Genz can't afford a car. Even used cars cost too damn much
this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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Millenials can't afford cars...
That's the real issue. It is 100% not that they're more environmentally cautious. Between less 16 year olds having jobs and cars and gas and insurance being so much more, less can afford a car. E bikes probably even have more to do with it than environmentalism does.
The Internet replacing the need to go places (e.g. chatting on social media vs. hanging out in a dead mall) probably helped too.
You also have ride hail services that weren't available a generation ago. You can get places in a car without owning a car.
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Lucky to get a hand-me-down as well.
Hmm
Gotta package wealth disparity as a feel-good environmentalist story :)
Years ago when my Gen Z nephew was turning 16 (minimum driving age in USA), the conversation went like this:
- "Are you excited to start driving and do you want car?"
- "Nah, not interested"
- "Why not?"
- "Where would I go?"
- "Wherever you want!"
- "Everything I want is right here at home"
I thought about my own Gen X early driving experience with the freedom to go to the mall or the movie theater whenever I wanted and to drive to school or work.
- His school (and eventually job) were both within walking bicycling distance.
- He had streaming services I never dreamed of when I was his age piping a flood of big budget movies right to his TV whenever he wants
- malls are dead
I couldn't really argue with his logic. Years later he did get a car when he moved out and lived farther away from work. However, it was many years after the minimum driving age which was a big departure from generations prior.
For me the appeal of a car was having somewhere private to do drugs, awkwardly make out with girls, and hide from my parents.
I feel like those things are somewhat timeless?
All of those things can and always have been accomplished without the use of a car.
Doesn't mean it doesn't make it easier, or make sure that when your friends are smoking you are there getting free hits and your gas money. Between the free beer, weed, and gas my shit box might have paid for itself.
Parents force their kids to share their location, so it isn't like the kids can hide as they used to.
I’m so glad I grew up when the internet was only used by nerds like me…
Even as someone who didn’t try any drugs until I was 20, I fully agree with you. But also gals and bois for me.
My son is about to turn 18 and is of much the same mind. We pushed him a bit to get his license but he rarely drives and has about zero interest in owning his own car. He just doesn't have anywhere he needs/wants to go. I imagine it's a little different for kids with more activities outside the home. Sports, clubs, jobs... He doesn't have any of that going on at this point. I'm admittedly a little sad about that, but I can't really force him to be interested.
Part of it comes down to that we killed a lot of the other places to go and do things along the way (called Third Places - not home or work, but a secret third thing). Kids don't have malls or something to hang out at anymore. If they're not hanging out online, then they're probably at somebody's house. It costs money to be anywhere else. Plus, gas and cars are expensive. So there's no desire to just go out driving for the fun of it. Instead of being an expression of personal freedom, cars are just about getting you from point A to point B. When I turned 16 almost 20 years ago, this was how I and the older sister of a friend of mine felt, too. There was nowhere to go really in a vacation town where traffic is so bad in the summer that you don't want to drive and everything is closed the rest of the year. So a car was just a way to get to school/work and back home again.
"Gen-z is choosing to be homeless."
These crazy kids are forgoing the tradition of having a roof over ones head in favor of urban camping. It definitely has nothing to do the kleptocracy that made housing unaffordable by converting it into a speculative market for Wall Street and foreign nationals to park dirty money.
I am reading the article to say "even living out of your car is an unobtainable dream for man Gen Z." When combined with the headline I saw recently about the return of company owned housing, the world is looking pretty bleak. We should expect unions to be making a comeback, but many seem to be brainwashed against them.
Don't forget insurance, either. A new driver will pay sky-high rates for the first few years. And while one can technically have a license but not pay for insurance if they don't own a car, if they ever do get a car insurance may end up even higher, since they dont have a history of good driving under insurance while their peers do.
My kids insurance for full coverage when they got their license was $35/month.
In the article they noted this was the same for millennials and gen x before them. I'm going to assume the standard for youths purchasing cars was with the baby boomer generation. I know my dad told me when he was young, you would purchase a cool car that didn't work for the equivalent of $100 dollars, get a friend to tow it home, then work on it for a few weeks to get it running. He told me how much he missed his MG Midget, which let's recognize as a cool ass car for a kid to have. He could fix that car with a wrench, a stick of butter, and a deck of cars*. All his friends would be doing the same.
Nowadays it would be a $1k junker, and you'd need to have a computer science degree to fix the onboard computer while having all the specific tools to get into their proprietary parts. There are older cars too, but the standard of fixing a car has increased, all the while each generation has less time and money to do it.
- This was a typo, but I love this typo. You say deck of cards, I say deck of cars, Thank you @otp@sh.itjust.works !
_He could fix that car with a wrench, a stick of butter, and a deck of cars.
Well yeah, having a whole deck of other cars would make it pretty simple!
I'm a millennial, but I fucking hate driving and gave it up a while ago. My eyesight is really bad due to misformed corneas so I have trauma from being forced to drive at a younger age. I eventually moved to a major city and got rid of my car the first chance I could (fun fact, leases are scams!). I love being able to walk/take public transit anywhere I want now, but unfortunately leaving the city is incredibly hard.
