70 ms·

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

• refurb 4y ago
  Is it just me or does the article contain zero actual data on car adoption? Just anecdotes and talking to people who wrote books?
• lightning19 4y ago
  I grew up obsessed with cars, I used to play racing video games almost exclusively, attend car shows etc. I now work for a large german car manufacturer as a SWE. I cannot afford the cheapest car they make, it is literally more than I make in a year before tax. I don't own car yet and I'm not sure I will be able to afford one in the next 3-5 years. I don't even care that I (a former car nut) works for a car manufacturer when this would've been my dream job as a kid
  • sharedptr 4y ago
    Bmw?
    • lightning19 4y ago
      how did you know :)
• _blz2 4y ago
  I've been following the anti-car movement push on internet forums for a while. These people swear by NYC public transport, which IMO is the worst experience anyone could go through while traveling. Hustlers, crime, drugs, filth, long wait times etc etc. No thanks, I'd like to live and not get beaten up and not catch a disease, will stick to my car.
• TheRealNGenius 4y ago
  [dead]
• inglor_cz 4y ago
  I mostly use public transport, but I have a taxi budget (about 10 per cent of what my acquaintances pay for their cars yearly in toto) and I will use it for transporting anything heavy, very inconvenient weather or for necessary, but otherwise impractical connections. I like this combination and I am glad that taxis exist. Some errands would be really weird-to-impossible without the ability to use a car, even if it is driven by somebody else.
• tjmc 4y ago
  The issue to me is not so much ownership as self reliance. I’m Gen X and I can drive, cook, swim, ski, sail, fly and scuba dive. Perhaps I’ve taken things to extremes but it was important for me and my friends to become capable of looking after ourselves. I own a car, but not a boat, skis, scuba tanks or plane (though building the latter is a dream). Here in Australia public transport is actually pretty good in the inner cities but it really limits your opportunity to see the wider country. Owning a car doesn’t always make sense - I lived in inner Sydney for a few years happily without one. But I don’t really respect people that are in their mid-20’s or older and have to rely on others to drive them everywhere.
• RickJWagner 4y ago
  I sold my car (a nice Lexus IS F) during covid, when used car prices went nuts. I had been calculating some healthy depreciation in the years ahead and saw this as an opportunity to get a good price for the car before things returned to normal and my car lost value. (It seems to have worked.) I now find that I didn't much need the car. My wife has a car, we share it. I'm a car enthusiast, but now I'm starting to wonder if we'll ever go back to two cars for the pair of us.
• cheschire 4y ago
  https://archive.ph/GleVo https://archive.ph/GleVo
• JustARandomGuy 4y ago
  Millennial: same feeling here. When I talk to people of my parents generation they always talk about how cars let them roam about and give them freedom. I never felt the same way, and I think a large part of that is that I grew up with the Internet; I could always AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) my friends or use ICQ. I was always connected even during an era of dialup. With the always-on functionality of modern phones, I’m sure that feeing is much more magnified. This doesn’t surprise me and I hope it drives a much more efficient future.
  • jna_sh 4y ago
    Cars have always felt more restrictive to me. I don’t want to have to worry about parking or road access or fuel when I’m visiting somewhere.
    • andrepd 4y ago
      Cars are a viable option only on low-density rural areas + long distance trips. Short distance you can do by biking (e-bikes are the modern evolution of the old two-stroke scooter) or walking. In high density public transportation is massively faster, cheaper, and more efficient that personal automobile.
      • _dain_ 4y ago
        >In high density public transportation is massively faster, cheaper, and more efficient that personal automobile. This assumes the public transportation is competently run, which is a rarity in the Anglophone world. In the UK I think the only good one is TfL. Meanwhile Birmingham has a million people and no metro. The one time I visited NYC the subway seemed third world.
        • jfk13 4y ago
          UK here: My brother and my 3 (adult, independent) kids all seem to manage fine without cars, and have done so for years. Only one of them lives in London, the others in much smaller places. Sure, there are plenty of areas where it would be really difficult. But there are also a lot more places than just London where it's perfectly possible, depending on family circumstances and lifestyle choices.
• TillE 4y ago
  If you live in anything like a real city and don't absolutely need a car to commute, the misery of street parking alone vastly outweighs any kind of occasional benefit. But it's nice to have a license so you can rent a car if you really want to.
  • andrepd 4y ago
    It's misery to you, the driver, and misery to someone else. It's depressing to think the sheer area of land in cities that is dedicated to (free) parking. That the space of what could easily be a nice park or a playground is instead used to store a dozen cars. Not to mentioned the economic value wasted.
    • rootusrootus 4y ago
      Where is this free parking you speak of? I live in a largely suburban city (couple million people) and the vast majority of parking lots are neither free nor taking up land which would otherwise be used by a park or playground. It's nearly all underground, or on top of buildings, or along the street, and almost none of it is free. We have lots of parks. I'll give the benefit of the doubt and just assume a different life experience, and not just hyperbole.
  • galangalalgol 4y ago
    What is a real city? I live in one of 20 biggest in the US, but even #2 LA is pretty hard to get around without a car. My experience in traveling has been that places where carless transportation is easy, are places I can only afford to visit, not live.
    • loloquwowndueo 4y ago
      If you limit yourself to the US this will of course be the case - the tendency in urban development has been shaped by cars for a long time.
    • swexbe 4y ago
      If you don’t count the suburbs LA wouldn’t be anywhere close to #2.
• deleted 4y ago
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• mellosouls 4y ago
  I can't read this due to the paywall, but taking the title as representative, and assuming the evidence to back the claim up is in the article (which I doubt): It's irrelevant whether or not the young are "falling out of love" with cars, cars are essential in the rich world (at least in my country, the UK) outside of a few urban areas well-served by public transport infrastructure - and non-EVs at that. There's a huge amount of development needed in that infrastructure before the luxury of choice will matter to the average Jo.
  • doikor 4y ago
    You can fall out of “love” (or never fall in “love” with them in the first place) with cars and own one. I’ve never really wanted to own a car but I did when I lived in a small town as there wasn’t really any other option. As soon as I moved to a place where I could live comfortably without one I got rid of it and haven’t had any regrets about that decision. Older generations (my parent for example) truly love their cars and never could imagine themselves living without one. Same for my grandmother and she lives right next to all the services she uses and mostly walks to them but still she has to own a car.
• wffurr 4y ago
  There's 138 trains per day between Amsterdam and The Hague. It's faster to take the train than to drive on that trip. Driving in either city in an exercise in frustration. Why would anyone in a rich country with a high functioning rail system like The Netherlands want to drive? I don't know how many rich countries that describes, but I lived happily for years in Boston in the USA without a car. I have one now but only because I have an off-street parking space for it. Otherwise I'd go back to renting one on the ~monthly occasions I want to use one. The main benefit of Zipcar to me versus owning is that the car had a parking space that it went back into. Now if only the mass transit system in the area wasn't falling apart and the rail connections to other cities were even half as good as the ones in the Netherlands.
