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Owning a Car Will Soon Be as Quaint as Owning a Horse
- whalesalad 8y agoDelusional.
- eckza 8y agoCompletely.
- easytiger 8y ago> But I am pretty good at this guessing game. In 1998, as one of the first Internet-focused reporters for The Wall Street Journal, I wrote a piece titled “I Cut the Cord” about giving up my land line and going all mobile. Cringeworthy, I'm afraid. A platform doesn't make you an oracle.
- Areading314 8y agoSomebody is having an IPO and hired a PR firm...
- nytesky 8y agoThis was EXACTLY my thought, but Kara is generally a respected journalist. Does she own shares in either Uber/Lyft?
- eckza 8y agoIt’s as if the entire Midwest doesn’t exist.
- jdhn 8y agoThe title should really be "Owning a Car For City Dwellers Will Soon Be as Quaint as Owning a Horse". I live in a suburb in the Midwest, and taking an Uber or Lyft to work every day is simply not fiscally wise, even taking into account insurance, maintenance, and gas.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 8y agoHell, I live in a suburb in a pretty major tech hub with a 15 minute commute from work and even then it doesn’t make fiscal sense to get rid of my vehicle. Commuting via rideshare just to work and back (without even taking into account the grocery trips etc that would be required without a car) would cost me about $300 a month. That’s being extremely conservative, assuming no surges and minimal tipping, and assuming I do literally nothing but commute back and forth. My insurance, fuel and routine maintenance on my vehicle doing everything in my life (not just commuting to and from work, but also shopping and whatever recreational activities on weekends) is still less than that.
- emj 8y agoI agree that a renting car by the hour is not fiscally responsible, but neither is owning a car in the really long run. I do have a beautiful bikepath all the way to work, and being carless saves more than $300 per month, sure I spend it on other things, but I buy time with friends and family using that money.
- timbuckley 8y agoTo a large degree that's because the cost is far higher to pay a human to do the driving. In a world of self-driving cars, more of them can be stations geographically close to where they may be needed - without having to pay for a human driver. So they will become both cheaper and easier/quicker to use than existing ride-share services. That will change the calculus for many many people - but not necessarily everyone, of course.
- kyralis 8y ago* for well-off individuals in a major metropolitan area.
- baud147258 8y agoI don't know what drugs the author took to write this headline, but I want the same!
- artgon 8y agoI mean I'm all for it, in principle, but this is about as out of touch as it gets.
- madcaptenor 8y agoI have a baby. Are these cars I don't own going to have car seats?
- francisofascii 8y agoSure, some can, why not. Or you bring your own. When you get to the boaster seat age, it is not a big deal. If city street speeds were limited to 20 mph, would car seats be necessary? You don't need a car seat when boarding a bus.
- derp_dee_derp 8y agoBring your own car seat?! And then what, carry it around all day when I get to where I'm going? Limiting speeds to 20 mph? What? It would take way too long for anyone that doesn't live in the city center to get anywhere!
- slackfan 8y agoMight as well get a horse, it might be faster at that point!
- wahern 8y agoWe won't need to limit speeds to 20mph, it'll happen naturally. Ride sharing substantially increases traffic--180% is the latest research. Uber and Lyft are the worse things to happen to traffic since... cars, I guess.
- Someone1234 8y ago> a quaint hobby, an interesting rarity Owning a home is a "rarity?" 67.4% (2009) of people own their own home. That's almost a super majority.
- madcaptenor 8y agoOwning a horse, not a home. (I misread it in the same way at first, because who expects to see "horse" there?)
- ehnto 8y agoYet people still find use in horses in rural parts of the country. There are parts of the America, vast regions in fact, where owning a car for individual use will remain an important part of life for years to come. Electric or combustion, owning a vehicle with complete agency over it will remain a strong part of the lifestyle. I say that as someone who is trying to ditch the car and replace it with a bike and who thinks cars should be removed from city centres so I am not at all pro-car. It is just a requirement of modern rural life to be able get yourself around long distances.
- chr1 8y ago>Yet people still find use in horses in rural parts of the country. that's why the title says "as rare as owning horses" Many people will own cars, but not nearly as many as now.
- moate 8y ago>>Many people will own cars, but not nearly as many as now. This is a meaningless prediction without context or specificity provided by the author. The author is saying that cars will be owned by .6% of the population (current horse ownership is aprox 2 million) in her lifetime. "Many" but "less than now" could mean that we go 263.6 to 240 and meet your criteria wall falling miles short of what this insane article is positing. No. As countless responses have pointed out, the amount of infrastructural challenges for non-urban hubs is staggering. We already have buses and cabs, and we even have "smart" buses and cabs with APPS and there still isn't a way that you can expect rural Alabama or Suburban Wisconsin to be able to deal with this non-car type existence.
