Case, screen protector, headphones: they are all one-time costs. If you factor them into the cost of the phone, it's still way cheaper than your car's first payment.

A data plan may perhaps equal the monthly amount of gas a car needs. But then you have insurance, maintenance, and parking. Overall, we are talking an order of magnitude of difference.

Unless you really need a car, like some of the commenters do, a car is truly a money sink. Car manufacturers seem to keep missing this point, which I honestly find surprising.

I'd argue that the presence of so many money sinks is why a lot of us don't own cars.

Why spend money on a car when I can spend it on a laptop, smartphone, music, movies, apps, case, screen protector, headphones... and I spend money on a whole bunch of other hobby-related things besides those.

Really, what kind of money sinks did my parents have when they were in their 20s and 30s in the '60s and '70s? Video games weren't a thing, home video wasn't a thing, personal computers weren't a thing, cell phones weren't a thing (some of these existed in the late '70s, but they were extreme niche products the general public didn't know or care about). About the only consumer electronics that were around were TV, radio, records, and consumer audio/visual technology didn't constantly evolve like it does now: if you had a color TV and a stereo system (record player, radio, speakers), you never had to upgrade, and they were built like rocks and lasted forever. The only media you could buy were records and books.

So that's it: you'd buy one TV and stereo system your whole life, you'd have a record collection and a bookshelf, and you had a pile of money left over. Why not put that into a car? See also: mortgages and expensive classy furniture, neither of which are particularly popular among Millennials either.

Used car + gas + insurance + repairs is certainly not cheaper than an high-end Macbook + electricity to run it.

Only the absolute worst ones, and you're ignoring the cost of repairs (significant on a junker), fuel and other consumables, insurance, in many cases parking and tolls, and in some cities you pay property tax or other non-trivial annual levies.

In a large city just parking alone can be a MacBook every couple of months unless your employer subsidizes it.

Running a used car for a year costs much more than buying another Macbook.

The thing to do here would be compare used cars to used high-end MacBooks or used generic, low end PCs in general.

Macbooks running costs come down to a small amount of electricity. No services, fuel, insurance, etc.

Cars that cost less than macbooks also are going to need (relatively) expensive repairs or even replacements on a similar if not more frequent basis than the macbooks gets replaced.

You're comparing the very best laptops on the market to the worst plausible used cars on the market without consideration for the cost of repairs that you're going to make on a car with minimum 80K miles on it. You're also not considering insurance, gas, etc.; the costs of running any car, even if you somehow luck into a used car for the price of a high end Macbook that isn't a lemon.

And for the record, I don't know any millennials buying the high-end Macbooks, either. I've always bought the Air for myself, and even though my jobs typically buy me a Macbook Pro, it's not the $5K ones with all the bells and whistles, it's a $2000-ish one with a few minor upgrades from minimum.