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Comment by skocznymroczny | Hacker News Reader

Escooter/ebike is rarely a replacement for a car. Maybe if you use your car only to commute to work, but in these cases, especially if you live in a city, public transport is a good replacement as well. The main advantage of a car is freedom. You can go anywhere you want, any time you want. Need to buy groceries for the whole week and deliver them home, a car can do that. Your wife is pregnant and you need to deliver her to the hospital in the middle of the night, your car can do that. You want to go on a spontaneous trip somewhere, your car can do that.

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> Escooter/ebike is rarely a replacement for a car.

True for most of the US, but that's by design.

Our family of three gave up having a car when we moved from California to Munich, here our electric cargo bike is our 'car'. Works great. Plenty of other families without cars as well.

That's not to say that a car wouldn't be very useful or more convenient for certain kinds of trips, of course (e.g. Ikea). But it doesn't feel like a necessity here the way it almost always felt like one in the US. And that's for a simple reason: Munich actually takes different forms of transport seriously, including street design, allocated land, and $$$ (well, €€€). I could go on and on about the differences.

In the US, mandatory very low density zoning, as well as local transportation systems designed to be car-first (or car-only), are the reason driving is usually a basic necessity. But if you start upzoning and pouring serious resources into other modes of transport, they can work very well too.

edit: I guess I should say, thinking of it as "a replacement for a car" is a very American mode of thinking, because it assumes that the car is a necessity in the first place. The aim should be a system where a car is a nice-to-have, not an integral component of every single person's life, a system where an ebike doesn't need to be a "replacement for a car", because you don't strictly need a car to live your life.

Depending on where you live a car may be a necessity. In suburban or rural US you won’t have a nice time. The more infrastructure you have to alleviate the need for personal cars the less you need a car or a car replacement.

I am not American, I am Polish. And having a car here is pretty much a necessity unless you live in the center of a big city. Unfortunately, most research in this seems to focus on places like Amsterdam or Berlin, but it completely ignores the reality outside of city center of capital cities.

The shift in where people live is increasingly toward cities, and away from places where one is dependent on a car. That trend needs to continue for us to continue to afford our infrastructure and survive as a species, so it's where we're going to focus.

Nah. We live on the outskirts of Munich and it still works fine. Suburbs of Munich you can still get by without a car easily enough.

Hell, even little Bavarian towns that I've visited, you don't really need a car, the way you do in the states. Somewhere like Lenggries or Bad Toelz, you can absolutely get around walking and biking, it's safe and pleasant and convenient in-town, even though these are nowhere close to big cities (IIRC Lenggries is like 10k people). Now, visiting any other city using buses/trains out there far, that's a pain, so you probably want a car, but you don't absolutely need one for daily life.

Compare that to living in the south SF bay area, which has a sizable population, but getting by without a car is nevertheless a nightmare. Biking is dangerous -- the year before I moved, I got hit twice by cars, including once with my son on it -- there's almost nothing within walking distance (and it's highly unpleasant to boot) and public transit is sparse and slow.

Anyway, I can't speak for Poland, but just about everywhere I've visited in Europe, compared to the US the necessity for a car is very drastically reduced. Even the places where you want a car for some trips, you often don't really need them for daily basic errands.

Would you mind sharing a link to the electric cargo bike you selected?

We use this: https://www.wintherbikes.com/product-items/cargoo/

Though we were also looking at the Babboe Big and Curve, and I know a lot of people like the Urban Arrow.

The Winther works fine, but I'm not in love with it as a particular model. There's lots of room for improvement.

I can personally recommend the Vogue Carry 3 (we own one, also family of 3) https://www.voguefietsen.nl/carry Popular is also the model TROY. Price around 2000€ (e-bike versions).

> Escooter/ebike is rarely a replacement for a car.

Yeah, well, I guess you are not from a big city like Amsterdam.

> Need to buy groceries for the whole week and deliver them home, a car can do that.

