[Animatronio]

I was just thinking - why don't they make electrified coin-operated shopping carts that you can take home and return when you're done with them? That would greatly extend the carrying capacity of a single person and maybe make car trips redundant.

[desas]

Because nearly no-one wants to walk to the store, walk home, walk back to the store to return the cart and then walk home again.

I never drive to the store and I still wouldn't do that.

[Animatronio]

You'd keep the cart until next time you need it.

[CableNinja]

Thats just buying a shopping cart with extra steps

[dragontamer]

Then why don't we make the shopping cart carry people and suddenly its just a car with a lot of extra steps.

Like, a car _is_ your shopping cart you take to-and-from the grocery store. It also carries you to work and does all sorts of other things.

These "crappier than a car" solutions seem to be from people who haven't really thought this through IMO.

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The solution is to have a store walking distance from the house, meaning you don't even take large amounts of groceries home. Why buy a lot of groceries when whatever you want is within walking distance?

When I visited Manila, Philippines, my life was like this. Fresh bread? Just walk to the corner store, no reason to take extra home with me because tomorrow morning it'd be baked fresh again. Why should I spend on 2 pan-de-sal (great tasting Filipino bread btw) for today-and-tomorrow, when I'm planning to walk to the city-corner again to well... do anything anyway? The bus is there, the food is there, breakfast is there, everything is there. Its less convenient to even take anything home outside of eggs or other longer-term goods.

But you need to live _much_ closer together than what Americans are used to. And there needs to be a reason to go "to the corner" (ex: to take the bus or other public transit). Etc. etc. etc. This simply doesn't work in American suburbia.

American City centers, such as New York or Washington DC seem to have figured it out in my experience. But prices for this lifestyle are higher than just buying a car and living in suburbia. So yeah, Americans recognize the value of this lifestyle (despite all of our debate and complaints). But there's not enough space/housing in cities to have enough people live a car-free lifestyle.

[Animatronio]

Your solution is even worse! Not only it means opening stores everywhere, but you haven't even considered the fact that not everyone wants to go shopping daily. Buying in bulk is a thing, bc of time and money saved. Besides, I was thinking of something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Foldable-Lightweight-Shopping-Capacit... which is already popular with the old ppl in many countries in Europe.