  • stronglikedan 4y ago
    > Why would anyone in a rich country with a high functioning rail system like The Netherlands want to drive? Because some people, like me, find driving to be blissful and elating, and I will never not take the opportunity to do it.
  • wffurr 4y ago
    One line of thought that hadn't occurred to me until this thread is that The Netherlands car infrastructure is also probably quite good, in keeping with their general high quality of infrastructure all around. Although as many of the other commenters noted, one reason that driving in some places in the country is doable is that many others choose alternatives, themselves made attractive by high quality infrastructure.
  • fruit2020 4y ago
    It’s faster if you live next to the train station and your work is next to the destination station. Anyway, for some people is better one way than the other
    • mcv 4y ago
      A lot of business parks are close to a station for that very reason.
• galangalalgol 4y ago
  The article specifies rich, maybe beacuse, at least in the US, only the rich can afford to live in places where cars aren't strictly necessary? Some choose to live elsewhere anyway, for scenery or privacy, but the poor or even median 60% can't choose an area with a 15 minute walk to necessities. The Seattle walkability map on hn recently highlighted that fairly well I think? I also wonder if it is truly cars or just driving that is out of favor? If so, will full self drive fix that if and when it ever arrives?
  • dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    The rhetoric and trends around transportation seem to be reflective of the increasing bifurcation (both economically and socially) of society in general.
  • HeckFeck 4y ago
    This is the situation where I live too, in a non-London part of the UK. There are buses and trains but they mostly just link you to the larger cities, outside of the cities it isn't a viable replacement for car ownership. Also if you're planning to have a family, a car is essential. Herding children on packed public transport is a no-no. I can imagine it being easier to walk with children if you're living in high trust communities where all amenities are available within walking distance, but that might also be a wealth thing too.
  • freddie_mercury 4y ago
    The article cites national statistics. Is your argument that those national statistics are being driven entirely by changes in rich cities? That the changes in driving habits have been so large that it drags down the bottom 60%. The article says that in 1997 43% of 16-year olds had a driver's licence but by 2020 it had fallee to 20%. Since you're claiming that's entirely driven by the richest 40% let's do some simple math to quantify the implications of your claim. If richest 40% of 16 year olds had 0 driver's licences... Not a single one in the entire country... Then the national rate would have fallen to 25% not 20%. So the richest 40% must actually have NEGATIVE driver's for the math to work out on your claim. Or maybe it isn't just a phenomenon limited the rich places.
  • 4y ago
• zppln 4y ago
  I got my license just in time to be able to drive my pregnant wife to hospital to give birth, aged 33. Before that I didn't really need one. Now I love my car and the life I want to live absolutely involve owning one (I don't necessarily love the ownership part though...). I suspect a lot of young people will eventually discover the same.
• Spooky23 4y ago
  Cars are falling out of love with them. How is one expected to pay for a $1500/mo apartment and a $40k car on a $60k salary?
  • bell-cot 4y ago
    Plus car insurance - which tends to be very costly for younger drivers.
  • revscat 4y ago
    The average American spends $3000 a year on gas. Imagine if you didn’t have to do that.
    • dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      I do ~23000mi/yr (way above average) commuting at 23mpg (somewhat below average) and gas here is about $3/gal (average) so I pay about $3k/yr. I am nowhere near typical. There is no way the average American pays that much for just gas unless the source is doing some slight of hand. Obviously I pay more than $3k/yr after you include other expenses but still, few are buying that much fuel. I used to take the train when I worked downtown and @$350/mo or $4200/yr for a pass (which also covers the subway and buses) it's basically a break even vs driving. Medium distance rail and bus needs to get a hell of a lot better for it to actually be cheaper for the average person in practice.
      • fundad 4y ago
        $3/gal is practically free
      • HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
        > @$350/mo or $4200/yr for a pass (which also covers the subway and buses) it's basically a break even vs driving. Cost-wise, yes but there are other benefits. I live in rural MN and used to commute to downtown Minneapolis about 40 miles away. It was far more convenient, not to mention much faster, to drive to an express bus stop and take the bus into the city than to drive. The 6 block walk to the office sucked sometimes when it was raining or -20F but not having to deal with traffic, plus the reduction of wear and tear on my car was well worth the minor inconvenience. Now, I realize that's an ideal situation: having a bus 15 minutes away and a relatively short distance between the bus stop and my destination, but it's possible. Cities can do this: Minneapolis has streets that are bus-only at rush hour to speed up transit -- cars will get ticketed if the cops see them. The Metro area has a large number of bus routes between suburbs and even to the edge of the ex-urban areas. There was a big push around 20 years ago to improve transit and it's definitely paying off, but it takes commitment and patience that I guess a lot of other areas in the country don't have.
• _dain_ 4y ago
  I can't get through the paywall, but I'm one of these car-less youngs (although less young by the day). Mainly it is for idiosyncratic reasons: I hate being confined where I can't stand up if I want to, and I don't like "car smell". There's something about the air inside motor vehicles that puts me on edge. I get the same feeling on buses and planes, but oddly not on trains, even though rationally I know the air must be of similar quality. There's the health benefits and the climate stuff and saving money and so on. But that's not what I'm happy about about when I bike around; it's about fresh air and postural freedom. I'm glad I live somewhere where I don't need a car to do everyday things. It's not as bike-friendly as somewhere like Denmark but it's tolerable.
  • pteraspidomorph 4y ago
    You can get through the paywall by disabling javascript.
• hkon 4y ago
  [flagged]
• benjaminwootton 4y ago
  The young are falling out of love with home ownership, cars, dating, drinking etc. I suspect a lack of money is the common factor.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    I don’t think that car ownership is related to poverty or absence of disposable income. In fact, a well off person in a well functioning city has little if any reason to own a car and can get away without one. Subreddits like r/solarpunk, r/fuckcars, r/notjustbikes, along with the push for 15 minute cities are a testament that young people dont want to be in the grip of petrol companies or owning a car as they are not sustainable, cause traffic, accidents, and on and on.
    • BizarreByte 4y ago
      > In fact, a well off person in a well functioning city has little if any reason to own a car and can get away without one. You can get away without one, that is if you don’t mind sharing transit with violent junkies in any North American city. Transit can be down right terrifying to use these days.
      • afunctionof 4y ago
        I would be interested in seeing a graph comparing the rate of automobile fatalities to the rate of public transit fatalities.
        • rootusrootus 4y ago
          I'm not sure what value there would be in that comparison. Cars and public transit are not filling the same role in society, regardless of how often that claim is made on HN. And that's completely ignoring the counterfactual of how mortality overall would change if we actually tried to make public transit fill all the roles cars have today.
