AP Photo/Markus Schreiber
Uber‘s quest to compete with owning a car has come home for CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.
Like many young people, Khosrowshahi’s son doesn’t have his license despite being over 18. The reason: he can get around using the ride-hailing app that his father oversees, the CEO said on an episode of The Verge’s Decoder podcast.
“I’m still trying to get my son to get his driver’s license, but Uber’s freed him up,” Khosrowshahi said.
Uber executives have long said that they view their ride-hailing offering as an alternative to car ownership. Khosrowshahi’s son and others like him show how much progress Uber may have made on that front.
In 2023, about 33% of eligible drivers aged 19 or under had a license, according to data from the US Department of Transportation. In 2003, it was 45%.
Ride-hailing apps like Uber, which was founded in 2009, are one of the reasons for that decline, Khosrowshahi said. “It is absolutely having an effect on car ownership,” he said of the company. Uber did not respond to a request for additional comment from Business Insider.
Driving is one of a few life milestones for young adults that some members of Gen Z are holding off on reaching, along with their first romantic relationships and entering the workforce.
While some are waiting because of personal choice, others say economic realities are limiting what they can achieve.
Khosrowshahi also said that the shift away from driving among young people marks a cultural change.
For decades, many young people have gotten their driver’s licenses as soon as they’re old enough to. Podcast host Nilay Patel said that he got his license at 15-and-a-half while growing up in Wisconsin, for instance.
“It was a goal in life,” Khosrowshahi said. “It represented freedom.”
Uber started offering a version of its app for teens in 2023. Since then, the company has integrated rides for young people into its broader offering. It now lets parents request rides for their kids as well as share their benefits from Uber One, the company’s paid subscription program.
In March, Khosrowshahi said at an investor conference that teens were among the “new demographics that we’re going after.” The company has also introduced a streamlined version of its app for seniors to use.
Khosrowshahi said that Uber doesn’t keep estimates of how many people — teens or other demographic groups — might have avoided buying a car because they use Uber.
But he did say on the podcast that car ownership is still “the big Kahuna” that Uber is targeting with its ride-hailing business.
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