Comment by nomel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nomel | Hacker News Reader

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Or, you perception is only specific to your limited experience.

My "every day" short trips (I claim that's < 100 miles total) are, going to work (70 miles round trip), going out on the weekends (almost always < 60 miles, to get to the beach) going to the grocery store (5 miles, with ~40lbs of groceries, with steep hills).

Maybe this is a US thing, but I definitely can't do any of these things with my feet, in a reasonable amount of time. I also can't afford to live anywhere closer to work (getting within biking distance means a few million dollars, for a home, or my three bedroom mortgage for a single bedroom apartment), or next to a grocery store (there's no housing available there).

But, I can easily do all of this within the range of my 100 mile electric car, that I purchased for $8k.

Is it affordable to live close to work, in other countries? In the US, if you're in tech, you're paying a significant portion of your income to be within biking distance.

> Is it affordable to live close to work, in other countries?

Not really. Before COVID, I generally took a 15 minute run to the train station, then took the train for about hour, then took another 20 minute run to get to work at the local tech centre. If I had a fold-up bike, it would be a lot quicker, because there are bicycle paths. (In theory, I could've worked remotely, but it was easier to get stuff done with access to a whiteboard and the person in charge of systems architecture. I could also take a regular bike on the train, but if everyone did it that would be a mess, so I don't.)

I do stand by my “doing it wrong” remark – though I'll have to apply it to whoever designed your cities. That situation is awful (though good on you for using an electric car).

What kind of distance did you cover with your hour and a half commute? Also, what would your commute time have been if you had driven?

What electric car in the US costs 8k? I assume that is used, but even then that sounds cheap.

Maybe not in today's market, but you could probably get a used Leaf for around that a couple of years ago.

You can find used Nissan Leaf and used Fiat 500e for pretty cheap. I bought mine midway through this used car price increase (about one year ago). A year before, they were selling for $5k. People don't seem to want the low mileage cars, even though most people would be fine with a low mileage car, as a secondary vehicle.

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