trailer

Want a glimpse at the future of automakers? Consider this: there were four million fewer autos in the United States last year. Ouch.

The number of new cars sold has overshadowed the amount of cars we scrap – literally throw in the junk yard – every year. But that changed in 2009. Americans scrapped 14 million cars and only bought 10 million new cars, according to a report by the Earth Policy Institute. That’s a net loss of cars on U.S. roads.

Why is this happening? You can be like the prototypical Scooby-Doo villain and blame those meddling kids, but there are a lot of other factors at play here, as well: the economy, for starters. Higher unemployment + less money = fewer cars.

Those meddling kids brought down this dastardly villain… and took cars off the road.

There are other, more complicated reasons, too: market saturation, ongoing urbanization, economic uncertainty, oil insecurity, rising gas prices, frustration with traffic congestion, and concerns about the climate are the biggees, according to the Institute, a non-profit environmental research organization. As for the kids, we weren’t kidding: The Institute cites a declining interest in cars among young people.

Apparently, young people are simply not interested in cars. Getting your driver’s license, that 16-year-old rite of passage I remember surprisingly well, has lost some favor among today’s teens.

The number of teenagers with licenses peaked at 12 million in 1978 and has been decline ever since, according to the organization’s data. Despite the largest U.S. teenage population ever, which was 17.7 million in 2007, the number of licenses issued to this group that same year was just under 10 million.

The study highlights how competitive the automaker industry is going to become in the next decade. Competition will push automakers to build better, more efficient cars, which almost hurts them in an odd way: As cars become more efficient and durable, consumers are less likely to buy cars as often as they once did. Meaning, automakers will be fighting to sell autos to fewer interested buyers than ever before.

http://www.weseed.com/blog/tag/cars/

trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRdxXPV9GNQ