[otabdeveloper4]

You don't need a 2000 kg car-shaped monster just to get one person to his office job. That's a historical artifact because ICE engines can't fit onto man-sized vehicles.

In the future most vehicles will be man-sized and powered by electrical motors. "Cars" will exist only for hauling freight, and probably only ever occasionally rented, not owned.

[myrmidon]

This appears like wishful thinking to me, because motorcycles have been available for a century, but people still almost always prefer cars if they can afford them.

Cars keep you much better protected from temperature, weather and traffic; it seems very unlikely to me that people will just forgo these comforts to rent electric rollers in the future.

Keeping a similar total number of privately owned cars, but almost all electric, sounds MUCH more likely to me.

[bluejekyll]

> Cars keep you much better protected from … traffic;

I think you mean car traffic. Cars create most of the dangerous traffic conditions that exist in our cities and neighborhoods.

While the GP’s post is idealistic, so many places are working to make non-car travel safer, it’s not hard to imagine a future where people choose more convenient modes of transportation as they feel safer doing so. Bikes as an example, tend to be easier to park, avoid most traffic issues (never really get stuck in traffic) and generally don’t have to look for parking at your destination. The only downside is their utility is generally mostly for local travel (last mile) of about 2 miles.

My guess is that for people that live within 2 miles of their work, school, and other needs, you’ll start seeing most households drop to a single car, with electric bikes making up most of the utility needs. It’s hard to predict a timeline here, and is highly dependent on a communities attention to making roads safer for non-car users. But for communities that do make those safety improvements you see big upticks in bike usage for things like taking kids to school, daily food shopping, and travel to work.

[myrmidon]

> I think you mean car traffic

No; I mean that a car protects reliably in case of an accident. When on a bike, roller or on foot you are MUCH more likely to bleed or break bones. Bike-on-bike crashes can be fatal, even if there were zero cars or trucks around.

Living within 2 miles of work for the majority sounds just improbable to me without falling back on short-term renting (maybe even then). Outside urban centers- impossible.

[otabdeveloper4]

Scooters, ebikes and other personal electric vehicles have a comfortable range of about 30 miles. (15 you want there and back again.)

[bluejekyll]

True, though based on the statistics around this most people tend to only bike about 5 miles. After that, it’s really only the folks committed to not driving at all.

[otabdeveloper4]

It doesn't matter if cars are more comfortable.

Cars are a massive waste of energy and resources compared to other transport options we have now.

Societis/cultures who ignore efficiency will be eventually forced to adapt against their will. It's just market economics.

(E.g., you can be obstinate and waste a significant chunk of your income just for the perceived comfort of a car, but over a few generations these people will lose in economic competition to people who act rationally.)

[pfdietz]

"People won't do something if it's not efficient" is quite a take. Demonstrably wrong, too. People will happily trade off more energy consumption for personal convenience.

As PV goes down its experience curve, the cost of operating an electric vehicle will fall. As batteries go down their curves, the cost of the vehicles themselves will fall. This will naturally push the equilibrium tradeoff point to larger, more energy intensive vehicles.

[bluejekyll]

As someone who’s adopting bikes for most of my utility needs, food shopping, dropping kids off at school, one thing I can’t agree with is that cars are more convenient. In general, I find cars to be far less convenient. They are annoying to park, often get stuck in traffic, and generally are just annoying large boxes that you need a lot of space to maneuver. Using a cargo bike for most of those needs on the other hand is far more convenient. Cars are definitely more comfortable, especially on rainy days. But even on rainy days, I often choose to ride (if it’s not a crazy storm) as it’s still more convenient.

[nradov]

Cars are only inconvenient in a few dense urban areas. In the places where most Americans live/work/shop/recreate there is plenty of free parking and traffic isn't too bad.

Cargo bikes can be a great option, though.

[bluejekyll]

Most Americans live in urban or dense suburban environments: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-03-26/u-s-urban...

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/urban-ru...

[Swizec]

> People will happily trade off more energy consumption for personal convenience

This must be why European cars are generally smaller than American cars. It has nothing to do with the lack of tax breaks on large vehicles, historically higher gas prices, and notoriously smaller parking spots. Nothing at all. Europeans just like smaller cars, right?

And let’s not get into why half of Asia seems to ride around on tiny little 50cc vespas/scooters. I’m sure that’s just more comfortable there what with all the extremely hot weather and monsoon rains.

