The Death of Cars Was Greatly Exaggerated (wired.com) 153
Personal car ownership in the US has increased in the past 10 years, even in the frenzied urban places where Uber and car-share have become verbs. From a report: According to research from former New York City transportation official Bruce Schaller, the number of vehicles has grown faster than the population in some of the cities where ride-hail is most popular: Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Moreover, some services targeted to the aspirationally or actually car-free have hit the skids. Car2Go, the car-sharing company now jointly owned by Daimler and BMW, said earlier this month it would pull out of half of the North American cities where it operates. (The company, which allows users to pick up and drop off cars at regular street parking spaces, says it will focus its firepower on its remaining North American cities: New York, Montreal, Seattle, Vancouver, and Washington.) BMW-owned ReachNow, a wide-ranging experiment in ride hailing and car rental, folded in the US this summer. The scooter-share folks at Lime last month killed their experimental LimePod car-share service in Seattle. General Motors wound down its Maven car-sharing service in eight of its 17 North American cities this summer. Uber and Lyft, now public companies, are losing gobs of money, and the services' most popular times are Friday evenings, which seems to indicate less that people are ditching their personal cars than ditching their personal cars while drinking.
Not a surprise at all... (Score:5, Insightful)
More time demand (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how today's frenetic time demands factor into this as well.
Even if you wanted to take public transportation, in many places its so fucking slow as to be worthless.
20 years ago I moved 4 miles from the apartment I had been living at to a house. I tried to take the express bus route that served my new neighborhood and it was agony. The bus ride itself was over 35 minutes to go about 8 miles, and I had about 20 minutes of walking on both ends of the trip combined.
The same trip in the car was 20-25 minutes door to door. A paid parking spot in the ramp across the street was only about $75 more per month than the bus pas, so I gave up on the bus.
Don't even get me started on what local, non-express bus service was like. Even close in to downtown it was barely more time efficient than walking 2-3 miles.
Re:More time demand (Score:5, Insightful)
30 minutes saved a day is 30 additional minutes you can spend with your family or on your hobbies, and that time adds up quickly. Some people prefer to gain that time by driving, and even if public transport is as fast, having a car allows you to make a small detour during your commute and get groceries for a week, or pick up the kids, or whatever. That's another 30-60 minutes gained. However, others will make good use of their time spent on public transport: you can work, or read, or do other stuff on the go if you don't have to drive. That's another way of gaining time, in the end it comes down to your preferences.
It might be a psychological thing. If you leave work and get into your car, the work day is done. But if you take public transport, it kind of feels like you're only really done when you get to your front door.
Re:More time demand (Score:5, Interesting)
It might be a psychological thing. If you leave work and get into your car, the work day is done. But if you take public transport, it kind of feels like you're only really done when you get to your front door.
Interesting, I see it almost the exact opposite - when I am in public transport I can do a lot of things like relax, read a book, watch a video, etc. In a car, I have to drive, which oftentimes isn't relaxing. I have seen the traffic in some US cities, and I don't think that's even remotely relaxing (that said, there are cities, especially in California, where I just couldn't live at all).
So for me the time in public transport is more mine than the job's. But what is 100% MY time is when I bicycle to and from work. I enjoy it so much, it's truly mine.
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But what is 100% MY time is when I bicycle to and from work. I enjoy it so much, it's truly mine.
I dislike cycling. But I did appreciate living close enough to work to be able to cycle there for a while, and like you, I felt that time was my own rather than work time.
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In my experience there was nothing especially comfortable about being on the bus. The seats were like coach airline seats in terms of size, and of course you're wearing your winter coat in the winter and dealing with your bag. There was zero room for laptops, and even something bigger than a paperback or folded up newspaper was awkward to read. In the winter it was too hot with your coat on, but you couldn't take it off. In the summer the air conditioning was broken about half the time.
So environmentall
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It might be a psychological thing. If you leave work and get into your car, the work day is done. But if you take public transport, it kind of feels like you're only really done when you get to your front door.
When you get into your car after work, you can go ANYWHERE at all. When you get on a bus, you can only go to another bus stop. It is the ability to go anywhere that ends the workday for a person.
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That said, sometimes it's not about efficiency.
It used to take me about 30 minutes to drive to work. But I got energetic and I would bike and take the train. It took me two hours one way. But, y'know, I felt a lot better doing that than driving. Rather than driving home and stopping at the gym to get some exercise, I consolidated them both together. I didn't do it every day, granted, but I'd do it 2-3 days a week.
