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People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo. > We need a dining room for when we have parties (has a party once every 2 years; room

• kbrackbill 3y ago
  I think what makes it hard to be realistic about these things is that they're all aspirational. People want to be the kind of people who have parties, have guests often, do big projects that need a truck. Admitting to yourself that you don't need these things is admitting that you're not living up to the ideal in your head.
  • jamestimmins 3y ago
    This is also one of the main promises of consumerism - that we can buy the life we want. If I have the right space, I'll become the kind of person who has parties. If I buy a truck, I'll want to do big projects.
    • chii 3y ago
      > main promises of consumerism not consumerism, but advertising. Specifically, brand advertising (rather than informational advertising like walmart putting low prices in ads)
    • Spivak 3y ago
      This take is overly cynical. Burying a house with a nice entertaining space or a good set of tools is about reducing the friction of doing the things you want. Owning a treadmill and walking to the other room is way easier than going to gym after work when you're tired. It's far far easier to throw a party when it just means inviting people over and making or ordering food than renting an entertaining space. It's easier to work on a project when you have the tools in your garage than if you had to go to the hardware store or go rent a u haul. For all the talk of rampant consumerism the stuff on the bottom of my list of things to complain about are purchases intended to reduce your reliance on buying things. Owning nothing, making nothing, and renting other people's stuff and labor for every task is peak consumerist behavior disguised as "efficient" "minimal" living.
      • jamestimmins 3y ago
        In my mind these things aren't really at odds. It can both be true that in a society where folks have disposable cash they're willing to spend it to optimize low frequency events, and companies are willing to encourage this behavior for the reasons I mentioned above.
      • lukas099 3y ago
        The point probably doesn't land as well on this particular website where incomes skew high, BUT... a LOT of people do not have the rosiest finances. Maybe it is student loans or credit card debt or whatever. But sure, maybe it makes sense for people with more wealth than they will ever spend to have extras around 'just in case'. But if you're not in that situation, I think it's something a lot of people should look at a lot harder than they do.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • wyager 3y ago
      You phrase your comment as if that doesn't work. The fact that I have a (mostly unused) guestroom absolutely does increase the number of guests I get. The fact that I have a mountain bike (mostly used for commuting) absolutely does increase the amount of mountain biking I do.
  • lukas099 3y ago
    Great point.
• iteria 3y ago
  It's about how often the edge case comes up. 4 to 12 times a year, I need to drive 300 miles to visit my family. 10 to 30 times a year, I'll drive 50 to 60 miles to visit friends/family or see specialist doctors or take trip to some interesting event. But on the vast majority of days I drive less than 10 miles a day. My edge cases come up fairly frequently and I don't really have a good fall back for them i could spend a huge amount of money or time to do the 50 mile trips via uber or transit. Or, I could own a hybrid. I could do something similar with less reliability for the 300 mile trip. Or I could own a hybrid. In both cases, i could keep an app that tells me where the charge stations are and account for any possible needed charging... or I could just own a hybrid and gas up at any random station I pass in 5 mins. This is the problem of EVs. Yeah edge cases, but a lot of people can have their edge cases come up fairly frequently. And worse this changes over time. People like to plan for probably outcomes over the life of the vehicle. It's not strange to think you might a few hours a handful of times a year. The more people you need to transport with you the more alternative travel methods and the uncertainty of the charge network starts to matter.
  • ellisv 3y ago
    I fly a couple times a year but don’t own a plane. (Of course, that would be impractical) I think the issue is largely around having to adjust the mindset to plan in advance. For the roadtrip scenario, it might be better to just rent a vehicle for a week. For transporting large or heavy items, renting a truck beats owning one.
    • yonaguska 3y ago
      Renting a car for a week is close to a monthly car payment(less true today) - and the more frequently you have to do this- the less sense it makes. I've also found it increasingly difficult to book rental cars in advance that will actually meet my needs. it's a bit of a gamble to depend on that.
      • freedomben 3y ago
        Not to mention something I've been running into lately when renting cars: They will only rent to you if you are from out of state, and oftentimes you have to show them that you have a valid flight ticket. They don't like renting cars to people who live in the local area, and they're getting more and more strict on not doing it.
• ellisv 3y ago
  I agree. Although part of the challenge is that people are accustomed to jumping in their car for a roadtrip without thinking twice about their vehicle’s range. Once you’ve upgraded your lifestyle for the convenience of “not thinking about it”, well it’s hard to go back.
• WrongAssumption 3y ago
  So would you buy a car with a 50 mile range?
  • bombcar 3y ago
    Maybe. Maybe not. But I certainly wouldn’t pay a $10k premium over a similar vehicle with a 300 mile range and easy recharging (read: hybrid gas).
  • lukas099 3y ago
    If it made sense for me. Did I say that it made sense for everybody?
• tchalla 3y ago
  And you’re focusing too little on the impact of edge cases. Think geometric mean, not arithmetic mean.
  • lukas099 3y ago
    Usually renting is an easy workaround. For instance you can rent a private room at a pub for your yearly gathering. Or rent heavy equipment when you need it for your garden.
    • callalex 3y ago
      One of things is not like the other. Gardening can happen anytime, but gatherings happen on holidays, so the party space you describe is already booked or closed for the holiday.
    • SirMaster 3y ago
      I have 0 interest in hosting a party in a rented space. I want it on the comfort of my own home with my own amenities on all my own terms. I know my friends would much prefer that as well.
