Instead, cities should have much better and practical public transport, so I wouldn't need my car in the first place, but it's not possible to plan your day around with flexibility in my city, unless I have my car with me.

Otherwise, 15 min trips become 60+ ones which makes everything impossible.

Public transport still doesn't cover all the use cases of a car, such as hauling things and going out into nature. Which is something everyone needs to do.

In South Australia the public transport certainly does go out to nature. Kids use the train to bring their mountain bikes to the top of the trails and you can visit many national parks by bus. And for hauling things, its cheaper to get them delivered or rent a small truck.

People seem to think that just because things don't work where they live, that they must be impossible.

Even if public transport goes out into nature, it's going to be a tiny fraction of the places that you can reach with a car. To reach nature in the same extent with public transport as with a car, is impossible. The few nature spots that are connected by public transport around here are completely overcrowded on any weekend with nice weather, and the trip itself takes more than twice the time of driving, making day trips not even feasible anymore.

Even just getting around in inside the city, driving takes on average half the time of public transport. Shopping is much more convenient. It IS impossible to have public transport that delivers the same usefulness, speed and flexibility.

Correct. Therefore, the winning combination for city dwellers is public transit + carsharing. Public transit operators are catching on to this: In my city, there is a tie-in offer where a subscription to public transit gives you a rebate with a partnered carsharing provider.

Like I already wrote in another comment, I think car sharing absolutely does not work at all, because everyone wants the cars at the same time. It's really difficult to find a car when you want it, for example on a sunday afternoon when the weather is nice. And it's totally unreliable, sorry bad luck no swimming for you today, a whole beautiful day wasted in your apartment. It's almost impossible hard to find a scooter share to go to work during commute times. It's only reliable on odd times where noone wants it.

Owning a car still gives you a lot of freedom and flexibility to do what you want, when you want it. Which is not covered by car sharing at all.

I would gladly own a cheaper car only to do a weekly shopping trip and a weekly nature trip, something like 25km per week. Seems ridiculous to own a car for that short distances, but it gives a LOT of quality of life and I would gladly pay for it instead of using car sharing.

> Owning a car still gives you a lot of freedom and flexibility to do what you want, when you want it. Which is not covered by car sharing at all.

I live in a big city (London). Owning a car for me would be frankly insane. Where would I put it? If I was communing again, could not possibly take it in to work, there would be nowhere to put it at that end either, when I finally got through the traffic.

It is both much more practical and cheaper to use bicycle or bus and metro rail for commuting; taxi, minicab, or uber for other urban journeys; and car rental for weekends away.

I get that cases may vary. it's different further out from the city. But the idea that car = freedom, always, is very silly. I owned car here once, and it was liberating to get rid of it.

It seems that you have problems with your shared transport in your area, it sucks but maybe the better solution is better shared transport, not more private cars?

> I live in a big city (London). Owning a car for me would be frankly insane. Where would I put it? If I was communing again, could not possibly take it in to work, there would be nowhere to put it at that end either, when I finally got through the traffic.

I live in a big city. Not owning a car for me would be frankly insane. How would I get to work? It'd take ~2 hours with public transport only.

It is both much more practical and safer to use a car rather than a bicylce (too dangerous) or bus (cannot reach where I go) and metro rail (Have to walk an hour for nearest station) for commuting; taxi, minicab, or uber for other urban journeys; and car rental for weekends away (all are too expensive in the long run).

I get that cases may vary. it's different in other cities. But the idea that car = burden, always, is very silly. I was unable to go where I want/need to go quickly until I got a car, and it was liberating.

There, fixed it for my case. :)

Of course, YMMV. :)

The public transport in your city sucks, sorry about that. Maybe fix that, not daft distractions like solar panels on cars.

Eh, the comment thread we're talking under starts with a comment [0] by me, supporting public transport rather than thse cars with an implicit sentence stating that my city's public transport sucks.

That's a nice full circle. :)

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26474545

If they want cars at the same time each day, that's what mass transport covers.

Problem is people don't pay the real cost of their car, it's subsidised by free pollution

No it doesn't, because the destination is not a densely populated place. People go in wheel and spoke formation in their cars out from the city into nature.

