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I don't know why the other reply to this post got downvoted to hell. THe person has a point. Fully autonomous cars are cool... don't get me wrong. But electric

• Frogeman 3y ago
  I would do anything to keep a personal vehicle and live with land separating me and my neighbors. I have a 20-30% incident rate taking the BART in the last year. If public transit isn't similar in safety to the japanese system I have no interest in bus/train systems.
  • uoaei 3y ago
    20-30% incident rate? What kinds of incidents?
• adave 3y ago
  That ebike can barely protect itself let alone be autonomous and run for more than a few miles at slow speeds. Not realistic any way but purely efficiency based way which you pointed out, still unrealistic for 99% of US population unfortunately. Maybe in Europe where places are more walkable.
• geraldwhen 3y ago
  My city doesn’t even have sidewalks. Bikes aren’t happening.
  • llambda 3y ago
    While I understand your point is likely that sidewalks would come before later advancements (like support for bikes) I want to make it clear that bikes do not belong on sidewalks. If you ride a bike please ride it in the street with other vehicles. This is the law in some jurisdictions (such as where I live) but frequently ignored. Failure to do this poses a serious risk to pedestrians. Please do not use sidewalks as an alternative road.
    • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      Some sidewalks are designed for bikes, especially in Europe. If you are on one of those, pedestrians beware (especially in Netherlands and Germany). I prefer bike lanes on roads or bike trails. Driving on roads with traffic for a small amount of time: OK, but all the time: hard no.
    • dekhn 3y ago
      I've stopped advising people to not ride bikes on sidewalks, especially opposite the direction of traffic, even in situations where it's legally permitted (for example, kids in my area are allowed to ride on sidewalks). People get really worked up when you ask them to stop, really angry! Which I find so odd because if somebody comes up to me and says something is both illegal and unsafe, I check the laws, and put some critical thought into what the risks could be, and then typically comply if I'm convinced, or simply respond with "I have heard what you are asking, but it's not absolutely required, so I will continue to do so."
    • geraldwhen 3y ago
      There are few to no pedestrians because there are few to no sidewalks. Where sidewalks exist, it is legal to bike on them in my state.
• Retric 3y ago
  It doesn’t actually take that much energy to move a 4000 lb vehicle. 15,000 miles per year * 1 kWh / 4 miles ~= 10.3 kWh per day ~= 430 watts 24/7. Few loads are 24/7 but a single crypto mining PC can easily use several times that.
  • barbazoo 3y ago
    I got 15,000 miles * 1.344 kWh/mile = 20,160 kWh or 55 kWh / day
    • Retric 3y ago
      Several ~4k lb EV’s get ~400 mile of range on a 100 kWh battery pack that’s 0.25 kWh/mile or 1 kWh / 4 miles. The some EV’s like the Hummer EV are much worse, but that is also ~9,000 pounds fully loaded.
    • coryrc 3y ago
      Most EVs are 0.2-0.4 kWh/mi.
  • zeroonetwothree 3y ago
    And if you solar charge your car it basically doesn’t matter anyway. You can charge at peak production times so it’s extremely efficient for the grid. We also have to consider that bikes aren’t super efficient either.
• Aurornis 3y ago
  > A 60lb e-bike can also transport a 200 lb person whilst using far less resources (both to make the vehicle and to operate it) and space. E-bikes are great for the situations, climates, and people who can use them. E-bikes are not a substitute for the majority of people’s transportation needs. I think the young, healthy people who live in moderate climates with good weather, short commutes, and little need to haul anything often forget that they’re own transportation needs don’t match the average person’s.
  • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    > and little need to haul anything often forget The dutch created the cargo bike for this very reason. But they have the climate and biking infrastructure to support that kind of lifestyle. We (Americans) don't, I wish we did.
    • tjohns 3y ago
      Cargo bikes are great, but when I think of "hauling things" I think of items much larger than would ever fit there. You're not going to haul lumber or sheet metal in a cargo bike, and that's the easy case.
