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In theory. In practice the market has spoken as to what kind of a form-factor people find the most useful for personal transportation in different climates and

In theory. In practice the market has spoken as to what kind of a form-factor people find the most useful for personal transportation in different climates and economic development scenarios. There’s no reason why ICEs couldn’t have supported the kind of vehicles some people imagine other people need. The market has spoken, EVs only started gaining traction when they started resembling actual cars in form and function. Think of it as parallel evolution. Dolphins and fish.

CalRobert 4y ago
The market is profoundly distorted by single use zoning, parking minimums, density maximums, wide (and high speed) stroads, and other urban design choices that force long journeys. It's also not safe to be on an ebike surrounded by electric Hummers, F-350 super duties, and your normal "whole kindergarten class in the blind spot" Escalades. Having just spent a week in Utrecht it's very clear that "the market" can certainly show a preference for ebikes over cars.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  What's your justification for saying that it's the US with a profoundly distorted market and not places like Utrecht?
  - akgerber 4y ago
    The massive state, federal, and local bureaucracies shaping the public & private realm to always guarantee easy parking for automobiles & a network of high-throughput roadways between them yet only occasionally & reluctantly doing the same for other modes of transportation. Note that guaranteeing easy parking for automobiles also results in destinations being so far apart that other modes of transport usually become impractical.
  - hannasanarion 4y ago
    How about the fact that America's most walkable and transit-accessible neighborhoods are also the most expensive and highest demand? People want this kind of development, they flock to it, and they are willing to pay astronomically high prices to get it. The government keeps the supply low with exclusionary zoning that makes all types of construction except car-centric single family housing illegal.
    - keneda7 4y ago
      You have evidence of that claim? I took a look around me. The most expensive and highest demand areas are actually not transit accessible at all and walking is not really feasible as the houses have lots of land and are very spread out. I am in the Sacramento area for reference.
      - CalRobert 4y ago
        Yes, Granite Bay is a great place to keep your sports car collection, but places in Sacramento where you can walk and bike command a premium compared similar places without the same walkability.
        keneda7 4y ago
        But you are moving the goal posts here. The person I responded to didn't say compared to similar places without the same walkability. They said "the fact that America's most walkable and transit-accessible neighborhoods are also the most expensive and highest demand". Granite bay shows this to not be a fact.
      - tomtheelder 4y ago
        Well for starters Sacramento is just a really poor example. Most of CA isn't. It's a consequence of hyper aggressive SFH zoning (~80% of the SCAG area is SFH, used to be even higher) and the era in which CA grew being the mid century period. There basically aren't any properly transit served and walkable areas in Sacramento. Closest would be Midtown and Richmond Grove, but they aren't really very good at all compared to neighborhoods in cities with actual infrastructure. But despite that they are _still_ some of the most expensive neighborhoods in the area on a cost to sq foot basis. The trend of walkable transit served areas being in high demand is near universal across the US.
        keneda7 4y ago
        Again just like the other poster you are trying to move the goal posts. The comment did not say some. The comment said "the fact that America's most walkable and transit-accessible neighborhoods are also the most expensive and highest demand". I provided a single example that proves this statement is not a fact. edit: comment not commit
  - vidarh 4y ago
    Everywhere is distorted. As such it's meaningless to insist one or the other is preferred - it's down to an environment heavily influenced by policy. As such, choices can change if policies change.
  - CalRobert 4y ago
    I don't think I said that. All places people live, aside from frontiers, have rules applied to them and those rules affect how people get around. The Netherlands has different rules than the US, and within that framework the market (I didn't say the word free) shows a preference for ebikes. Similarly, when I lived in the US I had to go 1.1 miles to the nearest coffee shop (or shop of any sort), and opening a coffee shop in my neighbourhood would have been illegal, and shut down very quickly. And that wasn't even all that far from the downtown of a medium-sized city (Sacramento).