• micromacrofoot 4y ago
  of course they are, cars are expensive, dangerous, and dirty… traffic is miserable, maintenance is expensive, you can’t trust anyone else on the road… a car might be the worst thing I own but I live in a place where I couldn’t eat or get to the doctor’s office without one
  • BizarreByte 4y ago
    > maintenance is expensive This is largely just nonsense for a lot of modern cars. I’m at 80k in 4 years and have only done oil changes and tyres. My mother only had her first “big” repair on her car at 140k after 10 years. Cars are more reliable than they’ve ever been.
    • fundad 4y ago
      Oil and tires is expensive
      • wara23arish 4y ago
        Oil changes are cheap unless you drive a really fancy car. And also everybody can do their own oil changes if they watch a video or two. Tires last at least 3 years..
      • BizarreByte 4y ago
        Oil changes are inexpensive and new cars often have them included for the first few years. On top of that with modern oils the change interval is longer than it used to be. Unless you're driving an obscene amount or doing burnouts everywhere a set of tyres should last 3-4 years. A set for a small sedan really isn't that expensive.
    • revscat 4y ago
      Now add the cost of gas/petrol. For the average American that’s $3000/year. > more reliable So what? They are still a cost that is forced upon us. I don’t want a car. Yet I have to have one whether I like it or not.
• Giacomot 4y ago
  In Montreal(and other places throughout Eastern Canada) we have a "car-sharing" program called communauto. It's pretty cheap and is competitive with a bus pass depending on where you're going. It covers gas, insurance, maintenance, and you have access to all local parking permits. You can get essentially 'unlimited rides' for less than 100$/month. I had a car off and on over the last couple of years, and I would barely use it, mostly just to change parking spots. I also sank a couple ~4k into repairs only to finally scrap it (I'm a bit of an idiot). Communauto is a great inbetween, where I can do groceries, can go on extended trips. It's a great option for the occasional (<3/week) or frequent in-city motorist.
• kensai 4y ago
  I really wished this demonisation of the car stopped. Modern cars are way more climate friendly than merely 10-20 years ago and many climate-conscious persons do pool to commute. But we need to understand. There are cases where the car is a must. Unavoidable. Imagine having toddlers, having to do heavy groceries, and living in a place with difficult landscape or challenging weather. Imagine having a neurological disease or some other disability.
  • digdugdirk 4y ago
    Replace the words "the car" with "good public transit" and your last paragraph makes equal if not more sense. There's different ways of living a life, and the current trend shouldn't be seen as car demonization. I see it more as a new generation seeing the current US car-centric society and pushing for a better (for the life they want to live) alternative.
    • kensai 4y ago
      It depends where you live. Good public transit is unfortunately the exception in many places and not the rule. Cars are still needed in many use cases.
      • spyremeown 4y ago
        You're almost getting it. So, so close. >Good public transit is unfortunately the exception in many places and not the rule. Then let's make it better! :-)
        • BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
          >”You're almost getting it. So, so close.” >” Then let's make it better! :-)” Why respond with such condescension? And, why follow it up with such a hollow and glib call to action?
      • jcranmer 4y ago
        > 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.
• goodpoint 4y ago
  "A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation." - Gustavo Petro
• fallingknife 4y ago
  I suspect that the issue is more that money is falling out of love with them, (at least in the US)
• paulcole 4y ago
  I grew up in a very rural part of northern Florida. When I was 16 my parents said I’d have to learn how to drive so I could get to the job that I’d use to pay for a car. I thought that was dumb and just decided to get by with less money and no car. Throughout high school, I’d walk to the general store a mile away and that was about all I did other than go fishing (my favorite thing to do at the time). For a bit of money I tutored at school and tied flies (a fishing thing) for a local tackle shop. In college I’d think nothing of walking 3-5 miles round trip for errands. Outside of peak school hours I was often the only person on the limited local bus system. I kept tutoring and writing grad school entrance essays for kids for money. After college I moved to Portland, OR and still haven’t learned to drive (I’m 40 today). I walk and bike everywhere and take the bus once in awhile.
  • fundad 4y ago
    You grew up someplace serviced by bus that got you to school, work and the general store. That’s harder to come by these days.
    • paulcole 4y ago
      Oh no, sorry I meant that the college town I went to had a bus. No non-school bus where I grew up. Growing up it was 1 mile to the general store or 35 miles to Walmart. I went there with my parents or I didn't go there at all. My job tying flies was by mail. I worked at home and mailed them to the shop. It paid about minimum wage but kept me in fishing tackle and I got better at tying flies. Plus I could listen to the radio while I worked. And we had a schoolbus to get to/from school which I don't think is that rare.
• PaulHoule 4y ago
  My son (20 yrs old) like driving but he doesn't like where new cars are going in becoming "phonish". He wants a 1970s boat of car but in a place with severe winters and road salt I think we are adding a 2000-2010 vintage asian car to the motor pool at the farm but the state of the car market is a little intimidating right now.
• seydor 4y ago
  I expect in the future cars will be used for fewer but longer trips. Commuting to work should not be a thing, and most cities will adapt to the new reality where the home is also the office. On the other hand people will seek better living quality in less dense areas and this makes the car necessary, however infrequently. Maybe the news of their demise is greatly exaggerated
• nfriedly 4y ago
  I'm not sure if I still qualify as young, but yeah, I have no love of cars. I prefer bicycling and trains. (Or just walking for sufficiently short trips.) Cars are a necessary evil in my life for the moment, but I hope for a future where that "necessary" part goes away.
• imgabe 4y ago
  It's like the Yogi Berra saying: Nobody drives, there's too much traffic. I mostly gave up a car living in Washington, DC. I still had one, but only because my apartment had free parking. It came in handy for occasional work trips and road trips, but day-to-day I walked or biked almost everywhere. Yet, the main reason it was not useful was because the roads were so packed with traffic, at almost all hours of the day, that it was nearly impossible to drive anywhere. Let alone find somewhere to park that wouldn't charge you $20. If enough people fall out of love with cars, maybe it driving will become attractive again.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• mft_ 4y ago
  Eh, this is a very city-centric view. As discussed many times past, including on HN, if you live in or near a major city, and in a country or area which prioritises goood public transport, you can get by admirably --even better-- without a car. As soon as you move even a little away from the metropolis, and/or to somewhere that doesn't prioritise good public transport, access (at least) to a car becomes close to a necessity for many activities. This rule holds true in my direct experience in the UK, US, Switzerland, and Germany. For example, in the US compare living in Denver to a small town a couple of hours' drive out in the sticks. Or in the UK, living in one of the major cities to virtually anywhere in the countryside.
  • narrowtux 4y ago
    Nobody is talking about taking away cars from people who live outside of cities. Yet this argument always comes up when problems with cars in densely populated areas are discussed.
