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Auto manufacturers today are scratching their heads, trying to figure out why the millennial generation has little-to-no interest in owning a car. What car makers are failing to see is that this generation's interests and priorities have been redefined in the last two decades, pushing cars to the side while must-have personal technology products take up the fast lane.
It's no secret the percentage of new vehicles sold to 18- to 34-year-olds has significantly dropped over the past few years. Many argue this is the result of a weak economy, that the idea of making a large car investment and getting into more debt on top of college loans is too daunting for them. But that's not the "driving" factor, especially considering that owning a smartphone or other mobile device, with its monthly fees of network access, data plan, insurance, and app services, is almost comparable to the monthly payments required when leasing a Honda Civic.
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With recent studies showing a huge decline in auto sales among the millennial marketplace, it's no wonder auto manufacturers are in a mild state of panic, realizing they're missing out on a generation that wields $200 billion in purchasing power. Numbers don't lie, and over the last few years statistics have shown a significant drop in young people who own cars, as well as those with driver's licenses—and that decline continues among the youngest millennials, meaning this is not a trend that's going away anytime soon. From 2007 to 2011, the number of cars purchased by people aged 18 to 34, fell almost 30%, and according to a study from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, only 44% of teens obtain a driver's license within the first year of becoming eligible and just half, 54% are licensed before turning 18. This is a major break with the past, considering how most teens of the two previous generations would race to the DMV for their license or permit on the day of their 16th birthday.
(Score: 2) by dingus on Wednesday September 14 2016, @02:03AM
You can get phones for cheap. That, and they're pretty much a necessity for modern life, unlike a car(in most cities -- some places have terrible or nonexistent public transport).
I can say with confidence that if I hadn't been given my dad's truck, I would be riding my bike or taking the bus. It's just not worth.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gaaark on Wednesday September 14 2016, @03:00AM
Exactly: phones are considered a necessity, but are expensive when you have school debt.
They make it seem like "hey, why don't they drop their phones and bills and buy a car"... they can only afford one, so they choose their phones.
My wife and I, though, need cars and so cannot afford mobile phones.
It's one or the other for lots of people, and getting worse for those with large school debt who can't find good paying jobs.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @03:19AM
Somehow I've managed a career without ever having more than a landline.
You might want to rethink your idea of "necessity".
Playing Candy Crush while you wait in line ain't exactly it.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday September 14 2016, @09:30AM
Depends how much you use the phone (and probably on where you live). I just got a landline for the first time in over a decade, and only because it's a requirement for FTTH here (there's no phone connected to it). I dropped the landline because it wasn't economic. Back then, it cost £10/month just for line rental, and I was spending £2-3/month on a pre-pay mobile. Since then, mobile prices have gone down, landline line rental has gone up. I now pay 3p/minute for calls, 2p/text, and 1p/MB of data and spend about £1/month on my phone.
I bought my first Smartphone (Nokia N80) as a cost-saving measure too. It had a built-in SIP client and the cost of calls using SIP over WiFi was lower than the cost of mobile calls by enough that the device paid for itself over about half of its lifetime. Now, aside from calls abroad and freephone numbers, it's cheaper to use the mobile, so I spend about £5/year on my SIP account, mostly to call my mother, who now lives in France.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:22PM
Uh, cellular service costs less than a landline, dipshit.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday September 14 2016, @02:04PM
In cellular-only households I've seen, there's a phone per persno. Do two to four cellular phones in a household cost less than one landline?
(Score: 2) by pendorbound on Wednesday September 14 2016, @02:56PM
In a family shared plan, it's pretty close.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:41PM
Not these days. Now where I am, where a traditional phoneline starts at $30, and VOIP is cheaper still.
Meanwhile, shared cell plans *start* at $75-80, for a mere 1 or 2 GB, and that's just for the *first* phone on the plan.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday September 14 2016, @10:40PM
Yeah, $75/month (plus tax) is what I pay for my contract. But I get a hell of a lot more than "a mere 1 or 2GB". Last month I used 56 gigs. That $75/month gets me 450 minutes, unlimited texts, unlimited data (no caps, no throttling) and a subsidized phone (the usual -- $200 for the latest model Galaxy or iPhone.)
My parents have two phones on a single non-contract account, and they pay around $30/month. Plus an initial $100-$200 to buy each phone (an iPhone and a Galaxy, two year old models). Although they don't use a ton of data -- that 2GB/month would cost them an extra $10-15, but that's still below $50/month.
I live in Rhode Island, they're in Pennsylvania, and we're using different providers although they're both Sprint MVNOs -- Credo Mobile and Ting.
So you can get a phone for $100 plus around fifty a month for service which you can cancel or adjust at any time if money is tight. Buy a car and you're out at least a grand, and possibly in debt which you can't just cancel. Plus gas, plus maintenance, which could be more than a hundred a month even on a car that's in pretty good shape. So maybe you buy a halfway decent used car, and the *loan payments* are about the same as a monthly cellphone bill, but there's no way in hell that the total cost of a car is that low.
