Registrations for light VIO in the U.S. also reached a record level of 257,900,000. A record 258 million vehicles are now in operation on U.S. roads, 5 million (or 2 percent) more than the previous year and the most since IHS began tracking growth. Used auto drivers hold onto their vehicles for an average 63 months before disposing of them, a 25-month increase since early 2006.
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“Consumers are now being driven back to the showroom”, Mark Seng, global aftermarket practice leader at IHS Automotive, said in a telephone interview. Using a snapshot of data taken from January 1 of this year, IHS Automotive discovered that the average vehicle age in the United States now stands at 11.5 years.
Helping age the fleet is the fact that consumers are holding on to their vehicles longer than ever before.
The average length of ownership for a new vehicle was 77.8 months in this year’s first quarter, rising nearly 26 months since the same period in 2006, the information provider said.
IHS forecasts that the average age of vehicles in operation will rise only fractionally in the next year and take until 2018 to reach 11.7 years.
IHS Automotive is part of Englewood, Colorado-based IHS Inc.
The number of vehicles scrapped in 2014 declined slightly from 2013, with just over 11 million light vehicles scuttled during the 12-month time frame analyzed by IHS Automotive. In comparison, a record high of more than 14 million vehicles were scrapped in 2012. They aged faster in the 2008- to-2013 period, when sales of new cars and light trucks fell in the recession and then began to rebound.
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The drawback, experts warn, is that driver behinds the wheels of older cars don’t have the more advanced safety features found in newer vehicles.
