Courtesy of Doug Short.
For several years now I have published a weekly update on gasoline prices and a monthly update on vehicle miles traveled and gasoline volume sales, complete with a variety of charts.
Paul Hodges, who writes a blog for ISIS.com on Chemicals and the Economy, recently sent me link to his fascinating study on the correlation between gasoline prices and the Department of Transportation’s monthly statistics on vehicle miles driven statistics.
Paul offers a new perspective with a scatter chart showing the correlation between gasoline prices (vertical axis) and per-capita vehicle miles traveled on the horizontal axis.
Paul leads with the following observations:
“Americans are driving less each year. For the first time since records began in 1970, average vehicle miles per person has been declining for over a decade. The trend is now so well established, it is highly unlikely that the current collapse of oil prices back to normal levels will change the overall picture.
This has enormous implications for companies and investors. It means we have reached ‘peak car’ moment in the US market, and should expect auto sales to slowly decline in future years, even if the overall population continues to increase.”
I highly recommend a reading of Paul’s complete commentary:
