Gen Z is choosing not to drive::Less Gen Z Americans own a driver’s license than previous generations, according to consulting firm McKinsey.
Are they choosing, or can’t they afford to own a car with insurance and petrol costs going through the roof?
It may be a choice for many. I only got a car recently at age 26, even though I could always afford one (or ask my parents at an earlier age). There’s also a decline in driver’s licenses and the desire to have/drive/maintain a vehicle. Frankly, I’m not sure I’d have one myself if public transportation and sidewalks were reliable in my area.
Yea. I think there’s genuine generational shift here. Which in many ways makes sense. I never heard a negative word from my elders/parents about cars, while I and many of my friends and partners have had one and arrived at fairly critical to down right negative views about cars and driving.
Why it would be generational strikes me again as fairly obvious.
Traffic congestion has only gotten worse over time. The freedom machine ideal of the car has therefore very much faded. And things like traffic jams and the general stress of driving and parking etc are the sorts of thing that are hard to unsee once you’ve seen them. The damage they do in destroying or preventing pedestrian friendly areas is similar. The whole climate thing shifts the value proposal again.
And then there’s the pure generational factor too. Cars are relatively new. It makes sense that they’ve been on some hype curve this whole time, peaking with the boomers. Now it feels obvious we’ve overdone it and relied on them too much. Watching plenty of cars scramble to find a car park or get stuck in traffic, each bearing a single driver/passenger while taking up 5-10 square meters … again hard to unsee.
Once you’ve seen or even lived a life without all that noise, they’re no longer the must haves they were for the past decades.
This also depends on where you live, I’m gen z and I have a license (no car tho, saving money for it) but since I don’t live in a big city a car’s still important to get around (there is a mediumish-sized city ~15 min drive away, but I’m in australia so everything’s real spread out)
Yep. My parents offered to buy my gen Z brother a car, and he asked for an e-bike instead. I (a millenial) also choose to not have a car for both environmental reasons and just… not wanting to drive and deal with traffic and car maintenance and whatnot. Thankfully we live in a city whose public transportation’s getting better by day.
My partner and I live in Silicon Valley and it’s cheaper for us to rent a car when we need it than to own one. We’d use it maybe twice a month so rentals just make more sense. We’re moving to San Francisco soon though and at that point we’ll likely never own a car and just transit everywhere.
I saw a 1998 corolla for sale on the street for $5000. The basic buy-in for anything these days it insane. This “market rate” shit needs to die.
Toyota Corollas are really popular though. For a Kia of the same age the previous owner will pay you 5k if you take it off their hands.
My son is getting gifted an electric car from a family friend.
He still doesn’t really give a shit about getting a license, it’s crazy to me.
I think there’s also the issue of where do kids have to go hang out anymore?
By and large, malls are dead/dying, and some don’t even allow unsupervised kids anymore.
Movies are expensive. Restaurants are expensive. Concerts are expensive (if you’re lucky enough to live somewhere with easy access to concert venues, if you’re in the suburbs you probably have an uphill battle trying to convince your parents to let you go wandering around the city unsupervised to go to a concert) Arcades basically don’t even exist anymore.
They can barely even go hang out in a park without being harassed by some Karen or the cops, and of course parks usually close at dusk and kind of depend on the weather being decent so in many places there’s a good chunk of the year where parks are undesirable.
You can hang out at your friends’ houses, but depending on your area there’s a decent chance that they may be in walking or biking distance so no need for a car, and if you’re just going to be hanging around the house, not a big deal for Mom or Dad to drop you off/pick you up, not like you’re going to really need a car while you’re there, you got nowhere to go anyway. And of course we get some parents these days who are really weird about their kids going over to other people’s homes, which leaves staying home and hanging out online.
About the only thing I can think of that I used to do as a kid that might still be accessible for kids and might necessitate them having their own car is to go hang out at the local comic/game shop to play magic, d&d, etc. Because most of them are pretty cool about people just coming to hang out, but even that could really be a “hey parental unit, can I get a ride?” kind of thing.