    • BizarreByte 4y ago
      This probably occurs because people and governments love one size fits all solutions. There’s a good chance any rules about cars made in the city will spill over and cause issues for people in the country, it happens all the time in regards to other things so why not this?
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • narrowtux 4y ago
        Open your eyes and look at the "one size fits all" solution that we have today. Cars upon cars upon cars. Alternatives such as public transport, walking and cycling have always been gimped in favour of car traffic, lest the car driving populace complain.
    • mellosouls 4y ago
      That's because the tone of "problems with cars in densely populated areas" and those discussing them tend to completely ignore the significant part of the population that the argument is redundant for.
• chapium 4y ago
  EBikes are a huge win for mobility for people who live in areas that are sprawled and have poor access to transit.
• gumballindie 4y ago
  “rich world” cant afford a car. cant afford a house.
  • _vbnz 4y ago
    It means the capitalists and landowners are rich, meanwhile we "will own nothing". Marx predicted it perfectly: > You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• albertopv 4y ago
  Italy is made of thousands of small towns, industrial areas far from cities, all poorly connected by public transit. I really would like not to use car, but them using public transport it would take me almost an hour from home to work, 10kms, it's 15 minutes by cars. Also there are kids, if sick school will call parents to bring them home. I drive less than my parents did, if only because of higher gas prices, higher traffic and danger.
  • albertopv 4y ago
    I really must check what and how I write before clicking comment button...
• JansjoFromIkea 4y ago
  Probably depends a lot on where you want to live and where you will live. Where I live now it'd be madness to want a car, just a huge obligation to take care of with very little use. Decent chance I'll feel a bit different when I buy a place and am living in an area with much less frequent public transport options (but much more space to just leave a car sitting). I would rather stay where I am than move out to somewhere like that though; and I don't think I'd ever see it as a positive trade beyond the ownership vs rental aspect.
• david-gpu 4y ago
  Some of us don't want to impose the externalities of car ownership on others. The suburbanite who drives a car barely feels these inconveniences, but everybody else does. Cars are dangerous to both pedestrians and cyclists. They make our streets noisy, our air polluted -- even electric cars shed particulates from their tires and their brakes. Cars require extensive amounts of parking, which is ugly dead space which contributes to sprawl.
  • fulafel 4y ago
    And the biggest one, bringing about and excerbating global heating.
  • GiorgioG 4y ago
    Mass transit isn't without its own inconveniences: "In 2017, the average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Toronto, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 96 minutes. 34% of public transit riders ride for more than two hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 14 minutes, while 10% of riders wait for over twenty minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 10 kilometres (6.2 mi), while 25% travel for over 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) in a single direction."
    • david-gpu 4y ago
      Proving my point, because something like 80% of the land in Toronto is zoned for single-family housing. The Toronto metropolitan area is one massive sprawling suburb. How would these numbers look like if we had more dense walkable neighborhoods? No need to speculate, simply look at similar statistics from places like Montreal.
      • GiorgioG 4y ago
        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-about-impact-of-high-density-developments/ https://toronto.citynews.ca/2022/02/07/gta-communities-worry... and like everything else they are not without their own problems. I grew up in a single-family home, and also spent a year in an apartment in France as a kid and while it was more walkable...it wasn't better or worse - it was just different. People have choices, if they want to live in a more walkable city, they can relocate to one. If enough people vote with their feet, the cities will have to adapt. It seems like the people living in the 80% single-family zoned areas of Toronto are not unhappy/inconvenienced enough with the state of things to leave.
• GiorgioG 4y ago
  I grew up in a small/medium sized city with a bus system. I couldn't wait to get a car and stop having to live my life around the bus schedule (especially on the weekends.) I don't buy this article's argument. Outside of cities there will always be a demand for cars. My daughter just turned 16 and she's working/saving for a car and won't shut up about it - which IMO is great...motivation to work hard, keep her grades up (one of our stipulations), etc. Same with all of her friends. In cities with a functioning mass transit system, there's very little need for the young or old to be interested or in love with cars. It's the same as it ever was. This is literally a non-story.
  • vanilla_nut 4y ago
    I'm a young millenial. I have a number of Gen Z cousins and coworkers who admit that they hate driving, many of which never got a driver's license. I loathe car dependence too, but I suspect a lot is linked to frugality: I grew up with gas prices approaching $5 a gallon and it certainly didn't feel freeing to pay that to go literally anywhere (plus maintenance and upfront costs and insurance, of course).
    • GiorgioG 4y ago
      "...who admit that they hate driving, many of which never got a driver's license." They hate driving or they don't drive because they don't have a license (and thus how can they hate something they don't do)...which one is it? I don't "love" my vehicle, I'm an adult and a vehicle is just a tool. I enjoy the convenience of being able to move from point A to point B on my own schedule. Are there downsides? Of course. Find me something that has no downsides. Cars have more upside than downside for most people outside of cities with mass transit systems that run like a well oiled machine. Beyond just moving humans, sometimes we need to move other things. I needed several sheets of drywall and plywood a couple of weeks ago. I didn't have to pay some ridiculous $100 delivery fee and wait for delivery on their schedule. I drove 1/2 mile to my local hardware store, threw the materials in the back of my truck and brought it home...total time, 30 minutes.
      • 4y ago
• schnitzelstoat 4y ago
  I don't have a car because I live in one of the densest cities in Europe with awful traffic and no parking. Public transport can be slow and you get weirdos on it occasionally and it's annoying if you want to visit somewhere without a train station like a castle or whatever - but it doesn't seem worth the hassle of having one in the city. I really wish they'd expand the train network though.
  • nivenkos 4y ago
    They need to enforce the law on public transport too. Like begging and street selling should be illegal, clean it right up so even the wealthy would choose to take public transport.
• gadders 4y ago
  Young people in towns are going to be filling up the comments about how they don't need a car. Trying living somewhere rural without a car.
  • juve1996 4y ago
    This is the 50th time someone said this on here. It can be said without being said. Yea, try living somewhere rural without a large number of things. The fact is, most people don't, and the fact is, most of the market for everything is in cities and their satellite suburbs.
    • gadders 4y ago
      I don't know how to break this to you, but you can write software from pretty much anywhere. You don't need to be living in a polluted city. You can live in the country with your family and raise chickens and walk your dog across fields in your lunch break. Uber Eats might not reach that far, but you learn to cope.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
• CalRobert 4y ago
  It's been a decade-long journey but my wife and I finally got EU citizenship and are picking where to live (Utrecht and Freiburg are the frontrunners) specifically so our child can have a proper, independent childhood, and not the painfully lonely, infantilizing, ones we had in stroad-infested Californian suburbs. We're not young! But I applaud this development.
