51–60 of 116 posts
> The traditional, reliable cycle of a new wave of teenagers getting their driver’s licenses and buying cars is shrinking. Are these teenagers buying new cars in the room with us now?
« Vertical Takeoff and Landing aircraft are on track to provide urban air transit within the next few years»
Better get to it.
Because a single autonomous vehicle operating in a shared fleet can replace multiple privately owned cars, the widespread adoption of this technology can’t help but reduce new-car sales volumes. The old "Thing will become more useful so we'll make less of it" argument. No mention of Jevons Paradox? If we can travel and send stuff around from point A to point B cheaply and instantly by dropping ourselves or an item in…
This is the dumbest possible approach. We don't need fleets of autonomous vehicles, each carrying two tons of metal for transporting a person or two and clogging up cities. We just need a train network that doesn't suck.
If you're reaction to Daniel Penny's killing of Jordan Neely on the New York City Subway isn't "Daniel Penny was a hero, Jordan Neely should have been incarcerated rather than allowed to freely exist on the train, and everyone involved in Penny's prosecution should be thrown out of positions of power", then you can't actually make the train network not suck.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People in cities decided they wanted less car-centric infrastructure. People in cities demanded EVs, yet didn't show up to keep buying them. People in cities apparently know best what car companies should build, yet they don't buy the cars. Car companies build for suburbanites. Suburbanites buy cars.
Little of what you said is based on fact, only grievance. Very few cities in the us are actively anti car, and the ones that are, are dense enough that vehicle emissions are a local problem for them. We’re not demanding evs for ourselves, we’re demanding gas cars stop gassing our homes. You want to drive a v8 dually? Great, go nuts! Keep it out of SF!
They're ripping up lanes of traffic in my city and replacing them with bike lanes that nobody uses.
The busy intersection next to my home used to take all of 15 seconds to turn at, now I get stuck for five to six minutes at a time because they now forbid right turns on red and stuck left turners in front of right turners.
Meanwhile, nobody is using the bike lanes.
The bike lanes are gender and age inequitable, favor low-commercial activity, and hamper productive economic activities. Not only that, but they're unusable in inclement and hot weather, which my city experiences frequently.
I drive a car because I'm buying things, traveling with family, and spending hundreds of dollars. People on bikes are not doing these things and are not contributing to the tax base as much as car drivers. A typical bike rider's coffee and book reading activities do not match a trip to Target and a local restaurant with family in terms of economic impact.
Now multiply that times every car rider who is being delayed and disrupted. All of this spending is now being delayed or even prevented.
We're going to feel really silly when we need more lanes for all the autonomous vehicles that will come online in the next 15 years. Autonomous vehicles - transportation, logistics, last mile delivery, ordering robotics services, etc. - are going to be a billion times more important than bikes.
Just go to a park or get a gym membership if you want to exercise. Or, better yet, take your bike with you on your car and drive to the countryside trails.
Because a single autonomous vehicle operating in a shared fleet can replace multiple privately owned cars, the widespread adoption of this technology can’t help but reduce new-car sales volumes. The old "Thing will become more useful so we'll make less of it" argument. No mention of Jevons Paradox? If we can travel and send stuff around from point A to point B cheaply and instantly by dropping ourselves or an item in…
I wish HN commenters would stop bringing up Jevon's Paradox:
1. We see it mentioned all the time now, i.e. When AI makes producing software essentially free, there'll be more jobs. As HN has maybe 75% of the frontpage filled with AI stories, it means we see it almost every single day!
2. It essentially describes outliers. Driving food costs down to a fraction of the peak price (basically down by 90% over the last 200 years) did not result in correspondingly higher food consumption.
3. It only applies when the market is not yet saturated. Making cars more fuel efficient (by going EV) in the last 5 years did not result in correspondingly more miles being driven.
Any time you feel compelled to bring up Jevon's Paradox, ask yourself "Are we talking about energy here?" and if the answer is "No" then it probably doesn't apply.
Keep in mind that even if Jevon's Paradox applies, it does not mean that the society actually benefits. If you drive the value of all human labour to almost zero, you can't use Jevon's Paradox as an argument that the increased efficiency means that we're all living a life of leisure.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If your theory is true we might see an era where supply vastly exceeds demand and car manufacturers will need to offset brand new vehicles to keep cash flow going. Sounds great to me, sign me up for 20$k brand new Ford when the time’s ready. The car manufacturers could have staved this off - they keep developing new models with little to no marginal improvement. Once we got seatbelts, airbags and similar in cars, t…
There are plenty of 2010 Toyotas still out there, running great, if you want one. The market has instead demanded more different-looking cars (for variety), and generally larger vehicles with a higher riding position, not to mention newer creature comforts like air conditioned seats, and safety features like beeping at you when a car is in your blind spot and you try to change lanes. The evidence that this is what th…
That's not my point. My point is that the billions poured into designing the three new generations of Toyota since 2010 did not have to be spent by Toyota.
