Global and Local Change

Gets License, Facial Hair

If you read about Millennials and their buying habits, you've heard how there's been a sea change in their thinking and needs in the past few years. Gone, we are told, is the all-consuming interest for their own cars, replaced by the desire to be ferried around while they text in peace. Failing the Parent (or Grandparent) Valet Service, we're told that Uber and Lyft are just the ticket, especially because such a move is summoned by the all-powerful smartphone. Independence and the open road? Meaningless, compared to the wonders of cyberspace. Oh, and by the way, Dad, no one uses the word cyberspace anymore.

They also cast a fair amount of side eye, by the way, at the idea of self-driving cars. No one's seen that where I live, and you generally aren't going to be able to sell kids on bleeding edge technology. Besides, the mechanisms of the local school system codify drivers education as a credited course, with simulators and everything. It's very serious business, Dad. Cars matter.

And as for the new tech... well, maybe somewhere else. Especially in places where ride sharing services are ubiquitous, or the kids make their own money and pay for everything. (That place is, I am sure, Parent Utopia.) Which isn't exactly my neck of suburbia, or the experience of either of my siblings, both of whom have auto-ready kids. For them, the rite of passage is the same mix of excitement, terror and tedium that it was for us, lo those many years ago, when we became of automotive age.

This is, alas, the nature of change. I don't doubt that in the Bay Area, or maybe the boroughs of New York City, or other enlightened areas with massive ride-sharing penetration and good mass transit, there's less appeal than there used to be for cars. After all, the median age for new car purchase is now in the mid '40s and climbing ever higher, and there's got to be something to all of those rising demographic numbers.

Just not in the here and now, or in my personal zip code. (Couldn't get her to sign off on the hoverboard a few months ago, either. Maybe my kid's just a Luddite. Or has secret stock in an auto insurance agency.)

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