Let’s wrap this tour through left-over car charts with a few truly random entries.
Why Don’t Americans Like Mass Transit? Compared to many European and Asian countries, the USA doesn’t generally excel at public transportation. (Have you compared the Tokyo and the NYC subways lately?1) There is a vast field of research - and opinion - dedicated to this topic, the surface of which I can’t even scratch here. But to toss one chart into the mix, part of the reason we seem averse to taking the tram or bus may be that, for average working Americans, our commutes (about 90% of which are by car) just aren’t that onerous. If we were stuck in traffic for hours a day, the train would have more appeal. But we aren’t stuck, at least relative to all those other countries which have in response invested more in mass transit. Work by Aksoy, Barrero, Bloom et al. (various papers) shows these average commute times by country, as of 2019 (so, pre-pandemic):
(No, I don’t know why Serbia is equally speedy.) America may be the land of wide open spaces, but we certainly traverse them quickly.
What is Causing the Surge in Pedestrian Fatalities? You may be aware that even as vehicular fatality counts in the USA have remained relatively stable in recent years (not that that is a good thing: they should be declining!), pedestrian traffic deaths have surged:
(People, please zero-base your axes!) This is another area where we have many hypotheses but no proven links to the core causes. (Some hypotheses include: more distracted drivers, more distracted pedestrians, poorer visibility from taller vehicles, increased vehicle weight, declining transit investment (!) causing more people to walk, etc.) I do not know the answer, but here are two charts which may shed some light. First, it doesn’t seem to be vehicle weight gain causing the problem (though I personally do not understand the appeal of driving a 7,000 pound super-duty pickup anywhere except on a ranch!). You can see above that the fatality spike runs from about 2010 to the present. But our big weight gains mostly predate this:
(EPA is the source but Bloomberg made the chart: thanks!)
You can see the weight of new vehicles has mostly plateaued since about 2005 (and even fell a bit for trucks). Beats me what is going on here, since I do tend to believe that F = ma.
The very popular hypothesis that it is smartphone use while driving that is behind this climb in fatalities has enormous intuitive appeal but, believe it or not, it is not very well supported by research. (Contact me if you want a whole pile of research articles sent your way!) We even see in some studies drivers slowing down when they use their phones, which would mitigate the force of impact. Regardless, my own very small contribution here is to point out the potential role of automatic transmissions. Put bluntly, have you ever tried to (probably illegally) fiddle with your phone in the car while shifting? Can’t be done, unless you are Lewis Hamilton. CarMax data shows how manual transmissions have disappeared from our roads - and with them, one small impediment to Driving & Phoning:
Just a thought. Onward!
Politics and EVs, Again. We’ve talked about this. No new news from me here except to point you to an excellent resource which covers this topic much better than I ever could: evpolitics.org . Go there for lots of good analyses, just one of which I post here:
“Friends don’t let friends drive electrons,” I guess. Americans have an endless capacity for politicizing. Probably if there is a sighting of Taylor Swift in a Lucid the internet will melt down entirely.
Dealers Are Getting Better No They Are Not. A cool chart courtesy of Bank of America (thank you!), summarizing some four decades of Gallup research into American views as to how trustworthy “car dealers”2 are. I find the title not quite matching the data, however: the low-trust line is declining and the high- and average-trust lines are rising. But trust can always be higher, I guess.
My own personal opinion as to these improvements in trustworthiness is that two factors are at work: first, dealers’ own efforts to improve, and secondly, the internet’s narrowing of price bands.
On that latter point, the old saying goes that people do not mind paying too much for a car, as much as they mind that someone else paid less. With online price transparency that fear ebbs, and trust rises. In fact, I would argue that dealers are no longer "dealers” in the classic sense (buy some inventory, then try to sell it for as much as you can get), but “retailers” (given a price mostly set by the market, how do I move as much volume as possible?).3
Does Automotive “Disruption” Pay? I don’t get into financial markets here much, as I lack expertise there. But the stock market does have a vote when it comes to car companies, EVs, and the rest, of course. And the vote over the last couple of years is that “disruption” is no guarantee of success:
Hard to read, yes, but the market indices SPX and DJIA are at the top, and then a whole bunch of relatively new “disruptor” OEMs below. BYD, Tesla, Nio, Xpeng, Rivian, Nikola, Fisker, Canoo, Faraday Future. Over the last two years all have underperformed the indices. Of course (and I am painfully aware of this, in light of not having bought TSLA years ago!), the results depend a great deal on one’s chosen starting date. But you get my point, I think.
On a related note, on which we will close, I would like to point out how Tesla is as much as option stock as a share stock: the volume of options trading around this company is staggering. I suspect vast numbers of boys and girls checking their Robinhood apps every two minutes and trading zero-day options, but I am not sure. Are these investors, or just meme-stock gamblers? I don’t know, but it is a remarkable phenomenon. I put in current market darling Nvidia (market cap $1.7 trillion, Tesla is a mere $600 billion4) just for comparison’s sake. (That is going to be one intensely-watched NVDA earnings call today at 5!)
That’s it for now, we should be back in a week or so, with fresh new Car Charts!
I put that in quotes because I think all too often we all (media, citizens, pundits) conflate new and used car dealers. They are different animals selling somewhat different things (in fact, your basic BHPH (buy here pay here) store is selling financing more than it is selling cars), but we lump ‘em all together. Not good for analytical purposes. Would you lump together Urban Outfitters and a vintage clothing shop? (Not that I have anything against a used-clothing store: after all, it is where Jack Reacher shops!)
Volume splits into two pieces: volume today and volume tomorrow. It is much cheaper to bring a current customer back than to conquest a new one, thus dealers are motivated to improve the satisfaction of current customers, so that they might become loyal repeat buyers.
Fun fact illuminating just how stupendous the tech giants have become, in terms of market cap: Apple’s market cap and the combined market cap of all 1,900 or so firms listing on the LSE both round to about $3 trillion. Give or take (LSE 3.3, Apple 2.8).