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    In lots of the US it's illegal for developers to propose anything other than Single-Family Homes. They are codified to have large minimum size requirements and often have setback requirements forcing the house to be a certain feet away from the street. Businesses are legally required to be segregated from residential used, even corner stores. Lots of businesses in the US are zoned to mandate a minimum amount of parking. The justification for a lot of these zoning laws is explicitly that developers and the market will not provide adequate home sizes or parking, so minimum requirements are forced on developers. When law forces huge houses, no mixed use, and huge minimum parking lots, the only built environment that emerges is a car dependent one. Older US suburban neighborhoods, like the post-WWII suburbs, had smaller (900-1200 sq ft.) homes because these minimum lot and floor area size requirements weren't in place yet. If you're curious about areas with different land-use requirements, there are cities in the US like Boston, Berkeley, or Emeryville (just off the top of my head) with more permissive zoning laws that have much lower car modeshare than other parts of the US.
- rangersanger 4y ago
  The situation in Utrecht isn’t a function of “the [free] market” though. It’s distorted by significant taxation of cars and subsidization of biking. It’s legislation on both sides, and American legislation can change, especially locally. Look at bentonville Arkansas for an example.
  - galaxyLogic 4y ago
    But does "free market" mean you are free to pollute the air and cause a climate crisis? Is that the kind of freedom we want?
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >The market is profoundly distorted by single use zoning, parking minimums, density maximums None of which they have in the developing world yet those nations become wealthier people buy cars basically as soon as they can make the economics pencil out. People like to sit in expensive four wheeled air-conditioned boxes more than they like the alternatives.
  - CalRobert 4y ago
    Cars are a great way to show you've become wealthy until everyone has one and suddenly driving isn't as pleasant. The developing world (vague terminology there, though - would somewhere like Bangkok count?) tends to have mediocre transport and no infrastructure to stop drivers from killing people riding bikes or walking.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > Utrecht is not representative of common reality. It is also not much representative of "market forces", cars have to respect very strict "Urban Access Regulations" (similarly across Europe, but in Holland in particular) Not that it is bad in general, but Utrecht is not a good example of what will happen around the World and actually make a difference. China + India will soon be inhabited by 3 billion people combined, Utrecht has only 500 thousand residents. It's basically a glitch in the matrix.
  - CalRobert 4y ago
    Small note - Utrecht is not in Holland.
    - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      Right, I translated in my mind from Italian Olanda.
bertil 4y ago
“The market” spoke twice, during the oil crisis of 1975. It was made very clear to said market that if oil was priced at competitive levels, people who made that decisions would be bombed out of existence and the memory of men. Horrors are committed every day, including today, in Yemen, in your name. Starvation, genocide, rapes… There is nothing more shockingly unethical and disgusting to pretend that killing millions of people every year and destroying entire countries is somehow moral because of “the market”.
zozbot234 4y ago
Streetcars are "EV's". They've been gaining traction for a 100 years and more.
- AstralStorm 4y ago
  They also tend to carry more traditional batteries (lead-acid) as they tend to be connected often to the grid.
778hbff 4y ago
> In practice the market has spoken as to what kind of a form-factor people find the most useful for personal transportation That market contains the heavy lobbying by oil firms and car industry to keep trains at the sorry state they are in.
ambientenv 4y ago
What if the market, often times a manifestation of social and cultural greed and ignorance (and acquiescence and conformity and manipulation), is wrong? What if the market, which has fundamentally brought us to the brink upon which we find our collective selves and is driven by short term profit motives, cannot be trusted to do the right thing for the sake of the future rather than the immediate or even near term? What if the market, the deity that capitaism worships, is only interested in self preservation and not at all concerned with sanctity of all life on the planet. I do believe it is both interesting and frustrating that people (in general) fail to challenge the validity and utility of their own beliefs, even when those beliefs have been shown to not hold up under the scrutiny of others. Then, there is also normacy bias.
- galaxyLogic 4y ago
  What's kind of silly is the adulation of "market" as some kind of God. Talking about, or implying that "markets are always right" is a diversion, a red herring by those who are served by such "markets". We need markets (super and other types) but just because we need them does not mean they are an intelligent being who is "always right". Is Greed good? Is Greed our next God? I think it was proven in a movie already that greed is not good.
hannob 4y ago
"Let's build bike lanes that are so scary only the bavest will dare to use them - and also subsidise cars in any way we can." - "The market has spoken, people want cars!"
