Carmageddon is Coming | Hacker News Reader

Carmageddon is Coming

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24 pointsmaxwell14 comments

As a field tech, and someone who visits a bunch of construction sites (mostly data centers). I seriously feel that the author needs to get out of their tech/fincial social bubbles.

Personally I carry around a few hundred pounds of tools. This is enough that it would take me me an hour or two every day to load and unload (since this would happen at least twice, maybe 8 times).

Likewise I also get a stipend to increase both my car insurance and renters insurance to cover my tools (electrical test equipment). It would not be acceptable to forgo this coverage, nor is it a frequent enough problem for a startup to even consider (since a lot of there real advantage is ignoring edge cases in my opinion).

Even construction workers here carry tons of tools in their vehicles, just in case (and they can be on the same site for a year). Since shared tools are kind of bad.

Likewise I couldn't imagine the anger a client would have if I showed up 2 hours later than before to an emergency, because I needed to wait for the mercy of a ride hailing company to even arrive. That then went through a likely jammed highway because some automated program wanted eyes on the traffic status.

The middle class also has immense pride in their cars. It is similar to how some programmers brag about 20 or 90 hour weeks, their strange gut improving diets, or their vacations to somewhere far.

You are the exception rather than the rule though. Most people don't lug around heavy kit. I don't think anyone is saying there won't be special cases. For most of us EVs or ride hailing would make a lot more sense. Personally myself and my partner have moved from two cars to one car, which is about three years old, and we share it quite happily. Our next car will be an EV and for us we'd have to be nuts to buy a petrol car next. However, I don't think my brother, who is a builder, will be getting rid of his pickup any time soon! By the way the move for us to one car (I got rid of mine) and then to an EV (in the future) is primarily a financial one - we are saving a ton of money by not running a second car, and an EV is a lot cheaper to run than a petrol car. At the end of the day it's about what works for you personally I guess. If ride hailing coverage improves in our area (we are not in a city) then over time we would most likely be quite happy to give up owning a car altogether.

>Personally I carry around a few hundred pounds of tools.

This is relevant here exactly as much as the observation that a sailor needs a ship to do their job...

I hope you get as dewey eyed about healthcare.

Much as I want to agree, I think this article buries the real question. Yes, we will have the technology - but will people's behaviour change as quickly as the article suggests?

Will whoever wins the ride-sharing market actually provide rates that low to the passengers? Or will they become the new oil barons, gouging the market?

What about the car as more than just point A to point B transport? How many people use a car as a secondary base of operations, and would still need 'their' car, with all their things in it, not just 'a' car, to get from A to B?

That latter point is something I think very few people in urban living situations understand. My car is, if I am to misappropriate a term, a 'safe space'. It's like an offshoot of my house I bring with me elsewhere. If there's something I don't carry on my person regularly, but might need, it's probably in my car. My car is a space that I own, that I control, and of course, can lock myself inside. And my car instantly affords me the ability to move myself away from where I am, and to something else.

My comfort level is based in part on either being in walking distance to my house or to my car.

Not to mention people who use their vehicles as a hobby - be it in motorsport, vintage restoration, or whatever.

Electric cars and Automation will do the same to conventional cars as the automobile did to horses. Cars didn't bring on the horsepocalypse, it just created a new enthusiast industry around them as opposed to being a mainstream transport industry.

I'm not so sure. I think when people figure out how much money they are going to save by switching to an EV you could see a rapid uptake.

EVs are a distraction that fools a lot of people ito thinking that car culture will be sustainable with EVs.

The lifetime CO2 footprint of a EV is about half of a fossil fuel car, which means we'll still have to cut down on car use a lot.

In addition, if we assume all reasonably priced oil is going to be pumped up and burned in transport, then EVs may even cause an increase of global CO2 emissions because car use will no longer be limited by the global oil supply.

Sure, but it's a good step forward to move to an EV. Agreed that people also need to give up their car where they can, or cut down on use, and wider availability of ride hailing will help.

By the way, I was recently in Manila and ride hailing is readily available unlike where I am in the UK. There was Uber and a few others. Much easier (and safer) to hail and ride there than trying to flag down a taxi.

I think this position would call for a counterargument tackling my point about the limiting factor of the oil supply.

Replace the word "car" with segway and this article seems like a repeat of claims of entire cities having to be redesigned around this marvelous new invention.

When you the remove the driver, i think people will generally tend to act worse in the car, to the point that i can see a world where you _REALLY_ don't want to get in those dirty things. or .. alternatively the hailing company has to spend a significant amount of money keeping them clean and repaired. Both of which limit the immediacy of its complete disruptive force.

Was this article basically a rip-off of:

https://shift.newco.co/this-is-how-big-oil-will-die-38b843bd...

I'm prepared to give the benefit of the doubt though.

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