4 ms·

I want to think that the future involves avoiding having to own bigger cars entirely and lease/rent an EV car plus credits for short-term rentals of different v

by gav 8y ago

I want to think that the future involves avoiding having to own bigger cars entirely and lease/rent an EV car plus credits for short-term rentals of different vehicles when needed. Need a big SUV for skiing or camping? Swap your small EV for the weekend. There's too many people I know that make vehicle purchasing decisions based on edge cases to avoid having to rent something different when they actually need it. We need to figure out how to give up large SUVs that only drive around a single passenger.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
That's only because you know wealth/high class people. I assure you there are plenty of people who will cram a family of five in a compact for a road trip, haul plywood on the roof of a sedan, throw a sofa in/on a station wagon, haul gravel with a compact pickup, etc, etc. They're just not people who are employed by tech companies shop at whole foods and browse HN. Shoehorning a vehicle into a use case for which it is a less than perfect fit is not how white collar professionals making tech money are expected to act. Vehicle suitability for any given task is inversely proportional to the average net worth of the occupants. The only way you get a free pass is if the vehicle is environmentally friendly and plastered in the kind of bumper stickers you expect on the back of a university professor's EV conversion project car. Then you're just "eccentric" and not low class.
- nradov 8y ago
  Maybe that's common in other countries, but in the US I see a lot of low wage workers driving large, practical vehicles like older model F150s and Chevy Tahoes. Sure they burn a lot of gas, but they can do everything and are relatively easy to repair.
ghaff 8y ago
I get what you're saying but, for many of us, renting a car for the weekend is a significant hassle and time sink. And then the rental probably isn't set up with a roof rack for canoes, etc. If it were a once a year thing? Sure. But it's not. It's every few weeks at least. (There's also picking up home improvement stuff etc.) It doesn't always need to be a big SUV either. There are somewhat smaller vehicles that are almost as good for a lot of activities. People are going to keep buying vehicles that they can use for most of their activities.
- ricardobeat 8y ago
  > renting a car for the weekend is a significant hassle and time sink That's the real problem to be solved, and not by stationing one of those cars permanently in each person's house. Evolving tech might enable at least three scenarios: self-driving cars can be summoned on demand; cars can be piloted remotely to the customer's location (a matter of legislation at this point); electric scooters can make it feasible for a driver to deliver and return to base at a reasonable cost. I'd pay a premium to have a standard-issue rental car at my door at the press of a button.
  - nradov 8y ago
    If you want to enable remote driving through populated areas it will take a lot more changes than just legislation. Our cellular data networks lack the reliability, latency, and bandwidth that would be needed for the level of streaming video to make this safe.
nradov 8y ago
The problem is that everyone wants to go skiing on the same holiday weekends so the rental agencies have all their AWD SUVs booked weeks in advance at high prices. But they can't afford to add inventory because there's little demand for those vehicles at other times. The rental solution doesn't really scale.

by gav 8y ago

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

That's only because you know wealth/high class people. I assure you there are plenty of people who will cram a family of five in a compact for a road trip, haul plywood on the roof of a sedan, throw a sofa in/on a station wagon, haul gravel with a compact pickup, etc, etc. They're just not people who are employed by tech companies shop at whole foods and browse HN. Shoehorning a vehicle into a use case for which it is a less than perfect fit is not how white collar professionals making tech money are expected to act. Vehicle suitability for any given task is inversely proportional to the average net worth of the occupants. The only way you get a free pass is if the vehicle is environmentally friendly and plastered in the kind of bumper stickers you expect on the back of a university professor's EV conversion project car. Then you're just "eccentric" and not low class.

nradov 8y ago
Maybe that's common in other countries, but in the US I see a lot of low wage workers driving large, practical vehicles like older model F150s and Chevy Tahoes. Sure they burn a lot of gas, but they can do everything and are relatively easy to repair.

ghaff 8y ago

I get what you're saying but, for many of us, renting a car for the weekend is a significant hassle and time sink. And then the rental probably isn't set up with a roof rack for canoes, etc. If it were a once a year thing? Sure. But it's not. It's every few weeks at least. (There's also picking up home improvement stuff etc.) It doesn't always need to be a big SUV either. There are somewhat smaller vehicles that are almost as good for a lot of activities. People are going to keep buying vehicles that they can use for most of their activities.

ricardobeat 8y ago
> renting a car for the weekend is a significant hassle and time sink That's the real problem to be solved, and not by stationing one of those cars permanently in each person's house. Evolving tech might enable at least three scenarios: self-driving cars can be summoned on demand; cars can be piloted remotely to the customer's location (a matter of legislation at this point); electric scooters can make it feasible for a driver to deliver and return to base at a reasonable cost. I'd pay a premium to have a standard-issue rental car at my door at the press of a button.
- nradov 8y ago
  If you want to enable remote driving through populated areas it will take a lot more changes than just legislation. Our cellular data networks lack the reliability, latency, and bandwidth that would be needed for the level of streaming video to make this safe.

nradov 8y ago

The problem is that everyone wants to go skiing on the same holiday weekends so the rental agencies have all their AWD SUVs booked weeks in advance at high prices. But they can't afford to add inventory because there's little demand for those vehicles at other times. The rental solution doesn't really scale.