I just order my groceries online and get them delivered. I could also use my cargo bike, normal bicycle, or walk to do groceries. Neither of these options is electric, but you can buy these electric. Last time I checked, each of these options give me enough 'freedom' so that I don't need a car. Sure, I can't go to the other side of the country with my car, but I don't want to either. If I am going on a spontaneous _long_distance_ trip I got two options: I go by public transport, or we rent a car. Cars are overrated; we got a lot more options nowadays so that the use of a car is diminished (though not completely). People in Amsterdam are living without a car and go by fine (they also need the money they'd otherwise spend on a car on rent ...).

At least for us Americans, there's more to it than practical disadvantage, though we do have to travel much longer distances much more often here. If I say we love cars because they represent freedom, I'm not sure that gets it across. For a century they have been a tool that allows the American to go when he pleases when he pleases. Everyone remembers the day his dad tossed him the keys to the car and the freedom that brought. We appreciate them on a much deeper level than is easy to communicate, and for that reason they will not go away, nor should they.

I can imagine the day dad tossed the keys to the car because in USA that is at age 16 while say drinking age is 21; so it comes first, as an earlier sign of recognition of becoming an adult. Its like a nod of responsibility. Here, you are allowed both when you are considered an adult (18). That's post high school. Students get to travel for free with public transport (either throughout the week or in the weekend, they have to pick either). How nice is that? Its great, unless you live in a rural area. Instead, kids here get proud when they get their first scooter (at age 16 when still at high school).

What you say about car freedom for rural life, sure. I wasn't on about rural life though. I don't know how good the public transport is in American cities (it is very good in Amsterdam, but also perhaps even better in say Berlin).

I'm curious about that (didn't get to use it when I was in USA). I would guess that someone who lives in New York City who doesn't own a car can rent one if they go to say Pennsylvania. But my guess would be, like in Amsterdam, they don't need one when they reside in New York City.

> it is very good in Amsterdam, but also perhaps even better in say Berlin

Oh, it’s fantastic in Berlin. Within 1.6 km of me, there are 18 tram stops, a similar number of bus stops, and 3 stops on the Ringbahn. The trams and the trains come roughly every 5 minutes.

I suspect one other big difference between American and European when it comes to the feeling of car-derived Liberty is the fact that, before the Schengen Agreement, Europeans needed passports to travel between countries (and European counties are about the same size as American states); and after the Schengen Agreement, air travel was cheap enough that it (rather than cars) represents the large scale freedom of movement.

At least, that’s how it feels to me.

I suspect that, for the most part, this is advertising. Sure, advertising creates culture, but you're mostly communicating the result of what you're told by the media you consume.

That culture doesn't somehow make it sustainable or healthy to drive so much.

I get your hesitation, but it’s not advertising. You didn’t want your mom to take you and your crush to the movie theater. You didn’t want to wait 30 minutes until after practice to get picked up because your parents both work until 5.

(I’m afraid that, your worldview may be, more narrow, than you, may think.)

Youth here walk/hike/drive (with scooter) or go with public transport on top of car (if 18+). Obviously it doesn't work well if distances are huge. A car is useful in rural areas.

And every year, fewer people live in rural America compared to those in cities. :)

Oh, I assert all that land use happened because of advertising and regulatory capture! The movie theater was in walking distance before the massive interstate highway giveaways.

As an American, the only time a car represents freedom to me is on a road trip through rural areas, and it's perfectly easy to rent one for that purpose. The rest of the time, it's a massively expensive and dangerous anchor.

Well.... this works because Amsterdam is a small city.

No, it works because Amsterdam has infrastructure in place to make it work. My "home" town is Bath in England - population of ~90000, and vastly smaller than Amsterdam. However, the transit infrastructure there is terrible. It's also worth noting that Amsterdam has not always been how it is today: in the 70s and 80s it was filled with cars.

Try cycling across LA...

Yeah, LA has a lot of work to do to catch up.

Right, because LA is built for cars not people.

It was actually built for streetcars.

What about it? I do it all the time. Faster than taking surface streets in a car during rush hour for sure.

The main difference isn’t the size, it’s the layout.

I’m in Berlin (metro area population 6.1 million compared to LA’s 13.1 million) and I don’t need a car or a bike because I have at least 22 food supermarkets (including 3 in a shopping mall), 2 household electronics stores, a building supplies store, a hacker shop, and countless bakeries and spätis [0] within 1.0 miles.

