When they need a car, a growing number of Millennials will turn to carsharing services.
Forget guns – or car keys – it’s the cellphone you’ll have to pry out of the cold, dead hand of the typical Millennial, according to a new survey.
Brought up on social media, they’re as likely as not to stay home and text friends as drive over for a night out, found KRC Research, which conducted its survey for Zipcar, the largest of the U.S. carsharing services.
The bottom line: By a more than two-to-one margin, Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 would be more likely to have a meltdown if you took their cellphone than their car keys. A full 65% said that losing their phone or computer would have a major, negative impact on their lives. Only 28% felt that about losing their car.
Perhaps that’s no surprise considering nearly half, 47% to be precise, are likely to spend time with friends online rather than driving over for a visit. And 73% of the Millennials surveyed said they’d rather go online than drive – or take mass transit – to shop.
The results, not surprisingly, appear to buoy the basic concept behind carsharing services such as Zipcar. The fundamental idea is that folks living in urban environments either can’t or don’t want to own a car of their own. Instead, they’ll use alternatives – including going online – to satisfy many of their basic needs. And when they do need a vehicle for, say, a visit to Ikea, they can access one on a short-term basis rather than through traditional car rental options.
The argument appears to have been convincing enough that Avis purchased Zipcar earlier this year, while Hertz and Enterprise have launched their own carsharing operations.
(For more on the Zipcar acquisition, Click Here.)
“We’re living through the most important shift in transportation in generations – the creation of a new mobility society,” said Scott Griffith , Zipcar chairman and CEO. “Millennials are leading the charge for this highly efficient new model that is revolutionizing how people get around.”
The study also found that Millennials were twice as likely to turn to transportation-related cellphone apps than those over the age of 45.
But it’s not just the availability of new technology and the rise of carsharing services that appears to be changing the way Millennials think about owning a car. The survey of more than 1,000 Americans over age 18 also pointed to the increasingly high cost of car ownership. Indeed, as TheDetroitBureau.com recently reported, a separate study shows that the typical household in only one U.S. city can afford the price of the “average” new vehicle, which last month rose to nearly $31,000.
Add the fact that Millennials are the most environmentally conscious generation now of driving age and the researchers at KRC concluded, that is“compelling many Millennials to drive less.”
(New study finds few Americans now can afford a new car. Click Here for that story.)