Cars Are Basically iPhones Now, and People Experience Severe FOMO If They Don’t Have the Latest One

Photo: Wonwoo Lee/Corbis

When the iPhone 5 came out, an obscene number of tech-hungry types waited outside Apple Stores hoping to be one of the first people to use the latest tricked-out smartphone. Bloomberg Businessweek imagined a future where we do the same with cars, which are slowly morphing into mostly just being enormous iPhones you can sit in. 

Average car leases have shrunk to around 36 months — which Bloomberg Businessweek notes is the same amount of time it takes for the average smartphone user to experience FOMO on the latest device.

This trend will probably end with Apple announcing the iCar, which will look like a giant iPad and function like Marty McFly’s hoverboard in Back to the Future II. This idea also seems like less of a joke when you realize that Apple is currently researching cars and talking with Tesla.