[TeMPOraL]

Most people in Europe are money-bound, not energy-bound, when choosing what car to buy.

[Swizec]

You use money to buy energy. Wouldn't matter that you're money-bound if gas was free. With gas (energy) not being free, people are voting with their wallet to say they would rather spend their limited funds on things other than energy.

For example: Going bonkers crazy on insulation is a common thing to do in Europe. We had TV ads for triple-pane windows back in the 1990s in a country (Slovenia) where re-doing your windows costs an annual wage or more. Because over N years it comes out cheaper than paying for energy.

Energy is so cheap in USA, at least in CA where I am, that even in 2024 seeing double-pane windows on a house is rare. Let alone triple or quadruple pane, which have become the norm back home.

[otabdeveloper4]

It's just the free market, dude. 20 years ago we didn't have cheaper and more efficient options. Now we do.

[pfdietz]

And by gum you're going to coerce people into buying them even if they don't want to!

[concordDance]

> It doesn't matter if cars are more comfortable.

> Cars are a massive waste of energy and resources compared to other transport options we have now.

Comfort is something we spend energy and resources on. This is a good thing.

You could potentially argue its too much energy/resources but that's not a determination you can make, not having access to people's internal emotional states. Some people really like giant fuzzy toys, some like nothing more than flying and some like fancy VR.

We should let people spend the energy/resources they earn on what gives them the most comfort/enjoyment or we'll be Typical Mind Fallacying our way to collective unhappiness.

(The above assumes that the externalities of cars are correctly priced in in the form of car insurance, road tax, congestion charge and fuel duty)

[detourdog]

I was struck on a visit to Tel Aviv how absolutely every economic class had a form of powered transportation.

The low rung was the scooter/bicycle and the expense and convenience went up from there.

The streets are absolutely clogged with every level of transportation and everyone was busy and going fast.

Quite a contrast to rural New England but obviously the future. I see a college professor riding a one wheel about 2 miles from campus going up an incline that stretches for 2 miles. The road turns to dirt as it crosses state lines to Vermont. I dislike the ride on my bicycle. I stopped him once and I think he said he had 40 mile range!?

[ethangk]

Admittedly our experience is probably very different, I live in London where there's great public transport, so most people use that/ bicycles to get into their jobs. Despite that, I still own a car that I regularly use to get out of the city into areas that aren't remotely well served by public transport (think an airfield in the middle of nowhere). The infrastructure around renting a car is too much of a pain in the ass at the moment, and far too expensive. I think the inflection point is ~12 rentals or so per year to make it cheaper to own my crappy old car with insurance and maintenance.

[mitthrowaway2]

In Japan, electric Kei cars do quite well at half that weight, even in rural areas with heavy snow. For example, 2022-2023 car of the year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Sakura

[elzbardico]

> That's a historical artifact because ICE engines can't fit onto man-sized vehicles.

My motorcycle in the garage would disagree

[otabdeveloper4]

A motorcyle is not "man-sized".

There's a simple test - can you put it on your porch or in a hallway?

[JumpinJack_Cash]

> > There's a simple test - can you put it on your porch or in a hallway?

If the building has ramps for handicapped and elevators you can put your motorcycle everywhere, even on floor 10 or 100 or even 1000.

[lupusreal]

You need the car if you want to go reasonably fast (much more than 20-30 mph) and stay reasonably safe. You also need the car if you want to haul enough groceries to feed a family for more than one or two meals, or if you want to transport other people who may be too old or young to go cowboying around on an electric scooter. Electric scooters are pretty much only for young urban adults with no children.

Like it or not, cars aren't going anywhere. A scooter lifestyle might work for you but it doesn't work for a large enough portion of the population that your wishes for society will never come to pass.

Btw, electric scooters are possibly the most idiotic form of personal electric transport; electric bicycles are much safer. The geometry of a scooter, small wheels far below the center of mass of the rider, makes them fundamentally unstable at any speed. Considering bicycles exist, scooters are completely senseless and should probably be banned outright. You are far more likely to crash a scooter by yourself, simply by losing control of it, than to crash a bicycle. Scooters really are for young people who still think they're invincible; which explains why most riders don't even wear helmets.

