Germans Buying Bigger Cars But Driving Them Less
August 23, 2006
Year after year, it seemed Germans, and most other Europeans, were happy to drive their cars more and farther than before. Then came 2005 and the first-ever drop in how often Germans pulled their cars out of the driveway.
"Over the last year we observed that there were cuts in actual distance traveled, that the average distance traveled per car went down 3 percent," said Hartmut Kuhfeld of the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin. "Before it was always the case that it stagnated or only negligibly declined. People choose to save in other ways in order to be able to afford gas."
But over the past few decades, gas has steadily become more affordable. The same amount of fuel has become cheaper when measured against a person's buying power. The average employee had to work for 14 minutes to be able to afford one liter (about one-fourth of a gallon) of gas in 1960, while in 1991 it took just four minutes work to buy the same amount.
Sticker shock overshadows reality
It's the psychological effects of seeing bigger and bigger numbers adorning signs on the autobahn and the increasing distances people tend to drive that has created the feeling fuel is more difficult to afford, according to Andreas Knie of Berlin's Economic Center for Social Research.
"In regards to changes in the cost of mobility, you can generally say that they have become relatively cheaper over the past decades, even when there is an impression that everything has got more expensive," he said. "Measured against the figures from 1950 and 1960, over the years, the price for driving a car have been stable or even sunk a little."
But violence in the Middle East, a corroded pipeline in Alaska, high demand coming from China and India, and speculators hoping to take a profit have driven up the price for a barrel of oil to over $70 (54 euros). The average price in Germany for a liter of gas rose from 95 euro cents in January 2005 to 1.22 euros in December, which has left some drivers of mid and high-range cars to think twice before they put the key in the ignition.
Drivers switching to smaller cars and fewer trips
"Even in higher income brackets there is a switch being made to smaller cars for trips made alone or with the family," said Stephan Thun, European head of the Maritz market research company, which polled 1,200 car owners from France, Great Britain and Germany.
Reactions to gas prices in the trio of countries differed widely, according to the Maritz report. Germans were double as likely to cut back on long drives and vacation trips as French drivers.
"The French drivers were especially likely to say they would eliminate trips that were not essential," Thun said. "People in England took more drastic measures of looking for a job closer to home to save fuel."
New engines are not always the right answer
About half of drivers in all three countries, however, hoped they would get better mileage from a new car, with Germans the most likely to trade in their gas-guzzlers for cheaper diesel motors. But the car many drivers bring home from the dealer doesn't always prove to be the best bet.
"Over the last few years the average consumption of a gas-fuelled car has hardly sunk, while the average consumption for a diesel car has gone back up," Kuhfeld said. "This is because bigger and bigger cars with stronger and stronger diesel motors are being sold."