Great article! As a car enthusiast under the age of 30 this topic hits close to home for me.
All of the said theories on why young peope may not be getting into more cars than they used to is valid, it's about deciding which issues should take prevalance and how automakers are going to deal with it. The reasons for youth not buying cars is vast and varied. From my personal network of friends i could tell all of you the wide spectrum of reasons why the ones that arent buying cars arent. I have one friend that refuses based on enviro-issues (specifically his interest in the topic of peak-oil) and then on the other hand i have another friend that doesnt own a car because she cant put down her iphone for more than 3 minutes. Then of course, on top of that you have (as the article touched on) the youth that wont drive, not because they cant afford it, but because its too much of a hassle: inconsiderate/anti-automobile city planning (in regard to metropolitan areas) that make tooling around in a car a liability and not an asset.
My final thought on this, to address the element of the article that discusses what automakers are doing to make cars more "appealing" (read: more tech than a 90's space shuttle and gimmicky styling features). I realize that they are simply trying to do the right thing and put features that their customer base will want, my only point is that they should tread VERY carefully as there is still a large portion of the car buying population and large number of youth within it (myself included) that resist all this "connectivity" in cars, and see them as a distraction. Like i said, i'm under the age of 30, and i frankly couldn't give a sh*t if my car read emails back to me
I say that to say this: automakers should be making the cars that appealin
