4 ms·

i'm multi-modal--train, bus, car, feet, & bike (before it was stolen)--so i especially appreciate your points, but i don't think it has to be an either-or situa

i'm multi-modal--train, bus, car, feet, & bike (before it was stolen)--so i especially appreciate your points, but i don't think it has to be an either-or situation. let's build more efficient cars/roads and build better public transportation. let's level the playing field--stop subsidization (or at least even out the subsidization) and internalize unaccounted-for costs like road maintenance and pollution, and let them compete. even though musk might seem short-sighted in his approach, his vision and determination are admirable. let's have more of that, especially in the public transportation space. (i agree that automated cars is not going to be a panacea, at least not in the next 30 years, but it's an meaningful step forward in transportation tech)

akgerber 9y ago
Electrification of the vehicle fleet will be great for cities (especially in Europe) just because it'll reduce a huge source of point pollution on urban blocks. And I'd definitely enjoy owning a car or campervan for hiking/biking trips and other adventures — or paying $.75 a mile for a robocar to pick me up for similar trips. I just hate the way that nearly all American cities make car ownership mandatory for full citizenship, and American land use laws mean almost all new development is almost purely auto-oriented (this is somewhat less the case in a subset of post-2008 development, but these developments are generally islands of sorta-walkability in an inhumane hellscape of high-speed arterials).