Chapter 28: Automobile Demand and Type Choice

The automobile's central and ubiquitous role in all aspects of modern life (especially in the industrialized nations) makes the understanding of automobile demand a singularly important topic, as reflected by the large extant research literature spanning many academic fields. This chapter considers one major component, namely, demand generated by households and/or individuals purchasing vehicles for personal-use transport of passengers. Particular attention is paid to topics of interest to transport modelers, and discrete-choice modeling methods of the type described in Chapters 5 and 13 will play a major role. Following the literature convention, the term “automobile” may at times be used generically to denote all light-duty vehicle types available in a market (e.g., cars of all sizes, minivans, sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks).¹