Fuck cars.
Well how the fuck are they supposed to drive when car payment at 500+, gas is 3+ a gallon and car insurance is 1500 per premium! Not to mention potential repairs.
I make 80k a year and I can barely afford my car!
These articles are so bad. There is no actual research behind them. It's all "it could be this"...well fucking dig into that maybe and get back to us with actual journalism.
Not to mention it's all based on ba consulting firm findings. It's McKinsey so they probably just want to lay people off and are using this research to support that recommendation.
Millennial chiming in. Donated my car to the humane society a couple years ago. Thankfully I live close enough to walk to work, have plenty of amenities near by, and a bus line a block away when it runs. I've saved so much money about it. If I need a car for a couple of days I rent and it's still less than owning. Do not regret it at all.
Every now and then I think about buying a used car and the prices are absurd on top of all the maintenance, insurance, registration.
Ah, so it's not just my kids (I'm Gen X). Neither has expressed any interest in driving. One's a starving student, so I guess there's that. But the other's graduated and scored a cushy job where he could certainly afford wheels if he wanted. I asked him about it and he's like nah. I'll just take a lyft or whatever if I need it. And he's a software dev so he spends the time on his laptop. I guess if he were driving, his time would be less productive? I dunno.
We actually went to the same tech convention last fall in Denver and shared a hotel. I knee-jerk rented a car thinking Denver sounds like a driving town. But parking at the convention was exorbitant and we wound up ride-sharing there anyway, so I am beginning to see the merit in his way of thinking? The only time we got any use out of the rental was the last day when we had a little free time before the flight and drove up to Red Rocks. But seriously, for that one trip, the rental was hardly worth it.
Gen z earns like $15/hr.
Those scooters are pretty cool though. If you told 10 year old me there would be electric scooters just sitting around on the street in the future you could just scan and ride, I'd have called you a big fibber.
Sometimes my dog gets a surprise run, while I just get to ride a scooter.
Gen Z can't afford £3k a year on insurance.
Millennials can't afford 3k a year on insurance.
The signal of a less enthused Gen Z when it comes to driving could affect the car industry. But McKinsey analysts point out that previous generations of Americans had also appeared less interested in driving but went behind the wheel of cars eventually.
It's like a threat
It’s like a threat
Welcome to America. This is how it's done.
Nobody is really interested in the way things work here, it's literally about forcing you to accept that you have to live this way to even begin to survive. It's about making people make choices they wouldn't otherwise make, based on a system of requirements that is always changing.
It was the same way with homeownership until it wasn't. Americans turned more conservative as they aged and got more "skin in the game" in the markets. They started seeing their homes valuation as something important, and so businesses and stocks doing well was also suddenly important. It's interesting (not) that their children who are not able to be similarly invested because they can't even begin to afford a house are not growing up conservative.
Cars will be forced on the populace, the people that run this country have no imagination and refuse to budge because they're making too much stinking money with how it works right now and they're going to drive this sucker into the ground, drain every last penny out of the economy, and then the rich will fuck off to Europe or Australia or Honduras or somewhere they can ignore how they hollowed out one of the largest nations, which is quite an achievement.
"The beatings will continue until morale improves."
Keeping people that don't like to drive off the roads is only a good thing.
I don't see a problem here.
They can't afford it with insurance and other expenses.
good
I'm a fan of public transportation too, but if you live in America, and not in a city, no car equals no job equals no income. Good for some things, not good for economy and living expenses.
no car equals no job equals no income
That's one of the things my kids noticed when searching for work.
A lot of the jobs specified either that you need a licence because you will need to drive a company vehicle sometimes, or that the workplace is not transit accessible and you will need your own transportation to/from work.
I'm an older millennial and have never even bothered to get a driver's license.
My old jeep blew its head gasket back in November 2022 and I have been walking and riding my ebike since then. Now my cheap Chinesium bike is out of order so just walking everywhere until I get new parts.
younger millennial. never got my licence, or really wanted it.
people are shocked when i tell them i don't drive. it was annoying growing up cus people kept trying to push it on me but eventually most people gave up. older people get weirdly offended if you don't drive, i truly don't understand it. honestly just find cars massively unappealing, nausea inducing, and gross for everyone and everything involved. like a loud moving pollution boxes that can kill. roads are pretty gross too, covered in oil and garbage. i was recently diagnosed autistic, i think it partially explains my distaste for them with sensory issues, at least the nausea part.
and in modern world it's not even really an inconvenience. if I need to get somewhere there is uber, if there was better public transport options where i live i would take them instead, trains and rail tend to cause me much less nausea. but i still have to use uber a lot even tho they make me car sick. pretty sure its way cheaper than actually owning a car, at least with how often i use it. get groceries delivered ect..
i would be pretty happy if the car industry collapsed ngl
You mean those services that offer to do the driving for people have impacted the way they live?
Wow, I had no idea business could alter how people spend their money. Someone should write a book on this or something. Truly revolutionary.
Gen Z is definitely driving, they're all over the place.
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