- SuoDuanDao 4y ago
  Well, the market has also spoken as to what kind of councils get elected and what kind of plans those councils approve. Of course, that's in large part because car owners pay infrastructure taxes cyclists don't. But that's also precisely what the market is - the segment who's paying. If wishes built livable cities there'd probably be more of them.
  - fowkswe 4y ago
    The market is rigged by an industry(ies) (auto, oil) to develop society in its favor. Without a major 'refactor', the US doesn't have a chance at efficient urban design that would support individual use transport.
    - jcampbell1 4y ago
      It is rigged because people want high speed climate controlled transportation. Prior to oil and autos, there were enclosed carriages pulled by horses.
      - fowkswe 4y ago
        The market was rigged by oil and auto before cars were climate controlled.
        jcampbell1 4y ago
        There are antique cast iron boxes that were filled with hot charcoal to keep carriages warm.
  - californical 4y ago
ldh0011 4y ago
I don't think it follows from the fact that most people drive (buy) cars in the US that they actually prefer it. Corporate lobbying and politics have ensured that you can't function in the vast majority of the US without a car. People in cities in Europe that support and/or prioritize bike/pedestrian traffic see many to most people preferring it. I went through childhood, uni, and the first year of my professional life living in car-dependent (but still nice) places. I moved to a city where I can (and do) live without a car and I vastly prefer not having to drive. I suspect many who say they prefer cars haven't even had the opportunity to live somewhere where they aren't a necessity.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  People that live nearby city center prefer them, get a few more KM radius away and sunddenly cycling to city center is no longer so much fun.
  - ldh0011 4y ago
    80.7%: Percent of the US population living within urban areas https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-areas/urban-rural/ua-facts.html https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g... The fact that some US urban areas are less dense and more car dependent than most European urban areas is at least in part due to the reasons I mentioned already. Obviously people who live in rural areas will need and prefer cars but my point is that it is hard to say "Americans prefer cars" when most Americans have never had the opportunity to live somewhere where they don't need a car.
saint_fiasco 4y ago
Those other kinds of ICE vehicles are supported in poorer markets. In the Third World people use motorcycles and scooters and so on all the time, for all sorts of things. If lithium becomes scarce, electric vehicles become more expensive. An increase in the price of vehicles produces a similar effect to a decrease in people's incomes, so the market would push people towards smaller vehicles just like in the Third World now. As a concrete example, tiny electric cars are common in China. Amusingly, the government doesn't like tiny cars because they are hard to regulate. It really is the market that has spoken. https://restofworld.org/2021/tesla-vs-tiny-cars/ https://restofworld.org/2021/tesla-vs-tiny-cars/
- jollyllama 4y ago
  UK and USA have some of the lowest rates of motorcycle usage in the world, they're part of the transportation solution in almost every other nation more than they are here. It's just never considered because the types of people working on policy in this area aren't motorcyclists.
  - TexanFeller 4y ago
    Motorcycles are unavoidably far more dangerous than cars, that's the reason it's not seriously considered in nations that are rich enough to use cars. I used to ride. Had a major crash and got lucky. My relatives that rode lost organs. Several of our biker friends died or spent months in the hospital after their wrecks.
    - jollyllama 4y ago
      It would be interesting to see the ratio of deaths per 100 million miles driven in motorcycles vs all other motor vehicles across countries.
jgilias 4y ago
Answering to my own comment to answer the broader discussion. - I’m not from the US and I’m not talking about the US market; - I don’t believe “the market” provides some value judgement. Rather, it’s just the aggregate behavior of people under their existing realities. We can and should aim to change those realities, but ignoring them because “they’re wrong” will not yield workable solutions.
mikem170 4y ago
I wish the market did a better job of ensuring that car owners pay all the related infrastructure costs for their vehicles, as opposed to some things that are paid for by other taxpayers. Gas might cost more without subsidies. Car ownership in cities would cost more to pay for parking. Roads outside of cities would be paid for from local taxes. Trucks would pay more because they damage roads much more than cars, which would encourage rail and boat transport. Etc. It's not a free market if these things are being paid for by all taxpayers, including those who don't drive, or don't drive as much.
otabdeveloper4 4y ago
I guarantee you 100 percent that there are orders of magnitude more electric scooters in the world that electric car-shaped vehicles. You are simply wrong.

