Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 835 posts

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

#581

Post by intrasight »

zeku wrote: post #429
intrasight wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a "Generation X" near the Boomer boundary, I just can't stop being shocked by "average car is $47k". When I was a teen, my parents did rental investing, owned about a dozen properties, and had never paid more than $30k for a property. I'm a well-compensated tech worker, and have no shame in driving my 2004 Volvo that I bought used 16 years ago. Had a second car for a while. A 2005 Camry that I bought for $5000 in…

Most would love to, but the rent is too high and they need a car to be able to get to their job so they can tread water. Owning a primary home as a means of "lazy wealth generation" is only accessible to people with family money or career titles like "Software Engineer" and even then the homes are much lower standard than before for older people working the same job.

Everything you said just further supports my statement of "save your money". Buy a cheap used car (but cheap over 5+ years, so get a reliable one). Rent a cheap apartment (mine is $1100/mo and is very nice).

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

#582

Post by realworldperson »

usrusr wrote: post #343
overthemoon wrote: post #174

I'm an aging millennial, but on a purely personal level, when I lived in a city with good public transit, I was a lot happier, most of the time. I really like stepping off the train and the bus and being on my own two feet, the walking exercise, not being chained to this thing I have to worry about. I hate driving, I hate parking, I hate owning a car--the maintenance, the ongoing cost of fuel and insurance, all of it…

It really is a "the grass is bleaker on the other side" situation. As a public transport person I feel weirdly constrained by the idea that a day's itinerary will inevitably have to see me return to wherever the car is parked, impossible to do spontaneous things like walk a few stops, ride with an acquaintance or something like that that would eventually take me home, but not return to some previous stage. With a car…

[dead]

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

#583

Post by asciimov »

ryukafalz wrote: post #528
asciimov wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an aging millennial that grew up in West Texas, I have the exact opposite feelings. To me cars, equal freedom. I grew up in a small neighborhood, I rode bikes to my friends houses there but my neighborhood was so far removed from other places and stores that there was no other place to go. Getting my license at 16 opened so many doors for me. Now I could go hang out at my other friends houses that lived 10-15 mile…

>but my neighborhood was so far removed from other places and stores that there was no other place to go This is probably why. It's less clear cut when there's an abundance of places to go and things to do within easy walking/biking/transit distance.

Indeed.

I'm always fascinated by the idea of high density cities, because that kind of lifestyle is so foreign to me. While I would love to have stores and restaurants that stay open past 9 pm, I don't think I want to live in such close quarters to so many other people.

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

#584

Post by taylodl »

sokoloff wrote: post #499
taylodl wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should also point out, and this is something I only learned recently, you can't get a car loan for a car that's over 10 years old. About five years ago my mechanic told me there was a Lexus I needed to look at. Single (obsessive) owner, extremely low miles for the year, extremely clean, my mechanic had done all the work since the time the vehicle was no longer under the Lexus service and warranty. The catch? It was…

An inability to get a loan on them would tend to make cars over 10 years artificially cheap/a better value than otherwise.

That's true, so long as you have the means for getting the money, which most young people don't.

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

#585

Post by fwungy »

taylodl wrote: post #489
sokoloff wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of reliable 15-year old cars. (My wife drives a reliable 18-year old, 225K mile car. We took it on a 1600 mile roundtrip for the winter holidays this year with no particular fear that it wouldn't run like a top for the entire trip.) The idea that cars are only reliable for 5 years and 60K miles is, IMO and IME, quite out-dated. That was more true in the days of carburetors, points-based ignition, and…

I should also point out, and this is something I only learned recently, you can't get a car loan for a car that's over 10 years old. About five years ago my mechanic told me there was a Lexus I needed to look at. Single (obsessive) owner, extremely low miles for the year, extremely clean, my mechanic had done all the work since the time the vehicle was no longer under the Lexus service and warranty. The catch? It was…

Not true. I did it recently for a 20 year car through a credit union. Just paid a slightly higher interest rate.

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

#586

Post by ardit33 »

I am staying in Wynwood Miami for a month, and I rented a car. I was surprised to discover that the neighborhood as many amenities, coffee shops, etc in just walking distance.

My car has been staying in the garage most of the time. I feel, slowly, places are getting a bit more dense and have more things to do that are just walking distance, without having to deal with the hassle of driving/parking, etc.

