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That advise just fails miseably in practice. We can't go back to non-mechanical sources of power unless we want to economically regress to those times. Can you

by Ygg2 8y ago

That advise just fails miseably in practice. We can't go back to non-mechanical sources of power unless we want to economically regress to those times. Can you imagine ships taking months to cross Atlantic? Can you imagine horse being used for delivery?

franky47 8y ago
The fact that delivery requires moving a couple of tons of vehicle to deliver at most 50kg of packages is where the problem lies. Larger delivery vehicles will obviously be required for remote locations and logistics, but for edge delivery (to re-use Cloud terminology) in urban spaces, there are many cases where soft mobility solutions would make much more sense, like electric-assisted cycling. DPD has started investing in those solutions [1]. As Dr Elliot Fishman said when Dominos announced pizza delivery by self-driving cars: "If the answer is a 1500kg ton car to deliver a 0.9kg pizza, you're not giving the problem your full attention". - https://twitter.com/ElliotFishman/status/907698051589869568 https://twitter.com/ElliotFishman/status/907698051589869568 [1] https://electrek.co/2019/04/10/p1-quadricycle-e-cargo-bike/ https://electrek.co/2019/04/10/p1-quadricycle-e-cargo-bike/
- Ygg2 8y ago
  Isn't Amazon trying something like that with their drone program?
  - whenchamenia 8y ago
    Flying drones are unlikely to be more efficient at scale than trucks.
viraptor 8y ago
You're thinking of going back rather than improving. Why a horse for delivery? How about (for example) - less frequent shopping, delivered in a more efficient way, than one family car at a time - improvements in public transport to reduce one-person drives - more remote work, removing daily commuters
jacquesm 8y ago
> We can't go back to non-mechanical sources of power unless we want to economically regress to those times. I really don't see why not. > Can you imagine ships taking months to cross Atlantic? Can you imagine horse being used for delivery? Yes I can. I can also imagine less shipping by producing more stuff locally. > Can you imagine horse being used for delivery? No, but I can imagine deliveries to be much more efficient than they are today. Just for one anecdotal example, last week I ordered two memory modules for a NAS, they arrived in two different shipments. Even a moments' reflection would have shown the ridiculousness of partial shipments, for one that particular NAS needs its memory incremented in double banks, for another, you'd have to do two upgrades even if it worked. So two different DHL trucks had to drive a significant distance in order to deliver two very small (less than 30 grams each) devices. The inefficiency there is staggering.

by Ygg2 8y ago

franky47 8y ago

The fact that delivery requires moving a couple of tons of vehicle to deliver at most 50kg of packages is where the problem lies. Larger delivery vehicles will obviously be required for remote locations and logistics, but for edge delivery (to re-use Cloud terminology) in urban spaces, there are many cases where soft mobility solutions would make much more sense, like electric-assisted cycling. DPD has started investing in those solutions [1]. As Dr Elliot Fishman said when Dominos announced pizza delivery by self-driving cars: "If the answer is a 1500kg ton car to deliver a 0.9kg pizza, you're not giving the problem your full attention". - https://twitter.com/ElliotFishman/status/907698051589869568 https://twitter.com/ElliotFishman/status/907698051589869568 [1] https://electrek.co/2019/04/10/p1-quadricycle-e-cargo-bike/ https://electrek.co/2019/04/10/p1-quadricycle-e-cargo-bike/

Ygg2 8y ago
Isn't Amazon trying something like that with their drone program?
- whenchamenia 8y ago
  Flying drones are unlikely to be more efficient at scale than trucks.

viraptor 8y ago

You're thinking of going back rather than improving. Why a horse for delivery? How about (for example) - less frequent shopping, delivered in a more efficient way, than one family car at a time - improvements in public transport to reduce one-person drives - more remote work, removing daily commuters

jacquesm 8y ago

> We can't go back to non-mechanical sources of power unless we want to economically regress to those times. I really don't see why not. > Can you imagine ships taking months to cross Atlantic? Can you imagine horse being used for delivery? Yes I can. I can also imagine less shipping by producing more stuff locally. > Can you imagine horse being used for delivery? No, but I can imagine deliveries to be much more efficient than they are today. Just for one anecdotal example, last week I ordered two memory modules for a NAS, they arrived in two different shipments. Even a moments' reflection would have shown the ridiculousness of partial shipments, for one that particular NAS needs its memory incremented in double banks, for another, you'd have to do two upgrades even if it worked. So two different DHL trucks had to drive a significant distance in order to deliver two very small (less than 30 grams each) devices. The inefficiency there is staggering.