via ThinkProgress, Ward's reports
According to Ward’s research, which looked at government-reported registrations and historical vehicle-population trends, global registrations jumped from 980 million units in 2009 to 1.015 billion in 2010.
The figures reflect the approximate number of cars, light-, medium- and heavy-duty trucks and buses registered worldwide, but that does not include off-road, heavy-duty vehicles. ...
Vehicles in operation in 2010 equated roughly to a ratio of 1:6.75 vehicles to people among a world population of 6.9 billion, compared with 1:6.63 in 2009. ...
In the U.S., the ratio was 1:1.3 among a population of almost 310 million – the highest vehicle-to-person ratio in the world. Italy was second with 1:1.45. France, Japan, and the U.K. followed, all of which fell in the 1:1.7 range.
In China, the ratio was 1:17.2 among the country’s more than 1.3 billion people. India, the world’s second most-populous nation with 1.17 billion people, saw a ratio of 1:56.3.
The world vehicle population in 2010 passed the 1 billion-unit mark 24 years after reaching 500 million in 1986. Prior to that, the vehicle population doubled roughly every 10 years from 1950 to 1970, when it first reached the 250 million-unit threshold.
Why does Italy have so many cars? It appears that the main thing going on here is that low income Italian households have more cars than poor households elsewhere in Europe. But why is that? I would hazard a combination of these effects: a) a better ability to keep old cheap cars on the road, due to good weather (a California effect) and a less stringent inspection regime, b) non-functional public transit, c) the cultural acceptance (why?) of very small cheap cars. Interestingly, Portugal has the of the lowest low income household car ownership rate in Europe (but Portugal is much poorer than Italy).
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