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> The vast majority of people don't buy a brand new car more than once or twice in their life. The adage has been that "Americans buy, on average, a new car or

> The vast majority of people don't buy a brand new car more than once or twice in their life. The adage has been that "Americans buy, on average, a new car or truck every 3 or 4 years."[1] That's like a dozen new cars in a lifetime. I was going to call bravo sierra on your assertion, but I decided to try a back-of-the-envelope calculation to check the plausibility: Roughly 10 million cars are sold each year in the U.S., the U.S. has 230 million adults, and they'd likely buy their cars between ages 18 and 65 (a span of 47 years). That means each adult has a 1 in 23 chance (230M/10M) of buying a new car each year, so over a 47-year span they'd buy 47/23 = 2 new cars. There could be all sorts of ways my calculation could be wrong, but it agrees surprisingly well with your claim. I'm wondering now if the "new car every 3-4 years" is a myth propagated by auto makers. [1] http://www.cnbc.com/id/49504504 http://www.cnbc.com/id/49504504

lancewiggs 12y ago
2nd hand cars? The 10m is just new cars right?
- computator 12y ago
  I do mean 10 million new cars are sold yearly in the U.S.[1][2] Without doing a lot of research, I couldn't decide how to deal with questions of: - Including or excluding light trucks - Including or excluding cars that are new but being leased rather than sold - Large year-to-year variations in sales (esp. of low sales during the recession) But I think 10 million is reasonable rough estimate. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States#Sales http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unite... [2] http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html
dredmorbius 12y ago
If you look at fleet life then you'll find it's markedly more than 3-4 years. It stood at 10.8 years as of 2011. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/autos/story/2012-01-17/cars-trucks-age-polk/52613102/1 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/autos/story/2012-01-17/... 33.8% of cars were older than 10 years as of 2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States#Age_of_vehicles_in_operation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unit... http://www.nada.org/Content/NavigationMenu/MediaCenter/NADAData/20021/NADAData_vos.pdf http://www.nada.org/Content/NavigationMenu/MediaCenter/NADAD... If you run the statistics as median number of lifetime purchases by person (rather than average), you'll likely get a lower count as well. High-volume purchasing is likely concentrated among wealthy (or exceptionally unlucky) drivers.
caseysoftware 12y ago
Thanks for the backup. :) I think the numbers are heavily skewed by people who do buy those new cars every few years. Also, I think the car rental companies - who would have massive annual turnover of vehicles - further skews the average[1]. The top 4 companies have ~2M vehicles and if they never have a car more than 3 years old (probably more like 2 years), then they buy ~700k/year or 7% of that 10M in annual new car sales. 1 - http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/07/13/surprising-facts-about-the-rental-car-industry.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/07/13/surprising-...

lancewiggs 12y ago

2nd hand cars? The 10m is just new cars right?

computator 12y ago
I do mean 10 million new cars are sold yearly in the U.S.[1][2] Without doing a lot of research, I couldn't decide how to deal with questions of: - Including or excluding light trucks - Including or excluding cars that are new but being leased rather than sold - Large year-to-year variations in sales (esp. of low sales during the recession) But I think 10 million is reasonable rough estimate. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States#Sales http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unite... [2] http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html

dredmorbius 12y ago

If you look at fleet life then you'll find it's markedly more than 3-4 years. It stood at 10.8 years as of 2011. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/autos/story/2012-01-17/cars-trucks-age-polk/52613102/1 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/autos/story/2012-01-17/... 33.8% of cars were older than 10 years as of 2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States#Age_of_vehicles_in_operation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unit... http://www.nada.org/Content/NavigationMenu/MediaCenter/NADAData/20021/NADAData_vos.pdf http://www.nada.org/Content/NavigationMenu/MediaCenter/NADAD... If you run the statistics as median number of lifetime purchases by person (rather than average), you'll likely get a lower count as well. High-volume purchasing is likely concentrated among wealthy (or exceptionally unlucky) drivers.

caseysoftware 12y ago

Thanks for the backup. :) I think the numbers are heavily skewed by people who do buy those new cars every few years. Also, I think the car rental companies - who would have massive annual turnover of vehicles - further skews the average[1]. The top 4 companies have ~2M vehicles and if they never have a car more than 3 years old (probably more like 2 years), then they buy ~700k/year or 7% of that 10M in annual new car sales. 1 - http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/07/13/surprising-facts-about-the-rental-car-industry.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/07/13/surprising-...