- apendleton 8y agoThis is getting pointless quibble-y, but they said "not nearly as many as now" not "less than now." 263.6 is nearly as many as 240 by any sensible definition; I took them to be suggesting a significant decrease for some common-sense definition of "significant."
- ehnto 8y ago
- moate 8y agoSpoken like someone who lives in an area where owning a horse is a luxury and doesn't serve an actual purpose. I want to believe in things like this, but it just doesn't make sense unless you expect complete urbanization and everyone vacating rural areas.
- smogcutter 8y ago> one of the next major secular trends in tech Secular trends? What the heck does that mean?
- aidenn0 8y agoA secular trend is roughly any trend that is not either a fad or cyclical. Basically the claim is that opting out of car-ownership will be a sticky long-term movement, not just something that urban hipsters do for a few years to signal how green they are. - Ice cream demand going up every summer is a cyclical trend. - Bell bottoms were a fad. - Smartphones replacing dumbphones is a secular trend.
- smogcutter 8y agoThanks, haven't heard that before
- smush 8y agoThis article is ridiculous. Sure for urbanite hipsters who just grab a Bird scooter, but for the rest of us in the non-trendy parts of the country or who live in the suburbs, a car is absolutely essential for living a modern life. More rent-seeking to get those perpetually rent-happy Millenials I guess? Who wants to wait for a rideshare when: 1. We're all snowed in but mom-to-be needs medicine/insulin? 1. Its time to go give birth...baby's here early! 1. You have 3 children and equivalent amounts of diaper bags/soccer outfits/bookbags and the schedule between school getting out and soccer practice starting is quite close 1. You get a call, grandpa's taken a turn for the worse, get here bc he's gonna die in <1 hr These examples are not perfect, they are just what I could get off the top of my head, but c'mon, until we have People-Mover style monorails and/or Hyperloops everywhere, you will need a vehicle of your own control IE ownership. To assert you can get full control over something you don't own is something I would disagree with.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- natefox 8y agoEven taking that to a more 'day to day' degree: 1. I live near the coast. I want to go surfing, but not sure where. Is my rideshare or autonomous car going to drive me around checking out different breaks to see what waves are good? 2. How about when I get out of the water, does it keep my change of clothes with it? Many times I take a couple boards with me cause I'm not sure which board is right for the conditions. And wtf do I do with my phone? Dont tell me its waterproof cause salt water for 2hrs at a time == destroy just about anything other than fiberglass. 3. What autonomous car is taking me camping? Sure I dont touch my car much once I'm done setting up camp, but I sure load it up and grab stuff from time to time out of it. 4. I need some 10' 2x4s from Home Depot, some plywood and also a bunch of bags of soil. Whats my best option here? 5. Going back to the beach thing.. how about taking my kids to the beach? That's a shitshow of a mess.. which autonomous or ride share is going to work best? Cause carseats + sand + water to rinse off + snacks + towels.. omg all the crap we bring and need to take home. For anyone who enjoys the outdoors, the autonomous/ride share thing just isnt anywhere close. Same for anyone with kids. Same for anyone who does projects with large-ish materials (aka runs to Home Depot).
- thorwasdfasdf 8y agoThere's nothing in there that explains how we'll get away from car ownership. In order for car ownership to be a thing of the past, we'll need a cheaper option. But what? Wait 10 min for an uber to arrive everytime i need to go to work? Not happening in this country, that's for sure. Flying cars will probably never arrive, the regulations won't allow it. Maybe Autonomous cars could do it, but they are another 20 to 40 years into the future: maybe then.
- bryanlarsen 8y agoA car costs about $6000 per year, so about $30 per workday. That makes sense if your Uber costs about the same price, but if you can uber each way for $5, most people would be willing to wait 10 minutes to save $20.
- clarry 8y ago> A car costs about $6000 per year, so about $30 per workday. And I thought owning cars in America was comparatively cheap. Meanwhile in Finland, 500-600 eur is enough to cover my tax & insurance. I'm coming close to 2000 eur on repairs and maintenance but I've got somewhat expensive and unusual stuff in this year's bill (like a new bumper & paint job). The rest is all gasoline. About 100 eur per refill, and that's usually enough for a month. Add up, 3800 eur. It's been by and far my most expensive year yet!
- s_y_n_t_a_x 8y agoOP is dead wrong on those costs. It's extremely cheap to own a car in America.