  • leethargo 4y ago
    Good luck! Be aware that suburbia exists in Germany as well (I'm still stuck in it).
    • CalRobert 4y ago
      Indeed! We are being very intentional about it - we want to check out Vauban in particular though I understand it would be hard to get a place there!
  • chasely 4y ago
    I have friends that live in Utrecht and it's great. The biggest adjustment for an American, I think, would be getting used to the smaller house sizes. It shifts how you see and value "stuff".
    • CalRobert 4y ago
      We spent two years living in a 50 square meter (~500 square feet) miserably cold and dark thatched cottage in a field in Ireland. That was, admittedly, unpleasant, but the places I see on Funda.nl look perfectly nice. Incidentally, the author of this article showed us around Houten (9 minutes from Utrecht by train) and it was hard to contain my dumb grin just seeing kids - not much older than mine! - riding bikes _everywhere_ and just doing their thing. we visited for dinner and when her ~10 y.o. son said "I want to go ice skating" she said "OK, have fun!" and he just... hopped on his bike and went. No "ugg who's going to drive him" or "I don't want to have to pick him up late" etc. - an independence most kids can only dream of. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/may/16/welcome-cycle-heaven-moved-family-netherlands-houten-utrecht https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/may/16/welcome-cycle... I actually would've thought the biggest adjustment would be cultural - the Dutch seem more reserved than Americans (who, to be fair, are known for being exceptionally outgoing).
• jraby3 4y ago
  I really didn’t need a car till I had kids. I wonder if this is related to reduced birth rates and rising age of childbirth.
• jimbo9991 4y ago
  People are really out to lunch if they think this is due to people not wanting cars and preferring public transit. I wish that was the case, but it's 100% because of the dire financial situation.
  • hypomanic 4y ago
    I was car-free for 8 years despite having plenty of money. The other car-free family on my street was the same. I have three kids and they have two.
  • CaptainZapp 4y ago
    > I wish that was the case, but it's 100% because of the dire financial situation Not necessarily so. I live 2 minutes from two tram lines and two bus lines. I live 4 minutes from a train station with a train every 15 minutes. It takes my 12 minutes door to door to the central train station and 25 minutes door to door to a 2nd tier European airport with excellent world wide connections. I'm a member of a car sharing cooperative with about a dozen cars within 10 minutes walking distance. I don't think that I rented one in the last two years because I just didn't need a car. And all this has really nothing to do with my financial situation. It's just that owning a car with public transport connections within walking distance would not add to my mobility in any reasonable sense.
  • PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    You'd be surprised if you lived in Copenhagen for a while. About 2/3 of the population commutes either on foot or through public transit. Personally, I am walking 40 minutes each way to go to work, or uber in the morning and walking in the afternoon. It's not that I can't afford a car. I am just not interested in owning one.
  • thedriver 4y ago
    Yeah. Owning and driving a car is becoming really expensive. It's understandable that people will avoid it if they are able to. Also, I'm pretty sure that many "anti car" teens still know someone, like their parents or a friend, that owns a car and can help them out occasionally.
  • 4y ago
• marban 4y ago
  Given today's car aesthetics, I'd also fall out of love with cars.
  • BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
    Older cars had far more design diversity and ‘personality’ but nowadays the dominant concern is fuel economy and that means their designs have converged towards a limited number of shapes that are the most aerodynamic.
• Jomaster 4y ago
  [flagged]
• kleiba 4y ago
  Young people are quite often drawn to city life, and many big cities have a well functioning PT system. Driving in big cities, on the other hand, and especially parking is a nuisance and expensive. At the same time, I recently saw a documentary about how young families are driven out of the cities and into the suburbs because apartments in bigger cities have become unaffordable for many of them. Also, life styles sometimes change as you get older - when you start a family, many of the amenities of city life become increasingly irrelevant, and raising kids outside of the city can also be more attractive for many. In such a situation, the perspective of having a car becomes a completely different one.
• mcv 4y ago
  My parents wanted to pay for my driver's license when I turned 18, but I didn't want one. (I wanted a good electric guitar instead, though it's been stolen since.) Lived most of my life without a car, and so did my brother. Worked fine. I only got a driver's license when I got married and my wife insisted, because she didn't want to the only one driving the kids around. (She mostly insists that she drives, though.) I still commute by bike. In a well-designed city, most people don't really need a car. Some do; some jobs really do require a car. My wife still travels to all corners of the country regularly, so we do have a car for that, but for me personally, a car would be a pointless expense.
  • dagw 4y ago
    In a well-designed city, most people don't really need a car. For me a car isn't for getting around the city or getting to work (I much prefer walking/biking/taking public transport for that), but getting away from the city. To get to my favourite walking trail by the sea or the local ski slope is a 30 minute drive or 1.5+ hours by public transport. Getting to the slightly larger ski resort is a 90 minute drive or almost 4 hours by public transport. Getting to a national park I like visiting is a 2.5 hour drive and virtually impossible to get to by public transport. With public transport I can vacation in most major cities in Europe. With a car I can vacation in tiny beautiful out of the way places I never would have even thought of visiting before I got car.
    • tduberne 4y ago
      This is a classical circular problem of transportation planning: when deciding whether to get a car, and if yes which car, people often use their vacation as a use case. And then, when they got that VW bus to go to the seeside once a year, using it in the city is the logical choice, because it is just lying around. Basically, getting a car is expensive, but once you have it, using it is cheaper (and often faster and more comfortable) than the other options. So a lot of the discution about getting people "out of cars" is not about getting people to never drive, but to get them to not own a car, such that they have to make the concious decision of renting a car for the holidays, if this is the best choice, for instance. What you describe sound like this. Obviously, this opens the question of how to improve the car rental market to make those options real options. This is where car-sharing systems and the like come in.
• TrackerFF 4y ago
  I'm from a rural place, so car is more or less the only viable method of transportation. Next town over is 45 miles away, the buss goes 3 times every day (06:00, 12:00, 18:00) - and like most small rural towns, the shops are dying one after another. If you want to purchase furniture, appliances, or whatever, that means driving to the next town - or you could spend $100-$200 on delivery. Luckily I moved away, but every time I'm back home I do feel the pain - especially during winters.
• SinePost 4y ago
  The article puts too much emphasis on political movements, when the answer is most likely economics and the increasingly sedentary lifestyle of the average youth.
• overthemoon 4y ago
  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. I was happy to have it to leave the city, but overall, it was a last resort. I live somewhere that requires a car now, and it's fine, traffic isn't so bad, I like cranking my music and being able to haul shit around, 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. Maybe it's the internet. Maybe it's that communication technology makes the world feel closer and more immediate than it used to. I'd be curious to hear about how/whether the experience of driving has changed over the decades, but freedom to my cohort means something else. People get sanctimonious about not owning or using a car, and that's annoying. I just wish there were more options. I don't see us (in the US) removing car infrastructure. I could see additive changes, though, which include national public transit, with some political will and creative thinking, which means it'll never happen.
