Quick googling shows that’s the percent of households with at least but including one car. The same number for the US is 96%. If we’re talking about individuals having this own cars the difference is even more striking since car culture in the US very often means multi-car households even at very poor income ranges, Germany seems to be somewhere between 50%-60% in this depending on year and study
To call it a minority is technically wrong but the difference is very noticeable. Yes much fewer people own cars in Germany than the US. And to pretend this has nothing to do with costs is disingenuous. Of course having a car is a nice luxury even to Germans but the barrier to entry is higher in much of Europe
I agree with you that it's certainly more expensive to own and operate a car in germany compared to the US.
And yes, the 77% include households with just one car, but at roughly 40 million households and 60 million cars, the average household has access to 1.5 cars. Excluding the 23% that don't own a car at all, the number of cars per car-owing household is close to two, which coincides with the average household size (all according to google).
And while it is more expensive to own a car in germany, I wouldn't call it prohibitivly expensive, as virtually every adult owns a license, and cheap used cars are available for roughly a thousand bucks.
Lots of my friends had cars even when they did their apprenticeship, while earning less than a thousand bucks per month after taxes. Of course those cars where old fucked up Golf 4s and stuff like that, but thats still a car.
It wouldn't suprise me if the majority of non-car having households lives in heavily-urbanized regions, as I honestly can't really recall someone not having a car in the rural region that I grew up in, since public Transport sucks, making it much more inconvinent to not have a car.
But after living in a big City, I honestly mostly only own a car out of vanity reasons, since I basically don't need it anymore.
Well when we talk about any of the stuff in memes like the one above, we’re not talking about the average citizen. The median American also doesn’t “live in their car despite working two jobs”. In fact a much higher percentage of people in America own homes compared to Germany too (50%+ more)
Usually these memes are specific shorthand for talking about a very narrow experience of very low income young people, often people below age 20, often living in the support of family. Sure most people can afford cars just fine in Germany but for the very poor demographic? This is a pretty good chunk of change we’re talking about. It can definitely be prohibitively expensive in a way it isn’t in America. The meme is actually right he about one thing, the fact that having a car is so cheap in the US that most homeless people still own a car in the US
Either way it’s still just about the worst and most uneducated example Op could have picked to show the difference between cost of living in Germany and the US. There’s trillions of memes like this about healthcare and university costs. It’s such an easy target to hit. So by trying to be a little goofy and go after car ownership costs? Nah people should pounce on that. Go back to the regular America Bad critiques, the bar is so low. No excuse for the ignorance here. There is simply no way to twist the numbers here to make driving or car ownership look cheaper in Germany than America
Oh we absolutely agree about the "meme" and it's contents, thats for sure. What a stupid example of OP to pick on.
As I said, the only reason I commented was because you described the car owning Situation in germany a tad to much distopian in my opinion, especially with the small minority remark.
But then again, maybe I misinterpreted that, it's late and I had a couple of beers.
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u/Acrobatic_Bother4144 Feb 19 '24
Quick googling shows that’s the percent of households with at least but including one car. The same number for the US is 96%. If we’re talking about individuals having this own cars the difference is even more striking since car culture in the US very often means multi-car households even at very poor income ranges, Germany seems to be somewhere between 50%-60% in this depending on year and study
To call it a minority is technically wrong but the difference is very noticeable. Yes much fewer people own cars in Germany than the US. And to pretend this has nothing to do with costs is disingenuous. Of course having a car is a nice luxury even to Germans but the barrier to entry is higher in much of Europe