Image credit: PixabayHoping to discover what the American consumer preferred (cars or light trucks), University of Michigan researchers set out to study the common links between car and light truck sales.
The study, using data from 2007-2016, examined the links between car (passenger cars and station wagons) and light truck (SUVs, vans, trucks) sales and other factors such as the price of gasoline, the unemployment rate and the amount of disposable income.
Researchers determined that these factors significantly predicted the percentage of car sales from the total combined light truck and car sales.
“All of the effects were in the expected directions: higher disposable income was associated with lower percentages of car sales, while both higher gas prices and higher unemployment rates were associated with higher percentages of car sales,” said Michael Sivak, a research professor at U-M Transportation Research Institute.
Taking the research a step further, the team also figured car sale percentages for 36 possible future scenarios considering the same economic factors that influenced the 2007-2016 data.
Researchers found that of the 36 scenarios, car sales only exceeded 50 percent of all sales in six instances. The instances usually occurred when the factors of lower disposable income and higher gas prices were at play and when the combination of low disposable income, median gas price, and high unemployment rates prevailed.