  • xnx 4y ago
    Wait until self driving cars become the norm. Driving to destinations 8 hours away will be commonplace.
  • wkat4242 4y ago
    Me too. I hate the stress of driving. The busy traffic, all the mistakes you can make and be fined for, the hurry of some people. Expensive everything. I live in a city now with amazing public transport and I don't miss my car at all.
    • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      It's also utterly wasted time. You can't do anything with it and you can't even zone out because you're actively driving. While walking or on a bus you can read or devote your whole attention to an audio book. You're not home, but it's still your time.
• nivenkos 4y ago
  "Falling out of love with" = unable to afford Like in my city it'd cost at least $4000 to get a licence, and then $250 a month for indoor parking, $~200 a month or so for insurance, road tax, etc. and $~400 a month for the car loan. After taxes and mortgage payment/rent that's just unaffordable (as a Europoor).
• aorloff 4y ago
  In other news, the e-bike has finally arrived.
• drumhead 4y ago
  Insurance costs, fuel, nowhere to park. Also the internet again. People have less need to go out, can talk to or play with your friends online, watch movies, no need to go shopping, just get it delivered.
• victorvosk 4y ago
  I always liked cars as a kid. Faster the better. But Tesla kind of broke everything. A super car for 150k and its only going to get cheaper and faster as time goes by. There is no longer any parity. EV's don't have roaring engines, outside of the cringe fake engine noises some are adding. There is nothing to be excited about when your future 30k 4 door sedan can do 200mph, 0-60 in 3 seconds.
• mihaic 4y ago
  Besides the financial and environmental reasons, I see cars as being misaligned with a frictionless culture that the young are used to. It's a real hassle to drive, park and do maintenance/accreditation/insurance on a car that most people simply accept because that's the way things are done. Honestly, I'm 35 and I've always felt car-culture reminded me of smokers in the 60s: it's terrible overall but most people can't seem to see the problems since it's so widespread.
• tombert 4y ago
  Aged 32. One of the biggest reasons I moved to NYC about 8 years ago was because I hated driving. I’m not good at it, gas and insurance is expensive, and you can’t do much in parallel when driving. Taking the train everywhere has its issues but I would much rather deal with those than a car.
• chasd00 4y ago
  I really enjoy road-trips. I live in dfw, an 8-12 hr drive in almost any direction is very beautiful and relaxing to me. (Directly south gets a little boring a couple hrs before Brownsville however)
• joemazerino 4y ago
  I personally do not miss using transit on a daily basis. It was cheap, yes, but feeling like a packed sardine while being harassed by mentally ill people did not make up for the cost savings. My car isn't even expensive. Go buy a Toyota or Honda. Hybrid? Even better. I'd happily pay a bit more monthly to be in comfort than to save a buck.
• xyzelement 4y ago
  I think this is explainable at the margins by the lack of positive peer pressure to live a rich life, of which the car is just a symptom. Case in point, a kid who (a) wants to have a job (b) wants to hook up and (c) wants to go to parties / events still wants a car. What changes is that whereas in the 80s/90s, a kid who sat in his basement pulling his pud would would be considered a loser and have pressure to not be like that. Today it's totally acceptable. So there are simply more kids who aren't even trying to have an out-of-basement life, so they don't need cars. I think it's not that relevant. The kids who are going to grow up with more power (financial and social) are the ones that want cars today.
• MaxPengwing 4y ago
  I calculated it, living in Dublin Ireland, it's cheaper for me to just use taxis and public transport than owning a car. Im 40 years old and dont see the point in owning one.
• prng2021 4y ago
  I don't understand how to account for the fact that total vehicle sales in the US has not been dropping over the last 40 years despite stats like this from the article: "By 1997, 43% of the country’s 16-year-olds had driving licences. But in 2020, the most recent year for which figures are available, the number had fallen to just 25%. Nor is it just teenagers. One in five Americans aged between 20 and 24 does not have a licence, up from just one in 12 in 1983. " US vehicle sales numbers: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA The article states it's baby boomers that account for increasing traffic on the road. So baby boomers are buying more cars per capita as they age? So much so that it's offsetting these dramatic drops from the younger generations? I find that really hard to believe so maybe I'm missing something. Anyone able to explain?
  • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Maybe I'm the exception but I had a driver's licence about that time and I didn't own a car because as a teenager neither I nor my parents could afford one. Even now I've never actually bought a car myself - my wife bought one early in our relationship and we've yet to buy another and I'm now pushing 40.
  • antiframe 4y ago
    It's unclear to me what counts as a vehicle in the chart you linked. Does it include boats? Train cars? Airplanes? Sleds? Delivery trucks? Corporations buy a lot of vehicles that wouldn't conflict with the Economist's analysis about private car ownership.
• taylodl 4y ago
  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 cars? The average used car price in the U.S. is now over $28K (KBB). That's more than I've ever paid for any new car I've ever bought! What does that look like for a monthly breakdown? The finance costs for $28K is $525 per month. The average car insurance is $130 per month (US News). The average fuel costs are $100 per month (1,000 miles per month, 35 MPG fuel consumption and a fuel cost of $3.50 per gallon). Finally, the average maintenance costs are $25 per month (Consumer Reports). That cost goes up as the car gets older and doubles after the car is 10 years old, according to Consumer Reports. Add it all up and that's $780 per month. Now ask yourself, with those costs are you really surprised to hear the young are falling out of love with cars?
  • wing-_-nuts 4y ago
    I see people pulling numbers like this, and I'm not saying I don't believe you, but in my experience, owning a car has been far cheaper than what most estimate. I bought a 3 year old used car in '09 for $14500 for cash. Since then I've spent a grand total of about $3000 on repair and maintenance. My insurance is about $700 / yr. I spend about another ~ $650 / yr on gas. My total costs have been less than $2500 / yr all in. You're also not accounting for the value of your time. My 30 minute commute to the office would turn into at least 90m on public transit. That's just one example. It's death by a thousand cuts. At even 1/3rd of hourly rate that most of us make, the cost in lost time is tens of thousands a year.
  • lotsofpulp 4y ago
    There are plenty of very high quality vehicles available for purchase at less than $47k for new and $28k for used. The average sale price is skewed by people choosing luxury purchases by buying larger (and fancier) than necessary vehicles. Also can be skewed by vehicles lasting longer in the first place, meaning poorer people do not need to buy cars as often, but richer people can choose to buy cars more often.
• huuhee3 4y ago
  I wouldn't miss cars or driving if I went carless. I would miss my parents and other relatives who I simply can't reach with public transport. I would also hate not being able to relax in middle of nature so well during weekends. Proper housing within reach of public transport also tends to be too expensive. Going carless works mainly for people who have their whole lives around urban areas. For the rest of us cars are a necessity for enjoying life.