      • lukas099 3y ago
        It sounds like you have actually considered the options, weighed them against your own tastes and preferences, multiplied by the number of times you expect to host, etc., and come to that conclusion. So you are not who I was talking about. I was more talking people like my family members who insisted that the must have a dining room in their next house, even though they don't use the one they have now. Just the fact that you acknowledged that other options exist puts you ahead of many.
        • SirMaster 3y ago
          Yeah, I definitely do feel that I try to consider the options and weigh them.
• orasis 3y ago
  When that edge case makes for an absolutely terrible experience of driving across North Dakota in 0F weather and having to stop every 150 miles then you definitely don’t forget that pain when buying your next car.
• akira2501 3y ago
  > but it's kind of annoying. Why? Do the life choices of other individuals really cause you that much harm? I could see being annoyed that they're _marketed_ into over sized solutions that aren't actually correct for their use case, but to just be annoyed that other people appear to enjoy prosperity as an edge case is unusual to my way of thinking. > People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo. Similarly, and sorry to do this in reverse, but why do you think that is? Marketing, experience, habitual, unfairly priced? > need Anyways, personally, I'm more annoyed that corporations get to do this kind of edge case thinking. Shifting the growing of food, the use of labor, and the capital markets they sell to around in pernicious ways simply to add a few points to a publicly traded stock. Then using these profit streams to purchase selfish legislation and reduced taxes all to grease the wheels of this odd machine. Then we're all expected to accept a reduced quality experience just to paper over their decades of environmental abuse? That is madness.
  • mh8h 3y ago
    > Why? Do the life choices of other individuals really cause you that much harm? Yes. Larger SUVs and trucks are making roads less safe for pedestrians, cyclists, and even other cars.
    • wharvle 3y ago
      The term of the day for the GP is “negative externality”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
    • llbeansandrice 3y ago
      EVs do not solve any of those problems and have their own negative externalities.
  • lukas099 3y ago
    > Why? Do the life choices of other individuals really cause you that much harm? I meant more emphasis on the 'kind of' in 'kind of annoying'. Maybe 'frustrating' would have been a better word. It is frustrating when seemingly everyone around you is on a different page than you are.
• paxys 3y ago
  Needing to drive extended distances is not an "edge case" in this country but something that the vast, vast majority of the population does on a regular basis.
  • lukas099 3y ago
    Yes, and I wasn't trying to imply that it's an edge case for most people. I do believe it's over-weighted for a lot of people though.
• foolfoolz 3y ago
  day to day monotony is boring those edge cases may be some of the most memorable and impactful days of the year being able to have those times is always going to outweigh canceling them out. even if it makes more sense day to day
  • lukas099 3y ago
    You don't need to purchase, maintain, and store the equipment for those edge cases to happen. You can rent them. In fact, that makes them even more special.
• mvdtnz 3y ago
  The edge cases are the important cases though. Those parties I throw are the highlight of my year. My parents staying here with me is important to me, I wouldn't have it any other way. Yeah I have a desk job but that landscaping work I do in my weekend is one of my favourite hobbies. I refuse to live my life as if these things aren't important to me. I refuse to average my entire life style down to my median day. My median day is boring.
  • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    We were wondering if we could drive to glacier national park in our BMW i4. There doesn’t seem to be any charging infrastructure outside Kalispell, so we are better off flying and renting an ICE car (Yellowstone or Grand Canyon doesn’t seem very possible yet either). Same with driving up to Alaska ATM, which maybe might be possible in 5 years but is impossible today unless you leverage slower charging at RV parks. They are unfortunate sacrifices, they definitely do matter.
    • FredPret 3y ago
      > Glacier National Park That’s a fantastic drive by the way. Pack a camera!
    • dboreham 3y ago
      I live in Livingston MT which is the closest proper town to Yellowstone. We have a two-bay charger at Clarke and Main. I've only seen it used once though.
      • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        Ya, the issue for Yellowstone is mostly when you are in the park. You need to head out to charge, but maybe the math works out better than glaciers where the town with charging is farther away, and the roads in the park more vast.
    • ryanjshaw 3y ago
      These guys [1] took an iX3 to the Kruger Park in South Africa and back with careful planning. They managed to do 100km of self-driving game viewing thru the remote park per day for 4 days without issues. They recharged out of their accomodation while they weren't out driving. We don't even have electricity 24 hours/day here due to our ongoing generation crisis, so I'm surprised you wouldn't be able to do something similar in the USA or are those two parks just really that remote? Or is it the 120V AC that's the issue? [1] https://mybroadband.co.za/news/motoring/504858-i-drove-an-electric-bmw-to-kruger-and-back-consider-me-converted.html https://mybroadband.co.za/news/motoring/504858-i-drove-an-el...
• kube-system 3y ago
  > People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo. Yes, but in life, many of the most meaningful things are the edge cases. That's what makes them special. If people don't statistically have many dinner parties, then the dinner parties they do have might be even more special. This is life, not a statistical model.
  • lukas099 3y ago
    Those meaningful edge cases can still happen. You don't need to own, store, and maintain the equipment for them year-round for this. In fact, I would argue that the edge cases feel even more special when you rent. For instance, my family rented a large passenger van for a road trip. The van itself became a sort of icon of that trip, and the source of distinct memories.
    • kube-system 3y ago
      Yes, but it often depends more on specific social dynamics, rather than a cost-benefit analysis. "Hey, you have a car, let's go do XYZ" doesn't happen to people who don't have a car. Replace 'car' with whatever else as appropriate. These social factors drive human decision making to a large degree. People might care about what others think, they might care about spontaneity, they might be influenced by their own desires and the desires of people around them. Or consider the dinner party example. Sure, I've had dinner parties in rented spaces. It can be done, but they're not the same as being in someone's private space.
