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Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

economist.com

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Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#361

Post by taylodl »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #324
taylodl wrote: post #287

The young are falling out of love with cars because they're unaffordable. It's as simple as that. It's yet another sign the standard of living is declining for the young. The average new car price in the U.S. is now over $47K (Consumer Reports). I make a good living and I'm not going to pay that kind of money for a new car! A young person would be stupid to pay that kind of money for a car. Okay, so what about used c…

A brand new Honda Civic comes in at $25k. https://automobiles.honda.com/civic

That moves the monthly cost from $780 to $740. That's still an expensive proposition

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#362

Post by GiorgioG »

mcv wrote: post #301
GiorgioG wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone wants to live in dense housing. I grew up in Buffalo and spent many many hours on the QEW driving family to/from Pearson Intl. Every ride up there I'd be in awe of the number of cranes in the sky as new (I assumed) residential buildings were going up around Toronto. It seems like high density developments are a thing in the GTA: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2022/02/07/gta-communities-worry... and like eve…

From what I understand, a big problem in North America is that there is almost no new mid-density building. Most is low density, and where anything denser is allowed, it's immediately all skyscrapers. The few surviving mid-density neighbourhoods, especially when walkable, are often extremely popular and expensive, but very rare, and no new ones are being built because the zoning rules don't allow them. These are choi…

Folks that can afford to live in a single home tend do to so outside of cities. When people/governments propose medium/high density developments, there's a huge pushback because the perception is that lower income people will live in those developments and "cause problems". I'm not saying I buy it, but I do think that's part of the problem with increasing density in single-family home areas.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#363

Post by mcv »

HardlyCurious wrote: post #183
mcv wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's generally better to live close to one person's workplace than right in between the two.

Why?

So only one person instead of two has to suffer through a dreadful commute, you need only one car instead of two, one parent works close to where the kids go to school, etc. If you live in the middle, everything is far away for everybody.

That doesn't mean it's not viable to live in the middle, but I think these are some pretty good arguments why it's often preferable to live close to at least one partner's workplace. Obviously it's not going to work for everybody, but if you're thinking about where to buy your house, this may be worth taking into consideration.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#364

Post by djhworld »

I lived in London, UK for 11 years (renting) before the pandemic so never bothered learning to drive, the public transport there is so prolific it's almost seamless (tube, bus, overground, train, uber etc)

Since moving back into a midlands city and purchasing a house, it quickly became apparent that *not* owning a car was detrimental to quality of life, there's a lot of aspects of home ownership where having a car just makes sense. Going to the DIY store to buy bulky items, going grocery shopping to do a "big shop", moving stuff around etc.

So I got my driving license at 36 years old a few months back. It's kinda awkward learning to drive at this age but I think I took it more seriously when I learnt a little bit at 17.

I'm still in the honeymoon period so quite enjoy the novelty of driving, the independence etc. I guess one advantage I do have with working remotely is I don't commute to work, so all my driving is 100% leisure and I don't drive during the peak/rush hour times.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#365

Post by hunter2_ »

brmgb wrote: post #340
nradov wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. That seems such a sad and limiting way to live your life. I love how I can use my cars to go anywhere at any time without depending on anyone else. And my family and I do a lot of optional activities. Different perspective, I guess.

> Wow. That seems such a sad and limiting way to live your life. Mostly true in my experience. I used to get away a lot more when I had a car and could just decide to hit the road whenever I wanted than I do now that I either have to rent or plan earlier and buy train tickets. It's purely friction linked by the way. I could still do all the things I did and it would actually cost me less money in the end. I just don'…

Friction for sure. In most cases (other than trying to find parking where that's difficult) having a car means most of the friction (cost, maintenance) is decoupled from each ride. With other options like train, Uber, etc. most of the friction (cost, waiting, planning) is coupled to each ride.

We tend to take more rides in the decoupled model, I'd think.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#366

Post by MagicMoonlight »

No they aren’t. Even the article admits that public transport is shit.

It’s not even about the fact that it’s inefficient or you’re limited to specific routes or that it’s slow.

The core reason it’s so shit is because some trash person can just come on the bus and chef you up for looking at them funny. I don’t have to deal with trash people in my comfy lil car.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#367

Post by rpastuszak »

taylodl wrote: post #287

The young are falling out of love with cars because they're unaffordable. It's as simple as that. It's yet another sign the standard of living is declining for the young. The average new car price in the U.S. is now over $47K (Consumer Reports). I make a good living and I'm not going to pay that kind of money for a new car! A young person would be stupid to pay that kind of money for a car. Okay, so what about used c…

I think that outside of the US the reason is that _in most cases_ you just don’t need cars. They’re more of a hassle and take up a lot of space.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#368

Post by bena »

mastax wrote: post #352
taylodl wrote: post #287

The young are falling out of love with cars because they're unaffordable. It's as simple as that. It's yet another sign the standard of living is declining for the young. The average new car price in the U.S. is now over $47K (Consumer Reports). I make a good living and I'm not going to pay that kind of money for a new car! A young person would be stupid to pay that kind of money for a car. Okay, so what about used c…

I think a big part of that is changing consumer preferences for larger cars and, to a lesser extent, hybrids and EVs. As one data point, the 2004 Corolla LE's MSRP of $13,570 is $22,063 in 2023 dollars. The 2023 Corolla LE's MSRP is $21,550. And that's a larger and more featureful car. Used cars are still really expensive though.

Yeah, I just went check for a new Honda Civic, it's what I think of when I think of "average car" and it's in the 26/27 range.

So it's gotta be partly because preferences have gone towards trucks and SUVs that are not only larger, but more expensive.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#369

Post by bootsmann »

dymk wrote: post #318
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N=1, I am young, have a great job, I don't own a car, I haven't owned a car in 5 years, and I deliberately avoid living in places where I need to own a car. I am not interested in owning a "house", too expensive, there is little to no reason to strap myself with long term responsibilities. I am also not interested in drinking, given all evidence on how bad alcohol is, I am not keen on destroying the only tool I have…

> there is little to no reason to strap myself with long term responsibilities equity, retirement

Stocks are better for that in every way. If you buy a house you are dependent on political will to arbitrarily keep house prices high while for stocks the political incentives for growth are guaranteed to go in your favour.

Re: Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

#370

Post by jcranmer »

iso1631 wrote: post #265
jcranmer wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good public transit is unfortunately the exception in many places and not the rule. This is a fixable problem. The biggest issue is... > Cars are still needed in many use cases. ... the people who say this and, as a result, block any attempt to improve public transit whatsoever. Even worse, some are apt to frame it a "war on cars" because they're spending money on transportation that's not going to cars.

My village has about 300 people in it, so call it 300 return trips per day. Those trips might be east to the small city. Or west to the mid-sized down. There's a bus in those directions, about once every 2 hours, last one at 6pm so useless for evening activities, or commuting further on the train. It's just gone past my front door now, it's rare to see more than 2 or 3 passengers on board other than at college time.…

> If you want to depopulate the country and put everyone in tower blocks in the city - leaving the country for the rich - then just be honest about it.

I don't want to do this. But the fact that you immediately go to the suggestion that I do is emblematic of the "war-on-cars" mentality. Just so much as mention wanting to improve public transit and you get a screed that concludes that I'm an evil person with ulterior motives.

No, public transit doesn't work everywhere. I'm not going to even try to pretend that it does. And consequently, I'm not going to attempt to propose it in places where it doesn't work. So why do the "war-on-car" people so vehemently oppose public transit when its proposed in the places where it very obviously works?

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