      • pg314 3y ago
        Why not? I do.
      • porsupah 3y ago
        Funny you should mention such use cases.. https://philsturgeon.com/carry-shit-olympics/ https://philsturgeon.com/carry-shit-olympics/
      • jeffbee 3y ago
        When I haul lumber—small homeowner amounts, not construction crew amounts—I always use my bike because with my bike trailer I can haul lumber of any length, while it's not safe to use my car for anything longer than 8 feet.
      • 3y ago
• meowkit 3y ago
  You’re comparing the merits of apples to oranges and not thinking about whether the soil or terrain is suitable for an apple tree or an orange tree. We should have public transit improvements across the board, and we should have ebikes/more bikelanes and more mixed used land. The reality is that there is too much red tape/bureaucracy, too much nimbyism, and not enough political firepower to build out that infrastructure. The majority of the US is car dependent, and we are stuck in that local optima. Self driving cars will ease the burden by making it realistic to not own a car (you just rideshare for cheap). Less car owners means there will be more demand for better public transportation infrastructure.
• jtriangle 3y ago
  Cool, you have an affordable, tenuously waterproofed, chinese mass produced e-bike, it's your only available mode of transportation, you need to go into the office for a meeting, and it's raining. Welcome to hell. Also, not sure if you've used public transportation recently, but man, it SUCKS. Far less time efficient than a car, often crowded during the times you want to use it, and ZERO enforcement of proper etiquette or rules or regulations as far as riders are concerned. If you could promise me a pleasant public transportation service, clean, no panhandling, no dude blasting music from his shitty offbrand bluetooth speaker, not unbearably hot/cold, armed security keeping the peace, then sure, I'll ride it every day. We both know that is literally never going to happen, and public transport will continue to be a minimally viable pipe dream that we spend far too much money on. TL;DR; Cars are here to stay, you need to make the cities work with them. Yes it's a harder problem to solve, but it's the problem you've got.
  • nerdbert 3y ago
    > Cool, you have an affordable, tenuously waterproofed, chinese mass produced e-bike, it's your only available mode of transportation, you need to go into the office for a meeting, and it's raining. Welcome to hell. It's raining half the time here in the Netherlands. You can stand under a convenient overhang in the banking district of Amsterdam at 8am and watch the bankers pour into the underground bike parking lots. They use cheap and readily available outerwear that covers their clothes - including shoes - and keeps them dry. Suits, skirts, high heels, whatever.
    • sitkack 3y ago
      No! It is impossible, simple untrue and cars are the only solution. /s If you come up with more evidence, I’ll move the straw goal post.
    • themaninthedark 3y ago
      And thus contributing to the PSAF/forever chemical problem.
  • renewiltord 3y ago
• mlinsey 3y ago
  We aren't talking about public spending on self-driving car infrastructure vs. bikes and mass-transit infrastructure. I would much rather fund the latter with public money. What we're talking about is erecting regulatory barriers for a technology that could solve one very large problem (auto safety), just because that technology doesn't solve some other problem (climate). This is like saying data privacy protections on a social networking site are not the right solution, because they don't really solve the misinformation problem. My parents who live out in the burbs can only drive for so much longer. I sure hope they aren't as stubborn as my grandparent who drove to the age of 90 and got into an accident (fortunately with only a parked car), but either way I don't think finally learning to ride a bike at the age of 70 is the answer either. We should move forward with rolling self-driving cars as quickly as we safely can. Speaking as someone who does not own a car and has no desire to ever own a car, I think it would benefit me a lot too, by making it less likely for me to get run over while I walk or bike around, the fear of the latter being the biggest obstacle preventing most people I know from biking more too.