      • closewith 3y ago
        > It can be done, but they're not the same as being in someone's private space. Yeah. Let's put the kids to bed while we continue our meal. Oops, forgot to rent a crèche. Want to stay over and continue chatting? Oops, forgot to rent a hotel and the space closes at 11:00.
    • aenis 3y ago
      Do this enough - like I did renting cars for roadtrips - and you Will have both good and bad memories. I have been doing this for 5 years and for every "that was such a fun drive for us" there is a "we needed something spacious and we got a compact city Suv because they screwed up our booking and there were no alternatives" kind of stories. Or "we got an X5 with a steering wheel making funny noises" or "we ended up getting a hybrid with a very small trunk" or "the car started smelling funny a few hours into the ride" or "they got us a car with a slow leak in a tire". And when that happens, its sometimes enough to suck all the fun from your rare vacation and it costs a lot of time to get a new rental, in relation to the time you have at your disposal. Its also not really cheap. I owned a range rover before deciding on switching to EV plus rentals combo and my total costs of using a car stayed at the same level.
• darksaints 3y ago
  I’m willing to bet you do the exact same thing. The vast majority of people drive alone every day, and only occasionally have passengers. Do you have a passenger seat? A back seat? A trunk? If so, you’re buying for the edge cases, not the average, and you’re not special.
  • lukas099 3y ago
    I would not consider my having a trunk as being an edge case as I use it weekly. Back seat less so, but still quite often. But if I didn't, I probably wouldn't choose a car that had them (assuming such options were available)
• noduerme 3y ago
  From a programming perspective, "edge cases", are actually failure modes. A single failure can be extremely expensive and wipe out years of marginal benefit that was accrued by ignoring them. I'm not sure I can think of a strong argument for consciously living your life in a way which ignores potential failure modes, unless you're pretty sure you've projected the hidden costs and are prepared at any moment to pay them. The cost of finding and paying someone else twice a year to haul wood or supplies can easily justify the extra cost of a larger vehicle, for example.
  • lukas099 3y ago
    If you've actually multiplied the likelihood by the costs & benefits of the different options and come to that conclusion that's fine. There are an infinite number of edge cases that can lead to total failure, so it is not rational to try to account for something solely on that basis. > The cost of finding and paying someone else twice a year to haul wood or supplies can easily justify the extra cost of a larger vehicle, for example. Wait, what? It costs like $50 to rent a pickup truck from Lowes. You don't have to hire somebody just because you're renting the truck. Driving a larger vehicle probably costs most people that much in gas costs alone in one month.
    • noduerme 3y ago
      idk. I pay $250 a month on loan for a car the size of a piñata, which goes fast and holds absolutely no cargo. I'm sure I've spent at least $2k on edge cases in the past few years renting or hiring when I had to move heavy objects on interstate journeys. Spread that out monthly, I could have saved money on a truck. Heck, I coulda bought a truck cheaper than my car. In my own calculation it's not worth it (because I don't want to drive a truck). >> There are an infinite number of edge cases that can lead to total failure, so it is not rational to try to account for something solely on that basis. I disagree here, because again you need to divide the probability by the severity of the consequences and only then rank the priorities. A $500k house on the side of a volcano that only erupts every thousand years is substantially different from the same house on a prairie, because the chance of total annihilation measurably increases the volatility of your bet. In gambling parlance, "risk of ruin". Once you see a possible risk of ruin you need to avoid it. I'll tell you why. Imagine that you had thought of it and discarded it as wildly unlikely. You did nothing to mitigate or plan for it. And a year later, it happened. You'd feel pretty stupid. You'd wish you had never even imagined it. I didn't initially want to bring this up as an example, but it was actually the first on my mind: I live in a dangerous neighborhood. Some nights I fall halfway asleep without remembering to take my gun out of the safe and put it next to my bed. I look at the clock; it's 5am; it's probably fine; I don't want to get up. Then I think, imagine if ten minutes after I make this decision some guy breaks in and points a gun at me, how stupid I'd feel.
• inglor_cz 3y ago
  Depends on the edge, right? 0.1 per cent vs. 2 per cent both look like a banal edge, but it is a 20:1 difference. If you do something 0.1 per cent of the time, you spend 1 day in 3 years doing so. If you do something 2 per cent of the time, you spend 1 week every year doing so. Also, it matters what the consequences are. I spent nontrivial money securing my home from potential burglary, because I just don't want to experience it, ever. I don't have a guest bedroom, but your example with the hotel down the street actually assumes that there is a hotel down the street; what if the closest hotel is five miles away and taxi services are unreliable? Etc. I get that some people overspend, but the original topic was range, and in a country like the US, with its vast rural regions, a lack of chargers on some trips may be a serious concern.
• lelanthran 3y ago
  > People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo. Not in this situation. If you take a family trip[1] once or twice a year, that's not an edge case, that's an annual case. The other thing you are missing is that those routes that are longer than the EV range are busy every day! If you go out, today (non-peak season), and see 2000 cars drive that long route today, that's 2000 car owners today that need that range, or 2000 car owners who would tell you "range anxiety" if you asked them to move to EV. On peak times, popular long routes get over 2000 cars per hour. We're talking 100s of thousands, if not millions, of this need coming up per year, so its hardly an edge case.
  • Kirby64 3y ago
    This is purely a semantic difference. If you travel once or twice a year beyond the standard EV range, then by definition it’s an edge case. Assuming you take one trip a day, then you’re literally only hitting that case 2/365 days. Obviously there’s people where this doesn’t apply, but there’s outliers everywhere and they’re free to continue buying gas cars today.
