
Kids Don’t Care About Cars - yesimahuman
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2014/07/05/kids-dont-care-cars/
======
lotharbot
Be careful not to extrapolate future trends too much based on what "kids these
days" are doing _right now_. Cars are tools, and when the only task you have
to complete is "get to school or work, get home, occasionally get to your
girlfriend's place" a car that gets you from A to B without much trouble is
fine. But a lot of "kids these days" will eventually grow into parents, and
they'll have different use cases and therefore need more versatile tools. A
2-seater no longer works when you have 3 kids, or when you have to haul things
bigger than a person for work or your own projects. A simple city-commute-
optimized car with a short range no longer works when you occasionally want to
visit your parents 2 states over, your brother 3 states over, and your wife's
parents in a small town that's inconveniently far from any airport. When "kids
these days" grow up, they may discover use cases they'd never considered
before.

~~~
kijin
How often do you visit your parents 2 states over, or your parents-in-law who
live far away from any airport?

Sure, "kids these days" will soon grow up and figure out what they need to get
to those places. But the answer might not be "Buy a minivan." It could just as
well be "Use this app to rent a self-driving minivan."

Having 3 kids, of course, is a different problem, but a lot of it depends on
where you live. I have a hunch that many "kids these days" would hate to live
in the same boring suburbs that their parents raised them in. And who knows,
maybe Americans will finally rediscover the courage to tell their kids to take
the subway to soccer.

~~~
lotharbot
my parents are nearby, but my wife's parents are about 500 miles away, and we
visit several times per year. We'd like to visit more often, but have also had
multiple funerals this year that have taken us in the other direction.

I'm not suggesting everyone will necessarily own a car. Only that
extrapolating from the trends of what young people are currently doing isn't
necessarily accurate -- recently graduated singles won't have all of the same
life considerations as they will 5-10 years in the future. (Another one: those
"boring suburbs" often have much better schools than the "hip" inner city.
When you have kids, bad schools become a serious consideration.)

------
akurilin
I've been pretty happy with swapping driving, insurance, parking, maintenance
etc. for living right in the middle of the city very close to work and using
Lyft for everything else. Actually saves me a ton of time/money. For just the
cost of a parking spot in SF (~$300) I can get a good 40 lyft rides a month to
most of the locations I need to access.

~~~
tdicola
What if you want to go for a weekend camping in Yosemite, or drive down the
coastal highway to LA, or maybe up to Portland and Seattle? I agree owning and
keeping a car in the middle of a city is expensive and tough. There are
certainly some benefits to having a car though.

~~~
sundaeofshock
My fiance and I live in San Francisco; neither one of us owns a car. On the
occasions that we need a car for a couple of hours (e.g., large purchases) we
use City Car Share. For trips out of the City, we just rent a car. We save
thousands of dollars a year in gas, insurance and maintenance. We also save
time and aggravation in not having to worry about things like parking and
street cleaning. We can't see ever going back to owning a car.

~~~
base698
I did the same thing. It was basically break even for weekend trips and more
profitable to have the car for week long trips. If you like the woods and
places off the beaten path car shares aren't going to work.

------
jseliger
I wrote a similar post two years ago:
[http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/cars-and-
generation...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/cars-and-generational-
shift/) and have noticed the same basic trends. I'd also note that this:

 _As for the freedom the automobile once represented…

You don’t have to leave your house to connect with your friends, you don’t
have go to the mall, as for doing illicit things…sexting is more outre and
volatile than anything baby boomers could ever cook up._

May have been done in by traffic, too. Many of the people I know associate
cars with traffic and wasted time.

~~~
stcredzero
_Many of the people I know associate cars with traffic and wasted time._

Won't self driving cars change that, though? I've also heard that a side
effect of constant Oculus use, is that one becomes far less sensitive to
motion sickness. These two things might combine to lessen the time wastage in
cars.

