This is the part of the lesson that Zipcar probably doesn’t like so much - the kids don’t seem to want to drive at all, even with a shared car. Only 18 percent of people over 55 say that. According to the survey, 54 percent of the 1,025 18-and-overs (966 of them drivers) surveyed said they’d rather spend time online with friends, communicating with social media, than driving to visit them. They’re not committed to personal mobility, and absent a car they’ll just keep in touch with social media. Kids my daughter’s age and older will drive if you give them the car and the keys. When I was 16, I got a license on the first day I could, and immediately bought a $50 car to exercise my “Born to be Wild” genes. “They want the freedom to drive, but reject the financial burden of car ownership.” “Millennials recognize the limited value of paying so much for something they use so little,” said Scott Griffith, Zipcar’s CEO. The average car sits more than 90 percent of the time, which is where the idea of vehicle to grid (V2G) comes from - why not turn hybrid cars into energy sources? But all that time sitting around is time drivers pay for. There’s maintenance, insurance, depreciation, parking, tolls and more. People (and probably not just millennials) have realized there’s more to car ownership than just filling the gas tank. The biggest reason, they say in the survey, is the high cost of owning a car. Among 25- to 34 year-olds, an incredible 67 percent say they’d like to drive less. Of course, polls like this are somewhat self-serving, but they still contain interesting information. Like Zipcar, America’s biggest car-sharing service, for instance? But they go further than that - they say they’d spend even less time driving if they had alternative ways of getting around. But Zipcar did commission a poll, and it finds that half of all 18- to 34 year-olds are spending less time behind the wheel.
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