    • lelanthran 3y ago
      > This is purely a semantic difference. If you travel once or twice a year beyond the standard EV range, then by definition it’s an edge case. I humbly beg to disagree; it's most definitely not an edge-case as the phrase is defined. You're using "edge-case" to mean low-frequency event. How I see the phrase used everywhere I've ever seen it, is "edge case" referring to a low-probability event, i.e. an event that is predicted to so rarely occur that it can be dismissed from consideration. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/edge-case https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/edge-cas... says: >> an extreme or not typical example of something, that should not be considered when forming an opinion about it: An annual trip is an almost guaranteed event, so it's a very high probability event. I get that it is a low-frequency event, but "edge-case" is the incorrect term used to describe the event. Use "rarely" or similar instead.
      • lukas099 3y ago
• bigyanshr 3y ago
  If I am paying a huge amount for something, I would pay for something that fits my needs including the edge cases. No convincing necessary!!!
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• mvkel 3y ago
  You're could use this argument to explain away seatbelts in cars
  • lukas099 3y ago
    Only if had argued that every single event with a low probability should be discounted every single time, which I didn't.
• acchow 3y ago
  The “edge” cases in life are what many people live for. Tho, in the car scenario, it can definitely be handled by renting what you need when you need it. A hotel is not a replacement for people staying with you. You do not get the same intimacy.
• BeefDinnerPurge 3y ago
  I have a 200 mile range EV, which is to say a practical range of 120-160. It's great for running around the bay area. It's not so great for the monthly travel I do going 500-2000 miles in a stretch because stopping every 120-160 miles for anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours is mind-numbing, and that doesn't even account for the mercurial state of the national charging network. It's also not so great in places less friendly to EVs. I'm upgrading to a 400 mile range EV down the road and I hope the charging network upgrades itself as well because it still sucks.
  • Throw839 3y ago
    Car rental...
    • oblio 3y ago
      If the car: 1. Is available. 2. If the car rental company doesn't pull shenanigans such as cancelling your rental at the last moment due to <reasons>. 3. Is the kind of model you want or need. 4. Has the extras you like/need (adaptive cruise control, etc). Etc. In my experience car rentals suck, I wouldn't want to use them except for when I'm flying somewhere.
      • BeefDinnerPurge 3y ago
        Lived that when I blew my Class B RV's transmission in Crescent City, CA on the 101 (Van life! Van life! #PortlandiaReference). I was going to be stuck there for a month waiting for parts until I galaxy brained my way out of it by getting my car towed to a dealer in Medford, OR and bought an EV there for below cost the same day, the first EV the dealer had ever sold hence the discount.
  • _ea1k 3y ago
    You should have access to the supercharger network by then. It is amazing compared to the patchwork mess that is everything else.
    • 3y ago
• jakebasile 3y ago
  When planning for the scale of a new system, do you plan for the worst case or best case? Which method would create a more resilient system? Put another way, if a service can only respond to 93% if requests, I wouldn't call it a very well architected service. EVs have a long way to go for many people.
• barrysteve 3y ago
  The edge cases aren't fully captured. That accountant driving to Lowes twice a year to pick up mulch, finds out he's missing a shovel or a reticulation fitting or something unexpected. The pickup truck is a solid work horse in new edge cases. There's nothing worse than finding out that your hatchback can't fit a ladder you needed to buy because you broke off a section of the gutter when you tried to pull a broken branch off your roof. A guest bedroom is often extra storage, kids sleep-over room and a communal signal that there's a spare bed for friends and family if they ever need it. The social signalling is worth the price of admission for the home owner. Just saying the edge cases cover more outcomes than direct use.
  • lukas099 3y ago
    Pickup truck rentals at Lowes start at $20. I've had family over and ended up turning rooms into temporary bedrooms. Basically, these things happen rarely enough that it is not such a crisis to put a little effort and adapt to them. Whereas the drag of being prepared for every situation all the time is constant. > a communal signal that there's a spare bed for friends and family if they ever need it. This is true. > The social signalling is worth the price of admission for the home owner. I don't think you can just flat-out say this. The opportunity cost of an unused room is pretty terrific. It might be bearable if you're wealthy, but most people are not. It also might be bearable if you LOVE hosting, can't get enough of it, it's what gets you up in the morning, but for most people it's not. So you just stating that it's worth it without any further justification is actually an example of my point which is how the opportunity costs of these things are routinely ignored.
• wiseowise 3y ago
  Having room empty 99% of time, empty guest room and unutilized pickup brings me far less stress than dealing with situation when I actually need them. How is that annoying?
  • lukas099 3y ago
    The 'annoying' part of my comment was not well thought out on my part, and I would take it back if I could. I guess that what is annoying is being in the situation of having opinions like that which are unconventional.
  • epolanski 3y ago
    It's super toxic for the planet, and in 99% of the cases useless. If we reason like that capitalism will push us further into buying and buying because what if. Car rentals and Airbnbs literally are the answers for both.
    • wiseowise 3y ago
      > It's super toxic for the planet, and in 99% of the cases useless Toxic how? > If we reason like that capitalism will push us further into buying and buying because what if. Capitalism pushes me to live comfortable life? > Car rentals and Airbnbs literally are the answers for both. “You will own nothing and be happy”?
      • Dylan16807 3y ago
        > Toxic how? Literally. Pollution. > Capitalism pushes me to live comfortable life? Capitalism pushes you to buy things that won't actually make you more comfortable. Or that are very ineffective. > “You will own nothing and be happy”? Yes, definitely. Suggesting you rent for rare occasions is the same as owning nothing.