------
ufmace
For what truth there is to this, I wonder if it's partly a class thing too.
For people middle-class and above, myself included, I get the sense that cars
are something that was always present in abundance, and therefore no big deal.
We're more sensitive to noticing the annoying things about them, like parking,
worrying about driving drunk, traffic jams, etc, and perhaps take for granted
the freedom in having your own car.

People in lower classes, at least that I have interacted with, tend to see a
car as more of a status symbol, since they're not so readily available at
their income levels. As in, their family may have one, but they don't just
automatically get their kids a car when they turn 16. And so they're more of a
status symbol, and people tend to more glamorize the freedom of it while
ignoring the headaches as trivial.

~~~
jiggy2011
In many ways cars are also more useful to people who are poor. You're more
likely to work in some out of the way place without good transport links
rather than an office in the big city and taking taxis can get expensive.

If you look at jobs in construction "must have own transport to get to the job
site" is often listed as a requirement, less so for programming jobs.

Poorer people are more likely to holiday by packing their family into the car
and driving somewhere rather than getting an international flight. They can
also be used to transport stuff around when moving etc.

In short cars provide a great deal of flexibility and utility for the cost.

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unsignedint
I have problem opening the link... so out of mere speculation what it is
discussing, but of all things, I don't appreciate that it is so much hassle
having a car. I wouldn't own a car if I had a choice. I almost feel like that
the lifecycle of owning car is designed to induce pain at every single step --
buying, maintaining, selling, etc.

~~~
amdanil
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2014/07/05/kids-
dont-care-cars/)

~~~
unsignedint
Thanks, doesn't sound too far off from what I thought it would be.

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jonah
I don't know the statistics, but car culture is definitely not dead in the
younger generation. Just look at the enthusiast forums for any make of car and
you'll see thousands of young people talking about modifying, enjoying,
driving, and racing cars.

Modern cars aren't as easy to upgrade and modify for the hobbyist, but they're
still doing it.

------
ender7
On quibble: I don't foresee the market for luxury and sports cards drying up
any time soon (as the author suggests). A status symbol is still a status
symbol: the main value proposition of an expensive car is to be expensive [1].

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good)

~~~
majormajor
Yes. This has been my experience at all whenever my younger relatives (ages
10-20) see a nice (to them defined as Tesla or European and fast, it seems)
car.

Kids still like toys, even with smartphones and the internet. And they'll most
likely grow into adults who still like toys.

Car ownership patterns will probably change (students living on campuses and
young professionals will probably have much less need for a personally owned
car in the next decade or so), but there's two pretty big car markets that
won't be threatened by that: luxury status symbol cars, and utilitarian
people/stuff-movers. Uber and all the "fleet of centrally owned self-driving
cars" talk is useless to someone who needs to keep a stash of items for their
kids in their car, and needs space for their kids' friends, and needs that
vehicle several times a day for family/commuting purposes (I don't think
UberMinivan would really take off...). Owning won't be practically replaced by
renting for every use case, and there's a lot of use cases for personal
vehicles out there that fall outside of the typical HN perspective.

------
bluthru
More on this topic: [http://fortune.com/2013/11/21/inside-the-mind-of-marc-
andree...](http://fortune.com/2013/11/21/inside-the-mind-of-marc-andreessen/)

"Ask kids if they’d rather have a smartphone or a car if they had to pick and
100% would say smartphones. Because smartphones represent freedom."

~~~
ams6110
A smart kid would realize that with a car he could have a job and then buy his
own smartphone.