• dmix 3y ago
  The point of autonomous electric vehicles isn't to revolutionize personal transportation. Everyone's not just sitting around trying to re-think how we can improve our lives as aggressively as possible. As radical as it is removing a driver in terms of what it means for people's economic relationship to cars and for business operations it's still an incremental adjustment in human behaviour...for regular people. That's how technology gets adopted in the real world. You don't need to think hard and long about why ebikes are still going to be limited to downtown-living urbanites and recreational casual riders [1]. Basically in an ideal world it will significantly expanding the existing niche biking population in American cities, taking existing riders further/long (ramping up average usage) and introducing tons of new riders to the streets. But still not enough to significantly take cars off roads in a macro-context, especially considering how many people live in suburbs or city neighbourhoods which are glorified suburbs. [1] I'm just trying to imagine 95% of my family members even getting on an e-bike for recreation let alone as a serious alternative to using a car.
• seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  E-bikes are a non-started due to theft problems. If you think coning of a robo-taxi is bad, have a few prowlers coming by every hour looking for a bike to poach, it is much worse for the e-bike crowd. If you are going with taxis/ubers/personal transit anyways, I think autonomous makes a lot of sense. They basically allow you to optimize your road bandwidth if taken to an extreme level (which I'm sure more authoritarian countries with huge traffic problems will jump on). But you are right: the better answer is mass transit, for optimizing roadway bandwidth (and energy resources). I for one look forward to a day where I can have my car drive us from Seattle to Yellowstone. I know I probably should have flown and rented a car onsite, it is really whimsical, but I want to try that at least once.
  • thaeli 3y ago
    Unless we're ever ready to start treating bike thieves like horse thieves, that's unlikely to ever change. And I doubt we'll ever have the political will to do that, or even a kinder gentler version of it.
    • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      Ya, but that just means I'm more likely to have an EV car than E-bike. The former is must less likely to get stolen, and the latter can still be very expensive (although not as expensive as the EV car).
• renewiltord 3y ago
  We have rental ebikes in San Francisco. I commute daily by them. My friend has some good footage he'll post today to show you what it's like. The best drivers to share the road with on an e-bike are AVs. They are polite, allow for bike lane to sharrow merges, give room, etc.
• briandear 3y ago
  You think cars just transport humans? I can’t tow trailers with an e-bike (or a city bus.) An e-bike doesn’t protect you from the weather. Regarding public transit — nice of you’re in Zurich. A nightmare in Los Angeles. Even in public-transport-friendly Europe, unless you live in a major city, public transport is a hassle. I get it, certain segments of people hate private transportation. But being under the illusion that the entire world can become “walkable” and “bike-able” to suit so naïve Sim City vision of the future is just not reality. Farmers getting tending their farms, buying machine parts, transporting things — are they going to do that on a bike or a bus? How about people that need to move furniture, or take their large dogs to the vet. Are they going to do that on bikes? What about people that go camping, rock climbing, or like to ride dirt bikes in the desert? Does the public bus go to Zion National Park? Or even people buying a week’s worth of groceries for a family of six, are they going to ride bikes in 100 degree weather to do that? Publix transportation has a place for sure, but this idea that we need to end cars is just silly. The freedom of movement is fundamental to freedom in general. Having lived through Paris transit strikes, as well as numerous major storms — the idea that cars should be replaced is madness. I remember when I lived in Jersey City during Superstorm Sandy and my wife’s due date was the day the storm arrived. The ability for us to quickly evacuate to Albany was critical. If I relied on public transportation, my wife and I would have been stranded in a blacked out city with no means to get anywhere. If this is about “climate,” then perhaps tell China to clean up their act and when that happens, then we can talk about lowering our quality of life to prevent some hypothetical “emergency.”
• dventimi 3y ago
  Personally, I believe our transport needs present many problems, with many factors, requiring many solutions. I wouldn't expect any one thing to be "the right solution." Autonomous vehicles offer productivity gains, safety gains, and even energy efficiency gains. If that's all they do, personally I regard that as progress.
