Comment by gorgoiler | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gorgoiler | Hacker News Reader

Vehicles are weird. I feel like we try to jam all use cases into one, when I really need three different things:

1/ To go to work and back. Same route everyday. Not very long. Currently use a bicycle, but I’ve used mass transit for these very common in-out routes in the past.

2/ Small local journeys. I can’t collect 6kg of wheat from the local farm with a bike or a bus. Taxi is viable if I could get them to wait 20 minutes while I hang around the farm, or perhaps I could use two taxis to get out and back, which seems wasteful and the market for getting a cab from the country back to the city is challenging vs the city to countryside version.

3/ Long distance journeys. City to city is easy and pleasant with mass transit. Harder with a family and luggage, especially if the destination is not in a town or city. Personal vehicle works well here, and it’s getting more common to be doing long distance journeys from suburbia to non-city destinations, for me.

It felt like I could do without a personal vehicle for a long time. I bought a petrol car five years ago and finally live somewhere where I need it as of two years ago.

Now that we’re all potentially migrating away from big cities (a real trend I see, albeit anecdotally) I feel like my ideal fleet of personal vehicles would be:

a/ big lovely slow commute bicycle

b/ local BEV for cargo

c/ something else for long range

What would be fantastic would be to combine b and c. Something where I could carry a few kg of 18650s for a 10 mile errand range, and load it up with 1000kg of cells for a 400 mile round trip (or 500kg if my parents would foot the bill to recharge the long-range incarnation of my mythical modular BEV, something which feels socially unviable with anything other than trips to see close family.)

How about a battery electric cargo bicycle? Like a Tern GSD ($$$) or Radwagon ($)?

The tern gsd can carry 180 kg of cargo and has detachable batteries, so that at least gives you the option of bringing extra batteries for long range. Or haul people or wheat.

I'm a huge fan of the concept of super-lightweight EVs. I still think something like the ELF [https://organictransit.com/] is one of the best ideas in this space, and I hope someone takes over the brand or concept and figures out how to market it better.

This needs robust offerings for both lower-end and higher-end models, but it's hard to say which should be initially focused on these days. My instinct is to go for the low end & maximize volume. There has to be a sweet spot between usefulness and affordability. As has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, designing for modular upgrades would probably help.

I already like the sound of the GSD — Get Stuff Done, apparently.

6kg of wheat is well within pannier/backpack/cargo bike range. 60kg wouldn't be.

If we ever get small "flow" batteries viable then the range problem can be solved cheaply, but even at the moment the 200 mile range is pretty good if you're prepared to stop slightly more often.

Could #2 be covered by a car club / rental-by-the-hour kind of thing? ZipCar in the UK is about £8-10/hour with no monthly, so if you're not making the journey frequently that could be suitable? Obviously requires an available car nearby though.

Zipcar isn't profitable because it hasn't really hit critical mass. The zipcar in my street is used maybe only 2 hours per week. It just feels too expensive to use. Also, the fact you can't just park it anywhere when you're done...

I wonder if perhaps some kind of "Pay £100 to have unlimited car use for the month" type scheme might work better?

It would be difficult to arrange that price-point. Once you've told someone they have unlimited use, they're going to reserve it 24/7, at which point you need to be charging them the full lease-price plus your margin.

Do away with reservations - if you aren't sitting in the driver's seat, someone else can use it.

The price point has to be low enough to look like a good deal compared to owning, insuring, and maintaining a cheap 2nd hand car for occasional use.

Maybe my £100 proposal needs a surcharge for driving outside the city boundaries to prevent roadtrip a.

The biggest bill in our time in the UK was the car rental for 1.5 weeks. Something like £1,000, and petrol cost us around £400. I couldn't imagine owning a car in the UK and living in a rural area. I certainly wouldn't want to commute to work via car if I lived there.

B and C were solved by plug-in hybrids; on electricity they would do up to 50 miles (or thereabouts) which is fine for the errands you mentioned, and when more power or range is required the ICE is fired up.

Hybrids and plug-in hybrids have all but died though, now that they're no longer subsidized, and as it turns out they're not actually that good at carbon emissions.

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