According to the iconic book Men Are From Mars & Women Are From Venus, but according to Carzone.ie’s survey data Mars and Venus must be a lot closer together than originally thought, as there’s little difference between the sexes in terms of how far each of them commutes daily
When those that work from home, don’t work or have a commute that changes, are taken out of the equation, there’s nothing between them, with 65.2% of men driving less than 25 kilometres to work, versus 66.9% of women. In both cases, just over 22% of respondents drive between 26- and 50 kilometres to work daily.
The same question did reveal that more women work from home or don’t work at all, so they have no commute. Hardly surprising in a society in which, if one of the parents is staying home to mind the kids, it’ll be the woman.
There’s more discrepancy between the sexes when it came to choosing their most recent cars, however.
The women, in general, went for older models, with lower mileage and they spent considerably less on the purchase price. It appears that male buyers are more concerned with the year of registration than they are the mileage.
Somewhat surprisingly, the petrol vs. diesel mix differed, with 55.8% of men buying diesel and 55.9% of women going for a petrol car.
Interestingly, only the men bought hybrids or electric models - albeit in small numbers. When questioned about their next car, both men and women said they’d go for diesel.
When asked why they bought the car they did, the majority of men (37.4%) admitted they just wanted one for a change, something only 18% of our female respondents owned up to.
The women instead focused more on saving costs and reliability, the latter attracting the attention of 25.5% of the females surveyed - in comparison to 17.3% of men.
Perhaps the women are cannier, as they reckon they spend, on average, €3,398 per annum to run their car (including insurance, tax, petrol, repairs and servicing), versus €3,814 for the men.
True to the stereotype, our male respondents were more interested in gadgets and in-car technology, 55.8% admitting that they would, or already have, bought a car based on the technology fitted.
Only 44.2% of women felt the same way.
Across the board, a larger percentage of men than women owned each of the in-car gadgets listed in the survey and much more of the men reckoned we need more technology in our cars (25.5% versus 9.7%).