Judging by Google Maps search results, I’d say Amsterdam is similar.

I’ve explored a few American cities on foot, and if those places were representative of the rest, I can understand why Americans would regard cars as mandatory; but the model of large stores, few and far between, is not the only one.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spätkauf

By Berlin standards I'm in the middle of nowhere yet there are at least 3 stores in walking range and this is actually a very car dependent city. They just put stores near residential buildings. That's all there is to it.

Don't know why you are downvoted, because individual transport is so established in our family and social structures that it is unrealistic to expect a scooter, bike or public transport to fully replace it.

Yes, if I live in a coastal city in the US, maybe you wouldn't need a vehicle. But everyone else...

If your trip to the doc is > 20km or > 15 miles you probably either take the car or have a lot of time on your hands. Same with family that needs your support from time to time.

Transporting even just groceries can be a problem on a bike. Sure, I said the same thing when I was a student when the next supermarket was directly next to university and I could just go there every day.

US? Hell, look at what happens when countries start to open up from oppressive governments. Cars show up everywhere. We can never over estimate the desire by any people to have the freedom to go where they want when they want.

The issue with scooters is the same with motorcycles. First and foremost is safety but quickly arriving behind that is weather. Get below 70F and it can be cold even moving only 20 to 30 miles per hour then top it off with rain or worse?

The second issue with scooters and motorcycles is that in some regions they are just too easy to make off with so in the case of scooters I could see a government just using the rental system where they are everywhere giving no value in stealing them.

I agree people want cars, but people also want single-family detached homes & neither of these scale to big cities (where - corona notwithstanding - increasingly large portions of the population move to). IMO If you want to live in a big city you have to take a hit for the greater good and forgo some things you want.

There is no (reasonable) way to have cities like Tokyo, Delhi or Shanghai if each family lives in a detached home & people commute to work daily by private automobile.

And this is not even tackling having to alleviate climate change by reducing emissions.

So stop micromanaging what people build on their property and drive on the road and let the market decide. Get rid of zoning so people and build whatever they want and get rid of registration BS.

If someone pays money to register something it shouldn't be the state's concern whether it's a car or a fork lift, moped or a bike, as long as it fits in the lanes and has the right lights they should be able to drive it on any road on which they can keep up with traffic.

Nobody wants to do 40 on a moped on the interstate with traffic speeding by. Market solutions for both these problems have been proven to work well.

The market does not on itself account for externalities: it can be better for the individual to drive a car even if it's better for all the road's users collectively if as many people as possible took the bus or rode a bike (less congestion).

Likewise your personal air pollution doesn't make a perceptible difference but if everyone is driving cleaner vehicles it benefits everyone collectively with cleaner air (this was very noticable when e.g. Delhi required auto-rickshaws to convert to natural gas).

I grew up in the midwest US (northern kentucky) as a "latchkey kid", and the thing that gave me freedom up through my highschool years was having a bike.

I didn't have a stay at home parent that was able to drive me to e.g. the fabric store when I wanted to make a kite one summer, so I biked there. The public swimming pool was about a mile and a half away in the center of town, mildly long walk, super quick bike ride. Same with a lot of other stuff.

To this day, 15 years later, I deeply wish it had been much safer and made more convenient for kids and people to bike around. It was so nice to be able to do whatever without having to be driven around, but some of it definitely was not at all safe due to the car culture in the area.

I still bike a lot as a result of this and I'm about to purchase a cargo ebike to let me pick up groceries and larger packages (we have some sizeable 300ft climbs here). I can tell a massive difference between my fitness (28 years old) and my similarly aged peers because I've stayed active biking. It's really sad to see.

It's insane how much people will complain about removing a single lane of traffic on an excessively large urban "road" to make life much, much safer and healthier for kids, people walking, etc.

The first protected bike lane in my city was put in about 8 years ago and it was an insane political battle. You can see where it stops as a result here: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1322698,-84.5316412,182m/dat...

