

How Car Companies Are Trying to Win Back Millennials - jgunaratne
http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/09/how-car-companies-are-trying-to-make-car-ownership-attractive-to-millennials/379377/

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fotbr
It would seem they're neglecting the elephant in the room:

The average millennial doesn't have much disposable income.

Sure, it's not all of them. But many of them are struggling financially, and a
new car, no matter how "cool", "hip", or whatever the current terms is, just
isn't something they can afford. So they drive old cars, and drive them less.
Or they live places they don't need cars.

You can stick $10k worth of the latest and greatest gadgets into the new car,
and all it will do, at best, is end up as their phone background (the
equivalent of my generation's poster on the wall), and move that car $10k+
farther away from what they can afford.

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akurilin
Completely concur. Dumping my car and moving to downtown SF actually saves me
a ton of time and money. Lyft / Instacart / Shyp take care of everything I
need and I always have Zipcar if I need it. I can go out on the weekend and
not have to deal with parking or potentially unsafe driving.

I can see this not working as well in a place like LA due to sheer size, but
it's perfect in SF.

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throwaway234
As a millennial in SoCal, I think it's safe to say we need cars. But we don't
buy new cars because they have iPhone docks, we buy used cars because we can
afford them.

Not sure how this article could not mention student loans once. We are
disenchanted by the idea of more monthly payments and debt. This issue seems
much more economic than a blanket 'cars aren't cool anymore' attitude.

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caseyamcl
To frame the situation as 'cars vs gadgets' is missing the bigger picture, and
completely ignoring some fundamental reasons for the shift away from car
culture.

We are a generation of people who grew up in car world. Car world is a boring,
homogenous, safe, segregated, sterile, humanless place. In car world,
serendipitous engagement with one's community is impossible. In car world,
engagement with other humans is always a car drive away. In car world, we
spend 20% of our after-tax income just to move around our environment. In car
world, every place is the same as every other place--Target, Starbucks, gad
stations, same strip malls, same subdivisions..

We grew up watching 'Friends' and 'Seinfeld' on tv. When we have travelled,
we've seen places that seemed more interesting, more human, more exciting than
the nowhere-vile isolating housing divisions we spent out childhood in. And we
want to go to those places, or create them in our own towns.

And that's why I don't care about whatever car you're trying to sell me--
gadget dock or not. It doesn't deliver on its promise of "freedom". It
perpetuates the banality that we grew up in.

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akurilin
That's very well written, I enjoyed that. I would read your blog/twitter if
you had one :)

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grownseed
If you came here to find any sort of valuable information, don't waste your
time reading this article. From indiscriminately putting a whole generation in
the same basket to calling weak gadgetry "innovation", I find this article
somewhat condescending, but mostly irrelevant. It addresses the wrong problems
with the wrong solutions, fails to provide any kind of substantial information
and just feels like the writer wanted to "hear himself".

