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Problem with gathering data off cars is that it's really not that effective vs your phone. A car realistically just sits around doing nothing 80% of the time, w

• kelnos 2y ago
  In theory I can disable most if not all of the telemetry coming out of my phone, though. I can also choose to leave my phone at home, knowing that it's likely there's still something on it that's collecting data on my movements, even if I've been careful about disabling and uninstalling things. But the car is largely a black box when it comes to its electronics, and if I need to drive the car somewhere, I can't leave the black boxes at home; they come with me wherever I go. > And an EV without smarts is legitimately just a golf cart. Sounds fine to me.
• brailsafe 2y ago
  > A car realistically just sits around doing nothing 80% of the time A bit besides the point, but isn't it wild how inherently wasteful personal cars are? Every time the thought crosses my mind to get another one, if I don't stop at the cost, I stop at the fact that I'll have this giant chunk of metal sitting idle on the street or somewhere else nearly all the time. It'd be useful in an extreme minority of cases (for me), but I/we pay for it all the time by allocating quite a lot of space and money to them. The tires, the insurance, taxes, fuel, charging stations, driveways, parking garages, natural resources, air quality, ambient noise, senseless deaths, it's crazy. Granted, some aren't a result of idle existence, but c'mon. Renting an arbitrary car periodically ends up being the most tolerable option. A small temporary expense when it's really needed or desired, and it's enough to remind me of the good and bad bits.
  • jfim 2y ago
    Depends where you live, and how much of a hassle it is to get a rental car. If you live somewhere with decent public transportation and good car sharing infrastructure (eg. walk to a nearby car share and unlock the doors with an app or a card vs Uber to Hertz and wait for an hour to sign paperwork), then yes that's a viable option. For many places in the US and Canada, that's not viable unfortunately.
    • brailsafe 2y ago
      True, and that really does constrain where I'm willing to live these days. There's some threshold probably where I could deal with owning one in exchange for some hypothetical benefit of living in the boonies or something, but for the foreseeable future I get too much personal value out of living on the west coast. It's not always suitable mind you. Extremely short random day trips are the trickiest, which might tip me at some point if I'm making decent money again, but it's so hard to get to a point where I could rationalize that as an occasional leisure luxury instead of a burden. I wouldn't move to another city though for any reason that would require me to own a car just for getting around. If they ain't investing in viable transit, they won't get my income tax.
  • BurningFrog 2y ago
    Selfdriving taxis solves much of the 98% unused car problem.
    • ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
      They also create problems in terms of extra journeys as a private car will go from A to B, whereas a taxi goes from C to A to B to C. It's quite amusing as people try to come up with more efficient use of cars and typically end up reinventing public transport (e.g. buses, trains etc).
      • _huayra_ 2y ago
        Bro just platoon the autonomous taxis into a convoy, give them separated lanes, and get rid of the rubber wheels and add steel wheels and steel lane guides for maximum efficiency. It's obviously new and revolutionary!
      • DennisP 2y ago
        Those extra journeys can be minimized with decent routing software. Even if it's as simple as ending up at B, then going directly to the nearest customer waiting for a ride. And fwiw, if Tesla gets their robotaxi stuff working, their 22-passenger "robovan" is basically a bus anyway, just without a driver.
        • anticensor 2y ago
          Their demo event showed a 14-passenger vehicle, but anyway.
      • BurningFrog 2y ago
        I doubt that's a big factor. The big thing they do is to make a huge number of parking spots obsolete! There will also be far fewer cars doing the same transportation work.
  • jaredhallen 2y ago
    Sounds like maybe you don't need a car. That's good for you, and I truly mean that. But that doesn't mean it's the case for everyone. It's a big, diverse world out there.
    • throwaway290 2y ago
      Um the fact that some people in some (less developed?) places need cars is not an argument against cars being wasteful...
    • rglullis 2y ago
      Unless your idea of "diverse world" is confined to (suburban) North America, the need to own a car is the exception, not the rule.
      • KineticLensman 2y ago
        Rural southern England here. Public transport is non existant where I live. You need a car if you want a life. I lost my driving license for medical reasons and have spent two years without driving. I am really conscious of what a car means in terms of having a social life, working, etc. If I was younger, I would have had to relocate
        • rglullis 2y ago
          Tell that to the Amish. Car dependency is something that we've learned, not the natural state of things.
          • bbradley406 2y ago
            The Amish ride in horse-drawn buggies and hire private car drivers for longer trips. I'd rather not go back to the days of horses as the primary means of transportation though.
          • KineticLensman 2y ago
            > Car dependency is something that we've learned, not the natural state of things. Yes, it is not the natural state of things but for many people it is the actual state of things. I absolutely hate the fact that I live in a car focussed society but that is where I do actually live. And because of my investment in my house and garden I don't want to move > Tell that to the Amish. I had to count to 10 before responding here. Perhaps you didn't notice the bit where I said I have spent two years without a car. It is something I have thought about a LOT. And have been impacted by. I don't have a convenient Amish community nearby to help me put up barns in my backyard, or even to lend me a horse to ride to the local B&Q when I need to buy a new tool of some sort. I deeply wish there was better public transport - I am not a petrolhead - but there isn't and won't be for the foreseeable future.
