Automobile society has been triumphant for a century. While this success is often ascribed to entrepreneurial tenacity and indefatigable demand, it is more correctly credited to auspicious political, economic and cultural trends. The macro-scale factors responsible for the entrenchment of automobility in developed countries are now moving in reverse direction. A socio-technical transitions perspective emphasises how declining industrial influence, stagnating wages, growing income inequality,

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... reasing vehicle operating costs and changing sociodemographics are now undermining the foundations of automobile society. Three expressions of this process are considered: claims that transport planners are engaged in a 'war' against the automobile, emergent evidence that vehicle use is reaching saturation (the so-called 'peak car' phenomenon) and apparent disinclination of youth to embrace automobile-oriented lifestyles. Although these developments suggest some instability in the socio-technical system, the lock-in of key features and the paucity of practicable alternatives suggest that declarations of a pending transition are premature.