CalRobert 4y ago

The market is profoundly distorted by single use zoning, parking minimums, density maximums, wide (and high speed) stroads, and other urban design choices that force long journeys. It's also not safe to be on an ebike surrounded by electric Hummers, F-350 super duties, and your normal "whole kindergarten class in the blind spot" Escalades. Having just spent a week in Utrecht it's very clear that "the market" can certainly show a preference for ebikes over cars.

rootusrootus 4y ago
What's your justification for saying that it's the US with a profoundly distorted market and not places like Utrecht?
- akgerber 4y ago
  The massive state, federal, and local bureaucracies shaping the public & private realm to always guarantee easy parking for automobiles & a network of high-throughput roadways between them yet only occasionally & reluctantly doing the same for other modes of transportation. Note that guaranteeing easy parking for automobiles also results in destinations being so far apart that other modes of transport usually become impractical.
- hannasanarion 4y ago
  How about the fact that America's most walkable and transit-accessible neighborhoods are also the most expensive and highest demand? People want this kind of development, they flock to it, and they are willing to pay astronomically high prices to get it. The government keeps the supply low with exclusionary zoning that makes all types of construction except car-centric single family housing illegal.
  - keneda7 4y ago
    You have evidence of that claim? I took a look around me. The most expensive and highest demand areas are actually not transit accessible at all and walking is not really feasible as the houses have lots of land and are very spread out. I am in the Sacramento area for reference.
    - CalRobert 4y ago
      Yes, Granite Bay is a great place to keep your sports car collection, but places in Sacramento where you can walk and bike command a premium compared similar places without the same walkability.
      - keneda7 4y ago
        But you are moving the goal posts here. The person I responded to didn't say compared to similar places without the same walkability. They said "the fact that America's most walkable and transit-accessible neighborhoods are also the most expensive and highest demand". Granite bay shows this to not be a fact.
    - tomtheelder 4y ago
      Well for starters Sacramento is just a really poor example. Most of CA isn't. It's a consequence of hyper aggressive SFH zoning (~80% of the SCAG area is SFH, used to be even higher) and the era in which CA grew being the mid century period. There basically aren't any properly transit served and walkable areas in Sacramento. Closest would be Midtown and Richmond Grove, but they aren't really very good at all compared to neighborhoods in cities with actual infrastructure. But despite that they are _still_ some of the most expensive neighborhoods in the area on a cost to sq foot basis. The trend of walkable transit served areas being in high demand is near universal across the US.
      - keneda7 4y ago
        Again just like the other poster you are trying to move the goal posts. The comment did not say some. The comment said "the fact that America's most walkable and transit-accessible neighborhoods are also the most expensive and highest demand". I provided a single example that proves this statement is not a fact. edit: comment not commit
- vidarh 4y ago
  Everywhere is distorted. As such it's meaningless to insist one or the other is preferred - it's down to an environment heavily influenced by policy. As such, choices can change if policies change.
- CalRobert 4y ago
  I don't think I said that. All places people live, aside from frontiers, have rules applied to them and those rules affect how people get around. The Netherlands has different rules than the US, and within that framework the market (I didn't say the word free) shows a preference for ebikes. Similarly, when I lived in the US I had to go 1.1 miles to the nearest coffee shop (or shop of any sort), and opening a coffee shop in my neighbourhood would have been illegal, and shut down very quickly. And that wasn't even all that far from the downtown of a medium-sized city (Sacramento).
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  In lots of the US it's illegal for developers to propose anything other than Single-Family Homes. They are codified to have large minimum size requirements and often have setback requirements forcing the house to be a certain feet away from the street. Businesses are legally required to be segregated from residential used, even corner stores. Lots of businesses in the US are zoned to mandate a minimum amount of parking. The justification for a lot of these zoning laws is explicitly that developers and the market will not provide adequate home sizes or parking, so minimum requirements are forced on developers. When law forces huge houses, no mixed use, and huge minimum parking lots, the only built environment that emerges is a car dependent one. Older US suburban neighborhoods, like the post-WWII suburbs, had smaller (900-1200 sq ft.) homes because these minimum lot and floor area size requirements weren't in place yet. If you're curious about areas with different land-use requirements, there are cities in the US like Boston, Berkeley, or Emeryville (just off the top of my head) with more permissive zoning laws that have much lower car modeshare than other parts of the US.
rangersanger 4y ago
The situation in Utrecht isn’t a function of “the [free] market” though. It’s distorted by significant taxation of cars and subsidization of biking. It’s legislation on both sides, and American legislation can change, especially locally. Look at bentonville Arkansas for an example.
- galaxyLogic 4y ago
  But does "free market" mean you are free to pollute the air and cause a climate crisis? Is that the kind of freedom we want?
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>The market is profoundly distorted by single use zoning, parking minimums, density maximums None of which they have in the developing world yet those nations become wealthier people buy cars basically as soon as they can make the economics pencil out. People like to sit in expensive four wheeled air-conditioned boxes more than they like the alternatives.
- CalRobert 4y ago
  Cars are a great way to show you've become wealthy until everyone has one and suddenly driving isn't as pleasant. The developing world (vague terminology there, though - would somewhere like Bangkok count?) tends to have mediocre transport and no infrastructure to stop drivers from killing people riding bikes or walking.
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> Utrecht is not representative of common reality. It is also not much representative of "market forces", cars have to respect very strict "Urban Access Regulations" (similarly across Europe, but in Holland in particular) Not that it is bad in general, but Utrecht is not a good example of what will happen around the World and actually make a difference. China + India will soon be inhabited by 3 billion people combined, Utrecht has only 500 thousand residents. It's basically a glitch in the matrix.
- CalRobert 4y ago
  Small note - Utrecht is not in Holland.
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    Right, I translated in my mind from Italian Olanda.