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

#587

Post by randomdata »

scottLobster wrote: post #504
tristor wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I could have expanded on my last sentence more and completed the thought. Of course nobody wants to be the person who works the drive through at McDonald's as their life's ambition. This type of job used to be seen as a stepping stone that provided you some spending money and an opportunity to meet people outside your parents social circle and school, a first taste of the working world, but wasn't a determina…

Well I'll admit hadn't considered that factor, I guess I'll find out in a decade or so when my daughter reaches that age, although hopefully that mentality will have died out once that generation gets a decade of reality under their belt. That said I kinda get the social media obsession, that was college for me and I was all in on the facebook parasocial queues (not liking someone's post that they KNOW you saw was an…

> Nowadays that's 100% assured to not be the case

That's the source of fear I mentioned earlier, being sold this idea that the only way to get a job is to go to college and if you don't 100% focus on college you won't make it. But there is nothing in the data to suggest that idea actually panned out. All signs point to young adults having a much harder time moving up because they didn't work in their youth to gain the experience necessary to navigate the waters of the economy.

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

#588

Post by johnwalkr »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #213
hgomersall wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I've heard people make that argument, what they actually mean is "The huge house I want to live in I can afford if I spend an hour a day in the car, oh and people that live in the cities should not make it harder for me to pursue such a path by restricting car usage. Externalities be damned, won't someone think of my being unable to afford a 5 bedroom house with a big garden in the city".

It is both the desire to not live in an apartment, but rather have a detached single family house with a garage and backyard, and also a desire to live away from people below your socioeconomic level and near people at or above your socioeconomic level (referred to as “good schools”). If Americans were okay with living in Tokyo sized abodes, then there would be sufficient density for sufficient housing and job opport…

There’s plenty of detached houses in Tokyo (even in the 23 wards) and they cost 1/4 of what they cost in a major American city. Tokyo is denser than any American city but less dense than Paris, and greater Tokyo, which is even cheaper for housing, still has great transit/no need for a car for most people and has a density of only 1000/km^2. Also available in Tokyo is small apartments for single people. A minimum wage worker there will live in a small apartment, yes, but can survive without 5 roommates in a moldy basement suite.

Americans would be okay living in “Tokyo sized abodes” if they knew what that actually meant and didn’t assume all of Tokyo looks like Shibuya. One thing I’ll grant is that garages are rare, because they count as finished space for property tax purposes.

Tokyo is actually a great example of what a city without car-centric planning and free parking everywhere can be like and a perfect example of a “15 minute city”. It’s not only about transit, but what transit and walkability encourages. I lived there for 6 years in a very residential neighborhood, but I was still within 10 minutes walking of virtually any daily necessity, 5 or so grocery stores, dozens if not hundreds of restaurants, 3 public baths, one of which was a legit onsen, a few furniture stores, and even 2 aquarium shops. I’m trying to think of a counter example and I can only think of one thing that wasn’t a ten minute walk away: a movie theatre, although there were multiple within a 15 minute train ride.

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

#590

Post by Mezzie »

maxsilver wrote: post #227
overthemoon wrote: post #174

I'm an aging millennial, but on a purely personal level, when I lived in a city with good public transit, I was a lot happier, most of the time. I really like stepping off the train and the bus and being on my own two feet, the walking exercise, not being chained to this thing I have to worry about. I hate driving, I hate parking, I hate owning a car--the maintenance, the ongoing cost of fuel and insurance, all of it…

> but even then, I don't get the emotional association of freedom that previous generations did. I don't know what's different, although I have some guesses. Money, I'm sure, but there's something that's nagging me about it. I'd argue it's a combination of money and aging infrastructure. Money is the big one (cars used to be a lot cheaper, both to buy and to maintain. Incomes for most used to be much higher). Infrast…

> it's usually appropriately sized for the population in all but the newest-growth places.

Hell, a lot of our municipalities have transport infrastructure designed for larger populations. Driving around Flint or Lansing is easy for the most part (Detroit proper can also handle much bigger traffic numbers but the roads will kill your car so that's not easy).

I hated driving in the PNW though. Especially Vancouver, with its refusal to allow highways.

Post reply on HN