Fizzboy7

Well said. There is an even higher need for owning a car if you live in the city. More places available to go to means more of a need to have a car to get there. The need to buy food, go to school, go to work, shop, see entertainment, and visit people increases in the city. A car saves a massive amount of time and opens up doors.
As time goes on, hopefully the cost of cars drops a bit and even entry level people can attain one. Personal transportation is always the fastest and most efficient way of traveling if one can afford it.

UDel

It is not very surprising that not as many are getting their license or driving considering the economic climate we are in and have been in for the past 7 or 8 years, stagnated low wages, many jobs moving to part time or going away, extremely hard to find a decent job, high inflation, high costs of everything, people are paying around $90-100 a month just for their smart phone service/internet and usually have to get a new phone every 2 years at a couple hundred dollars. Younger people just can't afford to live on their own anymore and are staying with their parents or family where they don't need a car as much. They just can't afford cars or don't want a huge chunk of any money they have going to paying for the car/maintaining/insuring it, many of their parents can't afford to buy their children cars anymore or maintain them either, they can't or can barely afford out of control college tuition these days which is more and more useless. The only cars many younger people can afford are older and older cars and the costs of even simple maintenance at dealership/mechanics is ridiculously high if they were not correctly maintained.

I don't think automakers should be too worried though because car sales are still high and I don't think the need for a automobile is ever going to go away, it is just going to fall a little due to the lousy economy and it is going to take longer for younger people to be able to drive and obtain a car.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

And there's a ton of single people, and a lot of young people just delaying getting married.

Maybe you don't see tons of young, often single mom's taking the bus with a kid in a stroller, or carrying bags of groceries, but millions do these things. But yeah most all with 1 or more kids would want or have a car, for now.

But again, there's zillions of single people, and not just young, there's retirees too.

Car sales are high due to population growth and rising global prosperity, especially in developing markets.

But i see another factor... Many people don't want to drive because it means too much time away from social media on their phones.

Joeb427

iTrader: (1)

Leasing brings the numbers up in a big way.

corradoMR2

With regards to the article speaking about concerns on the future sales of cars, I agree they need to be concerned.

In five years? No, but in 15 years or so when every new car offered in developed countries will be self-driven? You bet.

I see it today with my pre-teens, cars are a like a commodity, a means of transport regardless of the car. The entertainment (their ipads, watching movies, etc) in a car is what "motivates" them to be in a car and NOT the car itself. This is a key distinction to when we were young where we had nothing else to do in the car but engage in how the car operates which eventually lead us to be connected and interested in its operation and ownership.

Combine this with more IoT devices to keep people glued to their tech, increased virtual socializing, increased ability to work from home, vendors to provide door-to-door delivery of goods (i.e. Amazon drones), and a proliferation of transport service offerings like Uber, and so on, who will desire or have the need for the ownership of car? Sad days ahead for car enthusiasts. Let's enjoy our V8s and stick shifts now while we still can.

mmarshall

Sometimes they can only be delayed so long LOL.



Low oil and gas prices certainly help, but the worsening Chinese economy is probably going to affect sales there pretty soon.

Too many people, though, don't separate the two (and trust me on this, because I see it MANY times every day).

97-SC300

iTrader: (17)

I agree with you. It seems like this article is discussing young adults that live in the inner city with decent public transit, hence no need for a personal vehicle.

If you live in the suburbs, and last time I checked, people still live in the suburbs, how do you not have a car?

Yeah driving in some areas, especially during rush hour is a PITA, but if you're getting a taxi, you're not flying over this traffic, you're sitting in it like the rest of us but you're paying out your a$$ while that taxi meter keeps going.

Mr Bond

You are pointing out the problem here. Its not the phones or Ipads or whatever, its the car itself.

Automakers has successfully abolished every "fun-aspect" of owning a car by themsleves. Why ? Its simple, you cannot do a single fix/change on your car today. Not at home and not as an enthusiast. You need special tools for literary everything and every button is controlled by 5 computers.The book of "What will void you warranty" requires more pages than the option list to a Porsche Cayenne.

If it really was the Iphones / ipads or some kind of constraint to be online 24/7 people would have given up on things like sports or music as well, but they dont.

What will be left other than the "transport" factor when the car drives itself ?

peteharvey

Very true.

Tires23

I say the blame goes to kids always staying home and closely dense cities. I still know tons of friends that live in the city that don't even have the permit license and they are in their 20s. I could never survive without my car alone not even having a license.

Individual

iTrader: (7)

If this is true in Southern California, then that would be great because there is so much traffic here. The slight decline of drivers will hopefully make it less congested here.

Mr Johnson

While I think that there is a portion of the younger population that has dropped out of the car market I don't think it's doom and gloom for auto makers.

If you consider that typical cars spend a huge portion of their time just sitting there doing nothing then it would seem that you need far, far fewer cars to service people when they can be active almost all the time. Two things offset that trend though. You will have "surge" usage such as during "rush hour" where a *lot* of people will want to use a car at the same time. To enable that you will either have to have more autonomous vehicles than "optimal" or some will go the route of having their own to be able to get a vehicle when they need it. The second factor will be that the "severe" usage of a vehicle going from 5-10% utilization to 90% utilization will cause it fail more quickly and thus the average age for a fleet of autonomous vehicles will be significantly lower than the average age of vehicles on the road today.

Will it shake things up? Absolutely! Will it be the downfall of the auto industry? No, I don't think so.

situman

We live in a society where it is uncool for young people to look away from their phones for more than 1 second.