Comment by matt4077 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by matt4077 | Hacker News Reader

Car ownership seems to be on the decline anyway. I'm end-20ies and socialize in a group where everyone could afford a car, yet almost none of them do.

Granted it's Berlin which has a somewhat peculiar culture but even in the US it seems to be catching on, at least in the large cities.

It seems like the car has lost its cultural appeal as a symbol of freedom & wealth. Now it's just one of many options for transportation.

I cannot wait to see how this could transform cities. Car sharing together with self-driving cars means we need far fewer and they can disappear into a depot when unused. A typical road has four lanes (two for parking, two for driving). You could cut that in half by eliminating parked cars, possibly also eliminate one of the remaining lanes if automation allows for more efficient usage. Suddenly the space available for pedestrians / green / street life has more than doubled, noise and pollutants almost eliminated by electric cars... For dense cities, it could dramatically improve the quality of life.

For dense cities, it could dramatically improve the quality of life.

Which is why I'd like to see cities or housing developers taking a more open minded approach towards integrating something like car2go into their projects.

But for municipalities car2go's "commercial-ness" is some sort of stigma (which is wierd because it's not really being a high profit raking venture).

To "dramatically improve quality of life" the many low hanging fruits would have to be tackled by local government. (smaller) cities should consider franchising it somehow (ie paying Daimler for being part of the car2go network).

This is funny, I've just been in Berlin, and driving there (from pedastrian's perspective) seemed like a... difficult experience. Note: I currently live in Hamburg, and I recommend anyone coming to just ditch the car and come by plane/train, because the traffic rules are so crazy over here.

But seriously, the only feature that is missing from car2go in my opinion is the option to have someone get you your car to you, in case there isn't one available at the time. Also, I've only used the 2-person smart until now, I'm eager to see anything bigger soon. But anyway: when I lived in southern Germany I had to fuel up my car every 2 weeks or so, even though I had been driving mostly 15 minutes to work and back, and some light shopping. Here in north I tanked at the beginning of June, and still have to refuel. I just drive once a week to the market square, and for all other purposes I use metro system. On the other hand, this was fully inconviveable in the south, where distances were greater, and frequency lower. Every short ride was for me a huge endeavour, that took at least 40-50 minutes, definitelly not worth the time, hence I preferred to drive and sit in comfort.

I'm concerned self-driving cars will make driving so much easier and cheaper that their existence will induce enough extra traffic to more than make up for the eliminated parking spaces.

The only obvious solution would be more tolling, but I'm concerned (in the USA) about our ability to actually implement that politically. (In the USA most roads and parking are free -- nondrivers subsidize drivers.)

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