The company that my roommate works for turned "Bike to Work Day" into "Figure Out A Way To
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So she took the bus. Instead of the 40 minute drive during rush hour, it took her 70 minutes with the walk from the bus stop.
Then she has really, really good transit. My 30-45 minute commute drive would be 1hr45m - 2hr15m on public transit.
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This. Every minute spent on a bus is a minute I can't spend doing something else. And it adds up — often very quickly.
On my way to work, it would only take about 15 minutes longer, all of which would be walking, and I could reduce my treadmill walking later, so it would be fine. But on the way home from work, three days per week, I would end up driving within a couple of blocks of work on my way to my evening activities, and would lose about an hour of work time.
Or if I tried to take mass transit
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When everybody used public transport, it was quite efficient and fast and economical. Dont blame the death of public transport on the secret cartel of Firestone, Ford and Standard Oil. They did illegal things, true, but with active support of politicians and general public who all hated public transport and dreamed of having their own car. As soon as one can afford a car, he/she ditched public transport, the fixed costs were distributed over shrinking pool o
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Dont blame the death of public transport on the secret cartel of Firestone, Ford and Standard Oil. They did illegal things, true, but with active support of politicians and general public who all hated public transport and dreamed of having their own car.
Sure, they were told that it would bring them freedom. And in some ways it does, but in other ways it doesn't help at all. The government can take away your car any time it wants, at most it will have to refund fees, and you have to agree to a breath or blood test any time you're driving to avoid an assumption of guilt. The car can only go where the roads are, and the roads are expensive and have more ecological impact than rail.
The fact that public transport doesn't serve everyone all the time was not an i
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There's also a diff in your auto insurance: if you drive to/from work, your insurance rates go up (assuming you're honest with your insurance company). And you can use your bus pass any time, not just commuting.
That said, I believe the insurance diff is relatively small, and you may not want to ride the bus anywhere else; and buses can be a pain to ride (figuratively or even literally). Like you, I drive back and forth to work, although there is a bus that goes from somewhere near my house to somewhere ne
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Public transport is best for journeys you need to make regularly, e.g. getting to work. If you can take a train or bus that gets you through the rush hour traffic and to work on time every day while you read a book or post on Slashdot then you might prefer that to getting stuck in a queue of cars.
For random trips if you have a decent public transport system it can still be better than driving, but many places don't.
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Public transport is best for journeys you need to make regularly, e.g. getting to work. If you can take a train or bus that gets you through the rush hour traffic and to work on time every day while you read a book or post on Slashdot then you might prefer that to getting stuck in a queue of cars.
I'd rather spend 30m in rush hour traffic than 60m on the bus. That bus time is only useful if you don't have a family you are trying to spend time with, or important work to do that can't be done with distractions, or literally anything else other than "sit with a bunch of noisy strangers".
If the thing you need done can be done with a bunch of noisy strangers, then a bus commute is perfect for you - for the rest of us it makes sense to maximise the time in our day.
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If your public transport system isn't completely shit the bus should be faster. It should go down a bus lane past all the traffic.
Even if that is true, you'd better be living on the bus route or you are looking at an extra 20m of walking to get to your destination.
Like I said already, most people's time is valuable; saving 30m a day is valuable to them. Your 30m may not be particularly valuable, but most people would prefer to be home 30m early than to get nothing done with a bunch of noisy strangers.
And frankly, the difference between driving and public commuting is a great deal more than 30m.
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The point is entirely lost on you. The story is about the success, or lack thereof, literally "n the frenzied urban places where Uber and car-share have become verbs". No one has failed to understand that not all of the country is urban, it's you that's failed to understand that the article already takes that into account.
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good enough cars
The lack of which hasn't slowed the market down to date.
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Hmm...is somebody testing a bot here? It was at least close enough for me to try to make sense of it, but needs way more tuning.
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Hmm...is somebody testing a bot here? It was at least close enough for me to try to make sense of it, but needs way more tuning.
lol
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>Owners of car dealerships can rest easy with the knowledge that they're not at the precipice of a car extinction.
