There were more than 278 million registered vehicles in the United States as of 2022, which is to say there are almost as many cars and motorcycles in America as there are Americans — about 342 million at last count. The number of vehicles was a good deal lower in 1960, when one in every five households didn’t own a car at all. 

That year, about 57% of American households had one car, 19% had two, and 2.5% had three or more. Today, only 9% of households don’t own a car at all, while 33.8% have one, 37.6% have two, and 19.5% own three or more. Trucks are especially popular, accounting for 170 million of the 278 million vehicles in the country.

Car ownership soared in the economic boom that followed World War II, with the number of registered vehicles rising from 27.5 million in 1940 to 61.5 million in 1960. Automobile culture has become only more entrenched in the decades since, especially in rural areas: More than 96% of households in both Idaho and Wyoming report owning at least one car, the highest rate in the nation. On the other end of the spectrum is New York City, where just 44% of households own a vehicle — the only major city in the country where car ownership is under 50%.