I’m a petrol head. I’ve loved cars since I was a small child, I’ve owned hundreds in my lifetime, and I worked for car manufacturers for more than twenty years.
But, even as a commited car lover, I accept that we are either very close to or may have reached “Peak Car.” The point at which car ownership around the world begins to tail off.
Where we are now
Currently, nothing has changed in over a century. Just like my father, and his father before him, I own a car which is powered by an internal combustion engine, I paid a lot of money for it, and it sits in my driveway for the vast majority of its time.
The last seven days have been typical — the app tells me I have driven for a total of 222 minutes in the last seven days. That’s just over 2% usage. By any measure, that’s a waste. A waste of my hard earned money, a waste of the space it sits on, and a waste of the incredible technology of the machine.
It’s also a waste that the car is a five seater, with a reasonably sized boot, when for 98% of journeys, we only use one or two of those seats. At the other end of the scale, when we need to collect a large item or transport more than five people, we have to hire a van or a people carrier. While our car sits outside the rental office.