      • epolanski 3y ago
        Buying stuff we don't need because of far-fetched edge cases creates insane amounts of pollution. Most of those far-fetched edge cases have simple solutions (such as renting). I can't count the massive amount of stuff we have at home and don't use at all despite my active pushing against those, literally everybody I know is in the same situation.
• refurb 3y ago
  Like most things in life, the edge cases are the ones you should prepare for.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• Roark66 3y ago
  >People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo. Edge cases can mean life and death sometimes. Is my vehicle going to get stuck in an emergency if no one plows snow on a 1 mile stretch of unpaved road between my home and the major road? If unrest/war/natural disaster happens and major infrastructure is non functional can I pack my family in to my car and just go 3k miles without worrying about charging infrastructure? You can just siphon fuel from other vehicles. Good luck doing that with an electric car (especially with some random half destroyed car dumped on the side of the road). Edge cases may not matter much for daily life, but when they become important, they are really important. Also, there is one thing regulators (and car makers) could do to make EVs a lot more interesting for everyone. A compatible modular batteries. Why were standardised batteries invented (AAA etc?)? So you can swap them yourself even if rechargeable. Imagine your Tesla, a Mercedes eqe or VW ev had their battery as a number of 10/5kWh user replaceable units? Perhaps you can't afford, or you don't need a 120kWh battery pack, so you buy a new car with 20kWh only. You could benefit from a car lighter by few hundred kg and you could buy the rest later (assuming total capacity was 100kWh let's say). Then, on an old car, you could put new battery modules, or you could keep them when selling your car to stick in a new one. It is an obvious thing to do, why are regulators not even talking about it? Would you rather have a single, horribly expensive part in which tiny element fails and the whole vehicle is essentially scrap value, or am ability to swap it part by part? If we're in any way serious about EVs being a true replacement for Ice cars, and not just a toy for wealthy people to feel better they need user replaceable batteries.
  • epolanski 3y ago
    The examples you make are ridiculous. And the fact that you feel those edge cases life threatening tells a lot about the capitalist propaganda. And somewhat the people that do these kind of reasoning yet don't even have seriously life threatening savers like idk a carbon monoxide sensor.
    • Roark66 3y ago
      Which one is ridiculous? It seems regardless which part of the world you live in at least one is applicable. For me it happens to be war, for others it may be natural disasters or civil unrest. Tell all the raped/burned corpses in Bahmut they are in fact still alive and their existence is capitalist propaganda.
• idrisser 3y ago
  People by home alarm system even if they've never been robbed.
• hyperliner 3y ago
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• gherkinnn 3y ago
  I don't think it is edge cases as much as aspirations and pretence. To take your examples, I want a large dining room and guest bed because they signal popularity and I can imagine all those people coming over. I also want a pickup because I can tell myself that I'll weather the next zombie apocalypse, or I'll imagine transporting building materials back home and build that outside sauna my now divorced wife always wanted. That will show her. Or something.
• quickthrower2 3y ago
  The first 2 are not so silly as these "unused rooms" can have other functionality. The dining room becomes an office, or a retreat. In a crisis this extra capacity could be accommodation for an out of luck friend or relative, or rent out the room. The 3rd one might be more silly :-) I agree people should consider how much of an edge case it is though, and make a good decision. Even if "well it is an edge case but what the hell". Owning a Christmas tree ain't so bad.
  • lukas099 3y ago
    If one is using the spare rooms for other functionality, and actually using them consistently, that's not really what I was talking about. > I agree people should consider how much of an edge case it is though, and make a good decision. Even if "well it is an edge case but what the hell". Well put; wish I had said it so succinctly :)
    • quickthrower2 3y ago
      Well I try to do this: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#:~:text=Please%20respond%20to%20the%20strongest%20plausible%20interpretation%20of%20what%20someone%20says%2C%20not%20a%20weaker%20one%20that%27s%20easier%20to%20criticize.%20Assume%20good%20faith https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#:~:text=Ple.... :-)
• Slava_Propanei 3y ago
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• CalRobert 3y ago
  This is one of the great things about car share services or sites like turo, and why it's great Airbnb is in gasp residential neighbourhoods.
• Log_out_ 3y ago
  Could be easily circumvented by edge case shared equipment. Suburb-wide rent a shared lorry. And by e-manufacturers offering long distance carswaps.
• ijidak 3y ago
  Yeah. A lot of people also overlook renting. For all the money spent on that pickup truck, just rent one from Lowe's when you need it. Instead of buying a boat, save the money and rent an amazing one for those three times a year you have time to use it. Renting a car is really easy these days, especially with Turo. And with Turo, you can get the car dropped off at your house. And splurge on the rental instead of driving a gas guzzling car all year for those road trips you take a few times a year. Also, by renting you save wear and tear on your personal car.
• pipes 3y ago
  Why is it annoying? What you need is very subjective. Before I had a family I had no idea I'd want a guest room because I'd want extended family to stay. And when they stay in a hotel they spend way less time with us. I'm glad I live in a society where I can choose to spend my money and decide the trade offs for myself.
• Xelbair 3y ago
  why? It doesn't hurt anyone, and they do pay premium for that. It's just that they have different value system than you do.
• intended 3y ago
  People are people, changing "X" is like tyring to change the weather.
• gniv 3y ago
  You're getting flak for this, but this kind of thinking is prevalent in Europe from what I see. Especially the car part. Almost everybody drives small cars. Pickup trucks that don't have a company name on them are as rare as exotic cars.