bertil 4y ago

“The market” spoke twice, during the oil crisis of 1975. It was made very clear to said market that if oil was priced at competitive levels, people who made that decisions would be bombed out of existence and the memory of men. Horrors are committed every day, including today, in Yemen, in your name. Starvation, genocide, rapes… There is nothing more shockingly unethical and disgusting to pretend that killing millions of people every year and destroying entire countries is somehow moral because of “the market”.

zozbot234 4y ago

Streetcars are "EV's". They've been gaining traction for a 100 years and more.

AstralStorm 4y ago
They also tend to carry more traditional batteries (lead-acid) as they tend to be connected often to the grid.

778hbff 4y ago

> In practice the market has spoken as to what kind of a form-factor people find the most useful for personal transportation That market contains the heavy lobbying by oil firms and car industry to keep trains at the sorry state they are in.

ambientenv 4y ago

What if the market, often times a manifestation of social and cultural greed and ignorance (and acquiescence and conformity and manipulation), is wrong? What if the market, which has fundamentally brought us to the brink upon which we find our collective selves and is driven by short term profit motives, cannot be trusted to do the right thing for the sake of the future rather than the immediate or even near term? What if the market, the deity that capitaism worships, is only interested in self preservation and not at all concerned with sanctity of all life on the planet. I do believe it is both interesting and frustrating that people (in general) fail to challenge the validity and utility of their own beliefs, even when those beliefs have been shown to not hold up under the scrutiny of others. Then, there is also normacy bias.

galaxyLogic 4y ago
What's kind of silly is the adulation of "market" as some kind of God. Talking about, or implying that "markets are always right" is a diversion, a red herring by those who are served by such "markets". We need markets (super and other types) but just because we need them does not mean they are an intelligent being who is "always right". Is Greed good? Is Greed our next God? I think it was proven in a movie already that greed is not good.

hannob 4y ago

"Let's build bike lanes that are so scary only the bavest will dare to use them - and also subsidise cars in any way we can." - "The market has spoken, people want cars!"