But they did spend it, to design new cars, with little to no actual improvements, and so they have had to price their new cars appropriately, to recoup the cost.
What would a brand new Toyota cost today if billions of dollars were not spent in designing a whole new car, with all new incompatible parts, and all-new jigs? Would we still be looking at $40k for a brand new car?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Little of what you said is based on fact, only grievance. Very few cities in the us are actively anti car, and the ones that are, are dense enough that vehicle emissions are a local problem for them. We’re not demanding evs for ourselves, we’re demanding gas cars stop gassing our homes. You want to drive a v8 dually? Great, go nuts! Keep it out of SF!
> only grievance They're ripping up lanes of traffic in my city and replacing them with bike lanes that nobody uses. The busy intersection next to my home used to take all of 15 seconds to turn at, now I get stuck for five to six minutes at a time because they now forbid right turns on red and stuck left turners in front of right turners. Meanwhile, nobody is using the bike lanes. The bike lanes are gender and age in…
To your point on bike owners not contributing to the economy. They probably have a similar income, and are paying similar taxes. They are still buying groceries. But where they choose to spend their money is different. It's all still economic activity though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Little of what you said is based on fact, only grievance. Very few cities in the us are actively anti car, and the ones that are, are dense enough that vehicle emissions are a local problem for them. We’re not demanding evs for ourselves, we’re demanding gas cars stop gassing our homes. You want to drive a v8 dually? Great, go nuts! Keep it out of SF!
> only grievance They're ripping up lanes of traffic in my city and replacing them with bike lanes that nobody uses. The busy intersection next to my home used to take all of 15 seconds to turn at, now I get stuck for five to six minutes at a time because they now forbid right turns on red and stuck left turners in front of right turners. Meanwhile, nobody is using the bike lanes. The bike lanes are gender and age in…
If you live in car dependent suburbia, sure. And it sounds like you do.
And again, little of what you said is based on fact, only grievance.
Because a single autonomous vehicle operating in a shared fleet can replace multiple privately owned cars, the widespread adoption of this technology can’t help but reduce new-car sales volumes. The old "Thing will become more useful so we'll make less of it" argument. No mention of Jevons Paradox? If we can travel and send stuff around from point A to point B cheaply and instantly by dropping ourselves or an item in…
You mean like last time? More cars being the answer to problems created by creating too many cars and reasons to use them is like more people buying guns to counter the gun problem, and I can't think of better "tragedy of the commons" applicable situations.
As I start to get older and I spend less and less of my time in the deep suburbs, I'm starting to be more aware now of the phenomenon for people to get less social and less trusting the further away from a core area (or, arguably also the ground in the case of skyscrapers, but much less so) they live. I don't think it would be a net win to hypothetically encourage further dispersement from one another.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Little of what you said is based on fact, only grievance. Very few cities in the us are actively anti car, and the ones that are, are dense enough that vehicle emissions are a local problem for them. We’re not demanding evs for ourselves, we’re demanding gas cars stop gassing our homes. You want to drive a v8 dually? Great, go nuts! Keep it out of SF!
> only grievance They're ripping up lanes of traffic in my city and replacing them with bike lanes that nobody uses. The busy intersection next to my home used to take all of 15 seconds to turn at, now I get stuck for five to six minutes at a time because they now forbid right turns on red and stuck left turners in front of right turners. Meanwhile, nobody is using the bike lanes. The bike lanes are gender and age in…
That’s different for small-town low-traffic areas.
On bike lanes, it takes up such a tiny amount of space relative to cars. The real problem is that they are not put in with much thought, not made very safe and are ultimately not very attractive.
But in cities with a higher level of decent bike lanes (Seattle), you’ll absolutely get many people using them. But it also depends on the culture. Reality is that Seattle is geographically constrained, and I’m sorry, there is no room for more car lanes essentially anywhere in the city without destroying property.
So finding smarter, more efficient, cost-effective ways to use that space (like bikes and public transit, which are vastly more space efficient) is a fantastic idea.
If you go all-in on car infra (eg everywhere in the USA, including places like Seattle), you still get congested roads. Cars just use space so poorly that a small increase in number of cars when the streets are full will have massive compounding effect on how long it takes anyone to get anywhere.
Besides, your city is already fully designed around the MOST EXPENSIVE form of local transit, by far. You know what might help stimulate the economy? Make it easy for someone to take a bike to a restaurant. No gas or car payment (or parking, in the city), and now you might have more money to treat yourself