Also sounds like it's written by someone who has never used public transport his entire life. In my bus in the morning 70% of the passengers are standing not sitting.
Yeah, higher densities on public transports can be achieved by standing rather than sitting. For instance, BART has been testing removing seats to fit more people into each train carriage [1].
I think they're removing seats out of desperation. I've was hearing the planned capacity was many, many times smaller than the current ridership. It can take lots of money, political sway, and quite a few years to catch up.
... not having a seat is reason #1 why people ditch public transport in Europe (dense areas, hot & sweaty rides, not able to read a book or work on a computer, not able to sleep). Give a seat to everyone and you'll have more commuters.
Absolutely. I'm on board with some of this document, but the public transportation part makes no sense. What Musk is suggesting would make public transit less effective.
It's not clear to me either, but he also wrote "it will probably make sense to shrink the size of buses", so I think the implication is that one bus will become many individual cars with traditional doors.
I'm not seeing it. That seems like a lot of doors to build.
Or one big door for the entire side of the bus…
Either way it'd be a lot heavier than the one, two or three doors that buses have these days. But then, weight probably won't be that big of a factor given how it'd need to have a floor full of batteries anyway.
But then half you lose easy access for the half of seats not on the sidewalk side. There's not a good way to lose the aisle without condensing down to only a couple seats across.