Why we're still buying cars

Sobering reality via WIRED - car ownership is on the rise and not showing any signs of revolutionary decline. Maybe it’s time to get back to making the in-car experience better including #parking, #tolls and in-car payment for the millions of us who still default to driving personal vehicles where public #transit, #scooters and other services are just too expensive to deploy and afford (i.e. the multiple populous suburbs of our beautiful country and similar places in every other country)? Yet another reason why #automotive OEMs have nothing to fear but absolutely must innovate to satisfy the ever changing consumer demands. (The backdrop to this is recent news of Tier 1 supplier losses. Another indication that, like BMW Group Chairman recently said, the most profitable business is in making cars better themselves rather than exploring drastically new models that are damn hard to realize and often lose sight of centuries-old transportation context that David Pickeral is always so wise to remind us about).

An interesting perspective on the future of mobility and transportation...

Urbanites don't want personal cars any more. And Millenials don't even bother to get their license. Is that right? Statistics in the US don't seem to reflect that. According to WIRED, individual mobility isn't dead...yet? Very interesting read.

The founders of Uber and Lyft, among others, declared that people would no longer need to own cars. Instead, car ownership is rising. https://lnkd.in/gGa28M5

Despite the car & ride sharing trend, car ownership has increased! 🚗 #technology #innovation #transportation #emerginghumanity http://flip.it/q_ksLP

Despite recent rises in US car ownership, I'm still certain autonomous personal #transportation is going to be largely from on-demand fleets when it happens, and we'll be repurposing space that now goes to parking. "Recession-related decisions to delay starting families may have contributed more to their lower rates of car ownership than an aversion to the personal automobile. “We can’t tell if millennials aren’t owning cars until they start having children, and especially until their second kids hit school age,” says Robin Chase." #technology #data #futurism

Studies show that individual car ownership is increasing, despite trends such as ride-hailing and car-sharing. Good for OEMs, but what does this mean for Mobility-as-a-Service-companies? I'm eager to find out at https://lnkd.in/dmTeQ6X

Innovations and development are good things, but first the people has to change. The rebel generation starts to have family and their preference changes. If the environment in the cities (no car districts), governmental preference and most of all the approach of the urban car users dont change, these innovations will not survive the capitalism. #environment #cities #innovation #sustainable #sustainability #urbanplanning #climatechange #intuitivemobility #emobility https://lnkd.in/dnDNThB

This narrative made its appearance around a real trend that demand for cars worldwide was plateauing (this trend is now negative). There are many reasons for peak car - not least market saturation in China and US and shrinking populations in First World countries. Yet one of the potential reasons peddled was that millennials were walking away from cars. This us important because if that was true it was demographically significant, and represented a generational shift in lifestyle demand. Not so coincidentally, startups like zipcar, Lyft uber, lime etc peddled this notion as it bolstered their case for their valuation as one of the nimble, agile entities fighting aged dinosaurs (car companies). Well, the trend is that there is less demand for cars, but car ownership rates are still stable. Millennials deferred the purchase, not abandoned cars. If you have a small family, the convenience of a small car outweighs many things, including global warming.