“Despite Apple, General Motors and Toyota Motor rushing to invest in ride-hailing services, millennials still want to buy cars — for now,” James Detar reports for Investor’s Business Daily.
“Online lender LendingTree in a report Wednesday said of the auto loan requests it received from May 15, 2015 to May 15, 2016, about 33% came from applicants under 35 years of age,” Detar reports. “That’s up from 27% in early 2013.”
“The new data come amid fears that the popularity of ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft is weighing on demand for cars,” Detar reports. “On Wednesday, BMW i Ventures, venture capital team founded by BMW in 2011, announced an investment of an undisclosed amount in Scoop Technologies, creators of the carpooling mobile app ‘Scoop.’ Meanwhile, Apple earlier this month said it would invest $1 billion in Didi, China’s top ride-sharing service. And in January, General Motors said it would invest $500 million in Lyft.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If Apple feels there’s some idea worthy of investing billions, there’s likely a market for it.
If this is the case then why are all these, ‘ride-hailing’, services going into business? Have they not done the same cutting edge investigating that this brilliant blogger did? Or maybe this blogger is making sh*t up?
You should recall the Dotcom bust. Everyone and their brother started a website and assumed that they would get rich displaying advertisements and distributing trinkets. How many survived?
Ride sharing is another bubble that will fall apart in many regions because people actually like owning private vehicles that are specific to their needs and desires.
Remember, in North America, the most popular vehicles by far are pickup trucks. Those who own them will not give them up, even though the vast majority of them could save tons of money by ride sharing or owning a small commuter car and then just renting the mega truck for the few days per year that they actually use the capacity of the truck. Vehicle ownership is just too engrained in modern societies.
There are exceptions, of course. Young single urbanites seem to trust Uber and Lift, etc. Even when the bus or tram is cheaper. We will see some interesting things happening in urban areas that are rapidly becoming 24 hour traffic jams.
Pickup trucks? I guess it depends where you live. Here in the SF Bay area I think I see far more Porsches than pickups.
The article is mistaken in that Apple, GM, et al are looking several years down the road, no pun intended.
I think Mike is right.
San Francisco is hardly representative of the world at large.
Best selling vehicles in the USA for 2015:
1) Ford F150 series (still 34 years in a row)
2) Chevrolet Silverado (always a close 2nd)
3) Dodge Ram
4) Toyota Camry
5) Honda Accord
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/01/10/the-5-best-selling-vehicles-in-america-in-2015.aspx
All you people predicting that current automakers are going to be dead in less than a decade or that Apple and Tesla are going to take over the auto market are smoking something funny. What people want and buy today is pretty clearly not overpriced rolling mobile phones. The vast majority want reliable, simple, heavy duty transportation that they own and tailor to their own needs.
Maybe the most idiotic article ever written. Clearly the author is looking for a stupid bit of statistic to lie about. Does he not realize that Apple bought into a Chinese ride hailing service, where there are no millennial and no one buying cars with a Lending Tree loan? Is he just trying to gain attention comparing AAPLs to rocks?
In another decade Uber and Lyft will be dead because driverless cabs will replace the human navigated type (think Johnny Cab from Total Recall).
He is asking a wrong question. He should be asking who will use Uber/Lyft like service with driverless cab. Seniors who can no longer drive or parents with pre-teen or teenagers who can not drive yet, but find quality of the driver background checks run by these services lacking. I suspect GM and Toyota will try to develop such service in US market, while Apple will polish their system in China before bringing it to US.