• simple-thoughts 3y ago
  I’m just imagining going out on an ebike in the local weather here… lol. Maybe e-bikes are a good solution in SF where the weather is great year round but not in most places in the world.
  • jeffbee 3y ago
    E-bikes outsell EVs and with a CAGR of 10% they will soon have a majority share of the bicycle market. This is not weather-dependent. The e-bike share of the bicycle market in Finland is 15%, and e-bike unit sales in that country are about triple EV unit sales. The population centers of Finland are all north of the continental United States and virtually all of Canada.
    • simple-thoughts 3y ago
      Something people often forget about Helsinki, Finland is that the weather is quite nice year round. Anyway I wasn’t even thinking about e-bikes in winter, but rather what it would be like near my residence in monsoon season (which is currently ongoing). Traveling on an e-bike in steamy heat with wind and rain just sounds terrible.
  • orange_county 3y ago
    Weather isn’t the problem. Urban planning is problem and the United States does a terrible job of making transportation good for anyone but cars.
• lamontcg 3y ago
  people who think public transportation/e-bikes alone can completely wipe out single vehicle trips are delusional idealists.
• 1024core 3y ago
  > A 60lb e-bike can also transport a 200 lb person whilst using far less resources (both to make the vehicle and to operate it) and space. Have you ever ridden bikes in SF? I have. Even though I was an occasional rider, I got into 2 accidents that could have seriously hurt me (just through pure luck I didn't end up with hospitalization-worthy injuries). Both not my fault (one a dooring; another a driver turning into me without looking). Ask any rider in SF, and they'll tell you that SF is quite dangerous for bicyclists.
  • fnimick 3y ago
    The solution to that is to build better infrastructure to remove bicycle/vehicle conflict points, not put everyone in cars so they can be "safe".
    • 8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y ago
      SF can't build a public toilet without it turning into a national debacle. I wouldn't be holding my breath for city-wide infrastructure for biking improving anytime soon with the amount of grifting and NIMBYism in the city. Uber and Cruise are the market's response to public infrastructure not meeting the population's needs due to politics, rent-seeking et al. The media love to disparage them, but as consumers they are exactly what many of us needed in this city. A more civilized solution might be possible elsewhere, but not here in SF.
    • ironman1478 3y ago
      SFMTA is trying and literally making anti infrastructure, such as Valencia. I agree with your solution, but politically it's going nowhere. Self driving cars exist because our politicians are inept.
• zizee 3y ago
  I don't see why this technology would not be applied to minibus type public transportation, and we'll quickly see it enhancing public transportation. These vehicles are also likely to play a lot nicer with cyclists, vs emotional humans that are angered by cyclists for some reason.
• opportune 3y ago
  Sure. But that should be proposed independently of AV, it’s not an argument against AV. Personally this line of reasoning is something I see all the time in SF when the local NIMBYs want to hand wring about something - they’ll reject something saying we should do X instead when X is not even being proposed or discussed, and they certainly aren’t trying to make X happen either. It’s not really about X to them, it’s just a rhetorical tool to stop the thing they want to stop. I’m not saying you’re doing that but given it’s prevalence in SF and the recent media surge against AV in SF I think this phenomenon is starting to rear it’s ugly head.
• km3r 3y ago
  I hadn't even considered a bike in SF due to the rampant theft, despite not having a car and taking MUNI/BART daily. And SF is not alone in this. As a country we need to figure out how to bring out crime levels down. The few times I do call an Uber (or Waymo/Cruise if available), I am likely intoxicated or needing to get somewhere ASAP. We are very far away from public transit always be faster and biking while intoxicated is very unsafe, especially when sharing the road with human (and AI) drivers.
  • BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
    When I lived there, I used the bike share bikes often. They're widely available and eliminate having to worry about theft and locks.
    • blendo 3y ago
      And the electric ones make short work of our many hills.
