In 2003, statistics from the U.S. Division of Transportation confirmed that 45% of eligible individuals age 19 or underneath had a driver’s license. In 2023, that quantity has declined to about 33%.
Are Gen Zers failing the parallel parking portion of their exams in file numbers? No, the decline in licensed drivers has nothing to do with talent and every thing to do with tech, reviews Enterprise Insider.
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Increasingly more younger people are getting round in Ubers, and see no actual cause to get behind the wheel themselves. On a current dialog on the Decoder podcast, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi revealed that his 18-year-old son is a part of the pattern.
“I am nonetheless attempting to get my son to get his driver’s license, however Uber’s freed him up,” Khosrowshahi stated.
Khosrowshahi defined that for older generations, getting a driver’s license meant freedom — you may lastly go the place you needed to go while not having a raise out of your dad and mom. Nowadays, Uber delivers that very same freedom, he stated, with out the price of shopping for a automobile, insuring it, and conserving it fueled up.
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Uber has lengthy billed itself as an alternative choice to automobile possession, and has not been quiet about its efforts to seize the teenager demographic. They’ve supplied a model of the app geared at teenagers since 2023, and their subscription program, Uber One, permits dad and mom to get rides for his or her youngsters.
Uber’s efforts with this demographic and others appear to be paying off. In its 2025 first-quarter investor report, Uber’s gross bookings grew 14% year-over-year to $42.8 billion. The corporate estimates second-quarter gross bookings will attain $45.75 to $47.25 billion.
