Posted on 09/21/2010 8:39:16 AM PDT by Gordon Pym
Generation Y Giving Cars a Pass The generation gap is a growing, long-term headache for automakers.
Buzz Up! By Jim Ostroff Selling cars to young adults under 30 is proving to be a real challenge for automakers. Unlike their elders, Generation Yers own fewer cars and dont drive much. Theyre likely to see autos as a source of pollution, not as a sex or status symbol.
Motorists aged 21 to 30 now account for 14% of miles driven, down from 21% in 1995.
Theyre more apt to ride mass transit to work and use car sharing services -- pioneered by Zipcar -- for longer trips. And car sharing choices are expanding, with car rental firms moving into the market, making it convenient for young folks to rent with hourly rates and easy insurance. Connect by Hertz, for example, is rolling out its car sharing services in the New York metropolitan area, with plans to eventually expand them to around 40 college campuses nationwide.
(Excerpt) Read more at autos.yahoo.com ...
Heh, I’ve already been warned by one former BMW-driving, now minivan-driving colleague about that...
Wow, great attitude. With friends like you, who needs enemies?
Well heavens, that wouldn’t be because their father never taught them any of it?
If you want kids to exhibit these behaviours you have to teach them. I am slowly learning, but no thanks to my dad, who preferred not teaching me anything about cars or mechanics.
My dad was the same way, but I learned whatever I didn’t know and wanted to know by myself, or better yet - asked someone. There is a difference between wanting to know and not caring. With the web today, there isn’t an excuse for not having resources for virtually any maintenance issues.
If you buy this, you’d need to be prepared to get taken on virtually every common service maintenance cost there is. Probably just like BMW where they, for example, charged about $125 to change a front left turn bulb on my wife’s X3/X5 (whatever that damned money pit is)..... You actually had to take the whole headlight assembly out of the vehicle to change a $1 bulb.
I had my truck in for tires and he got to alignment and said you need 4 wheel thrust alignment....I asked him how exactly they were going to align the rear wheels of a truck with rear-wheel drive and a differential/axle, etc? No reply.....the difference in cost was $30.....
I wonder how many are the “failure to launch” group, of course they’re not buying cars, they’re using mom and dad’s to do whatever it is they do that’s not work.
It’s one thing when some young people criticise other young people for not knowing something they tried to learn themselves.
It’s quite another for older folks to criticise young people when they dropped the ball teaching us. If kids in general aren’t learning it, chances are their parents aren’t teaching them.
I'm not specifically criticizing young people per se here. It goes for everyone that can still move around by themselves.... willful ignorance is not generational.
Manual labor is overrated. One of the reasons I went to college to get a job that paid well is so I could afford to pay people to do the crap I don’t want to. If I had to I could do basic car and home repairs, not well but they’d work. But I don’t want to, and I’ve got the money to not have to. If you like it great, but that’s you, my refusal doesn’t make me helpless, it just cuts down on my callouses and frees up my weekends for things I find fun.
If my water heater died and it couldn’t be repaired for a couple of days I’d go use the the shower at the gym, where I’m already planning on being most of those days anyway. See there’s almost always a way to handle things that doesn’t involve the unpleasantness of scraping my knuckles. And, most importantly, it doesn’t mean I have no alternative but to depend on the government like you falsely accused, it means I have a different set of survival skills. It all really boils down to what’s important to you, I’ve never enjoyed fixing things, it’s dirty, unpleasant and almost always painful. So it’s a skill I never developed, because only an insane person practices doing things they hate, but anybody that thinks that makes me helpless is just plain stupid. In the software world we call them workarounds, it’s a way to handle an issue until somebody gets over to fix it.
You got some real issues about self reliance and dependence...good luck with that.
Wrong again. I’m 100% self reliant and independent. Your problem is you think you’re way is the only way, out here in reality you’re way is the hard way. In your water heater example both of our solutions result in us being properly showered, only my solution doesn’t involve me cracking my knuckles, or sucking a bunch of dust up my sinuses, and yeah it might cost me a couple more bucks but it’s darned well worth it.
Okay....take a lithium....The WH example was just that - an example. I don’t care how you survive, frankly....
I don’t need a lithium, you’re the one who threw the blanket insult, and the one that seems to have a problem with people having other solutions to life’s little problems than you. I’m just pointing out that there ARE other solutions to life’s little problems than you, and that just because people don’t change their own oil doesn’t make them dependent on government.
Interesting. I wish my dad was more like you. Still so many things I have to learn.
I’ll freely admit that I couldn’t go out into my garage with power tools and build a board.
I’ll let you know if the passion for gaming fades. As for now, I’m counting the days until Black Ops comes out.
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