> Public transport still doesn't cover all the use cases of a car.

Of course. OTOH, Instead of using my car, congesting traffic and spewing smoke from my back twice everyday, I'd only use my car whenever I need it for these heavy tasks.

Then, use public transport most of the time which possibly runs on electric and do a little more walking every day.

There is no car rental in my parents village and the bus only comes a few times a day. Car sharing works great in bigger cities but is not even an option outside those. I use one in Berlin and have never owned a car actually.

Perfect for people like my mother would be a self driving car that you can summon to your door in a few minutes. But even calling a taxi takes half an hour+. So it would have to be faster than that.

I live in a big city and use car sharing, and I don't think it works great at all. The fundamental problem with it, and the thing that is always overlooked in the calculations of how much time private cars are unused, is that everyone wants the cars at the same time. Mornings + afternoons (commute times) and weekends. Also highly depending on the weather, which means even planning a day ahead is very hard. If it's sunday afternoon and the weather is nice, good luck finding a free car in the car sharing.

For some (not that rare) areas, make that:

- bus: a few times a week (if at all), because of cost efficiency

- taxi: hours, + only if you book at least a day in advance, because they’re just not sitting there waiting for a call, they’re busy towards where people are/go, which is, like, the other way.

Throw in no/unstable/limited power grid, and you double down on one of the use cases.

The village 3 miles away has a bus service 5 times a day. My sister lives in a different village. She gets a bus service on Tuesday morning.

There would be more busses if there was more demand because less people had cars

There wouldn't, when there's only demand for 15 outbound journeys a day from a given hamlet, equally spread on the 4 roads in and out, your bus isn't going to get used.

Rent a car that's delivered to a house reliably available at 8am each morning and 3pm every afternoon, with car seats, when everyone else is after a car at at least one of those times, half a mile from the nearest neighbour, 2 miles from the village, and 7 miles from the nearest town?

Sounds like an urban planning problem.

I can find half a dozen car sharing vehicles in a 400m radius from my house.

Try again on a sunday afternoon on one of the first beautiful spring days, see how many cars you can find then. Zero around here

I can find half a dozen sheep within 400m radius from my house. Not everyone lives in a dense city.

Well, I can also find a dozen sheep within that radius, just the other way around! Dense country for sure, but I’m not living near the city center.

Urban planning does not equal trying to get everyone to live in packed apartments.

Lots of people have a 10 mile or less round trip commute. At that distance, you can drive to and from work every day using this car. I don't think most people would want to rent a vehicle for this.

... and if I'm going to rent it for 24 hours, why not buy it in the first place?

The environmental cost of making the car takes a reasonable amount of the resources used in is lifecycle. So in the case you only need the car for a few miles a week you should consider alternatives. Maybe village councils should have a car to be shared by all.

What about peak load

You've got 150 people in a village

Half drive, so that's 75

You've got 10% of people who want a car for this sort of distance (3000km), so that's 8. Of those chances are at least some of the time almost all of them will want to use it over the same period. Maybe you can get away with 6 or 7 cars instead of 8, with some risk, but that's not saving much, and you're adding a lot of inconvenience (car won't be in the right place), overhead, and risk (what if you need a car now and there's none available?)

If you want to tackle the externalities of the resources producing the car, tax them at the same rate as taxing other resources.

Of course that's a big village, what about a group of half a dozen isolated houses 2 miles from the village?

Sure, if peak load is 90% of users wanting to go on long distance trips simultaneously then it doesn't work out.

Why would peak load be that high, though?

Maybe you should build a ride sharing app......oh.

Small villages would not have any rentals. Small villages also keep vehicles for emergency - ex. for emergency visits to hospitals at nearest town or city.

Renting cars requires a good credit score, a good driving record, and somebody willing to rent you a car. Further, if a trip starts at a residence there probably won't be a rental car available. And if all the rental cars are in use, there arent any. Car ownership allows a greater level of autonomy without continuous reliance on one more entity that can blacklist whomever they want at any time.

Surely public transportation options are infinitely more preferable than people repeatedly renting cars?

Once you have JIT public transport then there's no difference really