They do however need to fear the tipping point where everyone wants an electric car and stop buying new ICE cars. I watched a financial analyst give a talk going through the car sales data that supports the idea that this is exactly what is starting to happen. The drop in sedan sales relative to pickups is down to people delaying new car purchases so they can get an electric one which costs m
Re: It will be apparent when there is an actual de (Score:5, Interesting)
This financial analyst needs to be fired. People have been buying SUVs and trucks like there is no tomorrow. That's why the drop of car sales. I have met maybe one person with the interest in buying an electric car. The popularity of electric cars is wildly exaggerated . They remain very expensive, range and charging times remain an issue.
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Where I live, there are a LOT of electric cars. I mean, seriously, in our parking lot at work, 20% of the cars are electric or hybrid. Granted it's in the Valley but still....
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Outside of the Valley and the Bay, most of the rest of California laughs at this.
I live in San Diego, and I can count the number of hybrid electrics I see in the low single digits. The charging stations are never more than half-full. A friend of mine just got stranded when I guess the fast-charging feature on her car decided to stop working or wasn't compatible, which meant stopping for 4 hours every couple hundred miles plus on a road trip. No thanks.
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Well, that does it, and I'm never buying an electric car. ICE cars never go wrong at inconvenient times.
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My friend ran out of petrol once because the petrol station he planned to charge at was closed due to a fault.
Another broke down on the motorway because his fossil car ran out of fuel. Turns out his fuel gauge was broken.
Years ago my uncle got stranded because he put petrol in his diesel car.
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Granted it's in the Valley but still....
Electric cars are WAY more popular in SV than in the rest of America, where EVs have 2% of the new car market, and a much smaller share of cars on-the-road.
Disclaimer: I live in SV, and I have an EV.
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Re: It will be apparent when there is an actual de (Score:4, Interesting)
For "around town" driving charging times shouldn't be an issue at all with EVs. Even the dinkiest practical EV battery will get a hundred miles of city driving. Unless you live 50 miles from work (most of the US doesn't) you'd get multiple commutes off a single charge. If you top off at home at night you'd be unlikely to run low on power pretty much ever. This holds true for EVs and plug-in hybrids that can top off at night while parked.
In the long term it can also make sense to set up a solar charger so you don't charge off grid power at night. I can't set up an oil derrick and refinery in my back yard but I can throw up a modest solar setup to charge a car.
An EV wouldn't be the best for cross country driving but they're fine for commuting which is what most people do with their cars.
Popular in Boston/Cambridge, not just NYC & SV (Score:2)
I don't k
Re:It will be apparent when there is an actual dea (Score:4, Interesting)
There is actually evidence that EVs sell because of subsidies [torontosun.com], and when those subsidies went away - sales slumped. It turns out people may buy some EVs when the Government pays them to make that choice. Get rid of the subsidies - and their sales crater (55% drop).
Talk all you want about maintenance costs - those are spread over several years. it's the high up-front cost of an EV that turns off most buyers. Sure, over 10 years they may save money - but having to come up with extra money for down-payment and regular purchase payments more than offsets that savings for most people.
The reality is easy to see: no subsidies, poor EV sales. Once again, you give people money to take an action and they will take it. Stop paying the to choose how you want - and they will choose how THEY want, and that is not an EV.
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having to come up with extra money for down-payment and regular purchase payments more than offsets that savings for most people.
Something I was wondering recently.... When someone buys an EV - do EV Dealerships do trade ins? I would imagine not, since they aren't going to be selling ICE vehicles. The extra effort combined with people being lazy seems like that would also be a big deterrent. "You mean I have to sell my car somewhere else, go to the dealership, THEN pay for a car?!?"
Feelings (Score:5, Interesting)
Or maybe I am projecting. I travel by bicycle most often, but despite that and bike rental stands being all over and subways and car rental and ride share...I still own both a bike and a car.
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Cars2GO (Score:2)
I never understood how Cars2GO was supposed to work. They have a fleet of Smart Fortwo, tiny 2 seater cars with almost no trunk space (enough for a couple of backpacks, if that). Also, they have designated parking areas within the city, you can't just leave them anywhere. And they don't allow intercity travel.
It's not like you could pick one up in NYC and leave it in Boston. So they're basically useless for what a city dweller would need a car for: transporting stuff, or intercity travel. How anyone thought
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In our town, Vancouver, Canada, the Car2Go and other car share services have a few set parking spaces but once you get away from the actual urban core out to the residential neighbourhoods, they can be left in any legal parking space, EVEN IF THE RESIDENTS HAVE TO PAY FOR A PERMIT TO PARK IN FRONT OF THEIR OWN HOUSE. As a city resident you can be left without a parking space in front of your own house even if you paid for the privilege.