- wahern 8y agoLatest research shows ride sharing increasing traffic by 180%. Time is money, and even with driverless cars I don't think we'll ever get close to $5. What we need is more mass transit. Perhaps one day tiny driverless cars that circulate near a mass transit stop can be used to overcome our density deficit. That way they'd stay off heavily traveled corridors, helping improve transit times rather than lengthening them.
- Tade0 8y agoCar-sharing continues to increase (Uber and Lyft are set to go public this year) I don't see how these two fit the definition of "sharing". To me they were always just "taxis but with a tax-dodgy flavour".
- ginger123 8y agoSeriously, nothing can beat the convience of owning a car.
- hexo 8y agono it will not
- SllX 8y agoI’m holding out for the Cowboy Bebop future. Sure the Moon might have exploded and everyone on Earth forced underground, but personal transport will be basically a cheap ship with military-grade weapons and ability to escape the atmosphere and the planet’s gravity under its own power.
- abruzzi 8y agoOne thing that interests me is how there is such a vastly divergent set of opinions and relationships with vehicles even in just the HN community. When autonomous vehicles were getting a lot of press a few years ago, there were utopian articles predicting the banning of manually driven vehicles by 2025. On the other hand there are a lot of people absolutely convinced that these things are snake oil. I can see part of the gap being location. When I lived in Philadelphia 20 years ago, I had already “cut the cord” on cars, and simply lived on public transit. I suspect many/most city residents in dense major cities have lived car free for decades. The current optimism for leaving cars behind may be confined to suburban residents of those same cities. The density and lifestyle in those areas may be suited to these predictions. But there are a lot of parts of the country that conditions like density preclude these things, or at least make them a less valuable proposition. I live in a city of 200k. I know there is Uber here, but I’ve never known any person I know to use it. Cars and insurance are cheap, parking is free, and everything is spread out. The Uber proposition makes much less sense here. But I also imagine lifestyle can have a big impact on how convenient you see the idea of Uber or the autonomous vehicle subscription fleets that have been discussed in the past. A number of other posters have brought up these things that are more problematic in shared vehicles. But if you don’t repair your leaking roof yourself, you may not see the value in owning a vehicle where you can carry a few sheets of four by eight for home maintenance. I wonder if there are other factors that influence what side of the divide you fall on. (If my comments seem like I favor the car-owners, I do, but I certainly see how non-car-owner ideal can work for some people, though not me.)
- Fins 8y agoHN community, obviously, skews young, urban, and often "progressive". Quite the demographic that may not (right now!) be interested in car ownership. When I lived in Chicago, it was quite possible to live w/o a car (I still had one, because, hell, it's convenient). If you're an overpaid hipster in the SF bubble, you can absolutely do without a car, riding over little old ladies and baby strollers in a Bird or Lime scooter, and having some poor gig economy Joe Schmoe lug groceries and packages for you. And that it does not actually work for the rest of the world... well, they try not to set foot there, so why would they care. As for people who point at China, or some European country with lower car ownership, sure, you CAN do without. And 200 years ago people did without electricity and (gasp!) computers, too. But not many people want to go back there.
- leecarraher 8y agowasn't owning a horse made quaint by the fact that owning a car was far more advantageous? so what is replacing the car? even the authors own anecdote/ethos plug isn't that they cut the landline cord because they could just share a landline phone with their friends, it was because a personal cell phone was a more advanced replacement. maybe i am looking too deeply into an opinion piece from an author who thinks that their ability to predict the rise of cell phones in 1998 makes them an authority prognosticator. well him, zac morris, my fellow arrl, and anyone whose had the pleasure of cruising the citizen's band.
- apacheCamel 8y agoI do not understand the bitterness on both sides. Yes, people will still find ways to need a car, it just happens like that. Not everyone lives the same life or are in the same geographical location. People still find uses for horses. On the other side, people find ways to not have cars. Just because you need one everyday doesn't mean my single friend Bill who lives downtown NYC needs one too. Everybody has their life, let them live it the way they want to.
- stunt 8y agoThe same people who are owning more and more every day are pushing and trying to convince the rest of people to do not own anything by saying that owning is a bad thing and people should move to subscription models instead of owning anything.
- stunt 8y agoCar sharing will grow up more and more as people are getting used to not owning stuff.
- RickJWagner 8y agoHello! Person living in 'fly-over country' (that vast stretch between New York and LA) here. This idea is completely silly. Rural life (where all the food comes from) and the surrounding counties and cities aren't sustainable without cars.