[bionhoward]

I believe cars are way less important than people think. Ride sharing and WFH goes a long way. The elephant in the room is Augmented Reality. We're not talking enough about the consequences of AR for the economy.

If I have a normal car, and I'm wearing AR, I can re-skin it with unreal engine. The most interesting technologies aren't about transportation -- they're about human augmentation, transhumanism. A car is just too big to be a great augment. If I were CEO of Apple I would take a hard pass on "Apple Car" project and focus the company on AR.

Plus, cars are expensive. Not always a great investment, or necessary

[TheAdamAndChe]

> "cars are not a necessity"

This is only potentially true in dense urban environments. Its not true in suburban and rural areas, at least in the US. The rural-to-urban transition won't occur fast enough for this to not be true for a few decades at very least.

[ericmay]

Well, you're describing how things are today but not necessarily how they could be.

I agree with the OP's sentiment that cars are mostly not needed. We've just been hoodwinked into building in car-friendly ways instead of people-friendly ways, and so we have these spread-out, fragile, suburban areas that depend entirely on cheap oil to function (if not the gas itself, the manufacturing, maintenance, and support of cars and car infrastructure).

Instead of building too dense (skyscrapers - opposite end of the problem spectrum) or not dense enough (suburbs) we could have built mixed-use walkable neighborhoods and towns and really reduced the need to spend money on cars. But hey, Ford, GM, and Chrysler had great lobbyists back in the day, and the threat of nuclear war with the Soviets meant that getting tanks and troops from one place to another necessitated the construction of extensive highway and freeway infrastructure. Win-win for a segment of the population with specific beliefs. Now we're so used to it that we find it hard to imagine living without it.

It infuriates me whenever I talk to people and they're like "wow Europe is so walkable! You can just go to the cafe down the street." or somewhere like Mackinac Island (aside from the horse poo) where people go to vacation - it's like yea we could just build like that everywhere if we wanted to. But we're dumb and we don't think and construction and automotive jobs need subsidies to keep the economy growing.

[TheAdamAndChe]

Sure, but you can't just close a milk bottle and expect the spilled milk to come back. Good or not, we have suburbs and rural infrastructure that won't just disappear in a decade.

[bionhoward]

I do live in a suburban / rural area without a car for the last 2 years. To shop I jog or bike to the store, or order from Amazon or the grocery store...and it's been fine. Sometimes I use Uber or ride with a friend. Yeah, I'd love to have a Toyota Tacoma, but insurance/maintenance/depreciation/gas is tens of thousands of dollars I can dedicate to other things instead.