Uber once presented itself as an alternative to car ownership. However, data shows that more than a decade into the ride-hailing revolution, car ownership is here to stay — even in places where Lyft, Uber and Waymo run rampant.
Uber had a profitable year in 2023 – its first year after going public and disclosing its financial position. So it’s worth taking a trip back to the early days of ride-hailing to revisit the beautiful future proposed by then-CEO Travis Kalanick. In the days before Uber collapsed, he described his “vision” to the Wall Street Journal as follows:
So what is that vision?… It is a reflection of our mission to transform ground transportation into a seamless service. Basically make car ownership a thing of the past… If you just looked at San Francisco, the ground transportation market in San Francisco – where people pay to get in a car and go somewhere, whether they own a car or someone else – is $22 billion. No wonder we’re several hundred million in size in SF alone, and growing faster this year than last.
Uber is now a weight-bearing pillar of the tech economy, and ride-hailing is now a regular feature of life, so it seems like a good time to examine Kalanick’s vision. He seemed to argue that the success of his app in San Francisco in 2011 was indicative of a shift away from individual car ownership that was already underway. Did his dream come true?
A brief report published Wednesday, compiled from census data, basically says: LOL.
Car ownership data shows that transportation is not only no longer as simple as tapping your phone, driving away, and never worrying about a tire rotation again, but the trends look like they’re going in a slightly opposite direction. In dense areas served by ride-hailing services, car ownership has been basically stable, or even rising slightly, since the birth of Uber.
The report comes from retired automotive researcher Glenn Mercer, who writes a newsletter called “Car Charts”, which is about car charts.
Looking at the crude total without controlling for other factors, Mercer found that nationally, there were 800 cars per 1,000 Americans in 2000, and now there are about 850 cars per 1,000 Americans—much more cars than anyone might have guessed.
But rather than leave it at that, they looked closely at major metropolitan areas, focusing on census metrics that reveal the number of “vehicles available to household members” where ride-hailing services are popular. Mercer focuses on a few representative years from 2005-2024 – before Uber, during the rise of Uber, and the most recent year with data.
During that time, these were changes to the chart’s raw metrics, with an increase or decrease of one point, basically corresponding to “one hundredth of a car per household”:
- Boston: +4 points
- Chicago: -1 point
- San Francisco: no change
- Los Angeles: +7 points
- New York: -1 point
- Dallas: +10 points
In other words, there have been no significant changes anywhere, although the car’s one-tenth increase in Dallas is somewhat eyebrow-raising.
Mercer’s analysis is that, he sees “no real impact on cars per household. Even in the Bay Area, the native home of the All Things App, there is no movement.”
With that in mind, did you know that the average new car in the US now costs over $50,000? A 2023 report from Brookings argues that young people own fewer cars than members of older generations, because they do not have enough money to buy a car. A report from Deloitte earlier this year found that 44% of adults aged 34 and younger would be willing to get rid of their cars in favor of a legitimate alternative.
So it seems there was nothing wrong with Kalanick’s “approach.” it would be great. It’s too bad ride-hailing services haven’t found a way to make this a reality. Not yet anyway.
Gizmodo has contacted Uber for comment and will update if we hear back.