The Next Car Buyer Might Not Be Who You Think
What our latest research reveals about who’s buying, what matters to them, and where automotive brands can reach them.
If you work in the automotive industry, here's a question worth asking: How well do you really know your next customer? That’s a question we ask ourselves every day. To answer it we recently surveyed 1,650 U.S. adults about the cars they drive, what they're planning to buy, how they research vehicles, and what ultimately influences their decisions.
We looked at Hispanic, Black, Asian, and non-Hispanic White consumers, and a few things stood out. For starters, multicultural consumers are playing a pretty important role in the automotive market. But what's especially interesting is how differently these groups approach buying a vehicle.
And some of those differences are bigger than you might expect.
Download the full reportHispanic and Black consumers have been busy buying cars.
One of the first things that caught our attention was who's been buying new vehicles.
In the past 12 months, 22% of Hispanic adults and 23% of Black adults reported purchasing a brand-new vehicle, compared to 15% of non-Hispanic White adults.
That's a pretty significant difference.
What's interesting is that when we asked about plans to buy a new vehicle in the next 12 months, the numbers were remarkably similar across all four groups. Roughly a third said they were planning to make a purchase.
So while Hispanic and Black consumers have been more active recently, interest in buying a new vehicle over the coming year is fairly broad.
For automakers and dealerships, that's worth paying attention to.
Asian consumers are especially interested in buying new, including EVs.
Here's another finding that stood out.
When asked whether their next vehicle would be new or used, 57% of Asian consumers said new. That compares with roughly 40% to 43% of the other groups.
We also asked about electric vehicles.
Only 25% of Americans overall said they'd be likely to consider an EV for their next vehicle. Among Asian consumers, that number jumped to 36%.
Black consumers came in at 30%, followed by Hispanic consumers at 27% and non-Hispanic White consumers at 21%.
Likely to consider an electric vehicle for their next vehicle
Age matters quite a bit too. Among Gen Z, 35% would consider an EV, compared to just 13% of Boomers.
This suggests the EV market still has a lot of room to grow, but automakers need to be realistic about who's ready to make that leap.
A message that resonates with a 25-year-old considering their first EV probably won't do much for a 65-year-old who's perfectly happy with their gas-powered SUV.
People aren't all researching cars the same way.
We all know consumers do their homework before buying a car. But where they do that homework varies quite a bit.
Among Asian consumers, 49% use YouTube to research vehicles. Among Hispanic consumers, 36% turn to social media, as do 35% of Black consumers.
Compare that with non-Hispanic White consumers, where only 19% use social media for vehicle research.
Meanwhile, traditional consumer review sites like Edmunds and Kelley Blue Book are much more popular among non-Hispanic White consumers than among Hispanic and Black consumers.
Sources used to research vehicles, by race/ethnicity
Think about what that means for automotive advertising.
If you're putting most of your digital effort into traditional car review sites, you may be missing a substantial part of your potential audience.
Maybe that means working with more automotive creators on YouTube. Maybe it means investing in short-form video or making sure your content shows up on the social platforms people already use.
The point is pretty simple: You need to be where your customers are actually looking for information.
And those places aren't necessarily the same for everyone.
Everybody cares about price. After that, things get interesting.
Regardless of ethnicity, price and reliability are the two biggest factors people consider when choosing a vehicle.
No big surprise there. Cars are expensive, and nobody wants to buy one that's constantly in the shop.
But when we looked a little deeper, we found some interesting differences.
Hispanic consumers place more importance on brand reputation than non-Hispanic White consumers (30% versus 21%).
Black consumers are more likely to prioritize style and design (32% versus 21%).
Asian consumers place relatively greater importance on safety ratings and resale value.
And non-Hispanic White consumers are especially focused on affordability, with 57% listing price as a top consideration.
That doesn't mean Hispanic consumers don't care about price or Black consumers only care about how a car looks. Of course they do.
What it tells us is that different messages can help tip the scales when someone is deciding between vehicles.
And I think that's where a lot of automotive marketing still has room to improve.
There's a big difference within the Hispanic market, too.
This last finding really caught our attention.
At ThinkNow, we've spent years talking about why marketers shouldn't treat Hispanic consumers as one big, uniform group. Our latest automotive research is another good example.
When we compared Spanish-dominant Hispanics with English-dominant Hispanics, the differences were striking.
Among Spanish-dominant Hispanics, 51% watch car review videos, compared to 33% of English-dominant Hispanics.
And 40% say brand reputation matters when choosing a vehicle, compared to 26%. English-dominant Hispanics lean the other way: 56% say price and affordability matter, compared to 39% of Spanish-dominant Hispanics.
Even more interesting, 30% of Spanish-dominant Hispanics said they'd purchased a new vehicle in the past year. Among English-dominant Hispanics, that number was just 15%.
That's twice as high.
Spanish-dominant Hispanics are also the most likely to want a truck next (27%, compared to 15% of English-dominant and 9% of bilingual Hispanics). Bilingual Hispanics stand out in a different way: 45% research cars on social media, the highest of the three groups.
These are substantial differences, and they reinforce something we've seen across a lot of categories: language can have a major impact on consumer behavior.
If you're marketing to Hispanic car buyers, simply translating an English campaign into Spanish probably isn't going to cut it. You need to understand the audience, the media they consume, and the things that actually matter to them.
So what does all this mean?
I think the big takeaway is that automotive brands have a real opportunity to connect with consumers they're not always reaching effectively.
There's no shortage of people interested in buying vehicles. But the way consumers research, evaluate, and ultimately choose them isn't identical across demographic groups.
That shouldn't be surprising. Still, it's something brands can easily lose sight of when they're developing campaigns for the so-called "general market."
The encouraging thing is that many of these differences are pretty actionable.
We know which audiences are more interested in EVs. We know where different consumers go to research vehicles. And we have a better sense of which messages might resonate with each group.
The challenge for automotive brands is putting that knowledge to work.
If you're interested in digging into the numbers, download our latest ThinkNow report, Where the Next Car Buyer Is. It includes a breakdown of vehicle ownership, purchase intentions, EV interest, research habits, and decision factors across Hispanic, Black, Asian, and non-Hispanic White consumers.
I think you'll find a few surprises of your own.
About the research: ThinkNow surveyed 1,650 U.S. adults in September 2026, including oversamples of Hispanic, Black, and Asian consumers. The online survey was available in English and Spanish. Results are weighted. Reported new-vehicle purchases include other new vehicle types such as motorcycles, RVs, and boats, in addition to cars, trucks, and SUVs.
Download the full report