The end of the private car?

[peteo48]

Just sensing straws in the wind. I follow a young guy on Youtube - a car dealer specializing in high end motors. He did a Q and A session and one question was whether he could see himself selling second hand Electric Cars. He said he thought, as they got older, they'd be difficult to shift. A 10 year old EV's battery would be shot and needing a new battery unless the buyer was prepared to put up with low range.

I also know an EV evangelist who has just bought his second EV. In various exchanges with him I keep going on about how expensive they are and he, being an industry expert, said that most people bought new cars on PCP or PCH (this is true - I think it's about 90%) and the petrol savings outweighed the higher monthly payments.

But then I thought, most people do not drive or even buy new cars. We've got 30 million cars on the road in the UK and probably, at the outside, 6 million are on some sort of PCP deal. The rest will range from 3 year old to maybe 15 years old. Many people pay about £2,000 for a car - a 10 year old Corsa say. These people will never, ever, have access to anything other than EVs at the end of their useful life.

Bit by bit, I sense we are moving away from the private car as an aspiration for all but the relatively well off. Life and transport might look very different in, say, 20 years. Young people in particular are already less able and/or willing to get on the car bandwagon.

Good thing or bad thing? I am old enough for it not to matter but the dream of a car of one's own might be disappearing for many.

[hemming]

A very thought provoking post, thank you. Is it possible please to give a link to the Youtube site?

[madasafish]

Conventional car costs have plummeted this week with the crash in oil prices  -30% today...

We are approaching oil prices last seen in the 2008-10 Crash....

Expect numerous car dealers to go bust with quarantine restrictions with Covid-19 outbreak.

[ColinB]

Bit by bit, I sense we are moving away from the private car as an aspiration for all but the relatively well off. Life and transport might look very different in, say, 20 years. Young people in particular are already less able and/or willing to get on the car bandwagon.

What you're talking about here is "Mobility as a Service" (aka Transportation as a Service). In this model, you don't own or lease the means of transport, you just buy the service when you need it. Couple of views about it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobility_as_a_service
https://mobilitylab.org/2018/12/06/understanding-transportation-as-a-services-potential-to-reduce-car-ownership/

Autonomous vehicles seem to form part of that (and there are various views about whether we'll ever achieve that nirvana), but even without those you can see the beginnings of MaaS with Oyster Cards and the like offering cross-mode ticketing, car clubs, app-based bike hire, Uber, etc. If these kinds of things are commercially viable and become widespread, why would anyone who lives in a city want to own a car ? Maybe different of course for rural residents for whom those initiatives are pretty irrelevant.

[Jocko]

Many Millenials shun car ownership. My grandsons, despite dad being a mechanic and having grown up around cars, are perfectly happy with public transport. They like to have a drink when they go out, are happy to use taxis and Ubers and don't feel the need to own a car. My grandson isn't even bothered about learning to drive. I think insurance costs put them off.
It is not until they marry and have kids that they then think again. By that time they are invariably earning and leasing a car on PCP or the like often makes sense.
I am sure Autonomous transport will come about and as long as it arrives before the last of the available ICE/Hybrid cars reach the end of their life transport should go okay.
And as for cheap EVs with depleted batteries, most people on a tight budget will manage with those. My early cars had very limited range because I didn't want to go much further than I could get a bus home when they broke down. And they did!

[peteo48]

A very thought provoking post, thank you. Is it possible please to give a link to the Youtube site?

[peteo48]

The bit where he talks about second hand EVs isn't very long - about 12 minutes in.

[RichardA]

Many Millenials shun car ownership. My grandsons, despite dad being a mechanic and having grown up around cars, are perfectly happy with public transport. They like to have a drink when they go out, are happy to use taxis and Ubers and don't feel the need to own a car. My grandson isn't even bothered about learning to drive. I think insurance costs put them off.

I didn't take my driving test until I was 19 as year two of uni was to take place at the main campus in another town and not at a local college, so the alternative was to get a bus to the station and then catch a train. This was almost 20 years ago, many people of my age had licenses by that point and some even had Peugeot 206s, Clios or Corsas and suchlike on PCPs as soon as they could scrape together a deposit.

I too grew up around cars and was really into cars (though that had dialled back a bit in my teenaged years), dad always worked with cars in some capacity during his working life, but I didn't need a car up until that point so never bothered. A monthly season ticket of £28 gave unlimited travel on Stagecoach buses (plus Metrobus services subsidised by the council) and pretty much covered everything.