Car Ownership Statistics 2023

The average American is a car owner. Across the country, 91 percent of American households have one vehicle or more as of 2017, the last year the Federal Highway Administration released national data. The plurality owns one car, while 33 percent own two. Only 3 percent own five or more cars.¹

It isn’t actually clear how many people own cars in the U.S. As of 2020, there were nearly 276 million cars registered in the country, but unfortunately, there’s no good national data on rates of car ownership versus leasing.

Registered Cars in Each State

In most states, the household-to-vehicle ratio is one to one. In a few states — Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, North Dakota, and Kentucky — cars outnumber licensed drivers by two to one or more.

Cities With the Highest Car Ownership Rates

The cities in the U.S. with the highest car ownership rates are all in the Western states, where public transportation is less available and people are more dependent on cars for daily transportation.

The city with the highest rate is Murrieta, California, where 99 percent of households had vehicles in 2016, according to data from Vanderbilt University.² Like in many other cities in California, Texas, Arizona, and Colorado, plus in Southern states like North Carolina, buses are the only form of public transportation available in Murrieta.³

Cities With the Lowest Car Ownership Rates

Densely populated cities in the Northeast, plus San Francisco in the West, have robust public transportation systems and the lowest car ownership rates in the U.S. New York, New York, has the lowest rate, with only 54 percent of households owning cars. Also on the list are Newark and Jersey City, New Jersey, which are not far from New York City.

Globally, in terms of the rate of motor vehicles per 1,000 people, the U.S. comes second to Monaco, which has a whopping 899 cars for every 1,000 people compared to 797 per 1,000 people in the U.S. The average across all countries is 213, making these two nations major outliers.⁴

Income Level

The people most likely to own cars in the U.S. are those who make between $50,000 to $74,999 a year.⁵⁶

Age

People aged 45 and older are most likely to own cars. Age and car ownership are directly proportional: The older you are, the more likely you are to own a car and the more cars you own.

Race

Black people are 10 percent less likely to live in households with vehicles and have access to a vehicle compared to the general population. On the opposite end of the spectrum, 94 percent of white households have vehicles. The average percentage of households with vehicles across all races is 91 percent.⁷

Crossovers have the largest segment of the U.S. vehicle market share. They make up 45 percent of vehicles total.

Electric

As of 2022, only 5 percent of vehicles on the road are all-electric vehicles. Seven percent are hybrid, while 88 percent are gas-powered.

Luxury

Only 5 percent of cars on the market are in the luxury class, which includes brands such as Bentley, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Lexus, and Jaguar, according to data from the National Automobile Dealers Association.⁸

In 1960, Americans spent a total of $17 million on new and used cars. By 2020, that number ballooned to over $460 million, a difference of 2,596 percent. Year over year, U.S. expenditures on new and used cars increased by 16 percent on average, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data.⁹ 

The type of car accounting for the highest death rate is a four-door mini car, with traffic fatality rates 221 percent higher than the average across all car types. In contrast, a four-wheel-drive luxury SUV has the lowest traffic fatality rates — 85 percent lower than average. This data is based on car models from 2015 to 2018.¹⁰

Although car ownership has been on the rise for decades, with an average year-over-year increase in vehicle registrations in the U.S. of 1 percent, many factors make the future of car ownership uncertain.

For example, rideshare services, the rise of work-from-home arrangements, increased availability of public transportation, and the promise of self-driving cars may affect personal car ownership in the future. Not to mention the effects of rising fuel prices, high costs of living, economic woes, and supply chain shortages.

According to Automotive World, a new trend may be Mobility as a Service (Maas). Instead of owning cars outright, people would depend on the following services:

• Car rental subscriptions like Zipcar
• Peer-to-peer sharing services like Getaround and Turo
• On-demand car-sharing
• Car clubs¹¹

Similarly, the think tank RethinkX believes that by 2030, once the U.S. government has approved autonomous vehicles (AVs), 95 percent of U.S. passenger miles will be traveled using on-demand AVs. They also predict that fleets, not individuals, will own these AVs.

RethinkX calls this new business model Transport as a Service, or TaaS, and believes it will save the average U.S. family $5,600 annually in transportation costs, equal to a 10 percent wage increase. Compared to buying a new car, TaaS will be four to 10 times cheaper per mile, or two to four times cheaper than the cost of buying a used car in 2021.¹²

Because leased cars have more insurance requirements than owned cars (mandating, for instance, collision and comprehensive coverage and gap insurance), they are sometimes more expensive to insure than owned cars. However, assuming you have the same coverage (new car replacement coverage is similar to gap coverage for owned vehicles, for example), leased vehicles may be no more expensive to insure than owned vehicles. Owned cars will only be cheaper to insure if you get minimum coverage — the bare minimum your state requires in auto insurance.

Although exciting new technologies could affect the future of car ownership, for now, personal vehicles are here to stay, especially in Western and Southern states where public transportation isn’t widely available. With car ownership comes a need for auto insurance. Learn more noteworthy car statistics in our auto insurance research.

We compiled this report using information from the following third parties:

• Automotive World
• Federal Highway Administration
• Infotur
• Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
• Murrieta, California website
• National Automobile Dealer’s Association
• National Equity Atlas
• Nation Master
• Rethink
• U.S. Census
• U.S. Department of Transportation
• Vanderbilt University