~~~
sundaeofshock
47% of the population of San Francisco uses something other than a car to get
to work. In big cities, a car is not needed to get a well paying job. The
really smart kids realize this.

~~~
vacri
'kids today'[1] have quite a lot of representation outside the concentrated
city centre - usually city centres have a higher-than-average age. Cool, SF is
tiny, compact, and riddled with public transport. Now travel down the coast a
bit to greater LA, 20 million people of which have poor access to public
transport and live in a very spread out city, limiting the utility of getting
around via musclepower. Rinse, repeat anywhere you have spread-out suburbia
with poor PT, or outside cities altogether..

[1] article's chosen demographic, though it doesn't really matter

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phear
In my opinion, the market for the auto industry is divided into two major
groups, there's the group that views cars as a means to an end whether this
end is an upgrade in status or getting from point A to B, and the group that
actually likes to drive and buys cars for the pleasure of it.

I think even in the younger generation this division exists. Granted the
latter group is a minority but it accounts for(or will account for when they
can afford to) sales in the sports car sector and activity in the tuning
sector.

But is this such a change from past? The words in the adverts may have changed
from freedom to self driving and electric but has the landscape really
changed? I don't think so. There's always a market segment that looks at what
cars bring and not the cars themselves. It's up to the auto industry to figure
out how to meet today's needs.

Personally though i will still line up for that Aston Martin, i am the other
kind.

------
jodoherty
I think the trends the author is seeing may only be regional. Out here in
Oklahoma and on some of my trips around the midwest, every little kid who sees
my car knows the difference between a new base model Mustang and a Mustang GT
and gets excited to hear a real 420HP V8. Lots of young guys I've met -- in
college, through friends, in the military, etc. -- have also had their share
of fast cars or tuners. A good number have even done a restoration or two.

As for the women, plenty of college girls and other young women notice what
I'm driving and give me complements. A nice car definitely still gets
attention from the ladies. Quite a few I've know even enjoy driving stick and
like to go pretty fast.

I'll admit, young people may be more practical and economical with their
vehicle purchase decisions, but car culture is still very alive and strong
here.

------
jmgrosen
I can certainly anecdotally confirm this. The only reason I'm even in the
process of getting my license is because my parents want me to, and many of my
peers are similar in that regard. Additionally, when my dad got a new car
recently, I was not excited due to its beauty or power, but because of its
convenience, energy efficiency, and price (he got a Spark EV).

Add this to self-driving cars coming soon, and cars are definitely looking
more and more like a utility.

~~~
ams6110
Interesting to hear. My son (17) and all his friends are quite interested in
cars, watch Top Gear, talk about cars, etc. The one difference I have noted
between he and I is that he is not really interested in how cars work or how
to maintain/repair them. I on the other hand do all the basic maintenance
myself and mostly enjoy doing it.

It might be an urban/rural thing as well.

Edit: I also think practical self-driving cars as well as EVs are a lot
farther off than you seem to. I've just seen in the automotive world too many
stories about amazing technologies that are "just around the corner" but never
seem to materialize.

~~~
stcredzero
_I also think practical self-driving cars as well as EVs are a lot farther off
than you seem to._

For heaven's sake: don't get your information about EVs from Top Gear. I love
watching those guys, but they really are a bunch of clowns, and the show's
just pure entertainment. The Tesla S model with the 260 mile range is a
perfectly reasonable (though pricey) car for getting around the Bay Area.

Also, I've heard that if you lease a Fiat 500e, you get some long distance car
rentals as part of your lease. (100 mile range is too short, though.)

~~~
sliverstorm
_The Tesla S model with the 260 mile range is a perfectly reasonable (though
pricey) car for getting around the Bay Area._

That's like saying a private jet is a perfectly reasonable (though pricey)
airplane for making flights.

I'm sorry my pockets are not gilded like some of the folk around here, but a
Tesla is way too goddamn expensive for us normal folk.

~~~
stcredzero
_That 's like saying a private jet is a perfectly reasonable (though pricey)
airplane for making flights._

Your analogy is off by a few orders of magnitude.

~~~
sliverstorm
It's exaggerated to make a point to people who consider a Tesla affordable.

