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CONVENIENCE: The popularity of the Uber app has dwarfed the desire to own a car for many young people in the UK

ACCORDING TO DVLA records and recent studies, car ownership is now on the decline with far less 17-20 year-olds holding driving licenses when compared with car ownership among this group 25 years ago.

Compared to 1990, there’s been a 12.5% reduction in young adults holding a license. This new trend is shown most prominently among men with only 33% in 2015 having a driving license, compared to 54% in 1990.

Car leasing company, Cars on Demand, carried out a survey to find out how today’s youth feel about driving and car ownership. The company ran a survey of 2,000 18-25 year-olds in order to understand their thoughts on car ownership and what is ultimately most valuable and desirable to them in terms of status symbols.

According to the survey results, 29% of millennials (those currently aged 18-35) ranked owning their own home as most important to them in terms of the ultimate status symbol.

The second most popular answer amongst our survey participants was a large following on social media, with 24% of respondents admitting that ‘making it’ on social media was their ultimate status symbol.

Owning a car ranked second to last in the survey findings, with only 11% of respondents selecting it as most important to them. For 36% of the 2,000 respondents, ordering an Uber was more attractive than driving themselves.

Of course, with the roads of the UK full to bursting point, and many of us spending a large chunk of our time in traffic jams, it’s unsurprising that millennials might be looking to avoid car ownership. When asked the question ‘Do you enjoy driving?’, 41% of survey participants responded ‘no’.

Paul Brown, Managing Director at Cars on Demand was unsurprised by the findings:

"There’s really little reason for millennials to own cars nowadays and nor does it seem they’re interested in doing so. That’s why short-term leasing can be an attractive option to this non-committal generation."

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