Plus, if you have a tight group of friends you always hang out with, you may only need a couple drivers. Even going back to when I was a teen/young adult, a lot of my friends didn’t have a license and many of them who did didn’t have their own car or couldn’t count on borrowing their parents’ car. I know the core group I hung out with was probably around 6-10 people, and one other guy and I did 99% of our driving whenever we went to do something because we were the ones with cars. Probably up until I was about 23 I spent a lot of time picking friends up and giving them rides places because I had a car and they didn’t.
I’ve heard this called “the death of the third place”. The first place is home, the second place is work, the third place is everything else. It used to be that people could hang out at bars, malls, bowling alleys, etc. for not astronomical prices. It’s gotten too expensive to be out.
Just like they’re “choosing” not to own houses either I guess
If you work hard and save up, you could live in a nice van down by the river!
The unit of measure in this article is whether or not they have a driver’s licence, not a car…I’m pretty sure even gen Zers can afford a driver’s license, if they actually wanted it. Not having a driver’s licence is very much a choice, to a much higher degree than owner a car (or house)
Sure, but why get a licence if you know you won’t have a car any time soon?
Because it’s convenient to be able to drive a car? There are lots of cases when you may borrow a car to do things. Teenagers might borrow their parents car to do errands and stuff.
I got a licence when I was 18 (legal driving age where I live) despite not owning a car or planning to anytime soon. I could still borrow my parent’s car sometimes, which was nice. This article specifically talks about teens in the 16-17 year old range, very much able to borrow a car from parents (if they have one)
In places like Finland it costs over a thousand euros to get your driver’s license. That’s less than a car obviously but not nothing either
It costs about 400K to 500K where I live to buy a house that used to be around 150K 30 years ago. Times are fucked
That’s not that bad unless that’s already adjusted for inflation. If you haven’t adjusted it already then 150k would be 310k today. Where I’m at house costs have increased 5x after adjusting for inflation.
This is after inflation has been calculated. I live in the Netherlands atm, you can look up how fucked that market is.
Hell, I’m a Millennial and it’s a no-brainer… Food or gas, emission taxes, road taxes, maintenance costs, and everything else which comes with owning a car. Including the car itself. And that’s just from an economic standpoint, I’m not even gonna go into the impact it has on the climate and how EVs are mostly just expensive and not-really-efficient pieces of jewellery still.
They’re choosing not to drive for the same reason they’re choosing to be more thrifty, choosing not to go to college, choosing to live with their parents longer, and choosing not to buy homes. See if you can find the common denominator.
idk, I have a car and a job that pays well enough that I don’t feel right for gas money and such, but I’ll still walk/public transit/bike when it’s not terribly inconvenient and I feel like a lot of my same generation coworkers feel the same way.
sure money might be part of it for some, but definitely not the driving force in my circles
It’s all a choice it seems. Damn these newer generations and their freedom of choosing the things that the older generations deemed great and easy to attain, the mindset of lazyness has encroached on the mind of the young ones through this TikTok and other electronic devices, poisoning their free will and corrupting their mind. Nobody thinks for themselves anymore these days.
Quite interesting to see them trying to live without a car in a society where cars are such a necessity. I live in the Netherlands and many of my friends don’t have a license or own a car, but over here the infrastructure is build around accessibility for people without a car. For example, I live in a small town and I can hop on my bike and reach 5 supermarkets within 15 minutes. But it’s interesting to see people trying out different modes of transportation where it’s not so easy.
The article mentions hailed mobility, like Uber and Lyft, are the alternative uses. It’s still cars, but not their car.
Considering how much cars cost I wonder if ride shares are even more expensive.
Depends on how often you drive.
there’s a lot of variables, but figure owning a car costs 300-400 a month minimum…
If you don’t need it everyday for work I can easily see ride apps/taxis being much cheaper.
It’s very easy when you don’t have enough money to buy a car.