• Tiktaalik 3y ago
  electric and autonomous cars were never a solution. An example of continuing the same wrong approach because of lazy status quo thinking and inertia.
• achates 3y ago
  It would also be more efficient if everyone lived in boarding houses and huddled together for warmth in the winter instead of using a heater. Fortunately we were born into a wealthy society with technology that lets us produce all the energy we need so we can optimize for things like comfort, convenience and quality of life instead of focusing purely on efficiency.
• phendrenad2 3y ago
  Revolutionary solutions like "everyone just get an e-bike" rarely turn out well. There are too many unknowns. Is your grandmother going to strap on a helmet and ride an e-bike? Are we going to be able to stop bike theft at that scale? Will we need to invent special snow plows to keep the bike lanes clear in winter? Will we have to deal with e-bike accidents? People riding e-bikes drunk? People getting heat exhaustion in summer? Will we have to deal with abandoned e-bikes clogging up the bike lanes? Will everything slow to a crawl because people will be contending for limited bike lock-up spaces? Meanwhile, an autonomous vehicle, well we know how those will work: Exactly like bedrivered cars, but with a few differences. I like that vision of the future. Maybe once we have this incremental improvement, we can start thinking about further improvements.
• aantix 3y ago
  The better solution is autonomous taxi airplanes. Easier algorithm for navigation, less obstructions, large amount of airspace. Much more direct routes.
• epistasis 3y ago
  I'm not very concerned with energy efficiency, at least when it comes to moving people around, honestly I think that's pretty fine. I'm far more concerned about a more precious resource in a city: space. Cars an atrocious, inefficient, deadly use of space. They simply do not scale to the densities needed for the amenities of a city. Sure, maybe 5% of the population can use them, but that 5% does it at a huge cost of space and safety for the remaining 95%, and greatly detract from what can be accomplished in a city otherwise. Personal car transport is only realistic for low density, low amenity living with access to few people. Rather than cars being a gateway to freedom, their space greediness end up hemming in everyone by taking up far too much space, at least when you want a city with high culture and high access to lots of people and things.
• cortesoft 3y ago
  Unless we suddenly get rid of cars, there is no way I am riding an e-bike around the streets of Los Angeles with my kids. It is way too dangerous, with huge cars driving very fast and recklessly. So many people I know who ride bikes around here have been hit by cars and seriously injured.
• forgetfreeman 3y ago
  e-bikes and e-scooters are bullshit entertainment and convenience devices. For folks living outside all but the most heavily congested urban areas they serve literally no purpose. Edit: downvotes are fine and all but any time one of y'all wants to jump in about how e-horseshit personal conveyances can credibly handle grocery shopping, car lines, or literally any other aspect of life that doesn't involve living with no children in a major metro area I'd be delighted to hear it.
• squokko 3y ago
  OK, great. Go build an e-bike company, lobby for government investment in e-bikes, for bike lanes, whatever. Don't interfere with private companies spending their own money, improving road safety, and advancing the world forward just because they're not working on the perfect solution to all of the world's problems.
• ekianjo 3y ago
  And ebikes will cause way more death. What a terrible idea.
• fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Resource utilization metrics that ignore human desirability metrics are doomed to fail without extreme scarcity. When energy is plentiful enough that the cost of the utilization of the wasteful metric is far below the human desirability and willingness to spend for the service - it’s a losing discussion every single time. I sadly agree with some folks in generally don’t agree with in these matters - cheap, plentiful, renewable, environmentally friendly energy and efficient enough utilization to be practical from a cost and infrastructure point of view will win out of over raw optimality. I’d much rather take an air conditioned robo taxi than a loud spewing bus filled with other people that drops me off within walking distance if I pay close enough attention to the cryptic maps and unannounced stops, peering madly at the street sign we just passed. I’m sorry. I wish the world were better than that. But it won’t change no matter what the efficiency metrics say.