SuoDuanDao 4y ago
Well, the market has also spoken as to what kind of councils get elected and what kind of plans those councils approve. Of course, that's in large part because car owners pay infrastructure taxes cyclists don't. But that's also precisely what the market is - the segment who's paying. If wishes built livable cities there'd probably be more of them.
- fowkswe 4y ago
  The market is rigged by an industry(ies) (auto, oil) to develop society in its favor. Without a major 'refactor', the US doesn't have a chance at efficient urban design that would support individual use transport.
  - jcampbell1 4y ago
    It is rigged because people want high speed climate controlled transportation. Prior to oil and autos, there were enclosed carriages pulled by horses.
    - fowkswe 4y ago
      The market was rigged by oil and auto before cars were climate controlled.
      - jcampbell1 4y ago
        There are antique cast iron boxes that were filled with hot charcoal to keep carriages warm.
- californical 4y ago

ldh0011 4y ago

I don't think it follows from the fact that most people drive (buy) cars in the US that they actually prefer it. Corporate lobbying and politics have ensured that you can't function in the vast majority of the US without a car. People in cities in Europe that support and/or prioritize bike/pedestrian traffic see many to most people preferring it. I went through childhood, uni, and the first year of my professional life living in car-dependent (but still nice) places. I moved to a city where I can (and do) live without a car and I vastly prefer not having to drive. I suspect many who say they prefer cars haven't even had the opportunity to live somewhere where they aren't a necessity.

pjmlp 4y ago
People that live nearby city center prefer them, get a few more KM radius away and sunddenly cycling to city center is no longer so much fun.
- ldh0011 4y ago
  80.7%: Percent of the US population living within urban areas https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-areas/urban-rural/ua-facts.html https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g... The fact that some US urban areas are less dense and more car dependent than most European urban areas is at least in part due to the reasons I mentioned already. Obviously people who live in rural areas will need and prefer cars but my point is that it is hard to say "Americans prefer cars" when most Americans have never had the opportunity to live somewhere where they don't need a car.

saint_fiasco 4y ago

Those other kinds of ICE vehicles are supported in poorer markets. In the Third World people use motorcycles and scooters and so on all the time, for all sorts of things. If lithium becomes scarce, electric vehicles become more expensive. An increase in the price of vehicles produces a similar effect to a decrease in people's incomes, so the market would push people towards smaller vehicles just like in the Third World now. As a concrete example, tiny electric cars are common in China. Amusingly, the government doesn't like tiny cars because they are hard to regulate. It really is the market that has spoken. https://restofworld.org/2021/tesla-vs-tiny-cars/ https://restofworld.org/2021/tesla-vs-tiny-cars/

jollyllama 4y ago
UK and USA have some of the lowest rates of motorcycle usage in the world, they're part of the transportation solution in almost every other nation more than they are here. It's just never considered because the types of people working on policy in this area aren't motorcyclists.
- TexanFeller 4y ago
  Motorcycles are unavoidably far more dangerous than cars, that's the reason it's not seriously considered in nations that are rich enough to use cars. I used to ride. Had a major crash and got lucky. My relatives that rode lost organs. Several of our biker friends died or spent months in the hospital after their wrecks.
  - jollyllama 4y ago
    It would be interesting to see the ratio of deaths per 100 million miles driven in motorcycles vs all other motor vehicles across countries.

jgilias 4y ago

Answering to my own comment to answer the broader discussion. - I’m not from the US and I’m not talking about the US market; - I don’t believe “the market” provides some value judgement. Rather, it’s just the aggregate behavior of people under their existing realities. We can and should aim to change those realities, but ignoring them because “they’re wrong” will not yield workable solutions.

mikem170 4y ago

I wish the market did a better job of ensuring that car owners pay all the related infrastructure costs for their vehicles, as opposed to some things that are paid for by other taxpayers. Gas might cost more without subsidies. Car ownership in cities would cost more to pay for parking. Roads outside of cities would be paid for from local taxes. Trucks would pay more because they damage roads much more than cars, which would encourage rail and boat transport. Etc. It's not a free market if these things are being paid for by all taxpayers, including those who don't drive, or don't drive as much.

otabdeveloper4 4y ago

I guarantee you 100 percent that there are orders of magnitude more electric scooters in the world that electric car-shaped vehicles. You are simply wrong.