Comment by smush | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smush | Hacker News Reader

This article is ridiculous. Sure for urbanite hipsters who just grab a Bird scooter, but for the rest of us in the non-trendy parts of the country or who live in the suburbs, a car is absolutely essential for living a modern life. More rent-seeking to get those perpetually rent-happy Millenials I guess?

Who wants to wait for a rideshare when:

1. We're all snowed in but mom-to-be needs medicine/insulin?

1. Its time to go give birth...baby's here early!

1. You have 3 children and equivalent amounts of diaper bags/soccer outfits/bookbags and the schedule between school getting out and soccer practice starting is quite close

1. You get a call, grandpa's taken a turn for the worse, get here bc he's gonna die in <1 hr

These examples are not perfect, they are just what I could get off the top of my head, but c'mon, until we have People-Mover style monorails and/or Hyperloops everywhere, you will need a vehicle of your own control IE ownership.

To assert you can get full control over something you don't own is something I would disagree with.

Even taking that to a more 'day to day' degree:

1. I live near the coast. I want to go surfing, but not sure where. Is my rideshare or autonomous car going to drive me around checking out different breaks to see what waves are good?

2. How about when I get out of the water, does it keep my change of clothes with it? Many times I take a couple boards with me cause I'm not sure which board is right for the conditions. And wtf do I do with my phone? Dont tell me its waterproof cause salt water for 2hrs at a time == destroy just about anything other than fiberglass.

3. What autonomous car is taking me camping? Sure I dont touch my car much once I'm done setting up camp, but I sure load it up and grab stuff from time to time out of it.

4. I need some 10' 2x4s from Home Depot, some plywood and also a bunch of bags of soil. Whats my best option here?

5. Going back to the beach thing.. how about taking my kids to the beach? That's a shitshow of a mess.. which autonomous or ride share is going to work best? Cause carseats + sand + water to rinse off + snacks + towels.. omg all the crap we bring and need to take home.

For anyone who enjoys the outdoors, the autonomous/ride share thing just isnt anywhere close. Same for anyone with kids. Same for anyone who does projects with large-ish materials (aka runs to Home Depot).

This was my thought - I mountain bike for fun. Maybe it will drive itself but having a car/truck with the necessary setup for my bike/camping is part of my transportation requirements that I've not seen addressed yet.

For infrequent trips like camping or picking up Home Depot stuff, you rent a large vehicle. I used to live near a Zipcar garage for these types of trips.

Home Depot already rents trucks. Although 10' stock fits in a Civic.

Home Depot, U Haul, etc. charge by the mile in addition to by the day. Useless for long trips.

> 4. I need some 10' 2x4s from Home Depot, some plywood and also a bunch of bags of soil. Whats my best option here?

This may actually be a good case for car sharing. If I could call up pickup truck to my door whenever I need, it'd be much cheaper / more efficient than getting a ride to a truck rental place and doing the same.

Ride share falls apart for this of course, but if the truck can deliver itself to my door? I'm all in.

Urbanite hipsters don't enjoy nature. They read about it on buzzfeed while drinking lattes.

A couple more:

1. A hurricane is coming and we need to evacuate!

2. We want to pack a family's worth of luggage and take a sight seeing roadtrip of the US.

3. Sure would be nice to visit my parents who live in rural America where no planes/trains/busses go.

4. There exist bad parts of town that police, cabs, and Uber refuse to go. How will people who live in those areas even go anywhere? Walk 10 blocks so that they can hopefully find a Bird scooter to drive the doctor?

I feel like this author is ignorant about the conditions of many Americans. I don't see at all how owning a car will be considered "quaint" when our modern lives are built around owning a vehicle.

There's so many safety issues that arise from not owning your own transportation. Ignoring those, there will need to be a lifestyle/cultural shift to remove transportation independence from most Americans. And ignoring that, you'll still need to be okay with giving your freedom of movement to a private company. Better hope Uber/Lyft/Bird/etc don't ban you, or you're really screwed.

re 2) rent a nice large van! Don't put the wear on your vehicle!

I used to do that until two rentals broke down, the second being quite scary and leaving me and my family stranded. Hertz and Sixt. Do you have a local rental place or something?

With my own car, I'm constantly keeping an eye for everything + regular maintenance.

  rent a nice large van!

Typically $100/day without mileage limits.

I've actually done this! It worked out mostly well, though it's a perk reserved for us people at or over 25 years old :)

The fact is most people in major urban centers do all of those things. In fact most people in many countries do all of those things sans cars. It is principally in america which has glutted itself on heavily subsidized oil priced without external costs baked into it that this isn't the case.

I think it's more because America is huge and there's a lot of ground to cover. It's impossible for public transportation and private services to fill that gap.

I think people truly do not understand just how large the United States is. I've been on several family road trips with my wife and two kids all across the country, from west to east, north and south, and back again. The country is huge. If you're a young'un who's only ever experienced life in a city or suburb, you really have no idea just how big this country is.

china is huge yet most people don't have cars. It's not the geographic size it's because its population is spread out thin due to post ww2 american dream urban planning where we built rings upon rings of suburbs surrounding urban cars because we did not think of any of the negative consequences of everyone having cars (among other things)

Most of the world gets by fairly well with much lower car ownership rates than the US (apart from San Merino which has more cars than people, the US has the highest car ownership per capita in the world). If you live in a country with very good public transportation, I think it's not hard at all to imagine a future in which individual car ownership basically goes to 0% at some point in that not too distant future.

Yes and no; car ownership in many parts of the world is tied to development, and as standard of living rises in many parts of the world, so does car ownership. (Not that I’m saying this is a good thing, to be clear.)

I live in a part of my country with very dense public transportation and I can't imagine car ownership disappearing; even with a dense public transportation network, there's too many commutes that can't easily be done in public transportation. And that's ignoring people who have to carry stuff as part of their work and use cars to store them.

Have none of y'all heard of rental cars? Just a few weeks ago, I missed my morning flight from SF to LA and was told the next one wasn't until later that night, so I opened my phone, booked a rental car, took a Lyft to the pickup spot, and just drove myself the rest of the way down for the weekend.

I would imagine that a world in which fewer people are buying cars would also lead to one in which there are more options for different lifestyles. It wasn't that long ago that the idea of randomly picking up an electric scooter off the street was a novel one. Now there are multiple unicorns putting them everywhere. Getaround/Turo/ZipCar are already things, and I imagine they'll just become more widely adopted/less expensive in the future.

I'm not arguing your overall point - but simply walking through the snow to the plowed road and a ready to go vehicle sounds nicer than being forced to shovel the whole driveway/windrow, assuming that rideshare will actually show up.

Clickbait necessitates hyperbolic headlines. I think the reasonably likely thing that will happen is that many dual car households drop to single car households.

I had twins join my toddler to give us a family of five recently. The logistics, prep, timing, etc is crazy now. We got a minivan. Not something I even thought about when we were just three, let alone newly married or single.

Yeah I'm really worried about this kind of total disassociation with the rest of the country. Another commenter in another thread said we should remove the electoral college to ensure the coastal cities control the outcome of the country..

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