Car scrappage exceeding new car sales, number of vehicles on U.S. roads decreasing
August 5th, 2010Calculated Risk reports that light vehicle sales in July were at an annual rate of 11.52 million. Calculated Risk has also published a graph showing the historical light vehicle sales (seasonally adjusted annual rate) from the BEA.
The rate of new car sales appears to have plateaued well below the scrappage rate – which means that cars are disappearing from U.S. roads. During the period between July 1, 2008, and Sept. 30, 2009 – which included “cash for clunkers” – there were more than 14.8 million vehicles scrapped in the U.S., compared with a little more than 13.6 million new-vehicle registrations during the same time frame. There are about 242.63 million cars in the U.S. The scrappage rate in the U.S. is running at 6.1%, as shown in this chart posted by Lonnie Miller.
While scrappage rates have been declining (meaning the average age of light vehicles on the road has been creeping up), new car sales would have to pick up substantially before the number of cars on U.S. roads would again begin to increase.
Using projections anticipating that past patterns of VMT growth will continue into the future to justify spending huge sums on road and bridge infrastructure to handle anticipated but phantom increased vehicle traffic will most surely prove to be short-sighted and wasteful of precious resources desperately needed to transition to a different kind of future.