• furyofantares 3y ago
  I'm extremely confident that our guest bedroom that sits empty most of the year has increased the # of family visits we get by a whole lot. It's still mostly empty and it's true they could stay in a hotel, but they feel welcome, they have a place they can make their home, and it's just less commitment and planning. If you're middle age and only see your family once or twice year when you visit them on holidays, it's sobering to make a guess as to how many more times you'll see them in your life. I'm guessing my empty guest bedroom that might as well be replaced by a hotel visit has doubled the number of high quality visits I'll have with some family members.
• rib3ye 3y ago
  If people are paying a premium for something, they are going to expect it to hit the edge cases.
• XorNot 3y ago
  A guest bedroom isn't so guests can stay at a hotel. A guest bedroom is so I have a room I can offer people unconditionally if they need it due to a crisis. The situations in which this happens are hopefully never but they do arise, and the value of it is that it is in my house, with me and not at a hotel where I am not.
• tibbydudeza 3y ago
  My wife loves to craft and to stich and make clothes - the dining room gets used as a cutting, crafting table as the porch room where she sits during winter is too hot during summer.
• JoBrad 3y ago
  I make a 7-hour, ~600 mile trip 3-4 times a year. Most of that trip is through very rural areas in the Southeast, and I’m generally doing this at the end of the year (cold temps), or in the heat of summer, when batteries have the least range. It does seem like the next generation of batteries will be where I need them in the next year or so, but I’m also not going to spend $50k on a mid-tier vehicle, so we’ll see.
• eemil 3y ago
  Absolutely. I drive a small two seat convertible, and I could just as easily go without it on account of taxis, friends cars, rentals, home delivery, etc. And in many cases, I do rely on those.
• Minor49er 3y ago
  Houses are long-term investments. These rooms change their purposes over time
• t0bia_s 3y ago
  You heat an indoor, that you leave for many hours regularly. Also you put fridge in heated room to make food cold even though outside could be same temperature asi in your fridge. Etc.
• scarlehoff 3y ago
  I guess this is a cultural dependent thing as well. In Mediterranean cultures I believe the preparation of the dinner (in a dinner party) would often be part of the social event.
• wishpishh 3y ago
  The sense of self-entitlement in this thread makes me depressed. Intelligent, educated adults react like children when you tell them they can't have all the toys. > But I like living in this kind of excess! Sure, and I'm sure you deserve it. As do we all. But guess what? In the hard cold reality that we live in, it's not sustainable or feasible for everyone to own a huge hulking gas guzzling vehicle just to enable your yearly road trip. Wish it was, but it isn't. Not even close. > How preposterous, I certainly don't live in excess! Oh yes you do. On a global and historical scale, if you can afford a car, then you live in excess. I'd bet that all of us that read this website do. You need some perspective. > But I pay for myself! No you don't. If the planet is failing to even sustain civilization from this lifestyle, clearly somewhere there are costs that aren't covered. The market has no solution for the external costs that most things in our lifestyle incur. > But the alternatives would mean a slight inconvenience to me! I would have to adjust and re-evaluate things I've grown used to. They're not the 100% optimal solution for me personally! Well, I'm sorry that the freaking possible end of future civilization causes an inconvenience in your modern life of abundance. Actually no, I'm not. If stopping and waiting at a charging station those three times a year you make an 8 hour trip is what it takes to ensure a healthy life for future (and even current) generations, then I'm saving my concern for more pressing matters. Heck, I'd even argue that renting an ICE car on those occasions might be a reasonable price to pay, no matter the (in the grander scheme of things) slight inconvenience this means. Grow up, people.
  • wyager 3y ago
    > In the hard cold reality that we live in, it's not sustainable or feasible for everyone to own a huge hulking gas guzzling vehicle just to enable your yearly road trip. Wish it was, but it isn't. Not even close. It actually is. The only impediment is neurotic busybodies who are obsessed with making everyone poor because they've fallen for the current strain of doomsday millenarianism.
  • slothtrop 3y ago
    > it's not sustainable or feasible for everyone to own a huge hulking gas guzzling vehicle just to enable your yearly road trip. "everyone" doesn't own a car in the first place, and owning one to go on family trips is not contingent on "everyone" owning a car. Sustainability is a moot point. We're undergoing an aggressive shift to renewables in the West, including with vehicles, as a matter of policy. Issues pertaining to climate cannot be abated solely with a reduction in emissions. Notwithstanding, "degrowth" is just demanding that people in developing countries not be permitted to improve their quality of life, that Westerners race to an arbitrary bottom to worsen theirs, and put lives at risk. The rise in emissions year over year stem from demand in East Asia.
• scott_w 3y ago
  I disagree with your general statement because the edge case is entirely dependent on the individual circumstances. Let me provide some examples: I have two ovens purely so I can host Christmas Day. 99% of the time that second oven is unused but it massively reduces the stress of that one day. It was worth every penny. I own an MPV so I can take my bicycle to races/events. I can hire a car for the purpose but the flexibility and reduced stress of that 3/4 times a year (plus I can use it for other things) makes it worth it. That's not to say all edge cases are justified. Some are silly, such as owning a pickup truck, which pollutes like crazy and is inconvenient as fuck for parking. Other things like buying an expensive machine for a job you'll do once (just hire it or pay someone to do it, you'll save money). All I'm saying is you can't generalise from the specific cases.
