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I get a feeling that this is influenced by which part of the country you live in. The average age of a passenger car in Germany is ~6.7 years. I wasn't able t

by zhdc1 9y ago

I get a feeling that this is influenced by which part of the country you live in. The average age of a passenger car in Germany is ~6.7 years. I wasn't able to find a recent reliable figure for the average number of KMs driven per car per year, but the EU has is listed at ~14,000 for Germany in 2012, and I don't really see why the number would have increased dramatically over the last five or so years. Anyway, it looks like the average passenger car in Germany has been driven for ~87,000km. Germany is also on the lower side for average car age (France, and Italy are a little higher). This is a back of the hand estimate, but it matches up with my perception that people look to replace their cars once they go above 100-150k km. Again, if you're younger, take longer commutes, or live outside of a large city (or are just frugal), I'm willing to bet that this number goes up dramatically (Eastern Europeans, for instance, hold onto their cars for a much longer period of time, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is also true for many portions of East Germany).

thomasz 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrappage_program#Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrappage_program#Germany
mantas 9y ago
The 6.7 is average age for a car on a road today, not average lifetime of a car. You've as many brand-new and 13 years old cars on the road to have that average. Keep in mind that scrap age is lowered by company cars and taxies which could easily clock 200'000km in few years.
MrRadar 9y ago
> The average age of a passenger car in Germany is ~6.7 years. From a US perspective that number is insanely low! The average age of a car in the US was 11.6 years in 2016.[1] The average US driver drives 13.5k miles (21.7 km) per year[2] so that means the average car in the US would have around 156k miles (251k km) on its clock. I wonder if the German number is skewed lower because it's only measuring a relatively wealthy part of the EU. Do most used German cars simply get exported to less wealthy parts of the EU instead of being re-sold within Germany? [1]http://www.autonews.com/article/20161122/RETAIL05/161129973/average-age-of-vehicles-on-road-hits-11.6-years http://www.autonews.com/article/20161122/RETAIL05/161129973/... [2]https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm
- petre 9y ago
  Used German cars are resold mainly in Eastern Europe.

by zhdc1 9y ago

thomasz 9y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrappage_program#Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrappage_program#Germany

mantas 9y ago

The 6.7 is average age for a car on a road today, not average lifetime of a car. You've as many brand-new and 13 years old cars on the road to have that average. Keep in mind that scrap age is lowered by company cars and taxies which could easily clock 200'000km in few years.

MrRadar 9y ago

> The average age of a passenger car in Germany is ~6.7 years. From a US perspective that number is insanely low! The average age of a car in the US was 11.6 years in 2016.[1] The average US driver drives 13.5k miles (21.7 km) per year[2] so that means the average car in the US would have around 156k miles (251k km) on its clock. I wonder if the German number is skewed lower because it's only measuring a relatively wealthy part of the EU. Do most used German cars simply get exported to less wealthy parts of the EU instead of being re-sold within Germany? [1]http://www.autonews.com/article/20161122/RETAIL05/161129973/average-age-of-vehicles-on-road-hits-11.6-years http://www.autonews.com/article/20161122/RETAIL05/161129973/... [2]https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm

petre 9y ago
Used German cars are resold mainly in Eastern Europe.