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Comment by 0xDEEPFAC | Hacker News Reader

What a sad day for driving enthusiasts everywhere. Went to the BMW dealer last fall to test drive a 2 series and was told there are no manual 2 series cars in all of North America and I would have to get one shipped in.

But progress is progress I guess and if people want rechargeable, self-driving, ugly crossovers they'll get them.

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Please pardon my friendly cheekiness:

What a sad day for horseback riding enthusiasts everywhere. Went to the livery stable last fall to test ride a quarter horse and was told there are no racing-trained quarter horses in all of North America and I would have to get one shipped in.

But progress is progress I guess and if people want mechanical, self-propelled, noisy carriages they'll get them.

It's different though, because horses are developed and manufactured by nature. They don't require a huge enterprise and depth of engineering to mass produce them, nor do they require fueling infrastructure. When the supply chain supporting the mass produced internal combustion engine dies, the internal combustion powered enthusiast car dies with it.

Um Horse drawn transport requires a large amount of infrastructure

> large

Animal drawn vehicles have been in use for millennia with nothing but nature to provide infrastructure. Relatively flat terrain for the path, a watering hole, whatever plant the animal ate. This was improved over centuries with actual infrastructure (a well) but you have to admit we're talking vastly different scales compared to anything auto.

So horse-drawn carriages don't need roads? I guess the Romans just built these for fun, then.

Snark aside, no... the roads definitely helped but the vast majority of such traffic for thousands of years was done over "ad-hoc" roads, basically a beaten path. A road implies a base - pavement, stones, etc. For most of the history of carriages they used mostly beaten paths. For most (all?) of the history of the automobile they used roads.

And I'm pretty sure that at any point in history probably until a century or two ago there were more "beaten paths" in the world than actual roads. Which isn't the case now.

My point stands, highlighted by the quote: "large". The network of roads built for carriages pales in comparison with the scale of the current infrastructure for cars. Which I assume was the whole point of the comparison in the comment I replied to. I just objected to the unnecessarily vague or misleading use of "large". There was a road infrastructure. Whether it was large depends on how creative you get with the reference point.

And I'm not even counting the fact that the infrastructure for cars includes far more than just the roads. In this context almost any other infrastructure of any kind built before the 20th century is absolutely tiny.

For a much smaller population that the point at the scale we are currently at you start to run into problems.

In places like Edinburgh's New Town - which were built at "peak horse" you have entire streets of mews properties that were originally built as stables for grand houses:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mews

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Town,_Edinburgh

If for some reason, we had as many horse riders as drivers, none of that would be true. Horses would be as much a part of modern industry as chicken and cattle already are. IOW, there would be huge enterprises to ensure only good genes went into new horses, enterprises to ensure a steady supply of fodder to keep the horses of megacities fed, proportionately larger sewage system, and so on.

Are you prepared to cover the full costs of your "driving enthusiam"? Or do you wish for society to subsidize your personal enjoyment, comfort and lazyness at the cost of great financial, environmental and health costs to everyone else?

That's a lot of hyperboles and ad-hominem going on there.

There’s no hyperboles there. Cars, and ICE cars in particular, cause extreme health concerns from particles both exhausted and rubbed of from the tires. The vast majority of deaths in transportation are due to cars, and speeding ICE cars in particular. A primary cause of climate change (which in turn threatens the existence and/or sustenance of billions of people) is again the use of cars, in particular ICE cars, for personal transportation. Without those and the associated need for large amounts of otherwise unused spaces, many things could be done much more efficiently.

Given that the GP personally regretted the end of ICE cars, it seems not unreasonable to ask about their other feelings as well?

> Cars, and ICE cars in particular, cause extreme health concerns from particles both exhausted and rubbed of from the tires. The vast majority of deaths in transportation are due to cars, and speeding ICE cars in particular.

Except for tailpipe exhaust, electric cars are no different in this regard, so I'm not sure why you've singled out cars with internal combustion engines.

The world won't be going electric overnight. It can't physically speaking, and the power density of batteries is nowhere near where it would need to be to phase out internal combustion engines.

Construction equipment, farm equipment, loading and transportation equipment, lawn equipment etc... Still need compact, powerful power plants. Fossil fuels and petroleum is likely not going anywhere either. It's still needed for a lot of off-road uses, and as industrial precursors.

To the "do you expect society to subsidize yadda yadda" crowd:

Do not be so quick to evoke the power of society for or against your favorite/least favorite things. The United States is a blatant anomaly in terms of the proliferation of high tech infrastructure, given. But that has come as the byproduct of over 150 years of gradual industrialization.

Frankly I don't see ICE cars, or ICE car enthusiasts as as much a problem as poor city planning, over-emphasis on a consumerist lifestyle to fuel the economy, and an increasingly divisive and market subverted political system.

Besides which, speed does not correlate with deaths. Difference in speed does. If you want traffic related deaths to go away, stop looking at the enthusiasts, who are paying attention, and start looking at the ones who aren't paying attention.

The dearth of manual transmission cars in the US has more to do with the franchise dealer floorplan financing system than with electric cars. Right now electrics and hybrids still have only a tiny market share.

Most US customers prefer to buy a new car off the lot and drive it home today rather than ordering exactly what they want and waiting for the factory to build it. So dealers have to forecast what customers want and stock those as inventory. Dealers finance their inventory so they live or die by turnover rates. Thus they mostly only stock the most popular models, colors, and options that sell fast. Customers who want automatic transmissions are usually unwilling to buy a manual, whereas customers who would prefer a manual will usually be willing to buy an automatic. So the dealers hardly order any manuals even when manufacturers still offer them.

Hey, there's still options for driving fans: https://www.jaguar.com/about-jaguar/jaguar-classic/authentic...

Manual transmissions are a skill, albeit a declining one. There are certainly tricks that one can do with a manual that one cannot with any current electric. But there will be electric skills too. With the potential for literally instant response, exact throttle control will become more important than clutch skills. We won't be able to just mash the throttle down at every strait.

I think that some configurations of electric motors (ie one motor per wheel) could open up some new driving controls. F1 might not allow traction control, but there is no rule saying that drivers cannot manually prefer one motor over another. I could see the stick replaced with a stick that determines to which wheel power is sent.

A quick Autotrader search for new 2 series shows that is false. They are on the opposite side on the US from me but you could ship it or get your dealer to get it for you.

Crevier BMW in Cali looks like they’re horsing manual M240is.

Why don’t you order one, take the delivery in Munich, and save 5%?

Im going to guess that it’ll cost a fair bit more than 5% to get it home. Great holiday though.

Well, I did say last year.. In fact, at the time in the Atl dealership they only had 1 new manual car on the whole lot with a full parking garage.

Not sure what ugly crossovers have to do with technical progress; where I’m from they are all the rage, except they have internal combustion engines and you have to drive them yourself!

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