You might be able to afford a *bicycle* and the associated maintenance for around the cost of a mobile phone or two...my ex commuted several miles every day by bike and she definitely spent at least $50/month maintaining that thing, repairing bent rims and punctured tires and such. She did have a cellphone though -- a two year old iPhone, cracked so badly that big chunks of the glass and LCD were missing and you could see the aluminum frame. Still on her parents' family plan, which her and her siblings helped pay for because the parents couldn't afford it either. She didn't own a PC, so that iPhone was her only means of communication. Maybe a landline would have been a bit cheaper (although it would actually be three landlines vs one family plan -- the users of that family plan were spread across three states) but a landline can't browse the web which means riding several miles to a library or something, and it can't get text messages which would have caused some issues with her job since they did some of their scheduling via texts. So the landlines would have been about the same cost as the cellphones, without providing anywhere near the same level of access. Plus the fact that the cellphone is always with you, so you don't miss a call (missing calls repeatedly could cost you your job if you're in a low wage position) and also provides a very valuable tool in case of emergency.
Cellphones vs landlines isn't a fair comparison, as the phone is also a computer and a stereo system and an emergency beacon and a watch and so much more if that's all you have. And anyone who says cellphones are the same cost as a car is ignoring at least half the cost of the car.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @04:07PM
And VoiP (can do that at the library) is even cheaper still.
What's your point fuckwad?
Back when (insert regional disaster) happened, all the cell towers were at over capacity and quite a few were down. Couldn't make a call.
Landlines operated just fine.
Within the realm of necessity is the ability to make calls during disasters. Landlines are incredibly robust.
Did you get that bitch?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 14 2016, @05:25PM
Landlines are seldom affected by natural disasters - but they do take a fucking sometimes. Most frequently, flooding takes them out of service. A very unfortunately located fallen tree can take out areas of land line service.
You've made a decent point, but that point isn't always true.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Wednesday September 14 2016, @05:59PM
Depends if it's a real landline or not. Around here the POTS are mostly being replaced with fiber or cable connections, which means that they go down whenever the power goes down. I've had a great deal of luck with cellular during power outages and what not. Most of the cell towers have redundant power anyways, so as long as my handset has power I'm fine.
A relatively cheap solar set up ensures that I can have power for things like that indefinitely.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 14 2016, @05:22PM
That is true, and untrue. My landline costs about $20/month. With that landline, I can call anything within about 25 miles, except I can't call across the state line, without paying a fee. I no longer have a long distance carrier, so that makes it difficult to make a long distance call on the landline. I'd have to jump through a couple hoops, and connect with a long distance carrier in order to do so. BUT - long distance calls from a land line are pretty expensive.
So - a landline is cheaper than any cell service, if you only get the basics. But if you need to call further than your local calling area, the landline gets expensive real fast.
In today's world your freinds and relatives most certainly do NOT all live within any given area code, let alone local calling area. Even small businesses need to make frequent calls outside of their own area codes, and larger corporations think global.
So, yeah, I can almost agree that a cell phone is a necessity for people getting started in this world today.
It's not really a necessity for me. The wife and kids think so, but I don't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @08:41PM
> cellular service costs less than a landline, dipshit.
Where YOU live, maybe!
Not here. $35/mo for landline, $45 for the very cheapest cell plan.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Thursday September 15 2016, @06:24AM
$40/mo (no contract) here will give you unlimited talk, text, and 3g data. As long as you're in the city, coverage is fine.
If you're out in the middle of nowhere, things are different. But then, the real thing to point out here is just how few millenials you'll be likely to run into out there. Millenials and cities are pretty inseparable.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 14 2016, @05:15PM
"Playing Candy Crush while you wait in line"
Yeah, but, what about Zombie Apocalypse?
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Wednesday September 14 2016, @10:44AM
My wife and I, though, need cars and so cannot afford mobile phones.
What? You can get a functioning mobile for £30.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 14 2016, @05:28PM
The most recently purchased feature phone in my home cost $20US. Cheap, cheap, cheap. But, it's not the cost of the phone that makes cell service expensive. It's the monthly fee. I know, $45 or $55 monthly isn't a great deal - but it's a deal if you don't have reliable employment.
Millenials often work two or three jobs, because the corporations aren't willing to put them on full time. That seems to be true, because several of the people I work with have second jobs. To them, it just seems natural to have two or more jobs.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Friday September 16 2016, @10:05AM
Is there no way to get a cheap, low-upkeep service?
It's certainly possible here in the UK. Generally people go with contracts for high-consumption, and pay-as-you-go for low-consumption.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday September 16 2016, @02:42PM
If there is a cheaper service, I'm not aware of it. The first tier carriers want more than $100 US. The second tier carriers, like I use, start out around $40. The third tier carriers offer really cheap deals, but none of them cover my area. People further out in the boonies than I am certainly can't get those low rent deals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @05:56PM
I paid $30 for a used flip-phone, and $100 a year for more service than I can use at TMobile.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 15 2016, @06:30AM
$30 for a used flip phone? Christ, as long as you're throwing money around like that, how about sharing some around here. You can buy them new for $12.99 on fry's.com [frys.com], and that's only as high as it is because they're becoming a bit of a specialty item. $30 will buy you a smartphone over at Walmart [walmart.com].
