4 ms·
My formal training is in mechanical engineering and economics. You are completely right about the gradual reduction in cost and increases in efficiency over ti
by iaw 10y ago
My formal training is in mechanical engineering and economics. You are completely right about the gradual reduction in cost and increases in efficiency over time for all mechanical technology.
There are two things I feel you neglect:
a) These increases happen in parallel, meaning that as air vehicles get better so too do ground vehicles. Meaning it's unlikely for the relative advantage of cars to change with technology improvements.
b) I can state the last sentence because of the physics and engineering fundamentals that go into ground and air vehicles. There are hard and fast limits to the physical world, air vehicles have to butt up against a lot more of them than ground vehicles do.
- dllthomas 10y agoAs air and ground vehicles become less expensive, the real question is what happens to the difference between them.
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoThe point I was trying to make (rather obliquely, I admit) was that as mechanical technology improves the difference between variations ceases to matter. If air transport goes from $500 to $5, compared to ground transport making an even bigger drop from $5 to $0.01, people aren't necessarily going to choose ground over air. An infinitely more efficient $0 walking option exists in both cases. They're going to chose air because $5 isn't enough to care; their time is worth an order of magnitude more than the cost of the transport.