S&P Global Mobility today hosted an excellent webinar on global vehicle sales and VIO (vehicles in operation trends). I won’t violate their terms as to access to the exhibits shown1, but I am sure they won’t mind if I reproduce from their deck just one very simple chart, in its entirety:
That was the whole slide. Just one number. Global VIO (Vehicles in Operation), including passenger cars and light, medium, and heavy-duty vehicles.2
But one number is all it takes to shape an industry, and even the world. I’ll assert that this massive number, 1.6 billion, is what drives vast amounts of political and commercial activity. Every politician in every country eyes that number as a source of revenue (to be extracted as taxes), as a creator of jobs (most of them pretty well skilled), as a threat to lives (via crashes) and the environment (via emissions), and as a basis of national security (if you can make cars you can make weapons). Every manufacturing executive in every country eyes that number as a source of revenue, whether in making parts for cars, repairing cars, fueling cars, selling cars, financing car sales, and much more.
So perhaps no one should be surprised that as soon as any country makes a move regarding international trade, the automotive industry appears first on the list of concerns about impacts. This is true regardless of whether we are talking about tariffs, quotas (haven’t heard much about them lately, actually….), industry subsidies, consumption incentives, and more.
That point is obvious. But my second point is the One Number phenomenon extends far beyond this vehicle fleet count. I can think of at least three other significant automotive developments triggered by One Number (with apologies in advance for hopelessly simplifying what are all complex stories):
35,000 traffic deaths. The number of people killed on the roads in the USA annually. This one number triggered the creation of the autonomous vehicle (AVs) industry, at least in America, as proponents asserted that AVs would save all these lives. It’s unclear any lives have been saved yet, but the number and the hope it represents live on.
95%. The percentage of the time that a vehicle is parked in the USA, implying that this expensive asset is incredibly under-utilized. This one number sparked the growth of the ridehail industry, dominated in this country by Uber and Lyft, and maybe soon Waymo. It remains my opinion that the 95% is a flawed metric, since it ignores all the other values the car generates even when not in motion (e.g. immediate personal access, low variable cost per mile (but high total cost!), etc.3
2 degrees. The level of global warming first put forth at the 2009 Copenhagen Conference, as one at which point drastic consequences would ensue. This one number can be said to have driven the entire electric vehicle revolution ever since.
Again, these are stupidly reductionist arguments (China may be pursuing EVs more for national energy independence as for climate change amelioration, for example), but there is a kernel of truth, I assert, in each.
One number lodges itself in the public’s imagination, and the world shifts.
PS: Of course, the most important One Number remains, without doubt, 42.
Please contact your local S&P Global Mobility representative for access, e.g. Bjoern Huetter.
Including only vehicles registered for road travel, so no agricultural or construction equipment such as tractors or excavators.
As one Wall Street analyst, whose name I apologize I have forgotten, made the wonderful quip: “Sure, I only use my toothbrush for 1% of the day, but I am not renting it out to you in the meantime!”