Car aerials will be phased out of vehicles by 2030 according to a new report which has studied the listening habits of motorists.

The report from Nissan found that just 10% of motorists are listening to CDs in cars, and even fewer are choosing to tune into the radio. The Japanese car maker surveyed 2,000 motorists to find out the changing listening habits of drivers, finding that although a quarter (25.6 per cent) of drivers listened to CDs five years ago, that number has now halved to a little over 11 per cent.

And while the decline of CD sales is reflected in the survey, so too is that of the forgotten tape-cassette, which was once the staple of all low-to-medium range cars. Very few cars produced actually have a tape-cassette within the entertainment console and with just 0.45 per cent of drivers listening to cassette-tapes that comes as no surprise.

Whilst CDs and tapes are on the wane, the rise of streaming and downloaded music from providers such as Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon is on the rise, podcasts are also popular and streaming entertainment has almost doubled from eight per cent to 15 per cent in the past five years.

While radio play in cars has increased from 57.3 to 63.8 per cent, it is thought that much of that listening is now done via digital rather than analogue signals, at least that’s the opinion of the Nissan team who believe that the car aerial could be a thing of the past.

Ponz Pandikuthira, a spokesman from Nissan Europe, said: “In-car connectivity is one of the major transformational technologies of the automotive industry.

“Today, largely through smartphone connectivity, we have an infinite library of content at our fingertips.

“It’s perhaps no surprise that driver preferences are shifting towards on-demand and streamed services, rather than scheduled broadcasts or offline audio formats such as CD.

“Within the next decade, the integrated systems in our vehicles will be processing huge amounts of data.

“We’ll be streaming audio, navigational and visual information, entirely through cellular transmissions, with 4G and 5G connection speeds required to manage this data demand.

“As a result, by 2030, it’s entirely feasible that the car aerial – in the form we know it today – may be another feature consigned to the automotive history books.”

Sell or part ex your car today