Originally Posted by
wahoonc
Well with some 12 million NEW cars being sold every year, average number of years financed is 5, that is roughly 60 million cars. 195 million licensed drivers in the US so you might have up to roughly a third of those paying those "average" annual costs. Factor that in with an "average" income and it is a sizable hit.
How many dollars are being spent on automobile transportation by the total population is irrelevant when computing how much it would cost an individual to own a car for transportation.
The point is the LCF posters who trot out only the high side numbers from new car purchases to make points about how expensive car ownership is compared to bicycle ownership costs (as if they perform identical tasks and have equal capabilities). No one who needs a motor vehicle to meet transportation requirements has to pay top dollar for a new car anymore than LCF bicyclists need the latest, greatest and highest priced boutique product offered by an LBS to meet basic bicycle transportation requirements.
If you want to to include the cost of every mode of transport when figuring an average transportation ownership costs don't forget to include the cost of private planes, speedboats and yachts. Average bicycle transportation ownership costs are lower than them too, but I doubt that anybody who is not on this list would take such averages seriously.