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Comment by pilom | Hacker News Reader

I agree wholeheartedly with you and my next vehicle will be a plug in hybrid. That said, that isn't what the author is saying. He's saying that all private cars will go away because it will be so much cheaper to just call a self driving electric and I don't see it happening because people will never call a self driving car to the trailhead of a 14'er. It is just so much more convenient to have your own (PHEV).

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> people will never call a self driving car to the trailhead of a 14'er.

As a long distance backpacker I'd love to be able to get a ride to and from the trail at a reasonable price.

Of course, we'd also need better cell coverage.

Almost everywhere seems to have better cell coverage than the worlds richest country. Maybe electric Uber will mean this needs to be fixed.

If by "almost everywhere" you mean Europe or Japan, please compare population density. If most of the US had the population density of Northern Europe, or US northeast, or Silicon Valley, it would have similar almost-omnipresent coverage.

US West is more like Siberia, or Canada 100 miles north from the border. There are not enough subscribers to economically cover with GSM / LTE, except in cities and along major roads.

I'm talking about places like India or even Myanmar. To be fair India has probably a much greater population density than the US so maybe you are correct.

Or a massive satellite internet constellation that provides internet access everywhere [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation

The cell coverage isn't even required. If there is no driver waiting for me, I could affordably schedule the car in advance to wait at the trailhead until I arrive: all day if need be. It'd be no more expensive than having rented the car for the day.

If you had a self-driving car, you could let it take you to the beginning of the hike, and then let it drive itself to the end of the hike where you could take it home.

As an outdoorsman this is exactly what I am excited about with self driving cars. It has the possibility of making going even deeper into the wilderness more practical. A self driving car can take you to the trail head, go charge, and then go wait for you. With 300 miles of range you can go most anywhere.

Same. Self-driving cars/vans would be brilliant for trailhead use. In 2016, hiking Trans Zion, we paid US$120+tip to get two of us from our car to a starting point about 60-90 minutes away. Earlier this year, my brother and I hitched three separate times to save 10 hours of road walking in a storm to get back to our car after Buckskin Gulch. We were lucky with the timing of each ride.

I've been deterred from hiking the Grand Canyon rim to rim by needing to either hike all the way back, or have two cars and add a 5-hour drive. Salt Creek in Canyonlands is another where a shuttle is a help, or crossing from The Maze over the river to The Needles (avoiding many hours of driving back).

Being able to call a self-driving car to affordably make these trips would be great.

Right. I don't necessarily disagree with any of that. I'm just trying to fight the notion that EV's "won't help rural folk", or that electric cars are not compatible with rural life.

If anything, rural and exurban folks will have the most to benefit from electric vehicles and PHEVs (even without any charging infrastructure), since they end up driving more miles on average than city residents.

> I don't see it happening because people will never call a self driving car to the trailhead of a 14'er. It is just so much more convenient to have your own (PHEV).

Self-driving cars can co-exist with short-term rentals. I live in Seattle and recently sold my car because ReachNow is good enough: it does short-term rentals by the mile, but when I go hiking I can do half/full-day rentals, and it still ends up being a lot cheaper than owning a car. And this is before self-driving and the cost savings of EV enter the equation.

> because people will never call a self driving car to the trailhead of a 14'er.

I disagree with this. Why not? Hell, reserve the car for two weeks and have it sit there at the trail parking lot, if you want the old school experience. Still cheaper (for you, for the environment) than full time owning a car which is unused 90% of the time.

Not all private cars will go away, but a significant fraction of car use cases will move to self driving services (especially the ones that involve drinking).

For some this will mean their optimum is less car ownership, and for others no car ownership.

The trend will be amplified in areas with limited parking and high costs of living.

Also, you can always rent a car to go to the trailhead, just like you do on vacation.

None of this is dependent on electric or even self driving cars, as it is all already happening today with ride services and ICE cars, but self driving cars shift the economics considerably away from private car ownership.

Change happens at the margins. For reasons that you and parent comments mentioned, we're not going to go to 100% electric anytime soon. But I think we will see a lot more city dwellers willing to go car-less, and a lot more suburban/rural families willing to go down from multiple cars to just one. That'll still be enough to shake out the less competitive oil companies.

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