Deloitte interviews 677 'millenials,' concludes they're broke

Until artisanal, sustainable, locally sourced craft-beer bars can upend themselves from their Brooklyn brownstones and directly to your Park Slope loft entrance, it turns out that today's youthful generation will still need to buy cars to get places.

In fact, they might even be picky about what they spend time in, which means that young people, even "millennials," are doing research on cars and forming their own opinions as smart consumers. Hey, doesn't that sound familiar?

That's what a study by consulting firm Deloitte claims. The study, commissioned by Deloitte itself and odiously titled, "Dude, Here's My Car," claims that 61 percent of Gen Y plan to buy a new car within the next three years, while 23 percent will do so within the year. Just eight percent believe that they'll never, ever buy a car, preferring to live out an ascetic's lifestyle of bumming rides.

If true, then this turns the whole theory of our brave generation forgoing cars on its head. Deloitte surveyed 23,000 people across 19 countries, born between the years of 1977 and 1994, including 2,000 U.S. consumers. Of the 2,000 in America, just 677 of them were within the birth-year range.

The full study can be viewed here, and we dug a little deeper into the methodology.

Deloitte
Deloitte's infographic reflects the importance of millennials as a force in the automotive economy.

Deloitte's interpretation of "millennial" extends well into the range of Gen X. As some on staff here at Autoweek will tell you, Gen X is defined as people born up to the late 1970s, some of whom might even drink Pepsi. Many organizations, like Ad Age (which was one of the first publications to use the term "millennial") and statistics bureaus from Australia and Canada believe the latest birth year for inclusion in Generation Y is around 1982 or 1983.

But Deloitte consulted with Clay Voorhees, assistant professor of marketing at Michigan State University, who believes that 1977 is the date to which most academics are willing to extend the definition of "millennial." Even Pew Research, which pioneered millennial research, has since broadened its definition of "millennial" from 1981 back to 1977.

As for the 677 people surveyed from the initial 23,000: “Our researchers say that a sample of that size is considered normative for this kind of thing,” said Jon Rucket, the public relations lead for Deloitte, “Assuming the survey was fielded correctly.” If the sample size had been increased, Rucket explained, the results would have changed only one or two percentage points. Come to think of it, if so few young people (some of whom will be 37 years old this year, based on the age stretch) could make such an impact in trends, perhaps Jon Stewart's rally could have made a difference.

So. The data still applies to the disaffected youth of today, and it trumpets what has been heard and what's not surprising: It's the money that gets to us.

More people surveyed say they're not buying cars because cars are expensive, not because they can walk or bum rides off friends. Eighty percent can't afford a car. Seventy-five percent can't afford to fuel or maintain one. Contrast this to the 67 percent who are OK with walking or public transportation, and even fewer (40 percent) who latch on to trendy car-sharing services like ZipCar and Car2Go.

"The results indicate that while America's romance with the car does not extend to Gen Y," the study claims, "The nearly 80 million Gen Y consumers in the United States are not giving up on car ownership."

Ah, we just want better cars. No longer satisfied with the 1998 Ford Taurii our parents have handed down in droves, 59 percent of us want some sort of alternative-energy vehicle, and 27 percent specifically want hybrids. (Eight, seven and four percent want plug-in hybrids, all-electric cars, or fuel-cell cars, respectively.) Of course, we can't pay for these on our own, so 58 percent of those surveyed support government incentives for alternative-energy cars.

We want smarter cars, too, according to Masa Hasegawa, a principal at Deloitte. “Almost three quarters want technology that recognizes the presence of other vehicles on the road, and 63 [percent] want technology that lets them know when they have exceeded the speed limit,” Hasegawa said. We have clear needs, wants and desires, continued Hasegawa, about what we want -- it just so happens that acceleration and 0-60 mph times aren't priorities.

He continued: "Among Gen Y consumers who do not currently own or lease a vehicle, cost seems to be the main barrier -- with most (80 [percent]) saying it is because they cannot afford it and three quarters citing high operational and maintenance costs." No news here. If you haven't heard, apparently we're still broke.

Lambast this generation for eschewing the tradition of car ownership, but hey: That Park Slope loft to which we're all supposed to be retiring by age 30 doesn't come with a parking space.

Opel
From the Paris motor show: if only we could all look this cool.

The core tenet of this generation has been observed as such: Some of us like things, and others like different things. Some of us still like cars, in fact. Some of us like cars even more than others like cars. We are not a homogenous coagulation of humanity, available only in demographic blocks for easier marketing. Those among you might decry the desire for smartphone connectivity as some sort of hack "death of car enthusiast" tripe, but no dork in a yellow Best Buy polo can speak for an entire generation. It's cash, plain and simple.

But perhaps Gen Y, and half of Gen X, can be seen as such anyway, and the Deloitte survey does offer advice to the carmakers. So, here's an idea! What if there were a car that was cheap n' cheerful, possessing enough charisma and thrifty charm to avail itself to an entire generation? Make it a hybrid, if you will. Make it connect to your Nest thermostat and your Google Plus (now the same company!) and your Boston Dynamics killer robot (also the same company). Have it connect to radio both terrestrial, extraterrestrial, and Internetial. Have it connect to AM, in case a grandfather feels the need to reminisce about the Brooklyn Dodgers. Make it beep if we come close to rear-ending a Buick at the Starbucks drive-thru. But, most importantly: Design a cool ad campaign around it to make owners feel like they're in a cool, special club. Non-owners will feel ashamed and excluded from polite society, banned for their uncouthness and slovenly tastes, the Morlocks to the owners' Eloi. Call it "the Apple of cars." Put Jennifer Lawrence in the ads. Cha and ching.

Maybe Mazda can do it. That's right: Bring back the "Millenia."

Mazda
It's the perfect time to reintroduce the Mazda Millenia.

By Blake Z. Rong