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Old 09-22-2017, 11:20 AM   #1
johnpico
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Join Date: Sep 2010
Posts: 42
Default The Coming Car Sales Boon?

RethinkX, an independent think tank that analyzes and forecasts the speed and scale of technology-driven disruption and its implications across society predicts that “By 2030, 95% of passenger miles traveled in the U.S. could be happening in on-demand, autonomous electric cars owned by fleets rather than individuals.”

Now everyone is jumping on the bandwagon and predicting that millennials, with their technical savvy, will be using their smart phones to travel by Uber (or something akin to it), thereby saving thousands of dollars per year by traveling by autonomous electric cars instead of owning a car.

It seems to me, however, that just the opposite argument could be made.

Try looking at it this way.

According to a 2015 U.S. Census Bureau report, millennials, or America’s youth born between 1982 and 2000, now number 83.1 million and represent more than one quarter of the nation’s population. Their size exceeds that of the 75.4 million baby boomers.

They and all my kids all love Uber and have the program on their cell phones – so the argument sounds good.

Enter my grandchildren. There is no way my kids were going to take my grandchildren and their friends to hockey practice, lacrosse practice, and everything else kids do, using Uber. They needed a car that could fit them, their kids and their kids’ friends in to go to team dinners, group meals, school dances, etc. (Do you know anyone that had a tailgate party using Uber?)

So, without a without writing a treatise on the subject, think it through and do the math. There are 83.1 MILLION potential Uber users out there that will be looking for cars to buy in the future.

Paraphrasing Mark Twain, methinks that the death of the car dealership has been greatly exaggerated.

What do you think?

PS - That doesn't even count the thousands of cars that will have to be replaced because of natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes.
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