My house cost less than two Teslas.

~~~
stcredzero
_It 's exaggerated to make a point to people who consider a Tesla affordable._

A Tesla is in the same price range as a lot of conventional luxury cars. To
me, that's a good first step. I didn't say to stop there.

------
cenhyperion
16 year old here, I've got a few thoughts on this from being in the middle of
it. Background: I live in a moderately sized urban center (Austin).

First, some anecdotal data: roughly half my friends have no plans to even get
a license before they're 18, many of the rest (including myself) regularly
borrow a parent's car, a smaller sub-set have parents who bought them cars,
and a couple have bought cars with earned money.

> Yup, the road trip is as dead as the western

This is plainly wrong. Myself, and most of my friends grew up going on road
trips with parents and now we're starting to take them ourselves.

> To the younger generation cars are transportation, nothing more. They take
> you from a to b.

This is 100% on-point. They're a convenient tool, and not much more. Granted,
we still appreciate a Porsche, but we don't fantasize about them in the way I
think previous generations did. They still represent some freedom, because
they provide a space that's not controlled by authority figures in our lives,
along with mobility. But we feel no need to own that car, it can just as
easily be a parent's.

> So long Ferrari. So long Aston Martin.

I'm not sure this is true. My friends and I occasionally talk about, and
appreciate things like the Model S, McLarens, and Ferraris. I don't doubt that
several of my friends would buy them as successful adults. But given the
choice of a nice apartment in NYC or SF or the nice car, almost all of us
would take the better living location.

My job is three miles away, and my other work is all remote. Enough of my
friends have cars, or access to family cars, that for any social outing
someone can get access to a car. So buying a car doesn't provide much value to
me. It's expensive, stressful, and any car a teenager can afford is mediocre
at best. So instead of buying a car, I'm spending time in Europe with my two
best friends next summer.

Cars are still viewed as a nice thing to have, but to us they're not worth
working for months and months to buy. Driving is still very much a thing that
many teenagers are interested in.

~~~
kijin
> Driving is still very much a thing that many teenagers are interested in.

> Myself, and most of my friends grew up going on road trips with parents and
> now we're starting to take them ourselves.

> we feel no need to own that car, it can just as easily be a parent's.

> buying a car doesn't provide much value to me

I must say that many adults (older than you, but younger than the boomers)
feel exactly the same. Driving is fun. Traveling is fun. No amount of web
browsing and online social networking can replace the actual, physical
experience of traveling and seeing the country for yourself. Moreover, there
are so many cool places in America that you can only get to by driving. So the
road trip is definitely alive and well.

And yet, many people in their 30s and 40s have chosen to forgo car ownership.
Because they aren't going on road trips all time. They rent a vehicle when
they need one, or maybe lease a car for a while. This is the grown-up
equivalent of borrowing your parent's car, and it comes with all the same
benefits, too: renting can be less expensive, less stressful, and lower
maintenance than full ownership, even if you rent a car every single weekend.
(A rental location near my University used to have a special where you could
rent a mid-size car for three weekends for less than $200.)

tl;dr: Cars are still cool. Car ownership isn't.

------
martiuk
I don't know how it is in the US but in the UK, it was a real struggle to
afford a car, luckily this year, my insurance dropped to a reasonable £800,
compared to the £3000 I was being quoted for last year.

You can get your driving licence when you're 17, but at that point, (usually)
you aren't earning enough money to drive a car.

So you're sitting on your license for 4 years, and when the insurers finally
believe you can drive without crashing, you better be sure you remember
everything you were taught 4 year ago.

I don't think it's cars that are going out of fashion, insurers are pricing
'kids' out of the driving seat.

------
vacri
The article is rehashing the same tired old Y/millenials vs Boomers crap
again. There's a lot more individuality amongst all the generations than
articles like this give credit for.

------
CodeWriter23
My anecdotal experience varies from the author's. Having taken up driving for
Uber and Lyft for the past 6 weeks in Los Angeles, to earn some side cash, I
can say I receive a lot of compliments about my car, and mostly from women in
their 20's. I'm driving a 2010 Jetta Sportwagen TDI. I think the moon roof has
a lot to do with it.

