[gnarbarian]

I don't live in a city. I'm 20 miles from the nearest grocery store. I build real physical things with my hands that require physical materials like lumber to haul around. I can't haul 2000 lb of lumber on the back of my road bike.

[cardanome]

What would be the issue with just having your stuff delivered then?

And yeah every rule needs exceptions, of course there should be ways to rent cars for special occasion, I am just against general private car ownership for most people.

Edit: General private car ownership of people living in the cities that is

[ChadNauseam]

I hate cars as much as the next guy, but transitioning all urban life away from cars is a much more difficult project than transitioning urban life to electric cars.

The no-cars world requires a huge amount of political buy-in and you’d be going through the most politically annoying group in the US – homeowners. The transition to electric cars can be done through simple laws that change the incentives (like by implementing a federal gas tax so it’s cheaper to drive electric, or heavily subsidizing electric cars)

[gnarbarian]

I think your view is skewed towards living in a city. your solution doesn't work for a number of reasons. if I wanted to go somewhere I would call an Uber and they would drive 20 or 30 miles to pick me up and then 40 or 50 miles more to drop me off and then the reverse would happen when I wanted to go home Rather than me just driving the 100 miles there and back You have additional overhead of somebody having to come pick me up doubling the miles driven. That person has to get paid which makes it even more expensive. And there are still cars! I'm just not allowed to own one. if I'm sharing a ride which is unlikely it will take up way more time which is also an expensive drag on the economy.

delivery here is unreliable and expensive. if I'm picking out wood I have to go through dozens of boards to find ones that aren't fucked up. I need to find ones that are suitable for the job that I'm trying to use them for. A delivery guy would just grab whatever and throw it in the truck. It's not like I'm ordering an iPod off of Amazon. no mileage savings would be had because it is unlikely that anybody else would be having something delivered in the middle of nowhere.

[cardanome]

These are fair points. I am actually sorry that my last post might have been more dismissive than was called for.

The thing is most people live in urban areas (and the general trend is for that to increase) and don't work in woodworking. So this caused me to be a bit dismissive as it doesn't really effect the main point that much.

As I said, there will always be exceptions. I think the more productive discussion is to find what would work for most people, that is people in an urban setting. Then we can figure out how to make it work for people farther out.

I am not sure what the best solution for your situation would be. I guess the biggest quick win would be just to get private cars out of the cities. It doesn't really matter if a few people farther out own cars as long as they are a minority. Maybe that is where electric cars would come in handy but then again they lack the range.

Again, most people live in urban areas and prefer to live in urban areas and once cities become more green they will become even more attractive furthering urbanization. Whether the few people living outside own a car or not will hardly matter.

[dieselgate]

I personally think the best “solution” to needing any vehicle (car, truck) “outside a city” is one that runs on petrol alternatives (biodiesel, among others, being a common one). For remote/very very cold regions gasoline still has high value because they’re easier to start in way sub zero temps. for the record there’s no bias against EVs here