https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F6Bz-0EKA0

"Phasing", perhaps. "Phased", not yet...

Approximately 19% of passenger cars in use in Norway are (pure) EV, with 7% plug-in hybrid and 5% conventional hybrid. That leaves 40% diesel and 30% petrol.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_N...

Taken in isolation, it's an interesting case study in EVs, but I'd be careful about extrapolating too much.

Our public transit systems are largely garbage, if they exist at all. Bike lanes are extremely rare, and are really just used as free car parking.

Take my commute to work for instance. It's about 3 miles, but it would be impossible to bike, as there are huge and dangerous hills. Likewise, walking would be very difficult. It takes about 10 minutes to drive to work, and a bus would be over 40 minutes.

We have major infrastructural failures that make it very impractical to exist without a car in most cases.

That might seem pedantic but I’m not trying to be. The point is that we do actually have significant areas of population which are ready to be reworked to prioritize cycling without completely changing the way we live.

Suburbs can also prioritize safe cycling. Take a look at bentonville Arkansas. It has a tiny downtown but most of it looks and functions like a suburb. They’ve made it safe for everyone to ride their bikes to commute and for pleasure. It’s not a blueprint by any means, it’s a passion project by some rich folks, but it’s proof that the suburbs can be retrofitted with a vision and will.

I live in Kansas City and there is a valiant effort happening here to put in meaningful cycling infrastructure. There are bollard protected lanes from downtown out to the inner ring suburbs, additionally we have a residential grid that would allow safe cycling around town, but the new lanes are going completely unused. Visit the KC reddit and look at the vitriol being spewed - 'why are my tax dollars being wasted on this', 'i cant park', 'it ruins business'... These are the people coming from our outer ring suburbs where cycling is just not an option - they can't even fathom a place without cars.

The biggest problems are leaves on the stupid green paint they coat the bike lanes with, and increased stopping distance / driver fatigue for the cars.

Storing the rain gear at your destination in a way that lets it dry out is also a big concern.

Being cold is not an issue at all. If anything, you will be too hot while rising.

I mean, sure. I don’t want to. I lived without a car in New York and it was great. I live with a car in a low-density area and it’s also great. There should be a carbon tax, but that’s a fancy way of saying some people get cars and some don’t.

(Specifically: I don’t want to walk or bike when it’s -20° F. I don’t want to load up my skis every time on a bus, I literally can’t with a snowmobile, and I enjoy doing those things.)

But just as the Japanese found a foothold in the U.S. auto market in the 70's, if there were an electric car for under $10K I suspect a lot of people would find that their fears could be somewhat tempered.

Somebody should make a concept car that is electric but without any electronics (apart from battery and the motors, obviously). Apart from the battery, what's expensive in a modern electric car is that you are essentially sitting in a giant smartphone with 4 wheels.

Why is that necessary? Electric motors provide the unique opportunity to create vastly simpler (and thus cheaper) cars than ICE versions. This could over-compensate for the battery costs. But seems car manufacturers fill it with more electronics. I'm sure there are market opportunities for cars that just bring you safely from A to B without having some semi-self-driving-but-not-really Twitter client on board that opens the doors with an app on your mobile. I'm fine using a key, thank you very much.

The majority of the market (dollars-wise, at least) doesn't want a vastly simpler car though. They like having heated leather seats, heated steering wheels, comfortable interiors with good AC and heat, and a decent stereo.

Also, its not like you're realistically going to cut the price in half taking out the stereo. The actual car thing is the vast majority of the price.

It would be interesting to know how much cost it would cut to leave out the hundreds of sensors and CAN bus stuff and phone-home interactive NFC magic. Less dev costs, less certification, less maintenance, less licensing.

The screen and radios are usually pretty darn cheap BOM-wise. You really think a computer with less compute capacity as a cheap modern cell phone makes up a significant portion of the cost of a new car?

And no, not every car needs to have top-end leather heated fake-racing shaped seats. Some people just want to get from A to B and not everybody has a SWE salary/compensation like the slightly-detached-from-normal-people's-reality crowd here at HN.

Of course when I discuss this with a tech crowd I need to expect a tech-focused attitude. See it as a challenge .. I mean, some people write compilers that output only move instructions (still Turing complete) or build websites entirely running on solar power. Minimizing electronics in an electric car could just be another creativity-inducing restriction. Just saying "it can't be done" does not sound like real Hacker spirit to me..

