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Comment by nightsd01 | Hacker News Reader

beefield: a self driving car doesn’t NEED to take up space in a crowded city. It can drive you to work, then you get out, then it can go drive itself to a less crowded area. Then when you’re ready to leave the office it can be there when you’re ready to go.

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That sounds like more vehicle miles in downtown areas which are already severely congested. A large part of the problem is that cars are the least spatially-efficient form of transportation: having them drive more miles at peak times isn’t going to work unless we see huge improvements elsewhere, which seems unlikely.

What could be a more realistic option is electric velomobiles (a recumbent bike with an outer shell) which have a capacity of one person and a few bags. You get the benefit of weather protection and convenient speed while being extremely safe and space efficient.

I think there’s a lot of room in the e-bike space but don’t forget transit even if it’s not cool enough to get VCs interested. If the city planners do their jobs competently few things beat a bus in a priority lane for getting a large number of people around a city quickly with low to no CO2 emissions.

>If the city planners do their jobs competently

That's expecting way, way too much in America.

Where... where does the car live? It has to take up space somewhere. And if you say “outside the city”, then you’ve just reinvented suburbs.

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