[Toutouxc]

> wheels far below the center of mass of the rider, makes them fundamentally unstable

Having the wheels far below the center of mass of the whole system (rider + scooter) makes them MORE stable, a bit similar to reversing a car with a long trailer instead of a short one. Compare to something like a racing recumbent bicycle, where the center of mass is really low. Those are very hard to balance at lower speeds.

You're so high above the wheels on en e-scooter (or just a regular kick scooter) that you can easily swerve (i.e. laterally displace the wheels, but not your torso) around a pothole or a puddle without changing the direction of travel. That's the opposite of instability.

[lupusreal]

The small wheels of scooters make them more likely to death wobble. I have personally witnessed it happen literal to the name, the rider cracked his skull because he wasn't wearing a helmet of course.

Bicycles naturally stay upright. You can push one without a rider and it will roll alone until it loses speed. Try the same with a scooter and it will immediately fall.

[Toutouxc]

Some scooters are susceptible to death wobble, that's true.

The fact that you can push a bicycle without a rider and it will roll, while most small-wheeled kick-scooters will fall, is not caused by a higher center of mass, but by the geometry of the front wheel, mainly the steering angle, fork offset and trail. Without a rider, a) the center of mass isn't even that different and b) it doesn't really matter how they behave without one, because the rider is part of the system.

[otabdeveloper4]

> if you want to haul enough groceries to feed a family for more than one or two meals, or if you want to transport other people who may be too old or young

This is a "once a week" situation. As time goes on it will become increasingly hard to justify the cost of something you use once a week, especially when other options (groceries delivery) are cheaper and more convenient.

P.S. Scooters are popular because they don't need skill to ride, despite being worse in other respects. As time goes on this, too, will change; learning to ride some sort of PEV will be normal.

[Geisterde]

How many "once a week" situations do you have? I go out to breakfast most weekends with my spouse. Which one of us should ride on the spokes when its 20° out? Do we have to drive seprately now?

[otabdeveloper4]

We use our car once every one or two weeks. (I'm not in the USA.)

[nradov]

Grocery delivery sucks. You have to order too far ahead, actual delivery time is too unpredictable, you can't personally inspect the items, and sometimes you get inappropriate substitutions. Any suggestion of grocery delivery as a substitute for cars is just totally disconnected from reality.

Americans will continue driving to Costco. There is no conceivable future where this minor transportation cost becomes hard to justify, especially when you factor in the cost savings of buying in bulk.

[ghaff]

Grocery delivery is neither cheaper nor more convenient as a general rule. I've only used it once in the past 20 years when I was on crutches and doing a full grocery shopping was awkward.

[otabdeveloper4]

Grocery delivery is cheaper because they save on real estate costs. (You can keep most of your stock in a warehouse with only a small area for walk-in service.)

This is already happening where I live, because it makes economic sense. (They can sell upscale and more varied groceries without paying for upscale real estate.)

[gmac]

YMMV. For me in the UK — where all supermarkets except the discounters will deliver cheaply — it's ENORMOUSLY more convenient: it saves me hours a week that I'd otherwise spend at a supermarket.

[dredmorbius]

It is where land-use patterns are appropriate to it, see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39002203>.

[adrianN]

I use it regularly as it costs only a few euros to get my groceries delivered and I can do my shopping from the couch in ten minutes.

[dredmorbius]

All of these concerns are predicated on sprawl-based land-use patterns, which themselves are dependent on the automobile. The largest impact of private motorised transportation, after climate, has been on the built landscape.

What was replaced were dense cities and compact towns, along with more distributed rural living, though the traditional form of that, still found in some places in Europe and elsewhere, is of small towns from which farmers travel to their (nearby, but not immediately proximate) fields.

In the city/town example, where the total urbanisation rarely extended more than a few kilometers or miles (as in low single digits), one would walk to shops or the market square, and purchases were carried, occasionally pulled in carts or wagons, or later delivery by the merchant was arranged.

Some goods, particularly fresh / readily spoiling ones (milk, eggs, ice) were delivered by cart door-to-door.

I'm not saying that we necessarily are returning to a similar circumstance, though it's a possibility you and others on this thread seem not to even consider. I'd suggest that this is an error. What a post-carbon world will entail is much more expensive private vehicle costs, where EVs seem to runs 2--4x the cost of an equivalent ICE vehicle, which would make ownership more challenging and various alternatives, including smaller transport options (bicycles, electric bikes and scooters, "city cars", and the like) more viable. I'm going to suggest that the Uber/Lyft ride-hailing revolution has proved a failure with many of the purported benefits (less traffic & congestion, universal availability, lower cost, less demand for parking) falling well short of advertised potential.