  • ddingus 2y ago
    That depends doesn't it? I keep my cars for a long time. 200k miles is the usual, and that has held true buying used a little ways north of 100k miles already on the board. If we designed for very long car life, the waste equation would look different. Toyota does, and there are a small number of people planning on half a million miles. Recently there is evidence Toyota is either struggling on this metric. Quality problems or deliberate design intent change?
    • _huayra_ 2y ago
      > Recently there is evidence Toyota is either struggling on this metric. Quality problems or deliberate design intent change? I'm hoping they fix this. There's almost no other reason to buy a Toyota other than this reliability reputation. It seems like the way to go now is a naturally-aspirated Subaru, which I ended up after all the Toyota dealers near me treated me like a chump (which apparently is common; Toyota doesn't have as much "say" over their dealers as other similar companies afaik). Subies have basically been iterations on the same engine for a decade (the FB series), and the brand cannot afford to do much goofy R&D. They're also still dealing with the head gasket reputation despite that being >10 years old at this point (almost 20).
      • ddingus 2y ago
        Yeah, a friend has a Suburu and we just had this same chat. My most recent buy was a golden era Toyota and the difference is notable when I look at current models.
      • bigfatkitten 2y ago
        Subaru CVTs are not famous for their longevity.
        • _huayra_ 2y ago
          I mean don't expect to beat on them, under-maintain them, etc, like one can a lot of older Toyota gear, but used within parameters, they have lasted my family (almost all of whom drive CVT Subies) well over 1m miles at this point without any big failure. Key thing is to change the CVT fluid at least at the 60k interval (some countries say to do it every 30k, but that seems excessive). The "it's a lifetime fluid" thing is a total lie; it's the "lifetime of the CVT", so when it grenades itself, that's its lifetime ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • dsign 2y ago
    I've been of a similar opinion for many years. I have public transport and my office commute is about two hours and half in each direction, but I only need to go to the office once per week, so it's somehow acceptable. But I'm getting old. I've decided I want to use my remaining years of any strength to do more hiking, kayaking and camping, and for that I need a car every weekend. Rentals would be slightly more expensive than owning a second hand one. But I do wish car ownership were cheaper and more painless.
• dylan604 2y ago
  > likely powered 24/7, This is a weird thing to call out. I'd suggest a car is powered as much as a phone. I'm trying to decide for people that have a car and a phone which is more infuriating to not have power.
  • 6SixTy 2y ago
    Kill switches across the battery aren't terribly uncommon
    • dylan604 2y ago
      That’s your retort? Do you have numbers of them being anything more than a rounding error? More and more cars need something reset when the battery is disconnected. I can only assume that this will become even more prevalent as a “security feature”. I had after market head unit that used that as an anti-theft deterrent.
• Sebb767 2y ago
  On the other hand, cars are much less limited in terms of sensor size (allowing you to determine location and acceleration more precisely, for example), power and permissions. In theory, root permission on your phone would be better, but a normal app won't have this amount of far-reaching permissions, but the manufacturerers have full control over hardware and software on your car.
  • ddingus 2y ago
    To me, that makes it their car.
• hnlmorg 2y ago
  > And an EV without smarts is legitimately just a golf cart. Not really no. There’s a gulf of difference between a car and a golf buggy. And we can prove that by turning your argument the other way and saying: if that were true then ICE vehicles would just be petrol-powered golf carts. Clearly that isn’t even a remotely accurate way of describing your average car
  • BigGreenJorts 2y ago
    I mean, besides shape and speed, what is the difference that most people are concerned about. I wasn't aware that golf carts are all electric. I just thought of a golf cart as a car used specifically to traverse golf courses and resorts.
    • hnlmorg 2y ago
      Shape, speed, comfort (better seating), body work, windscreen, lights, gears, radio, air conditioning… I could go on If people just wanted to drive around in vehicles that were equivalent to golf carts then everyone would own a quad bike instead of a car. Cars have been around for more than a hundreds years so it’s astonishing to me that some people cannot imagine what a car would look like without the “smart” features
      • dzhiurgis 2y ago
        And luddites been criticising cara for being too modern for hundreds of years too.
        • TeMPOraL 2y ago
          The Luddites haven't been criticizing cars for anything, given how they came and went 50 years before a first proper car was built. And, if anything, the Luddites were not anti-technology, they were anti-being fucked over by capitalists. The problem they rose up against wasn't the automatic looms, it was the way they were deployed - to replace skilled workers instead of augmenting them, depressing salaries and eliminating jobs across the industry. The Luddites weren't fighting progress, they were fighting to keep themselves and their descendants from destitution. Alas, since technology was involved and technology is magic, the misconception about the Luddites has spread wide and persists to date, conveniently distracting everyone from what the actual problem was. Compare with everyone today whining about "tech bros" and the supposed folly of "solving social problems with technology", which is both wrong and entirely missing the real problem, which is the same as the ones Luddites fought and lost to.
• Spooky23 2y ago
  Not necessarily. Cars are a great proxy for human behavior. Long term, cars will be leased based on driving behavior, and more critically, will be taxed based in driving distance and style.