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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 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