Carpocalypse now: Lyft's founders are right – we're in the endgame for cars | Hacker News Reader

Carpocalypse now: Lyft's founders are right – we're in the endgame for cars

businessinsider.com

22 pointshourislate14 comments

Good news. The amount of resources devoted to cars is nuts. Just for parking in an average city.

We do need transportation but private cars are an incredibly inefficient solution for most people. Sharing / renting, public transportation and... walking work great in at least 80% of my needs. I'm gonna guess the same applies to at least 80% of urban and suburban dwellers (and if not, resources should be shifted from Free Parking and other car oriented things to excellent public).

I've lived nearly my entire life without one. I do live in cities but so do half the population.

Your experience is not universal. Public transportation covers maybe 5% of my needs, and that's if I'm being generous.

Honestly? I walk most palaces. Bad weather is my biggest reason to riding. And most people in cities can do that much more. Within an hour I can walk to most of my meetings throughout town. I live in a central-ish spot. Nice, affordable and walk-able - part of the choice. Driving takes almost as much time. The trams or metro save time only if the walk is over 30 min - and even at 60 min save only about half the time at best.

But as I posted, I didn't claim to be some universal example. I guessed 50% of people live in urban or sub-urban areas - high enough density to make public transportation practical. And I guessed that walking / public is appropriate for of transport needs.

Those who live in rural areas and/or have special needs would not be covered by the 50/80% easily (but I bet a very high percent would be covered by shared or taxi services)

Owning a car is absurdly inefficient. It sits parked 90% or more of its existence. We all pay taxes to support massive infrastructure for private cars - such as street parking in cities and police for drivers who can't stay within the law and choose to endanger my kids lives for their own convenience. Our whole view on car ownership is backwards.

I'm not preaching though - it's my choice to spend my money on things I find more useful than a status symbol parked where it might get stolen, broken into, and generally cost money. Everyone gets to make their own choices. :-)

I'm not convinced by this argument. One factor he isn't addressing is that cars may be getting more reliable, as in people drive them for longer. My grandmother for instance switched to Toyota 25 years ago and has two cars that whole time.

Another problem I see is that car sales aren't necessarily in s huge of downturn as he says. 2016-2017 according to his own graph shows massive growth and it looks like the UK has returned to 2016 numbers. Considering the weaker pound and the fear around Brexit, this doesn't seem to me to be all that bad long-term.

China and Turkey are both having economic downturns along with Britain. I wonder if he could make the same argument while using economicly stable countries.

One thing I'm thinking that might aid his argument is that the baby boomers are beginning to get old enough to stop driving or dying. Could that harm sales? Also I'd like to see how Lyft came up with the 300k riders who stopped owning a car.

I agree with you. Though your grandmother is obviously more sensible than the average car buyer, she's not representative.

I think 300k is fantasy.

But, that Lyft is actively taking on the car economy is encouraging. They aren't a band of hippies, it's a business that sees an opportunity in doing so. They may fail, or they may be what Tesla is to electric cars. That I find encouraging.

From the article:

> Although extreme, Turkey proves one thing. Today's cars last so long that if bad times happen consumers can simply stop buying new ones and get along just fine with their old ones.

Is this true? Despite (or perhaps because of) the many improvements in technology, cars are also becoming more complex. Certainly what I've seen is that you can't do anything without an expensive diagnostics tool anymore, and it's harder to get by with simple fixes an average car owner might be able to do.

For example, I drive a 20 year old VW whose windshield wipers recently decided to keep going non-stop. Diagnosis was simple: the clicking relay unit under the steering wheel was malfunctioning. Repair was even simpler: popping open the relay revealed the simplest, most organised piece of electronics I've ever seen, and it was clear that all that was necessary was to clean the contacts on one of the relays and pop it back in the car. Job done.

Compare that to a modern car in 20 years, where any similar problem will likely require an electrical engineering degree to even diagnose, if planned obsolescence hasn't done its work by then.

This is exactly why I like older cars instead of new ones.

The car company that make a simple, good, mechanical-& environmental-friendly car will earn a lot of money.

But they are so concentrated on high-tech and owning the vehicle/dealerships, that they forget what's truly important for their consumers.

I would love to see a modern Mercedes 190 Electric version, that is easy to repair.

Allow me to doubt that Lyft (or Uber) or both actually influence a market where they do not exist at all or are very, very marginal (like - say - Turkey) and even if they do, they alter it by 60%:

https://isturkeysafe.com/Is-Uber-safe-in-Turkey

I’m afraid that the reduction in demand for cars may also be a result of an expected economic downturn?

> It's hard to say whether car manufacturing is hurting because the greater global economy is faltering, or whether the faltering economy is hurting cars.

Hmm, aren’t both parts of the sentence saying the same thing?

I'll always want my private vehicle, in the future it will just drive itself. But I want to own mine. I like to go to Utah and go off roading

Cannot you just rent on an extended period of time then? Even if you want to "go off roading" once in a while, you probably are not constantly using it.

Subprime car loans may explain the delinquency rise. That business was expanded hugely in the last 10 years, and was one of Uber major loss areas.

I always want a nice high performance vehicle with luxury features as long as I can drive. Pub transport is not an option for anything but work and cars are one of the last pleasures in the gen X life.

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