And I'm not claiming that the transformation will be instantaneous. Mass-market automobiles first appeared in 1901 (Ford's Model T and equivalent General Motors offerings), whilst tract suburban development didn't gain significant momentum until the late 1940s (Levittown, PA), and weren't fully mature until the 1970s, a lag of a half to three quarters of a century. De-suburbanisation may well follow a similar timescale. And yes, it's worth noting that there were a few minor road-bumps on the path to suburbanisation (the Great Depression, World War II).

[dredmorbius]

Related: "Americans can no longer afford their cars", just posted to HN a few minutes ago:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39005696>

<https://www.newsweek.com/americans-can-no-longer-afford-thei...>

[concordDance]

> Considering bicycles exist, scooters are completely senseless and should probably be banned outright.

Scooters can be quite convenient due to smaller size.

In general, banning things that are too risky for an individual's taste seems wrong. Individuals should be allowed to take risks with their own bodies as long as they are fully informed of those risks. Skiing or having children might be too risky for me but imposing that preference on others isn't showing empathy.

[jl6]

But people need to “haul freight” all the time - shopping bags, kids, etc.

[defrost]

Not all people are US families though.

Many single people exist who shop using a backpack, in the peer comments there is an example of a Japanese small car of the year that suits people of a different country.

Big cars are a US lifestyle choice.

[elzbardico]

World-wide car sales 2023: Around 70 millions Cars sold in the US in 2022: Around 13 millions.

Even if you are talking only about Light Trucks and SUVs as an exclusively American choice, most customers in the BRICs and the most affluent developing countries now prefer a SUV if they can afford one. The only reason light-trucks and SUVs don't outsell light cars in those countries as much as in the USA is the income differential.

Cars per-capita? Well, the US has more cars per-capita than almost anyone, but not by a so big factor, it only has 2x the number of cars per-capita then, let's say, Brazil.

So, no, for what is worth, people seem to prefer to have a personal car as soon as they can afford one, and as soon as their income increases they also seem to have the same american stupid desire for trucks and SUVs.

[philwelch]

Single adults without children aren’t a sustainable social norm.

[defrost]

Nor is a continuously expanding human population.

Nonetheless, large families throughout time and space have somehow managed to survive without a yank tank, this suggests that while they may be desirable they are hardly neccessary.

[philwelch]

They’ve also managed to survive without running water or antibiotics. And if you’re really worried about overpopulation, we could go a step further and eliminate the entire practice of medicine. Large families went without modern medicine for thousands of years, plus then we wouldn’t need to worry about maintaining road infrastructure for ambulances.

[bluejekyll]

I have a cargo bike, I carry two kids on it to school and back in the mornings and afternoons, avoiding the crazy car traffic other parents create at drop-off/pickup, and also can carry up to six bags of groceries (easily) which is generally enough food for a week or more.

We use our car to travel longer distances, like soccer tournaments over 5 miles away, or on the very rare case I need to haul something really big (which is such a rare need it’s worth just renting a truck).

[achow]

Is it really true though?

Earliest cars were essentially horseless carriages. I think the norm of multiple people travelling together (as a family) has been set.

[otabdeveloper4]

Multiple people together in a car is definitely not the norm, statistically.

[arter4]

The average number of people in a car is probably somewhere between 1 and 2, but if a group of people who know each other have to go from A to B, it is reasonable that they may try to get in a single car. If nothing else, because parking in major cities tends to be a nightmare, and finding a spot for one car is easier than finding N (reasonably close) spots for N cars.

[chriswarbo]

> If nothing else, because parking in major cities tends to be a nightmare, and finding a spot for one car is easier than finding N (reasonably close) spots for N cars.

A vehicle which isn't moving is not performing its job as transport; and is instead wasting space. Your scenario is better served by public transit, which doesn't require any parking (outside of official maintenance depots, etc.). It also scales to groups of several hundred, whilst a car can only take around 5 individuals (perhaps a few more in a minivan, but that just makes the inefficiency of moving it around and wasting space on parking even worse for the entire rest of its lifetime!)

[mcculley]

Nobody needs monster trucks either. People will continue to use ridiculous machines as they become more affordable.

[adrianN]

ICEs fit on model planes.