3 ms·

Electrification of cars is useful -- but nothing compared to actually building livable cities, pushing bicycles, public transit and nuclear energy. That not onl

Electrification of cars is useful -- but nothing compared to actually building livable cities, pushing bicycles, public transit and nuclear energy. That not only does far more for global warming, but it makes living in cities far more enjoyable. He's actually slowing progress towards that with his asinine tunneling projects for single-occupant vehicles. However even if you disagree with that take, the fact is, FSD is unsafe. It's kinda fun, but it's tried to kill me a few times, and there's myriad YouTube videos of it trying to kill people. [edit] Elon's vision of the future is hardly some eco-leftist utopia. It's a fairly right-wing personal property forward world where inequality continues to be perpetrated by making people own (very expensive) electric cars to get around, and socializing the cost of free parking onto the poor. He's not a left-wing icon. He's not a villain either, he's just a great marketer.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
> He's actually slowing progress towards that with his asinine tunneling projects for single-occupant vehicles. From wiki: > According to Musk, the company's goal is to enhance tunneling speed enough such that establishing a tunnel network is financially feasible. No fan of Musk, but if a company can bring down the cost of tunneling so that it works well for single-occupant vehicles, that would be a huge deal for multi occupancy vehicles as well. This is a goal worthy of support, at least.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  That's just Elon's marketing. He's comparing the cost of digging a (very narrow) tunnel, with no emergency egress, to the cost of a fully-realized subway system with stations. In fact he's costing it out using commodity tunneling hardware. [1] [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/elon-musk-vegas-loop-traffic-b1988974.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/elon-musk-vegas-loop-traf...
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    So? If they can make that model work, it is still a big deal. I'm a bit tired of everyone thinking that only software can be disrupted. It could also be that they have no way of making this work, and will fail. That isn't weird for a startup either.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      Well my point is, a thin tunnel using existing commodity tunneling equipment, without egress, that you put a private $50,000 car into hardly seems like a big "disruption." In fact, it sounds like one extra lane of freeway with a roof on it. Why not beta test whether adding one extra lane of freeway, but covering it with a roof, improves traffic? I'm betting it won't.
      - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        Express lanes with limited access of course do, and tunnels are a great way to save the city above for new routes. But even barring that, I don't see a future for cities that doesn't involve moving more transportation infrastructure underground (for both buses and private vehicles).
        arcticbull 5y ago
        New capacity actually doesn't decrease traffic it increases it. It's called induced demand. [1] A sustainable future depends not on private cars in tiny tunnels, but subways and trains. Research by Kent Hymel of California State University of Northridge found that adding one percent more road capacity produces the exact same increase in the amount of vehicle miles traveled. Burying the road isn't going to change that. [1] https://archive.curbed.com/2020/3/6/21166655/highway-traffic-congestion-induced-demand https://archive.curbed.com/2020/3/6/21166655/highway-traffic...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- jcranmer 5y ago
  The fact that The Boring Company spends its efforts trying to build another iteration of a personal rapid transit system [1] as opposed to trying to win contracts for tunneling projects makes me think that they actually value their not-mass transit system design more than actually building better tunnels for existing systems. This is reinforced by the fact that the few times they have bid for transit proposals (e.g., the Chicago O'Hare express route), they're explicitly proposing noncompatibility with existing transit systems. And also the fact that the main way they seem to be trying to achieve cheaper tunneling principally by making smaller diameter tunnels rather than actually improving the ability to make tunnels similar to existing tunnels more cheaply. [1] Amusingly, I think the Las Vegas one the company built may be the first PRT system to not be automated. For a guy who keeps touting futurism, failing to achieve similar capabilities to antecedents from 50 years ago is pretty ironic.
tomp 5y ago
Do you have any examples of "livable cities"? People often point to Europe, but having lived in 3 different European cities (London, Zurich, Ljubljana) all of them are much better with a car (especially with a family - imagine shopping a weeks of groceries by bike!) (with the possible exception of London Zone 1 but well you use taxis "outsourced cars").
- arcticbull 5y ago
  If your issue is groceries and packages, why not simply lean on services that deliver groceries and supples by truck? Instacart and Amazon? And then you don't really need a personal car right? [edit] Hong Kong is a great example.
  - tomp 5y ago
    I fail to see how an Instacart driver driving a car is any more eco friendly than me driving a car. (Operationally… maybe less cars means less resource usage, but that’s not the biggest contribution to climate change… and there are other positives of owning your own car, e.g. trips)
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      Should be significantly more efficient to have 1 truck load up and provide groceries and packages to everyone on a road than say 50 cars right? Further you don't need to own a car to go on trips, car shares solve that! Just rent a car for the weekend when you want to leave town, or take a train.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

