boat/camper you need a full size truck to pull the trailer. Many people go for the 3/4 ton trucks for their hauling and payload capacity. Anything smaller and an SUV will do, and you have quite a few people who put their kayaks or bikes on the roofs of their car.

People disagree with the article.

Being a major city, the bus fare alone is cheaper than parking. I live within 15 minutes of world class night life, a city who's main source of income is tourism. An uber home costs little more than a drink.

For a lot of high rises, the cost of a car park is comparable in price to an extra room. It could be the difference between a nicer place or one further out.

I used to road trip to my home town before I started working, but the last few years have been trips overseas, or to other states with the same friends. Not having a car payment, or registration, or insurance helped here...

I know my lifestyle isn't for everyone, there are a lot of pros and cons. I think putting off settling down and having a family (another millennial trend?) removes a lot of the need for a car though. By the time I stopped driving, it seemed more an inconvenience than anything. Like that bulky spare couch you don't have a room for after moving house.

Just offering my $0.02 as a millennial that relates to the story.

That's not actually demonstrated in the article, read again.

"if"? In many cities that's already the case.

In college all the cars were new. Economy was up I guess, or cars were relatively cheaper.

Well, today the cars are getting rustier again. Lots of junkers; more used car lots than new; and even the new ones are econoboxes that won't last but a few years anyway.

Probably a study in there somewhere - plot the rust coefficient against wages or something.

Plus also my anecdata. Cars were horrendously unreliable back in the 1970s. It's only because of selection bias that the few reliable cars survived while all the recalled/broken down/junked cars from that era have gone.

Modern cars make more power while using less fuel [1][2], are way safer [3], more reliable [4], and are cheaper, relatively, than ever [5].

"Fun to drive" is subjective, but I don't think it's fair to compare a Civic to a Mustang. Personally, I think modern, performance cars handle better, feel "crisper", and accelerate better than the old muscle cars.

[1] http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...

[2] http://www.autoblog.com/2011/02/11/every-car-is-now-a-perfor...

[3] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/sr/statusreport/article/50/1/1

[4] http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2012/02/cars_have_imp...

[5] http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_DLIvw6mZGBU/SRDPkT-yq7I/AAAAAAAAAP...

It is all rationalizing.

The fact is that young people are poor, and not just poor in the conventional way people with less time on the planet less savings, but poor in the historical sense of being less wealthy in real money than their parents when they were the same age.

Somebody needs to explain to (most people outside places like Silicon Valley) why in an age supposedly advantaged by the forces of technology and globalization we are actually poorer.

We're not asking the right questions.

The government, the media and huge portions of the middle class are blithely ignoring the territory in favour of the map.

This is not going to end well.

I'd say that cheap flights have had the exact opposite effect. A long weekend in London/Berlin/Paris has become increasingly passe compared to a long weekend spent a 4 hour drive off the beaten track in that place you can only reach by car.

1. Buy a $5000 car up-front, which is an expensive up-front cost for me (and more than most people my age have in savings). If I've been careful in investigating the car, it will work most of the time and only cost me $500/year in repairs.

2. Buy a $20K car for $2000 up-front, taking on $18K on top of my student loans, which, frankly, I"m just not going to do. I've been shit on by banks enough for one lifetime.

3. Keep my savings, use public transit, and have enough financial stability that I could lose my job for a few months and not be homeless.

And for the record, I'm a software dev; I make almost twice as much salary as most of my peers.

My Macbook Air cost me $1200. My $2000 Macbook Pro was paid for by my job. Most of my peers buy <$1000 PCs. And laptops are cheaper to repair and don't require gas, insurance, or a license.

Uber is, fundamentally, no different than taxi services except that it allows average people to become drivers (taxis are either particularly exclusive requiring tests and certifications, or particularly bad like in most non-metropolitan towns that have them). Really, the basic use-case of Uber is what taxis should have done in the first place. GPS tracking + smartphones, they should've been connecting themselves to customers more intelligently. They didn't, Uber came in and swept up their business. That was their own fuck-up in many markets (in some markets the taxi services did do better, but not the majority, most still had traditional hailing or phoning in a taxi request).