• nerdchum 4y ago
  I rode the Los Angeles and San Fran mass transit for years. And it made me love cars. I love having a little home base wherever I go. I love not having to sit next to homeless people on drugs doing crazy things next to me. I love being able to wear a nice watch and nice shoes and not having to constantly look over my shoulder worrying about being robbed. I love being able to bring my little mini Australian shepherd dog without having to beg and plead with the government for permission and medical institutions for service dog paperwork because Pitbull owners exist and are exactly the people who ride mass transit. I love being able to go anywhere at any time. I love not having to rely on unreliable drivers of mass transit to get somewhere on time. I'm sure mass transit works great in an idealic region of all middle class and upper middle class people. But I would rather the downsides of driving than the downsides of having having to sit next to the seething teeming flesh of the average American anytime I want to go somewhere. Also part of me wonders if mass transit works better in cities like New York in Chicago where the cold weather annihilates the homeless population.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• JumpinJack_Cash 4y ago
  I love cars but power law is undefeated. It's better to go to the track twice a month and have fun in a rented Ferrari or a Lamborghini for 10 very hot laps and then Ubering for the rest of the month moving from point A to point B. The whole ownership of a car seems like useless as far as practicality and also cost. The A-B cars are owned by the community and the fun cars are owned by the track (or the rent company at the track). And I just use one or the other depending on my mood. The whole cars as design objects I never bought into that. Of course I live in a city and I don't need cars to do heavy work.
• djhworld 4y ago
  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.
• MagicMoonlight 4y ago
  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.
• golemotron 4y ago
  I think allure of cars for the young has always been that you can drive to where the 'scene' is.. the interesting things. For GenZ the 'scene' is mostly online. There's no reason to go to a particular place to hang out with friends, meet new people or see something cool, interesting, and different.
• AbelV 4y ago
  This is just another reason why shared ownership and vehicle as a service is the way to go. It frees up so much resources, I think it has to be the better solution once a critical mass of users is hit.
• habosa 4y ago
  I can afford a car but I really don't want one and I haven't had one in 10 years. I don't think most people in American can really comprehend how much we'd benefit from more reliable public transit. As others have mentioned though, cost matters too. AAA reported today that for new car owners the average cost of ownership has crossed $10,000: https://newsroom.aaa.com/2022/08/annual-cost-of-new-car-ownership-crosses-10k-mark/ https://newsroom.aaa.com/2022/08/annual-cost-of-new-car-owne... That's a lot of buses and Ubers.
• tenebrisalietum 4y ago
  Two things: A. In the US - driving sucks. Populated areas: It's gotten much more crowded on every road in the past 20 years. At least where I live rush hour is a joke - there's a crash every day on the interstate, meaning traffic doesn't get above 30mph the whole time I'm on the interstate. Local roads are also full of cars during these times and during most times. It's not fun, and it's not freedom, it's an annoying necessity to live. Non-populated areas: Far less crowded, but to get anywhere, you're looking at long drives on twisty, winding roads. It might be fun at first, but then gets old. It's not freedom, it's an annoying necessity to live. B. I think cars used to be a rite of passage for young people, and often the first way they would get "out of the house" and have a way to get privacy for their earliest girlfriends/boyfriends. This is something that started to die in the late 80's. Today's young people are much poorer, much more worried, pissed, and disappointed in everything, much more isolated, and under much more restrictive settings in things they do such as school and such.
• throwaway22032 4y ago
  IME this is simply because young people are poor and have no use for the car. If you live in a single room in a house in London, barely go outdoors, and have one shelf in a fridge, then a car is just far less useful to you as a concept. If you live in a house and you go on outdoor adventures often then it's a daily thing. I mean I transport wood, tools, large amounts of groceries, etc on a near daily basis.
• bluecalm 4y ago
  Let's hope the trend continues. Cars are terrible for us. They are bad for health because we don't walk anymore or at least easy way less than 30 years ago. Children can't walk to school safely anymore. We can't play on the street. Cycling is very dangerous. Alternative light, healthier and greener alternatives are heavily discouraged by car centric infrastructure. Cars pollute. Cars can kill you (and do kill many unprotected people every day). Cars make people disconnected from others and social connection suffer - you don't just meet people on the street anymore, children don't walk home which was always great time to socialize. Cars are also terribly inefficienct way to get around. Even if you forget fuel cost, health considerations, pollution. They are just too big for everyone to have one and still be able to get around in a city in reasonable time. Bikes are already faster in many cities even with terrible car centric infrastructure and laws hostile to cycling. E-bikes with some infrastructure would be significantly faster than cars. And cheaper, and greener and safer and healthier. Cars often take valuable land which could be used for residential buildings or recreational areas. Significant % of many city centers are parking lots. Significant % of many big buildings are parking lots as well. The cost of car centric infrastructure is humongous. I am so happy this movement gets some traction. For everyone life quality getting rid of cars in cities would mean great improvement for life quality, especially young people and poor people.
• aabajian 4y ago
  The article starts with a teenager in Portland, OR. If they had selected a teenager just south or north of the city, they would've had a very different perspective. The value of having and maintaining a car is directly tied to whether you need it to perform the activities you enjoy. I enjoy taking my dog on hikes outside of NYC, so I pay the exorbitant cost of parking ($650 per month on the upper east side) to have a parking spot. If I didn't have a dog, I wouldn't have a car in the city. This is despite the fact that I personally love cars having owned a number of Japanese sports cars. The focus of the article on climate change activism and urban planning is somewhat political, but I think it gets it right in the end: "Several studies...have concluded that driving habits that are formed in youth seem to persist...even into their 40s." This is exactly it. I grew up in a relatively remote area of Southern California and became accustomed to driving-in for school, to see friends, to take my dog on hikes, etc. Those experienced have formed a positive association with "owning a car" despite the displeasure of driving around looking for parking.
• zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
  Get a Subaru Impreza
• detourdog 4y ago
  cars used to be universally rare. I bet anyplace where cars are rare they are popular among the youth.