• mdekkers 3y ago
  The whole “you don’t need a car” discussion again? It is boring, nobody having it ever acknowledges that anyone else has valid arguments, and some of the arguments brought up on both side are ridiculous. Some people can do fine without a car most of the time, and have options available when they don’t. Some people need a car on a daily basis. Arguing that “sure you can do the schoolrun for your 3 kids on a cargo bike” is stupid (someone mentions further down below) as is the argument “but what if I need to carry 20 tonnes granite daily?!?” (slight exaggeration) I keep hearing about some grand conspiracy about stopping fully autonomous vehicles, but it is not at all clear who would be behind this, and why. I do see a lot of reports about these things getting stuck, and responders being forever away, causing chaos.
• jjallen 3y ago
  Seems like we need all the transportation improvements we can get and that a single mode of transportation would not suffice. Blind, old, drunk people, people with kids and or lots of groceries, people traveling long distances, and actual kids cannot simply take an e bike (I have two and love them btw). People going on ski trips or with significant luggage cannot hop on an e bike. So I for one welcome the reduction in pollution, cost and human error an electric autonomous car can provide. I also think that vehicles could be much smaller, but still electric and autonomous vehicles which would agree partially with what you seem to think would be best. A autonomous electric capsule that is weather protected traveling in its own protected lane programmed to go anywhere in a city seems ideal. These would likely be more efficient than buses and more precise in destination. I’m astonished nowhere has done this, at least to my knowledge
  • johanvts 3y ago
    A bicycle does all the things an electric capsule could do and much more. You can add weather protection to a bicycle if you need. You can add electrification. No need to reinvent the wheel.
• blobbers 3y ago
  You're not wrong. It's not clear why we're not building something slightly heavier, but still lightweight that is inherently slightly more stable at a stop or very low speed (ie an electric tricycle). It would seem that something like that with an integrated roll cage would be a better solution. That said, the problem with better solutions is that they need to not only compete with the existing solutions, but also coexist. The problem with cars? People decided that bigger cars are safer: cars have gotten bigger and bigger. Look at what a Toyota Camry looks like from 1987 vs. 2023. 1997: 174", 2235lbs. 2023: 192", 3284lbs. That means a car grew 1.5 feet... 10%. But the mass? Up 50%, over 1000 lbs. edit: (okay lbs are not mass, its force... but you know what I mean. Nobody talks in slugs)
• TulliusCicero 3y ago
  Energy efficiency is less of an issue for cities compared to space efficiency. It's the fact that moving people with cars takes a shitton of space because cars are big and they carry an average of like 1.5 persons per.
• rcpt 3y ago
  > e-bike Would be cool if these politicians cared about bikes to
• wahern 3y ago
  We'll never get self-driving, at-grade public buses unless and until the technology is commoditized through private investment in self-driving cars. Here in SF the Geary BRT line has yet to break ground on fully dedicated lanes despite the original timeline showing (IIRC) 2011 as the completion date. After the debacle with the Van Ness BRT, which only opened last year, it seems most politicians and city officials assume Geary BRT is dead. From a technology perspective, and after untold millions, the best the city has been able to accomplish on major bus lines is specialized signaling at a few intersections, saving a couple of minutes on a typically 45+ minute run--a run that takes 20-25 minutes max in a car. For the past 3 years, since COVID-19, I've been leasing a parking spot downtown in the Financial District and driving to work every day. But I received my Cruise invite last month. I cancelled my parking rental as of July 1 in favor of taking the bus downtown, and either the bus or Cruise home. (I often work late.) Even if a Cruise ride was $20 and I took it every night, I'd still come out even with the price of the parking spot, but currently Cruise is free so I come out way ahead. The Cruise ride is slow as molasses--about 30-35 minutes, which is the fastest any 38 Geary bus (i.e. 38AX--still suspended--or a very early morning 38R or 38) can do on my route, bus stop to bus stop (i.e. not including walking to the stop or waiting), in even the most optimal conditions. But Cruise is clean and I don't have to worry about standing out on Market St at midnight to catch the 38 Geary, or squeezing onto a packed 1 California--the much slower but "safe" bus. Also, interestingly, at least judging by the few Ubers I took in 2022 and my few Cruise rides so far, Cruise has similar or better availability from the downtown Financial District after midnight. (Years ago I often frequently caught a traditional cab at the taxi stand in front of the BofA building, as until about 2AM I could reliably walk up and jump into a waiting cab. But by 2020 Uber had killed that taxi stand, and presumably all others. So ironically it takes longer to catch a late-night, middle-of-the-week cab in the FiDi now than it did 10 years ago.) Anyhow, my point is that self-driving cars seem like the only realistic path to better transit in San Francisco, if not the entire United States. San Francisco (and most American cities) is demonstrably incapable of adequately improving public transit by building fixed infrastructure. The way forward is almost certainly through automation; SFMTA labor costs already exceed capital expenditures, and the gap is growing. Despite self-driving cars being the worst option imaginable when judged in isolation, they're the key toward realizing the best option--better intracity mass transit.