Some of the car share services do have vehicles larger than the Car42 b
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Why don't they just park in their own drive ways, carports/garages?
We're talking about private homes here, right?
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The sad fact is that the people who have garages often have either too many cars for the garage space they have, have filled their garage with junk they haven't room for in the house or, as is becoming more common, have replaced their garage with a laneway house that has no actual space for a car at all. Of course, the fact that houses are commonly built with the upstairs, the basement suite and the laneway house as three separate living spaces, even on a 26 foot wide lot, now strata'd out as separate sale
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Why don't they just park in their own drive ways, carports/garages?
We're talking about private homes here, right?
No, i think he is talking about row homes, even high end very expensive row homes in congested places like D.C. with street only parking.
Stayed in an airbnb in D.C. a while back, row home, very nice, came with a resident parking permit tag you hang on your mirror.
If I got back to the place after 6pm people were cutting throats in the streets for a parking space, even WITH the permit only parking. I usually had to park several blocks away.
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The BMW "Reach Now" service used the road adjacent to my house to store all their unused cars. Overnight we went from about 10 available spots for visitors and deliveries to 0. I submitted a complaint to the county and the next day they were moved to some other poor neighborhood.
Then they can back a few months later - and I was going to complain again, but before I did, they shut down operations and disappeared again.
It was easy to see that they were losing money. They paid for a number of quite pricey BMW
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They paid for a number of quite pricey BMW cars to sit by the road never being used.
I can't see how it would be any other way. People need to move around in large numbers at peak times, and any extra usage you get from off-peak times will mean cars needed for the return journeys will be where they AREN'T needed, so you'll have large over-provisioning AND staff to move them around.
The bike sharing things you see are the same. Sometimes there are 4 times the number of bikes the rack should hold, sometimes there are none. The benefit is that you can load 20 in a van and move them quickly, not
I work from home twice a week (Score:2)
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This is true for most of the USA (possibly to those living in rural areas in other countries as well).
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Americans like their freedom, go figure (Score:3, Funny)
We prefer the dystopia where we get our own cars and meat and the problems that go with them, instead of that other dystopia where the Earth is "pure" and we exist, if we must, only to serve it.
p.s.
Hi to the "Why is a U.S.-oriented story posted on Slashdot?" trolls.
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Americans like their freedom
This just reminds me of some Slashdot article a while back saying we were slaves because we drive everywhere.
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If your best choice is to drive a bad commute everyday to work, then it's both - you are a slave to it then, and enjoy the freedom of it at other times. I am fortunate enough to avoid being a slave to it since I have a decent bus route available to my workplace, and also work from home a couple days a week.
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I've been riding buses to and from work for over 20 years, but outside of work I enjoy driving to places that are not practical for public transit. Many of us don't find our fun in urban areas.
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MOST cities in the US are NOT densely packed, urban areas where everyone is stacked up on top of each other either.
It makes a difference.
In most of the US cities, you have single family homes, with yards, and room to breath a bit.
To each their own...but I prefer a place with a back yard where I can have my smoker or se
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"I prefer a place with a back yard where I can have my smoker or set up and have friends over for a crawfish boil, or brew beer, etc....."
I think I need you for a neighbor.
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You do realize that more than 99% of America is located outside "major cities", right?
In fact, about 50% of the US population lives is suburb or exurb areas - areas that cannot be handled by public transportation - plus another 25% that lives in straight-up rural areas.
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Stop right there because no, we don't prefer. In order to get people to be loyal customers of Big Oil, governments must heavily subsidize driving [taxfoundation.org], force developers and business owners to provide more parking than the market wants [strongtowns.org], and legislate density limits to increase distances between places people want to go to and from until driving becomes the only practical way to get around.
(N.B. I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic but you're echoing what many people here in the USA actually think
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Thanks for the benefit of the doubt, but even though I tend not to take my opinions or anyone else's very seriously, I do think that the "ignorant masses" are actually choosing the better dystopia here. Much better than that land of conspiracies from your bubble.
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Correct, they did [ssrn.com].
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On the subject of socialism, what should we do about our socialized roads?
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Socialized roads are great public service and investment. We need to continue to support them through income taxes or gas taxes / mileage fees.
