Hacker News Reader

Comment by conk | Hacker News Reader

So old people who’s kids have left never have kids come back to visit, or grandkids, or a 30+ lb dog?

As I said in another comment, if we had more easily available rental cars that would be more commonly used outside of a vacation context, we could buy cars that match the need we have 98% of the time, rather than optimize for the 2%.

I also think that this is another corrective action problem. The benefit to everyone from having most carsm in our cities be much smaller would be huge, but the inconvenience from having a smaller car is the thing an individual can control.

the real metric here is miles not ownership. I have a large truck because I need to haul building materials and a trailer. there is no way I am renting

I don't think anyone is saying that nobody at all should have a pickup truck. Of course some people need it to actually haul large equipment or materials. That seems to be <50% of those with those large vehicles though. At the same time there also seems to be a somewhat vocal group (not sure if large) that needs pickup trucks for work, but find that the design of current pickup trucks favors aesthetics over practical benefits with beds being too high to load comfortable, too much space being taken up by the cabin etc. This thread had some very interesting discussion of those issues: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35645624

Again, there are legitimate use cases for a lot of this. Some people even need a semi ;)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com