Projections of Household Vehicle Consumption in the United States
Forecasts of household vehicle consumption are important for automobile market analyses and related socioeconomic planning. This chapter employs the ProFamy extended cohort-component method to project household vehicle consumption from 2000 to 2025 across four regions of the United States (the Northeast, Midwest, South, and West). The results show that the total number of household vehicles (The term “household vehicles” refers to vehicles for household use in this book) in 2025 will reach 235 million, representing a 31% increase over 25 years. About a half of the increase is due to the consumption of cars, while the household consumption of vans will increase at a faster rate than that of cars and trucks. Household vehicle consumption will grow more in white non-Hispanic and Hispanic households in comparison with black non-Hispanic and Asian and other non-Hispanic households. Owners of household vehicles in the United States will be aging quickly. Among households of different sizes, the largest increase in household vehicles will come from two-person households. Across the four regions, the largest increase in household vehicle consumption will be in the South, followed by the West, Midwest, and Northeast.
