Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on February 13, 2014
Will We Reach ‘Peak Cars’ Within Our Lifetime?
“Peak oil” is the term given to the date after which extraction and production of oil enters terminal decline.
It doesn’t mean the oil is necessarily running out–more that its extraction becomes less viable as time goes on.
Some suspect a similar thing is happening with automobile use in the U.S, as running a vehicle gets more expensive and cars themselves become niche items, rather than a primary means of transportation.
That’s unlikely to happen for a while yet, but the early signs are there.
Navigant Research cites a report (.pdf file) by the University of Michigan Transport Research Institute (UMTRI) which finds an increasing number of U.S. households are carless.
It’s been a measurable trend since 2007, and reached a 9.2 percent total in 2012. In some areas of the country, the rate at which fewer are owning cars is even higher–in the Detroit metro area, that figure has increased five percent.
Such statistics follow others suggesting younger buyers are less interested in cars than they are their smartphones, leading to fewer millennials, customers born between the early 1980s and early 2000s, buying fewer cars than their parents or grandparents did.
The elephant in the room is the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 that caused a huge recession–conveniently concurrent with the period in which people have bought fewer cars.
MORE: Oil And Energy: Bountiful Or Dwindling? Experts Argue
Higher costs of living and greater employment are hardly catalysts for carefree spending, but it could be said the recession has caused some to re-prioritize their purchases–and cars may be seen as collateral damage by some.
Alternatively, they may be seen as more of a luxury item or a hobby.
Navigant cites another report by J.D. Power, in which young buyers particularly want their cars to “stand out”, and buyers are particularly keen on driving on “challenging roadways with hills and curves”.
We’re not sure there’s a time when that hasn’t been the case for younger drivers, but those still able to afford vehicles may be placing more emphasis on the fun, rather than the necessity of driving.
A paradigm shift in car ownership can only really occur when sufficient public transit alternatives become available, which they aren’t for many Americans.
But if such a shift occurs, suggests Navigant, the next 30 years could reveal a market where cars are–like the horses they replaced–a source of pleasure and entertainment, rather than mere transport.
14 Comments on "Will We Reach ‘Peak Cars’ Within Our Lifetime?"
rollin on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 9:16 pm
Seems like the rich want to control the roads and stand out again. The proletariat will be crowded into public transport while the rich show off their private vehicles.
A rich man’s fantasy to get the lower classes off the road.
Thirty years from now, they will not be running on petro fractions. They will be happy to have food and water, unless the rich start pushing hard to change things in the proper direction now.
DC on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 9:37 pm
Green car report, LOL, there is the ultimate oxymoron-right up there with ‘clean’ coal. If you mind me saying rollin, I dont think the ‘rich’ want the lumpen proletariat ‘off the road’ in quite the manner you are suggesting. In amerika, and other nations that imported amerikas sprawl-shop-consume paradigm, being forced to own cars, actually helps keep the poor, poor,(they spend far greater % of there income maintaining car-dependency) than the rich or the shrinking ‘middle-class’. And since there are more poor-than not poor, being forced to maintain cars of course, enriches our car-capitalist overlords like few others do. IoW, keeping the poor car dependent is a huge cash cow for the rich-one they would foolish to give up, at least willingly at any rate.
After all, who owns the auto-oil-sprawl complex? Not the poor thats for sure.
To ‘green cars’ credit-they(mostly) place the blame pretty squarely where it belongs-the permanent recession and not ‘efficiency’, hybrid greenwashers and Ijunks like the bulk of articles on this topic have been of late.
eugene on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 9:50 pm
I think we’ve already reached peak bullshit.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 11:08 pm
A paradigm shift in car ownership can only really occur when sufficient public transit alternatives become available, which they aren’t for many Americans.
Good luck building out the public transit alternatives. We talk over and over here about constraints on resources, Capex, and declining taxes. We are tapped out as a society. We will be lucky to maintain what we got! Car ownership is stagnating here in the US but the reasons are many and varied. One reason of course is the big drop in sales after the recession that was never made up. OH, remember cash for clunkers…ha..that cost a bundle for nothing. We also see higher oil prices lowering discretionary spending for cars and changing driving habits. We are at a saturation point too. How many damn cars does a family need? I know the unemployed younger generation are not buying.
