If someone has budding car fever at the moment, that fever will end when the bills come.

Rising interest rates, inflation and energy costs take such a slice out of household coffers that the dream of a new car is one of the first dreams to be passed on.

And those who can afford it or have a car advantage will likely have to wait for their new cars due to component shortages.

The result of all this is that fewer new cars appear on Finnish roads than before. It can create a weird gap in the car stock.

This is indicated by the following three observations.

1. New cars are decreasing

Statistics Finland said on Tuesday, that the lowest number of passenger cars of the entire 2000s was first registered in Finland last year, around 82,000 in total. The drop was up to 17 percent compared to the previous year. HS reports on the numbers already in January.

In practice, first registration refers to the official commissioning of a new car. Usually, the number has been close to a hundred thousand.

In addition, there was a separate but symbolic turn: the total number of passenger cars decreased by half a percent last year. Now there are about 2.7 million cars.

All this is not just about the time messed up by the pandemic and the war: new car registrations have been sluggish for a decade already.

Read more: The car trade was unusually quiet to the level of the 1990s recession

2. Cars get old

Finland the average age of the passenger car fleet at the end of last year was 12.9 years. The attached graphic shows how aging is on the rise.

The youngest average age is in Uusimaa, just over 10 years. The oldest population is in Kainuu, where the average age is about 15 years.

About chapters can be interpreted that there are a lot of cars from the last millennium in the “starving country”. Old cars are a problem for emission targets and traffic safety.

Middle age stopping the growth would requirethat five percent of the car stock would be renewed every year.

This would mean the annual first registration of approximately 140,000 new cars. Last year, that left just under 60,000 cars behind. It’s a terrible back trip.

Read more: There will be a radical change in the rule of thumb for buying a car. You have to forget about the mileage you’ve been staring at for a long time.

3. The internal combustion engine dies

About fully electric cars has become a rising trend, but in terms of quantity, just under 15,000 new electric cars were first registered in Finland last year.

Many would like an electric car, but delivery difficulties are unbearable. For this reason, not enough electric cars have arrived yet to fill the decreasing number of cars.

The EU decided a week ago on new emission targets for cars, i.e. in practice it banned new petrol and diesel cars after 2035.

Sooner or later, the price of combustion engine cars will start to fall in different parts of Europe. Particularly interesting is the moment when used ones the fully electric car market is getting off the ground. There aren’t any like that yet, because many people are waiting for their first electric car.

Read more: “I won’t wait another six months” – Brave words to the seller can change the way you do car shopping

Read more: The EU decided: New gasoline and diesel cars will be banned after 2035

What follows from this?

In the near future a car bomb can ignite. At the dawn of the 2030s, there is not enough used car stock of a suitable age and price.

At the latest, many people will be under a lot of pressure to switch from a combustion engine to electricity, but there are no suitable five- or six-year-old electric cars on the market.

The year 2022 could be a turning point: there are too few electric cars available before then, and the newer ones are still too expensive.

And that year itself is a deep gap.

At the same time, the price of combustion engines and hybrids becomes unstable. It creates an embarrassing temptation to buy old cars at the “ton bomb price” and further increases the average age of cars.

Horrible exultation in suffering. Let’s think positively.

The current situation is balanced by the import of cars from neighboring countries, the solution to the component shortage and the positive forecasts of the automotive industry. Even in Finland, first registrations are expected to rise this year to almost a hundred thousand cars.

Employment is also doing well, and households that have played their cards right have savings to put into the car after the corona pandemic’s slowed consumption.

And the consequences of the 1990s recession were not paid for in the early 2000s in the form of the end of cars.

Went for better or for worse, these uncertain times create a gap in the car fleet.

The fact that the beginning of electrification happened right at the border crossings creates a setting, the meaning of which we can only understand from the writing of history.

It is at least certain that if you got an electric car in the near future, there will be buyers for it in a few years until the queue.

Then it can be traded as a rare collector’s item of the watershed year 2022.