• davidthewatson 4y ago
  I'm happy to see these statistics going in the right direction. There's a lot to learn for old car guys like me. Traffic was a problem on roads long before the internet. It's not the car. It's how we've attempted to scale cars via highways and stroads at the expense of everything around us. I don't hate cars. They're not the problem. The problem with enjoying cars as a mode of commuting is that cars don't scale when the occupant-to-car ratio is 1:1, since the car is easily several times the size of one occupant. Cars could scale if the number of occupants was on average, greater than 1:1, as it is on planes, trains, and busses. One way to make cars scale like larger vehicles is to reduce their size toward a bicycle or motorcycle. This is obvious from observing denser parts of the world. The other way is HOV lanes. That hasn't worked well around here where I've frequently been the only one on the HOV in the middle of stop-and-go, multi-lane, rush-hour traffic for decades. The driver just made the decision not to carry more occupants under the guise of personal freedom. That's an error for which we all bear the burden. The hyperfocus on productivity, punctuality, and space-time in general is the problem with modern commute culture, ignoring the evolving dialectic on remote work. We did not create this, but we've certainly accepted it, - the triumph of commute-time over commune-time. We may not all be pickled in the same diminishing-returns-on-more-cars culture, but we can transition to an increasing-returns-on-less-cars culture and simply learn to transit the earth more creatively, meaningfully, and multi-modally. Commuting is a choice that should be optimized for the mutual benefit of self and society. I, for one, really enjoy being able to read on a bus or a train (leave the driving to them) - ignoring self-driving because I don't trust "them" any further than I can throw my near-autonomous medical device, because there isn't any greater sacrifice in my mind than the feeling of agency that arises from having my hands on the wheel and the gearshift, whether bicycle, motorcycle, or car.
• bannedbybros 4y ago
  [dead]
• vinyl7 4y ago
  Cars were cool back when they were simple machines that you could maintain yourself. Now it's full of electronics, cars are 10x as big as they used to be due to insane regulations, cars are slow and weak in order to maintain MPG regulations. People are falling out of love with cars because what made cars cool fun has been legislated away. Designs of cars have all become the same and lack any cool-ness. Cars are all white, gray, or black..no more bright reds or yellows. Now they're nothing more than boring gray boxes to haul a person down the road
• whiddershins 4y ago
  Young people feel it is necessary to live in urban areas, because that is where all the other young people are. Urban areas make car ownership annoying.
• getoffmyyawn 4y ago
  I grew up and lived in 3 cities in the US for most of my life. Having a car was a must in all of them. For the last 10 years I have lived in 2 european cities and not needed a car. I love not owning a car. This is made possible by lots of good public transportation options around me. On the few occasions that I need a car I can easily rent one. I've only rented a car 3 times in the last 10 years, excluding trips to the US (where I always need to rent a car). But also, modern cars are bananas. Between the flat screens replacing physical controls and the paid subscriptions to enable existing functionality, I want nothing to do with car ownership anymore.
• kkfx 4y ago
  Cars? OR wheeled surveillance and infotainment devices? Because that's a part of the issue. Their price and wages are another.
• dclowd9901 4y ago
  A story about young people falling out of love with cars starts in Portland OR? Pardon me if I roll my eyes. Most cities are not Portland, OR. Culturally, geographically or structurally. Show me this trend in Anywhereelseville.
• tdiff 4y ago
  Lets wait for the young generation get older, born some kids, see how they, for example, cope with trains being cancelled on the day of travel (destroying their holidays with kids), and what they say about cars then.
• thex10 4y ago
  We have so many more options to get from A to B now compared to our parents' generation! - Not just taxis anymore: Rideshare apps are available and easy to use - More car rental/carsharing options to choose from (e.g. Zipcar in the USA) - Not just bikes/motorcycles: Now one can buy E-bikes, or borrow E-bikes or regular bikes via bike share programs, now scooters are getting in on this too - More intercity bus and train companies with decent amenities - I don't know how car rental companies were before. But they are still an option. And we don't have to pay for inspections/insurance/maintenance on any of that.
• dclowd9901 4y ago
  I’m an older millennial and quite on the side of being a car lover. I grew up in the very car-necessary Phoenix, but spent a while in Portland, OR, where I learned to appreciate commuting to work via bike. Regardless, I still love cars. I have a small collection of euro classics and vintage Japanese models and I love restoring them. I definitely see people have gone more toward seeing cars as appliances rather than appendages they love. And I can see the trend heading more toward an overall disdain with having to own cars or put up with them as pedestrians or cyclists. I wonder if when my daughters grow up if driving around my classics will actually been seen as cool or gross to their peers.
• LeftHandPath 4y ago
  I think another thing that's being missed is that, due to EPA regulations, cars aren't really all that sexy anymore. The Maserati MC20 is a V6. The C63 AMG is has dropped from its namesake 6.3-liter V8 already, and will soon be a small displacement twin-turbo i4. That's not very exciting. This wouldn't be problematic if the replacement were better, but it's not. Try going on a long road trip in an electric car: depending on your origin and destination, it may or may not be possible. It will take a significant multiple of the time it would've taken in an ICE car. It's no wonder today's youth aren't interested in anemic ICE cars - they aren't as cool or exciting as they used to be. And electric cars are only really viable/useful for the rich (with garages to charge them in) and/or those who live in densely populated areas where they don't have to drive very far... and those places usually have viable public alternatives that young people without families are happy to use instead.
• ardit33 4y ago
  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.
• strickman 4y ago
  Can we accelerate this so that I can finally get a call back from any Porsche dealer to tell me I have a Carrera S allocation?
• euroderf 4y ago
  The time to miss having a car is on warm summer afternoons and evenings, when one can just drive and drive and stop and explore and drive some more and just soak it all in. Other times? Meh.
• wizofaus 4y ago
  Surely we can come up with a better term than "anti-car" laws. In virtually all the cases I've seen they're basically attempts to reverse over-dedication to car-specific infrastructure of precious urban space - i.e. to use that space for something that improves the urban environment for everyone - and yes, often including those who realistically have no choice but to drive (delivery vans etc.). Cars are great for many things, but most of reasons they're not are because so many of us are given few realistic alternative choices due to the nature of how our cities have been built (which we had very little collective say in), hence we all end up using them for almost every journey, with predictable consequences. It doesn't make sense to consider attempts to fix that as "anti-" anything.
• 90d 4y ago
  I am in Bangkok right now and while there is public transportation at every corner the air quality is still super low. I took this post as the rich are falling out of love with LUXURY cars. I got passed by a Lamborghini today while walking the streets and said to my friend, while everyone else was busy trying to snap pictures, that I would only be impressed if he could do his own oil change. I expect $tatus $ymbols to continue falling out of favor and be replaced by self sufficiency. Rich are also falling out of love with alcohol and falling in love with fitness. This is good for everyone.
  • 90d 4y ago
    Also I will never give up my ICE vehicle back home, which is a 20 year old diesel that has 270,000 miles on the clock. I am an original hacker/tinkerer and absolutely despise the tech and guardrails included in ALL modern cars but ESPECIALLY the EVs.
• deleted 4y ago
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• b3nji 4y ago
  Wondering if part if this is due to the sky high inflated prices of vehicles nowadays? Back in the day, my first car was £700, with £400 insurance. It's no where near that now, and this is only 19 years ago.
• JohnFen 4y ago
  I'm a graybeard, but I have never been in love with cars. I truly wish I didn't have to own one.