The peak car is not yet happening globally because of china and the EM’s. Yet, this may happen very quickly considering the crisis in the foreign exchange markets and China’s pollution problems. In any case when the significant market correction comes financing cars will be difficult to impossible for the 90%. And the 10% can’t buy enough to clean up our over capacity to produce cars. Expect more plant closures and car industry unemployment.
Good one DC! Green car report, LOL, there is the ultimate oxymoron-right up there with ‘clean’ coal.
I agree Eugene – I think we’ve already reached peak bullshit.
rollin on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 2:22 am
And soon there will be driverless cars. Before we could blame the driver, now the cars will wander around on their own. I wonder how they pay for gas.
Northwest Resident on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 3:25 am
From the time I was eighteen years old until I was fourty-five, I cycled through over twenty cars/trucks and five street bikes, a few dirt bikes and a couple of 4-wheelers. I did my part to pump that economy and keep the automakers in business. Then I got smart, bought a reasonably compact Scion and that’s what I’ve been driving for the last eight years — still runs great and I have no compulsive need to go out and buy a new car. I personally have reached Peak Car, and I’m guessing that a lot of other people are right there with me. It won’t be long before all the sexy gals in the world huddled around shiny new automobiles won’t be able to sell them — but they’ll keep trying until the very end, no doubt.
stevefromvirginia on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 3:34 am
The auto industry is a dinosaur with its head cut off, it’s too stupid to know it’s dead.
The industry is collapsing in Europe and Japan, held aloft by channel stuffing and subprime lending in the US; cars are still aspirational symbols in China but for how long?
In ten years there will be no more auto industry. Cars? Certainly, but dependent upon the individual’s ability with a wrench. Fuel will be hard to find and money much harder. The town cars might be a squad car, a fire truck and a delivery van, all dented, wired together and rusting. Everything else = target practice.
As for driverless cars: indeed! Sitting without wheels and glass in fields, slowly rotting away.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 11:18 am
Ha, Steve, love when I get a mind’s eye picture. I see that old car in the field. There used to be allot around these parts then scrape prices went up.
Let’s face it cars have ruined the world. The have been the most effective tool in utilizing fossil fuels period. Of all the technologies except maybe electricity, the car ranks at the top. It allowed the other technologies to flourish. We all have a love for cars until we learned about AGW. Now we see the wasteland the car has created when it has become center to the lives of a species in overshoot. Our carrying capacity is 10 times pre-fossil fuel times. I would say it is worse than that after modern society is cannibalized and the infrastructure salvaged like the marble in Rome. We will be left with an ecosystem unable to support modern man. I am not saying we will not remain modern we may go through an awakening and retain those higher aspects of our spirit. Yet, technology will be over in the modern sense. Cars will be a big part of that salvage I spoke of. Lots of good products in a salvage car. I often wonder about the highways and the big road cuts into the beautiful hillsides here in Missouri. They will be looked at in wonder by a postmodern human.
meld on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 12:09 pm
@Steve – that’s a pretty good image of the future we’re facing. May I add that those squad cars will probably also be fuelled by locally grown bio fuels and used only in real emergencies. We’ll probably go back to using horse and cart due to their efficiency in the end. May I suggest using your literary skills in The Archdruid’s peak oil stories of the future.
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/return-of-space-bats.html
Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 1:31 pm
I despise Hollywood but sprinkle of Mad Max of course
Mike999 on Fri, 14th Feb 2014 9:50 pm
I thought we already reached Peak Car. Car sales still down, roads crowded, unemployment high, jobs now in China and India. US jobs LOW PAYING.
We’ve already hit peak car.
eastbay on Sat, 15th Feb 2014 1:17 am
We got us now 1.1 billion of those rumbling bad boys busily burning their way through the Earth’s one-time allocation of fossil fuels. Interestingly, it took Mothre Nature hundreds of millions of years to manufacture the oil and we’re gonna burn it all in two centuries, the bulk in a half of one century. I think a rousing round of applause is in order! Bravo!!
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sat, 15th Feb 2014 12:25 pm
Guys, I think if you buy another car and keep it for its useful life it may be your last car purchase. “Enjoy” I want a diesel GMC Caynon. I need to pull a stock trailer and TDI jetta is a bad fit. I love that 40MPG but I have read the Canyon with the diesel will get low 30’s HWY. I don’t do the long trips much anymore. I try to stay local.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sat, 15th Feb 2014 12:26 pm
My TDI jetta has been a good purchase I highly recommend it