Having a 5 lane road for the amount of traffic this road gets (very minimal) is absolutely insane, and it results in people going 50-60mph on a 35mph road on one of the most active cycle routes around. The section of road with the protected bike lane has no worse of traffic at all, and is much safer. However, due to the political bickering and car obsession about 70% of the bollards have been run over and destroyed by cars, and no one on city council will stick their neck out to get them repaired.

It's so frustrating and selfish for people to do this!!

I think in many cases ebike can easily replace a second car in a family.

Yes, we went down to one car and two e-bikes. It would have been a struggle without the bikes as we live in a semi-rural area with poor public transport.

Same here. We live 18km from the city center. We have an electric car that we rarely use and two e-bikes (45km/hour kind) that we both use daily to go to work (300m elevation change). It's perfect !

How long do your batteries lasts which such a workload?

I have a short 15 minute 3-km ebike daily commute. But after 1 year the battery is obviously weaker. And i never made it past 2 years before a battery swap. I charge daily.

(I still kept my smallish car, which i now use much less)

My ebike has a 814Wh battery. It'll easily do to and from work twice. I've already done 7000km with it and no noticeable difference (<10% ?). But it's true that the battery degrades. I don't really "mind" in the sense that I treat it as a consumable and not a forever item.

That seems particularly poor. I'm still doing regular 30 mile rides with plenty of reserve after 6,000 miles on my original 500 wH battery.

This is what I think needs a bit more discussion & airtime. You're never going to eliminate cars entirely, don't try. But I think there's a good case that one car may be enough for many families when combined with ebikes, transit, & the rest.

Many urban people are also perfectly well-served by the occasional rental/carshare.

This is exactly the setup my significant other and I have. We even live in an urban area that is pretty bike hostile, car obsessed, hilly. We have one car that we share and the other bikes/walks when needed.

There have only been two or three times over the course of about 7 years that having two cars would have been nice, but it obviously didn't make that big of a deal.

It's definitely helped keep us healthier as well, particularly compared to our similar aged friend group (~30 years old). We've both gotten comments from our physicians in the last few years because of this too!

> Escooter/ebike is rarely a replacement for a car.

That's a strange response to an article that's literally saying the opposite. Evidently the scheme is popular.

Giving free money to people is always popular.

In this case the money is enough to effectively get a free e-bike or e-scooter, so of course people who can will use it. They may still buy a car as well, actually, since nothing prevent them from doing just that.

I've fit a weeks worth of groceries on my bike pretty easily. Between the rear rack, the panniers, and the trailer I can haul a lot of groceries. But you are right that it's a good idea to have at least one car in a family. Especially in the US. Although I would check first that it isn't cheaper to get a rental or a taxi when you need it. The only reason I still have my current car is because it's already paid for anyways and doesn't cost much to keep around.

Not for a family. For a single person it's a replacement

I'm a father of 2 young children in Berlin. We have no car (neither myself not my wife even have a driver's license) but we have a cargo-bike for taking the kids places & regular bicycles when we go alone (or when one person is riding the cargo bike and the other isn't).

They are not even electric (although sometimes I wish they were) and this is very common for urban German families. If it is impractical in US cities it is only because they were built that way.

When we have to go long distance we take trains (that often have an extra car for taking bikes with you).

You'll have an angry mob at your door if you even think about carrying a kid on anything with less than four wheels.

I see young children being carried by a trailer behind a bicycle often in the PNW region of the US.

What. I see kids on bikes/trailers on bikes in NYC all the time.

Count the wheels ;)

I chose my words carefully. Seems like bike trailers have mostly replaced those kid seats that used to go on the backs of bikes.

I see these all the time in the more affluent areas of brooklyn. Two wheels, kids on the back.

https://cdn.shoplightspeed.com/shops/611178/files/23705435/y...

I present to you this google image search: https://www.google.com/search?q=dutch+bicycle+kids&tbm=isch

you'll see mobs on 2 wheels in India.

Yepp seats are extremely common now. Nearly all cargo/utility bikes have compatible racks and often feature the child seats installed.

In specific cases where the person does not have much use for a car in the first place...

In many places in Europe people have cars because they need to commute over long distances every day.

Dutch cities, or e.g. central Paris or central London, are not representative of the a vast number (I'd say the majority) of Europeans.

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