One billion cars worldwide

Have you ever wondered how many cars are out there? I haven’t, at least not until yesterday. According to industry trade journal Ward’s, which added up both reported vehicle registrations and historical trends, the total crossed 1 billion cars sometime last year. (The vehicles include passenger cars, light-, medium-, and heavy-duty trucks, and buses, but not off-road or heavy construction vehicles.)

Just 40 years ago, in 1970, the world’s total was only a quarter of a billion vehicles, a number that took 85 years to achieve.

The 1970 total doubled in just 16 years, to 500,000,000 by 1986. It took 24 more years to double again, to the current 1 billion.

By some projections, the world could house as many as 2.5 billion vehicles by 2050.