I'm a bit stumped trying to think of one good thing that comes from socialized housing, at least the way it is done in the U.S. There are many stagnant, undersized communities in this country and I think it would be healthier for people to move out of overpopulated, overpriced cities instead of being "enabled" by government housing relief. I think more migration o
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Why? Why shouldn't they be funded 100% from gas taxes and other user fees?
Consider: high gas taxes reduce traffic congestion, while high sales taxes reduce commerce. Many states partially fund the roads with sales taxes [slashdot.org]. Between traffic congestion and commerce, which is it better to reduce? The answer to that will tell you which of the two taxes you think should be raised and which should be lowered.
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On the subject of socialism, what should we do about our socialized roads?
Just playing devil's advocate here but we could tax car manufacturers instead of people , or in addition to people.
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Cars are not freedom to those who cannot drive.
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Nope, you're not taking away my crack pipe either!
Uber and car-share have become verbs (Score:2)
Uber and car-share have become verbs
I've never actually seen or heard anyone use Uber as a verb? I've seen "I'll catch//take an Uber/Lyft" and "I drive for Uber / I'm working for Uber tonight" but never "I Ubered over to the bar / I Ubered her home"
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Uber and car-share have become verbs
I've never actually seen or heard anyone use Uber as a verb? I've seen "I'll catch//take an Uber/Lyft" and "I drive for Uber / I'm working for Uber tonight" but never "I Ubered over to the bar / I Ubered her home"
It's fairly common in San Diego to use it as a verb, at least among my friends. It gets used in both forms.
Without a doubt, Uber's most common use here is as a replacement for Designated Drivers when people are heading downtown (or somewhere) for a night out. Because we have very low density, taxis and cabs are extremely rare outside of the entertainment districts, so people rarely if ever "took a cab" anywhere and didn't use that phrase colloquially. Rather, "I'll drive over" became "I'll Uber over"...
Just imagine... (Score:2)
Just imagine that flashy, media-savvy companies with business models that relied on people not using their own cars that were to get uber (pun not intended) amounts of venture capital may have exaggerated the decline of car ownership.
Also imagine that most millennials will be using their parent's hand-me-down cars until their parents die (because mummy and daddy keep the car in their name and pay for the insurance).
Further imagine that GM has been on strike for weeks.
So, why would I be surprised that the me
It's the Economy, Stupid (Score:2)
https://afdc.energy.gov/data/1... [energy.gov]
I work in sustainability. It's one of our many charges to reduce personal vehicle use as a means to reducing GHG emissions. When the recession hit, US vehicle miles traveled began to go down for the first time since the Oil Crisis. People called it "peak car". People traded in their SUVs, got Priuses, and generally started looking at we call "more sustainable transportation options". Bus ridership went up. Train ridership went up. Biking and walking went up. Most college stu
Re: It's the Economy, Stupid (Score:2)
Well duh. When you got no job or your position is on a chopping block, of course you postpone buying a car. And when you're so broke you can't make a monthly payment, you take a bus or ride bicycle. It nice to talk about biking and sustainability when you live in a cozy college town but the bigger issue is that USA remains largely a suburban or rural country, with most places not having population density to sustain public transport.
What's This? (Score:2)
Another failed prediction? Wow, I didn't think we had any more of those considering what people are willing to believe in these days!
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More like a strawman or begging the question. Few sane people thought Uber/Lyft would suddenly greatly slow car sales.
Just like self driving cars were overhyped as being "right around the corner" so now people doubt they will ever get here, but it should have always been apparent that we were still at least a decade minimum away.
Looking in the wrong direction. (Score:2)
There's probably a market opportunity for a startup to cre
People like and want personal transportation (Score:3)
It kinda' sucks (Score:2)
Re: It kinda' sucks (Score:2)
You're making it sound like all of USA has a big traffic problem. The truth is maybe it's just only a few big cities. And I don't know about "doing nothing" while driving. Play a podcast. You do something that matters on a bus ride?
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Personally, I turn on Autopilot and start reading my email.
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Personally, I turn on Autopilot and start reading my email.
I like to open up xvideos or pornhub on my phone and prop it up in front of my instrument panel then jerk off on my ride home.
Just kidding, i haven't jerked off while driving "yet".
Now road head is an entirely different animal.
Is road head doing nothing?
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You're making it sound like all of USA has a big traffic problem. The truth is maybe it's just only a few big cities. And I don't know about "doing nothing" while driving. Play a podcast. You do something that matters on a bus ride?
