‘I think it’s super unfair that we, the young people, have to carry all of this on our shoulders because we are the ones who will have to deal with the consequences,’ says 18-year-old Teresa, a student at a Hamburg district school. ‘But at the end of the day, it is us who have the hardest time implementing it and the fewest opportunities to behave in a perfectly climate neutral way.’
Teresa has brought some of her fellow students along to the interview to talk about the mobility behaviour of Gen Z, i.e. 14 to 29-year-olds. ‘Hamburg could have better connections,’ says Chiara. ‘If I look at how I get to school, for example, it takes 45 minutes on public transport, but ten in the car.’
Teresa, who has always used up her data allowance by the tenth of the month, complains that there are far too few stops equipped with Wi-Fi and no internet at all on the underground: ‘Having Wi-Fi on the underground would be fantastic, I would definitely travel on it more. At night, I rely on MOIA ridesharing – it’s quicker and above all safer’.
Hanna wanted to get home from a festival in Hanover: ‘It was 60 euros with the ICE train – and if you haven’t booked weeks in advance, that’s well out of reach for me. That’s when you start looking to see if anyone has a car.’
The bicycle is not flexible enough
‘When I think about getting a car, it would be a used one for about 3000 euros in a couple of years – an electric one is out of the question,’ says Anton – praising the 49-euro ticket offered by Deutsche Bahn, which is free of charge for school pupils in Hamburg, as a ‘major factor’: ‘All of us know about the ticket. After all, for our generation, mobility is always about money.’
School pupils are generally more familiar with the affordable options offered by the transport transition than any older generation. Trips are planned via app and quickly changing between different modes of transport is part of everyday life. Public transport, ridesharing, electric scooters – they use anything that suits them. ‘Of course we want to do something for the climate and also go without. And most of us do well without meat, for example – and I only wear second-hand clothes. But it’s not been made easy for us when it comes to mobility.’
The climate-friendly bicycle has lost some of its appeal, at least with Teresa, Chiara and Anton: ‘Ever since e-scooters came along,’ says Chiara, ‘the bike hasn’t really been my thing anymore. And so many of them are stolen, particularly from underground stations. The e-scooters are the only thing that is really flexible, you can just leave them wherever. But with your bike, you’ve always got to come back to it – and that doesn’t really suit us because we never stay in one place, we’re always moving.’
This generation’s attitude to mobility, which is adapted to suit their circumstances, especially financial, seems a pragmatic one. This is also in line with expert assessments and is supported by international data.
Flexibility and independence are the most important wishes
‘For Generation Z, flexibility and independence are essential. Above all, they want good network coverage and for various modes of transport to be interlinked. Free charging stations for electric cars are also in demand,’ says Tobias Kuhnimhof from RWTH Aachen. ‘Gen Z thinks that the greatest need for improvement lies in rural areas and for commuters – and in this respect, they are no different to older generations.’
Given that they navigate digitally on public transport and use sharing services such as e-scooters, driving services and ridesharing, the link between mobility and the internet is crucial for this generation. When they were asked what they would like for their mobility, 47 per cent of the 16-19-year-olds called for widespread availability of the internet, 30 per cent for ‘one app for everything’ followed by 23 per cent who wanted ‘self-driving cars’.
When affordability and sustainability of products are weighed against each other, sustainability is slightly more important for Gen Z consumers than for older generations. Worldwide, 51% of Gen Z consumers value affordability over sustainability, compared to 57% of millennials and 55% of Gen X.
Combustion engines will keep going for another generation
Question to the student panel: how would you like to get around in five years’ time? ‘By car, hopefully,’ they all say almost in unison. Anton is about to get his driving licence, Chiara already has her licence and drives to school in her own car: ‘Driving in a more environmentally-friendly way – that’s what we learnt at driving school. But I think that you immediately forget all that once you’ve passed your test.’
She was given the car, a combustion engine car, as a gift from her father: ‘It was doable, an electric car wasn’t. And there’s also that thought that if I’m not driving a combustion engine car right now, does it actually even make any difference?’
Teresa suspects that it would still be a more difficult environment for electric cars even if they were cheaper: ‘For many people, there’s something cool about petrol engines, the way they sound and so on. They wouldn’t be so happy with an electric car, even it comes across as something that’s new and fresh.’ Even in this generation, mobility decisions are seemingly not always strictly logical.
However, everyone in the interview group thinks that the ‘ban on combustion engines’ in the EU from 2035 is ‘a sensible thing’ – and they want to see even more regulations introduced by politicians in general. And bans: ‘I think it would be better if these issues were regulated by law and there were also clear bans,’ says Teresa, ‘so it wouldn’t have to be like it is now: oh, I’m the one who has to choose whether or not to restrict myself from doing something.’
If you can only get the bus every two hours, you’ll use the car instead
Owning a car is an important goal in life, said 56 per cent of Germans aged between 16 and 25 in a survey conducted by the International Automobile Federation (FIA). By contrast, car sharing is only an option for one in four people.
The data therefore does not provide any conclusive evidence that young people from Gen Z are experiencing ‘car fatigue’. ‘Part of the pragmatism of this generation means that they often opt for the car, just like previous generations,’ says mobility researcher Kuhnimhof. If young people are dependent on a bus that comes only once every two hours, they won’t be prepared to give up cars either because it would mean that they couldn’t do certain things.
‘There was a brief slump in 2008 and 2009 but that was due more to socio-economic factors than a change in attitude.’ The proportion of car drivers has been steadily increasing again in Germany for many years now: in 2022 it reached a new high of 188 cars per 1000 people among 18-24-year-olds.
The number of driving licences issued has remained high in the 18-24 age group in recent years. ‘As far as the quota of driving licences is concerned, there have been no significant changes,’ says Kuhnimhof. ‘Even if attitudes change, that doesn’t necessarily always mean behaviour changes.’ According to a study by the TÜV Association, 76 per cent of 16-29-year-old driving licence holders consider their driving licence important or very important for daily life, compared to 88 per cent of the overall population.
Mobility behaviour is based on the same criteria globally
The mobility behaviour of younger people is changing worldwide: they have a much higher sensitivity to the environment, combined with significant openness to alternative modes of transport. However, as in all age groups, actual behaviour does not always align with good intentions.
The criteria that individuals base their behaviour on seem to be same internationally: financial aspects, concern for the environment and the appeal of alternatives, in that order. Their climate and mobility behaviour shows that young people seem to be under greater financial pressure than previous generations. In a global study by YouGov Global Profiles, 48 per cent, i.e. almost half of the 18-24-year-olds surveyed, agreed with the statement ‘we should all drive less to save the environment’, which means this age group had the lowest score out of all those surveyed. As people get older, they see a need for a comprehensive renunciation of the car, with the highest score being 59 per cent amongst the generation aged 55 and above.
