When will the world reach Car Saturation Day?

Countless millions of pounds and dollars seem to be expended every year on building a world that is hospitable to the motor car, but what will happen when everyone who wants a car owns one? Will the factories of Ford, VW, Citroen and the rest only need to build cars to replace the ones that fall apart or off cliffs (etc) and will the damage that all those vehicles do to the environment eventually reach some sort of plateau?

In the United States, 410 adults out of every 1,000 owned a car in 1960, but that figure had risen to 810 by 2002. In the United Kingdom the figure was not quite so advanced, with only 515 people per 1,000 being car owners by 2002. The estimate, by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, is that the saturation point will have been reached in both countries by 2030. So is that when the plateau mentioned above will have been reached?

Probably not! For one thing, there is always the possibility that, in the world’s richest countries, the figures will go beyond the 1,000 mark as the norm becomes owning more than one car per person.

And then there is the horrifying prospect of an explosion of car ownership in countries such as India and China, where the figures start from a very low base (currently 9 per 1,000 in India and 6 per 1,000 in China).

This is already happening. In India people are being encouraged to buy low-priced cars that are churned out in huge numbers by the Tata company. In China the impetus is coming from the opposite end of the market, with demand for high-priced vehicles from Europe leading to companies such as Land-Rover and Jaguar in Great Britain building new production lines in order to cope with increased demand.

It looks as though it will be long beyond 2030 when the world’s demand for personal transport units reaches saturation point. Hopefully, technology will develop at the same time so that these vehicles are more Earth-friendly (i.e. electric) than what is currently on the roads (i.e. fuelled by oil), but the damage done by the need to lay down yet more concrete and tarmac to accommodate them could be even more harmful.

© John Welford