• jmpman 3y ago
  The edge case I’m worried about is travel time during the holidays. Between LA and Phoenix is a desolate stretch of freeway running through a small number of essentially truck stop towns. The most isolated one, Quartzite, has an enormous Tesla supercharging station, which just doubled in the last year. It’s virtually essential to stop in Quartzite on the drive in a Tesla. I made that drive a week after Thanksgiving, and the new Tesla superchargers are behind a brand new gas station. While stopping, I asked the clerk how the wait was during Thanksgiving, and he indicated that it was through the roof. Now, Quartzite and its grid can currently handle the peak Tesla traffic between LA and Phoenix on the busiest holiday travel weekend, with significant wait time, but can it handle the 100x increase required for full electrification? I’m skeptical. And the we have square miles of essentially idle chargers outside of this peak travel period? Seems wasteful. How do we feed the peak power demand to these tiny towns? New huge transmission lines to these isolated towns? Diesel generators? Tesla power packs?
  • arkh 3y ago
    > How do we feed the peak power demand to these tiny towns? Like petrol station: charge some reservoir batteries during off hours and then you're able to discharge this energy fast. The problem then is the energy density of batteries making it so you'd need a gigantic battery / capacitor to replace a lot smaller fuel tank.
    • jmpman 3y ago
      Now you’ve got to have a 75KW of grid storage available for these peak use cases for every car. Quartzite currently has 120 charging spaces. 100x increase boosts that to 12,000 spaces. That’s all the parking at the Mall of America. Mind boggling. 150KW for each spot, and that’s 1.8GW of power. To put it in perspective, one of the three Palo Verde reactors produces just 1.4GW. Mind blowing.
• rco8786 3y ago
  I guess just depends on how you define edge case. > I need a bathroom in my house (Goes to the bathroom 4 times a day and room sits empty 99% of the time) I agree with you on the trucks one though, but only because of the outsized negative side effects.
• jb1991 3y ago
  I’m assuming you don’t live in the United States or have never had the reason to take frequent road trips.
  • itsoktocry 3y ago
    You can tell who these people, they say things like: "I don't mind waiting an hour to charge every 300 miles because I have to use the bathroom and stretch my legs". That's all well and good when you are on a long trip once a year. It's unfathomable to stop that often, for that long, when traveling regularly.
• mort96 3y ago
  I like that you didn't tackle the actual "need" you're trying to criticize, namely the need for a car which is compatible with road trips. For some people, it would look like this: > We need a car which can take us to our vacation home (goes to vacation home once per year, it's unreachable by train or bus and in a location where having a car is important; they could just rent out a rental car for a month for a billion dollars instead of having a car which can be used for the trip) That's the reality a bunch of people are looking at. Granted, for a bunch of other people, taking one or two stops to recharge at well-maintained and nice charging stations along the way would suffice. But as I'm sure you're aware, that's not the universal experience with recharging EVs along the way yet.
  • lukas099 3y ago
    From my perspective, your example of a yearly month-long vacation to a personal vacation home is unthinkably extravagent, and anyone in that situation is rich enough not to worry about the inefficiencies I am talking about (from a personal finance POV I mean. From an environmental standpoint it is an abomination)
    • mort96 3y ago
      What part of it is "unthinkably extravagant"? Having a vacation home isn't very uncommon, 4 weeks of vacation in a year isn't uncommon. You don't need to be stupidly rich to be in the situation I described, you just need to 1) have had enough spare money or luck ant some point to end up with a vacation home (inherited or otherwise), 2) not have severe enough financial trouble in the present to sell it, and 3) value it enough to prioritize it over the benefits of selling it.
      • fnimick 3y ago
        Having a vacation home is incredibly uncommon and privileged compared to a huge population that can't even afford a primary home that they own.
        • 3y ago
• j-bos 3y ago
  I see your point, people do overvalue edge cases. At the same time people also undervalue edge cases, think health insurance. > We need a dining room for when we have parties (Our community group needs a friendly reliable place to meet weekly) > We need a guest bedroom (My in-laws hit hard times, they need a safe place, now) > I need a pickup truck (I get to help out my friends with their projects and when their pressed to move) And > I need long range to take the semiannual road trip (There was an earthquake/hurricane/flood/tornado/(in many counties /civil disturbance) and I need to move my family/haul supplies now) I have plenty more examples, and I doubt I'd ever have a dining room for example, but I have personally benefited from each of the above. Edge cases can make or break lives. Just look at software people rely on.
• franga2000 3y ago
  > I'm glad I live in a prosperous society where this is possible and all, but it's kind of annoying. You don't, you live in one that took a huge loan against the future and counts on dying before it needs to be paid. The kind of environmental and socoetal damage caused by these kinds of inefficiencies is immeasurable.
• mihaic 3y ago
  I think you're interpreting it wrong. Edge-cases matter a lot for quality of life, as some other comments illustrated well. The solutions to these edge-cases don't need to be solved by the same thing that solves your average case though. Give me a fleet of large cars that I can rent whenever I have a long-distance drive, and maybe I'll consider not even owning a car.
• DrScientist 3y ago
  Your argument is the same as saying most people that live in cities don't actually need a car at all - just use public transport and perhaps hire a car for those odd occasions where you really need one. I lived in a city for a decade without a car - and did exactly that - but when I had children - I found I needed both more certainty and more flexibility for my travel - so I got a car. Don't underestimate those aspects - range impacts that flexibility ( not just range on a single journey, but cumulative range over a number of journeys without charging ). Availability of charging points impacts both flexibility & certainty. These are real concerns. Range and charging are of course linked - if charging was easily available and very quick then range on one charge ceases to be much of an issue. If the range from a single charge is massive, then frequency of charge points is less of an issue. So the good news is any improvement on either has a synergistic effect.