------
Crito
Eh, I didn't care about cars until I was in my 20s, but before then I wasn't
in the market for expensive cars anyway. Kids not being into cars is not the
end of the world.

~~~
ryandrake
Yea, wait until they get a job and have to figure out how to get to work. Then
(assuming they live in 99% of the USA), all of a sudden, having a car is going
to be pretty important. I wouldn't draw any conclusions if kids under 20 don't
care about cars. Like E-mail, they'll suddenly start using it as soon as they
get their first job.

~~~
randomdata
But will they care about them? The article acknowledges the utility aspect,
but that doesn't mean they will form an emotional bond with it, as previous
generations have. If so, then it will be a difficult future for the automakers
who play on that aspect.

------
jimbobimbo
"All the young girls you want to impress will be laughing at you, you wasted
all your money on WHAT?"

Actually, they DO notice the nice car. Not that it is super helpful, but
still...

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ekianjo
Haha. A good laugh of a post. I did not care one bit about many things when I
was 15. Yet your tastes and interests change as you get older. Why people dont
realize that?

------
hyperliner
I agree kids don't care about cars right now. They care about getting a job,
which it's been harder for many of these Gen-R (recession) kids.

------
dharbin
I certainly view a car as a tool, nothing more, but I don't know why this
author presumes to talk for all people under forty.

~~~
tdicola
It's also a weird screed against cars as if they have no utility. I guess this
person has never lived outside a big city in the suburbs or country where
having a car is absolutely a necessity to get to work, the store, etc.

------
vbrendel
No need for status symbols anymore. If you want people to know you are rich,
just post it on Facebook.

------
thaumaturgy
You have to be careful not to extrapolate too much from your personal
experiences. I screw that up pretty often.

Near as I can tell, there are about as many kids that are into cars as ever
have been. They're maybe doing different things to them than in the past --
wheels, suspension, hydraulics, stereos -- but there are still a lot of young
people that care a lot about their cars. Forums like stancenation
([http://www.stancenation.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?30-Meets...](http://www.stancenation.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?30-Meets-
amp-Events-Photo-Coverage!)) seem to be mostly younger people. Not my thing,
but hey, a lot of folks into it.

And near as I can tell, it's never been true that everyone knew how to work on
a car. Mechanics have been around forever, and for good reason. One of my
grandpa's favorite stories is the time he took apart the engine on his car,
down to the bolt, carefully boxing and bagging and labeling every single
thing, only to find he had no idea how it all went back together again. The
mechanic showed up, took one look at it, threw it all into a box and brought
the car back a few days later.

The 50's style family road trip has maybe suffered somewhat from the high
price of gas and from the competition of touring abroad, but people still do
road trips. My pa and I drove from Florida to California years ago; I just
finished a brief tour of small towns in Oregon and California a few months
ago, and bumped into someone else doing the same; lots of people take road
trips to Burning Man every year; I still see the occasional converted hippy
bus on the road; and there's even a company that specializes in renting RVs to
people for trips,
[https://www.cruiseamerica.com/](https://www.cruiseamerica.com/) \-- if you
stop at a KOA or a Goodsam, you'll find plenty of those. If you don't travel
much, it's easy to believe other people don't travel too, and if you travel,
you'll meet other travelers.

Sure, some things are changing. Something always is. But just 'cause people
can do the Facebook thing doesn't mean it's as fun as a LAN party or a game
night or beer and barbecue with friends. I'm pretty sure the party scene isn't
any less lively than before.

Jeep is still doing a brisk business domestically
([http://www.autonews.com/article/20140701/RETAIL01/140709987/...](http://www.autonews.com/article/20140701/RETAIL01/140709987/chrysler-
up-9-on-strong-jeep-ram-demand)), and the main thing those vehicles have going
for them is their brand identity. (Don't hate me, I love Jeeps ... but they're
not really practical for the average use case.)

------
platz
It is not the sixties once again.

