Twenty Questions For 2020

ARE YOU INTO CARS BUT NOT INTO CARS LIKE WE ARE? THESE 20 QUESTIONS CAN HELP. SIDE EFFECTS INCLUDE IMPROVED COMPREHENSION AND MODER ATE ENNUI.

1. Are millennials ruining the car industry?

IF YOU’RE SHAKING your partially clenched fist at whichever millennial abandoned that rented electric scooter on your lawn, nothing we say will help. Besides, that assumption is ageist— anyone could have left that scooter there.

The notion that young people are killing the car industry probably started with sensationalized news stories that suggested ride-sharing apps, smartphones, generational migration to population-dense cities, and, yes, those scooters were chipping away at their interest in cars. But the auto industry is not dead. At least not yet.

A car remains a useful asset no matter your age. And millennials, defined by the Pew Research Center as those born between 1981 and 1996, have steadily increased their new-car purchases since the Great Recession ended. The financial kerfuffle of 2008 is behind a lot of the doom and gloom surrounding many young people’s car-buying habits. Think your 401(k) took a dip? The recession kneecapped millennials’ careers and suppressed their wage growth just as they amassed the greatest student-debt burden in history. So forgive them for delaying normal adult purchases like cars and homes for a few years. Industry analyst Stephanie Brinley of IHS Markit says, “People buy what they need at different stages in their lives. All that has changed is when [they] jump in.”