• dahfizz 3y ago
  So what am I supposed to do, never host my friends or family? Never go on road trips? 2 to 4 times a year is a hell of a lot more often than "never". If I can only afford one car, why wouldn't I get one that fits _all_ my needs? If I can only buy one house, why wouldn't I get one that fits _all_ my needs?
• strix_varius 3y ago
  I find it hilarious that this comment was written just three years after the height of COVID closures. During that time I was so happy to have access to my home gym, to have a spare bedroom we could turn into an office, etc. You're welcome to make the personal bet that a pandemic was a once-in-a-lifetime event, but it's amazingly self-righteous to criticize others who prepare for edge cases.
• wyager 3y ago
  The entire point of ownership is to hedge against right-tail demand scenarios. If you don't care about them, you should just rent everything and own nothing at all. "Own nothing and be happy", as they say. You will just occasionally find yourself screwed when demand is high. Probably we should let people decide for themselves what level of hedging is appropriate.
• briandear 3y ago
  On the pickup truck example — maybe the person only buys mulch a few times a year, but the person has the capabilities of the truck all year. When I lived in the U.S., I had a home backup generator. Only really become useful once or twice, but when it was useful, it was extremely useful. Certainly one could instead rent a generator right? Except you don’t necessarily know when you’ll need it and that’s assuming there are even places from which to rent when you need it. A pickup truck is a vehicle you can use every day that also has the capability of additional utility — you don’t lose everyday utility because it’s a pickup truck, but you have additional utility that’s there when you need it. Why do most people own suitcases? Why not rent those when you need them? Why do people own skis? Or anything else that has occasional use? In Spain, I drive a big diesel van. When I bought it, many commercial vehicle dealerships were pushing the electric version — for my daily driving which involves transporting motorcycles to the race tracks roughly 1.5 hours away, an electric would work, but the 10 times per year I have to drive across Spain for races, electric would be a nightmare — drive several hours, potentially towing a trailer then having to stop for hours to recharge? That turns a one-day 9 hour drive into a two day drive. Barcelona to Jerez for example. That also assumes that chargers are ideally spaced along the route and that time while I’m waiting for the van to charge? That’s wasted time. Then there is the matter of daily charging — parking in the Barcelona area, especially for a van isn’t easy. And finding a charging spot available that’s close to home would be an exercise in luck. Even if there were an order of magnitude more chargers, there’d presumably be an order of magnitude more EVs to compete with. Then there is the question of weight — a large van requires large batteries which makes the weight of the vehicle substantially more than diesel — that means either a bigger vehicle is required or I get less payload. And driver licensing is based on weight.. so the EV version of my Crafter van would either mean I carry less (not an option,) or I have to move up to a higher weigh class which would require a commercial license. While my personal situation is an “edge case,” the fact is that everyone’s life consists of their own version of edge cases. That’s the point of the free market — we can optimize around our own edge cases. The problem is when do-gooders are reductive, trying to fit everyone into a box based on what they think their needs should be rather than what they are.
  • _ph_ 3y ago
    You are pretending that owning a truck doesn't have a downside compared to a normal car or a station wagon. The truck will use more fuel and is way less nice to drive if you not in a very rural region. Which is why driving a truck instead of a car is mostly a US thing. And yes, if the bottom line is, you want to own a truck, by all means by one.
• amelius 3y ago
  > We need expensive gear (used only once, could have been rented much cheaper)
• stef25 3y ago
  5 years ago I spent 20K on a second hand Merc that I love driving. At the time, hybrids let alone electrical were way more expensive than a diesel car. I'll be damned if I have to spend 50K on a car that doesn't even get me to the south of France in a day. Yeah, I only take long road trips a few times a year but if I do, I want to be able to do it in my expensive car. It's like buying a top spec macbook pro but if you want to edit video even once or twice a year, you got to rent another computer.
• thsksbd 3y ago
  The tail is where important decisions are made. X meter tsunami waves -> nuclear reactor barrier walls X days without replenishing vital supplies -> warehouses and buffers. I loath to think how many bad decisions are made because someone decided "three stdev" is good enough because they don't even know what a long tail is.
• silverlake 3y ago
  My favorite is double ovens in McMansions. The only use case is for Thanksgiving dinner.
• philipov 3y ago
  If you had a dining room, maybe you'd throw parties more often than every two years. We use ours every Thanksgiving and Christmas at a minimum. It's also a great place to simply eat dinner without retreating to one's bedroom. Same with guests; people aren't going to visit you if they have to pay for a hotel, and have to travel from the hotel back to your house for breakfast in the dining room you don't have. My town doesn't even have a hotel. You'd have to go to the neighboring city. The hotel is on the side of a mountain overlooking the river, which makes it hard to get to. About 20 minutes away is 20 minutes too far when everyone is exhausted and drunk at the end of the party. First to bed gets the spare bedroom, and the last one up crashes on the couch. In a pinch, a cot can be put in the dining room. A spare bedroom is also an excellent location for a home office. Having extra rooms is capital. It greatly increases the quality of one's life, every day. You might as well say you don't need a kitchen. You don't really need to cook when you can get all your food prepared from outside, in our prosperous society. While technically true (there exist apartments without kitchens), it is an austere standard to live by. No argument on the pickup truck, though.
• robben1234 3y ago
  >People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo. Spending dozens of thousands on a personal people mover I would like it to enable and expand my freedoms. I.e. supporting painless weekend road trips. Fossil fuel cars answer this requirement, EVs don't. For the extremely constrained happy path of commute in urban areas it is much more efficient to develop public transport. Living in a city with developed public transport I'd rather take the train than drive an EV to get to the same destination.