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Passenger Cars

Map No. 31

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In 2002 there were 590 million cars in the world. That is one for every ten people. There are 140 million cars in the United States and 55 million in Japan. This contrasts with just nine million cars in China and 6 million in India.

Western European territories dominate the top ten list of the most cars per person. New Zealand, however, is at the top of this list, with 61 cars per hundred people. As 23% of the population of New Zealand are under 14 years old, that is almost a car per person for everyone old enough to drive. In contrast, in the Central African Republic, Bangladesh and Tajikistan there is one car for every 2000+ people.

"... the car still defines a lifestyle. Americans still buy cars by the millions, whether they are in gridlocked LA or in the middle of Kansas miles from the nearest town." Paul Harris, 2006

Territory size shows the proportion of all cars in the world that are found there.

• Open PDF poster, designed for printing. You need Acrobat Reader.
• View labelled territory map or population map for comparison
• Data files: Excel (large with map), Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
• Technical notes for this data.
• High Resolution image (see copyright conditions)
• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page