• Tade0 3y ago
  Efficiency is not everything. In the Netherlands for a third year in a row there are more fatalities among cyclists than car passengers: https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2023/16/more-traffic-deaths-in-2022-particularly-among-cyclists-over-75 https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2023/16/more-traffic-deaths-in... More than half of those deaths are people over the age of 75. Close to 85% - the 50+ cohort(so including the previously mentioned group). The Netherlands treats road safety seriously and spent decades prioritizing bicycles, yet this is happening.
  • yayitswei 3y ago
    This could be expected if the ratio of bikes to cars is much higher than in other places.
    • Tade0 3y ago
      It's a recent phenomenon - there were many bikes before and no such issues. What's worrying is that fatalities are higher despite bicycles not being a large part of the modal split: https://www.statista.com/statistics/449436/netherlands-modal-split-of-passenger-transport-on-land/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/449436/netherlands-modal... The few local accounts that I gathered point to older people using e-bikes (or even so-called fast bikes) and going too fast compared to their situational awareness. It's the same problem as with elderly drivers, just more pronounced because bicycles give little to no protection.
• KronisLV 3y ago
  > But electric cars and autonomous electric/gas cars are probably not the right solution to our person transport needs. using energy to move a 4000 lb vehicle to transport one or two 200 lb humans is not energy-efficient... most of the energy is spent just moving the vehicle. Silly early morning thought: if the local government has failed to provide adequate public transportation (buses, trams etc.), what's preventing the private sector from stepping up? I mean, even in the form of vans that would seat around 10 people or so, or smaller buses that don't have many infrastructure requirements like trams would. If all of these modern ride companies are so good at aggregating data about trips and have modern apps, then surely they'd be able to come up with profitable routes and get people where they need to go. Of course, buying their own fleet of vehicles would be challenging, but what's the actual dealbreaker here?
  • mikojan 3y ago
    > what's preventing the private sector from stepping up? Government has been providing adequate infrastructure for private interests to sell cars in instead of providing adequate public transportation. Roads, parking spots, traffic signs and lights, and all the administration and policing and legal apparatus required to make motorized individual transport a reality do not just magically exist.
• FuckButtons 3y ago
  This argument assumes that there’s an alternative world where people can go from A to B without that extra mass. But given the highway and road system we have and the inherent danger of driving on it (hence the mass) I fail to see how you propose to achieve that.
  • andbberger 3y ago
    you change the system. obviously.
• zirgs 3y ago
  That 60lb ebike is useless in winter and during bad weather. Public transport doesn't go everywhere.
• fairity 3y ago
  Baby steps. Once people learn to delegate transport entirely to a third party, that third party can more easily facilitate the transition to more efficient transport vehicles. Do you care what type of airplane you fly in?