THere’s a new senior population in the US. There are 284 million, their number grows every day and their age is surprising: 12.5 years on average. It may not be much to you and me, but this senescent set is made up not of people, but of cars. Never before has the American vehicle fleet been so old, and that’s bad news for the phase-out of gas vehicles and the environment as a whole.
The new news about old cars comes from a study released recently by S&P Global Mobility, an independent research and policy group, which regularly tracks the state of the US auto fleet and has seen some worrying trends lately . For six consecutive years, cars on American roads have been aging, with the largest jump in the last three years thanks in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic. Supply chain problems caused by the pandemic and related lockdowns led to a global shortage of the computer chips that new cars increasingly rely on, reducing auto supplies and driving up vehicle prices. The average sticker price for a new car is currently over $48,000. Rising interest rates to fight inflation have pushed the average rate on new car loans to over 6%. All of this has meant that people who would normally be willing to trade in their old cars are more likely to keep them longer. Retail sales of new cars fell 8% from 14.6 million vehicles in 2021 to 13.9 million in 2022; this is the lowest total for new car sales in more than a decade.
“Multiple factors have driven up vehicle costs, while the cost of eggs and groceries and gas and everything else has also gone up,” says Todd Campeau, associate director of aftermarket solutions at S&P Global Mobility. “So household disposable income is already limited and for many people, the thought of taking out a new car loan is something they are reluctant to do.”
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This affects the climate in several ways. For one thing, Campeau says, cars built 12.5 years ago are simply dirtier than cars that have benefited from the fuel efficiency improvements built into newer gasoline vehicles. Also, even an old car that started out fuel efficient will become less fuel efficient as it ages.
“A car deteriorates over time,” says Campeau. “It becomes less efficient. Just like humans as we age, our bodies don’t work at their best when we get past a certain age.”
When it comes to electric vehicles, the question of age goes in the opposite direction. There are just over two million EVs on the road in the US today, less than 1% of the total fleet, and they’re getting younger, not older. The average age of an electric vehicle is now 3.6 years, according to S&P, down from 3.7 in 2022. That’s because current owners with money to spend are trading up , while less affluent buyers are locked out of the market as they face high interest rates attached. with sticker shock for electric vehicles, which currently cost nearly $59,000 on average.
As for what this means for replacing the more than a quarter of a billion gas vehicles on the road with clean electrics, the outlook is not good. Because owners are keeping their cars longer and the cost of electric vehicles remains high, Campeau doesn’t see an electric shift anytime soon. Even if all vehicles sold in the future were electric, it would still take a decade to replace just half the gas fleet. Since every vehicle sold will almost certainly not be electric, Campeau doesn’t see electric vehicles outpacing combustion-powered vehicles for decades.
“I would put it in the 2040s,” he says. “Maybe even 2050.” American motorists may be looking at an all-electric, climate-friendly future, but that future will be a long time coming.
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