(Score: 1) by tftp on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:24AM
You can get phones for cheap. That, and they're pretty much a necessity for modern life, unlike a car
I don't know why a phone is needed "for modern life", unless you define the modern life as one that revolves around the phone :-)
I have an old flip phone, but I keep it only for emergencies. I rarely, if ever, call from it, and almost never receive valuable calls on it. Most of my communication these days is over email and Skype. I have them over Wi-Fi nearly at any place where I can be. Perhaps, if I were a UPS delivery guy, for example, then I could reconsider. But my day is nowhere that mobile. If someone cannot email me while I am getting from A to B, they can always call me if that's so important. If not, it can wait until I get to where I am going.
So the phone is not relevant to my life. However a car is. Sure, I live in a city now, and there are buses. But they are very expensive, and they incur too much overhead - they move slowly, stop at every corner, and come not all that often. I can be where I'm going in a car before the bus even shows up at the stop! My time is my life, and my life is finite. I do not want to waste time on things that I do not like - and certainly waiting for a bus is not a valuable investment of time. (If for you it is, then you surely need the smartphone and a data plan, as you will spend a good chunk of your life waiting :-) For me the car is an instrument that allows me to do more; often it allows me to get to places that the bus just doesn't go - such as to homes of some of my friends, who live just a few miles away from the city. A few miles in a car is not even worth mentioning. A few miles walking - that is something else entirely. Buses are also not all that great when you need to carry bulky stuff - and by "bulky" I mean anything that is larger than a small box. An average coffee maker is probably OK, but FSM forbid you also want to buy a pillow, let alone two. You won't have enough hands to carry all that. But with a car you just throw them in and carry them home.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by dingus on Wednesday September 14 2016, @07:16AM
Then your life is different from a lot of peoples'. Get over it.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Nuke on Wednesday September 14 2016, @09:23AM
Dingus wrote :- Then your life is different from a lot of peoples'.
So is yours. I use phones when i need to, but the cost is trivial compared with other costs in my life. I don't understand how in a matter of about 20 years, phones have become such a major (or the major) expense in so many people's lives - a triumph of marketing I guess. In town I see about 30% of people are walking around with a mobile to their ear, which suggests that they are spending perhaps 20-25% of their waking lives on the phone. WTF for? Who is it at the other end who needs all that information? People did not need it before about 20 years ago.
At work I use the company phone. At home (in the UK) I have a landline costing me about 25 GBP per month (excluding internet connection which is another 15 GBP). Most of the calls from my landline are at an off-peak rate (because at peak rate times I am at work). I also have a PAYG dumb mobile that cost me about 50GBP eight years ago and I need top it up only occasionally because I use it only if I have a particular need to, not to unload verbal diarrhea.
(Score: 2) by SDRefugee on Wednesday September 14 2016, @03:31PM
Sure.. cellphones are expensive if you have to have the latest/greatest, and "unlimited" data/minutes/text.. But.. you can have a perfectly usable older smartphone that you BUY from ebay/swappa or many other places. and steer yourself to something like Ting, a MVNO on both tmobile/sprint's networks.. I have a not-so-new Nexus 4 on Android 5.1.1 that I paid $65 for on ebay and wife has a Nokia Windows phone we paid $35 for, and our phone bill each month is around $35 for the both of us using Ting.. We're not yakkers, and don't use a heck of a lot of data/text, so this works fine. I'm a geek, but I sure the hell don't need the latest/greatest and the heavy costs that accompany these things, since wife and I are retired...
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @05:38AM
And hey, that Android 5.1.1 is only wide open to a handful or two of glaring security vulnerabilities. Might be time to build 6.0 [androidpit.com] or later...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 14 2016, @05:34PM
"a triumph of marketing I guess"
I think the greatest triumph of marketing has to be bottled water. People actually PAY for a drink of water. And, in many cases, that water is of questionable origin and purity. Water. Ordinary tap water. People PAY FOR IT!! A dollar, a dollar and a half, two bucks, and more, for just a little drink of water.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Nuke on Thursday September 15 2016, @06:19PM
I think the greatest triumph of marketing has to be bottled water. .... Water. Ordinary tap water.
I agree. I was behind a delivery truck two days ago and the ad on the back made no bones about it being bottled tap water. "Mains water in a bottle" it said. Cannot remember the brand (I am in the UK btw). They probably stick it through a filter or something just to claim some added value. Jeez, even the Romans had mains water and we are going back to carting it around in bottles. Civilisation is sliding backwards - women will be fetching the bottles on their heads next.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Wednesday September 14 2016, @05:57PM
I was offered a free car from one of my parents' friends when I was in high school, but the costs associated with driving a car don't stop with the car itself. There's the other add ons that you're required to have an insurance for teenage boys is rather expensive.
In fact, I didn't even bother getting my license until I was 19 because I didn't feel the need to drive. The bus got me where I wanted to go and if I did need to drive, chances are somebody else I knew was going there as well.