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More People are Valuing Their Phone Payment Over a Car Payment
Call it a sign of the times, but Bloomberg recently ran a story about how people are prioritizing their phone payment over their car payments. That means if money’s tight and they can only cover one, many will pay for their phone and then deal with the repo man.
Who needs to go places? A phone keeps your steady diet of social media going, plus Candy Crush and Netflix. Your car can’t do that. Besides, your phone can be used to hail an ultra-expensive Uber ride from a guy who smells like he just got off work at the local fish market. Joy.
This isn’t good news for the auto industry. Ram Ahluwalia , CEO of PeerIQ, and a data and analytics company for the consumer lending sector, told Bloomberg “the car is no longer a central asset.”
That’s an interesting shift in consumer behavior. I think once people have to constantly be hiring or bumming rides, they’ll come to appreciate the privilege of a car payment once more. Of course, it doesn’t help that car prices have inflated big time, making the average vehicle well out of reach for many Americans. A cheap Kia or Chevy maybe isn’t all bad after all.
What will the auto industry do about this? Ignore the problem and keep cramming expensive tech in cars, driving prices up further? Probably so.