> He's actually slowing progress towards that with his asinine tunneling projects for single-occupant vehicles. From wiki: > According to Musk, the company's goal is to enhance tunneling speed enough such that establishing a tunnel network is financially feasible. No fan of Musk, but if a company can bring down the cost of tunneling so that it works well for single-occupant vehicles, that would be a huge deal for multi occupancy vehicles as well. This is a goal worthy of support, at least.

arcticbull 5y ago
That's just Elon's marketing. He's comparing the cost of digging a (very narrow) tunnel, with no emergency egress, to the cost of a fully-realized subway system with stations. In fact he's costing it out using commodity tunneling hardware. [1] [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/elon-musk-vegas-loop-traffic-b1988974.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/elon-musk-vegas-loop-traf...
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  So? If they can make that model work, it is still a big deal. I'm a bit tired of everyone thinking that only software can be disrupted. It could also be that they have no way of making this work, and will fail. That isn't weird for a startup either.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Well my point is, a thin tunnel using existing commodity tunneling equipment, without egress, that you put a private $50,000 car into hardly seems like a big "disruption." In fact, it sounds like one extra lane of freeway with a roof on it. Why not beta test whether adding one extra lane of freeway, but covering it with a roof, improves traffic? I'm betting it won't.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      Express lanes with limited access of course do, and tunnels are a great way to save the city above for new routes. But even barring that, I don't see a future for cities that doesn't involve moving more transportation infrastructure underground (for both buses and private vehicles).
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        New capacity actually doesn't decrease traffic it increases it. It's called induced demand. [1] A sustainable future depends not on private cars in tiny tunnels, but subways and trains. Research by Kent Hymel of California State University of Northridge found that adding one percent more road capacity produces the exact same increase in the amount of vehicle miles traveled. Burying the road isn't going to change that. [1] https://archive.curbed.com/2020/3/6/21166655/highway-traffic-congestion-induced-demand https://archive.curbed.com/2020/3/6/21166655/highway-traffic...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
jcranmer 5y ago
The fact that The Boring Company spends its efforts trying to build another iteration of a personal rapid transit system [1] as opposed to trying to win contracts for tunneling projects makes me think that they actually value their not-mass transit system design more than actually building better tunnels for existing systems. This is reinforced by the fact that the few times they have bid for transit proposals (e.g., the Chicago O'Hare express route), they're explicitly proposing noncompatibility with existing transit systems. And also the fact that the main way they seem to be trying to achieve cheaper tunneling principally by making smaller diameter tunnels rather than actually improving the ability to make tunnels similar to existing tunnels more cheaply. [1] Amusingly, I think the Las Vegas one the company built may be the first PRT system to not be automated. For a guy who keeps touting futurism, failing to achieve similar capabilities to antecedents from 50 years ago is pretty ironic.

tomp 5y ago

Do you have any examples of "livable cities"? People often point to Europe, but having lived in 3 different European cities (London, Zurich, Ljubljana) all of them are much better with a car (especially with a family - imagine shopping a weeks of groceries by bike!) (with the possible exception of London Zone 1 but well you use taxis "outsourced cars").

arcticbull 5y ago
If your issue is groceries and packages, why not simply lean on services that deliver groceries and supples by truck? Instacart and Amazon? And then you don't really need a personal car right? [edit] Hong Kong is a great example.
- tomp 5y ago
  I fail to see how an Instacart driver driving a car is any more eco friendly than me driving a car. (Operationally… maybe less cars means less resource usage, but that’s not the biggest contribution to climate change… and there are other positives of owning your own car, e.g. trips)
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Should be significantly more efficient to have 1 truck load up and provide groceries and packages to everyone on a road than say 50 cars right? Further you don't need to own a car to go on trips, car shares solve that! Just rent a car for the weekend when you want to leave town, or take a train.