NPR
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I hear you. Traffic and commuting is an ordeal. I recently switched to riding the bus to work and have noticed something: driving home is the the absolute worst thing I could ever do in my life. Getting to work is easy, getting home is a god-dammed nightmare I wouldn't wish on anyone. Disclaimer: I ride an express line, so only 3 stops before I get off (14 miles). I fully endorse everyone take as many express lines as possible. Less traffic, somebody else is driving, I can read a book, I'm not screami
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Duh (Score:2)
" Uber and Lyft, now public companies, are losing gobs of money, and the services' most popular times are Friday evenings, which seems to indicate less that people are ditching their personal cars than ditching their personal cars while drinking."
It took you a whole research study to figure that out?
- Necron69
Timeline might be wrong, but end is coming (Score:2)
Car ownership does not make sense, most expensiv
Re: Timeline might be wrong, but end is coming (Score:2)
Young people always wanted to live in a city with dense vibrant life. The issue is that once they find a spouse, then they decide to move into suburbs. There is nothing new about this.
Unlikely for a while yet (Score:2)
It'll be a long time before cars are gone, at least to the extent that people will elect to give up cars, at least in the US. But why?
- Public transit is terrible. And I'm a user. I ride public transit regularly in conjunction with a bike because it's faster than driving where I live/work, and it's always crowded, slow, poorly or inadequately scheduled, and (once in a while) actively dangerous. All of these except the last can be ameliorated if we're willing to do what Europe's done, which is to say acc
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You are not wrong on any single point.
It all sucks.
Change does not come without unhappiness, unless of course you are vested in the change. Just remember, if it sucks and you want to make it better you have to move through the pain to get to the other side. Hopefully our generation will become know for dealing with our parents bullshit and fixing it, or at least starting the fixes.
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I think the fundamental problem is what you labeled "The layouts of our suburbs are awful." American suburbs are not dense enough to make public transit a viable option.
I live in Charlotte, NC (16th largest city in the us by population count), and the population density of the city around 1000/km2. My neighborhood is actually a bit denser around about 2000/km2. But that is still incredibly sparse.
I used to live in France and pretty much every city, scratch that, town is denser than that. Tours, a city know
No surprise at all for anyone (Score:2)
No surprise at all for anyone with a real job and a couple of children. You can't do it without a car and stay sane, at least not in the US.
Vested interests (Score:2)
The only people insisting the demise of the car was nigh were ecomarxists (for whom it is an article of religious faith and has been since 1970), wealthy hipsters who can afford to live in pricey brownstones, order all their food brought to them by drones, and uber everywhere else, or someone trying to sell you something (ie uber).
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The high-end EVs have batteries that might make it past the average age of a car in the USA, but older Nissan Leafs are already coming up short.
Older Nissan Leafs are also dirt cheap. You can buy a Leaf with 80% of its original range for $5K. If you have a sufficiently-short commute, you should seriously consider picking up an older Leaf. The low purchase price, combined with the almost total lack of maintenance expenses and the low cost of energy (especially if you can get on a time-of-use plan and charge off-peak -- or if you can charge for free on your employer's electricity) makes them extremely cost-effective.
Granted, the Leaf used a poorly designed air-cooled battery, but these are precisely the sort of corners that will be cut to get the price down
No, that foolish design will ju
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That 80% is really working out for old Tesla’s [jalopnik.com]. Am I right?
Why did you link to an article that describes an issue which is completely unrelated to batteries?
Re: They're still working on it (Score:3)
And ICE car ownership will never be outlawed in USA and most other places with real democracy. USA is a very rural or suburban. Cars have always been part of American culture. Once you step outside of a cozy college town you realize you must have a car to make the ends meet.
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And ICE car ownership will never be outlawed in USA and most other places with real democracy. USA is a very rural or suburban. Cars have always been part of American culture. Once you step outside of a cozy college town you realize you must have a car to make the ends meet.
Cars may never be outlaws in the USA, but I think it's quite likely that ICEVs will disappear from the roads, except for the occasional lovingly-maintained classic. You seem to think that EVs are not practical for rural or suburban use. Actually, EVs are in many ways more practical than ICEVs for truly rural living, where there may not be a gas station nearby. Many rural people have their own above-ground fuel storage tanks which are periodically filled by tanker trucks (my next-door neighbor has one, wh
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