Yeah the stuff it rests on such as the frame, the suspension, the wheels... That's the vast majority of the cost of a car. What sensors are you thinking about that add supposedly many many thousands of dollars to the cost of a car? Backup sensors aftermarket, at retail, can be had for $20. Mobileye sells aftermarket ADAS kits for <$1k installed, at retail. What do you think an automaker moving a million of those a year pays per unit?

Tear out a all of those computers and sensors from a $35k car and....now you're at a $33k with a lot of the comfort options removed.

Which part of the iceberg do you imagine makes up the majority of this cost? Which seems to be the most expensive part: the Android tablet, the $200 worth of sensors, or the couple thousand pounds of metal called the frame?

Could you ship a car without many computers on it? Sure, maybe. You'd have a hard time meeting emissions requirements without some kind of EFI though, so instantly there's a computer there. Same goes with needing to have some kind of EGR system to once again meet emissions and fuel economy standards. Then, you're going to have a hard time having a purely mechanical ABS, which without you'll get incredibly poor safety scores. These days a backup camera is required in the US, so you'll need some kind of display and a camera.

Like, sure, one could make a car without many computers in it. It wouldn't be radically cheaper than cars with computers in it, it will probably perform worse and have fewer comfort features. The only real selling point would be "hey, its a basic car!"

You probably wouldn't sell nearly as many units as the big auto makers, as I really doubt it would be as popular (for example, why isn't the Mirage the most popular car in the US?). This means your per unit manufacturing costs would be higher. In the end I imagine such a vehicle would actually cost more in the market than less as some of the big costs like safety testing would amortize over a much smaller fleet of vehicles.

Even the Aptera, an incredibly stripped down car, is estimating ~$25k base.

Lets take the Mirage for an example. ~$16kUSD for the extreme base tier. Tear out the computers, the motor, the transmission, we're probably at like $11k. Now add in a 45kWh battery pack at ~$151/kWh so ~$7k, and we're at ~$18k. Add a drive unit/charging system for another few grand, and we're at ~21k. Starting price for the Bolt, $27k, and that comes with all those fancy "make the car a smartphone" features. And if we price it with the Bolt's battery size (60kWh) it gets even closer.

Not sure what emissions you are thinking about from an electric car that needs regulation circuits. You know, the thing I'm talking about. (And that I'm still claiming could end up vastly simpler than ICE cars if we only tried).

But in any case, in absence of a good faith basis to a discussion, it doesn't seem worthwhile for either of us to continue it.

I do agree to the absence of good faith in this discussion. My comments have real experiences and cost estimations directly pointing to statements made by the other side. The other side of the conversation makes accusations of being disconnected from reality without actually giving examples, never actually addresses any questions, never actually gives any counter examples, etc. Perhaps we can both learn to be better communicators?

I did go a bit off topic talking about EGR systems, I kind of lost focus on EVs for a second there and talked cars in general. But either way, an EV is going to have computers to actually drive the electric motor effectively, a BMS, etc. Otherwise you're going to have some bad range, you're driving experience is probably going to be pretty poor, and you're not going to be able to really interface with any public chargers.

If you'd answer even one question, can you actually estimate how much an average car would save if they went without the "make a car a phone" stack? What kind of equipment do you propose they actually remove, and what do you think that equipment costs? I'd truly like to understand where you're coming from with that, because from what I see its <10% of the cost of a car.

And maybe I'm disconnected from reality, but the average new car sold today is now $40k, despite the Mirage still being sold for ~$16k. If there was really a massive market for cheap cars and I'm just too disconnected to notice, wouldn't Mitsubishi be moving a lot more Mirages?

We are very close to finding out, at least for the moment. In Oregon the combined federal & state tax incentives make a Chevy Bolt a $10.6K car.

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/electriccars/article-114...

Why is there this insistence that Americans are just 'big dumb'

Do the blind, seizure prone, or folks otherwise unable to drive a car due to health reasons count too?

That sounds intuitive to me but the fact that train tickets are so expensive on long distances (more than twice than if you travel alone in a car) makes me think it's not the case.

You are right - Rail freight is extremely expensive (typically more expensive than road except for very long routes) and cargo bikes have a tiny payload.

Think about container ships - massive vehicle and much lower cost vs rail freight (dependent on distance).

What matters is large volume per ride, which trains can definitely pull off.

Additionally, a train always costs the same amount to run, no matter the number of passengers, so in countries where trains don't see much use (like the US), they'll be much more expensive than they should be.

If you look at how DB sells the vast majority of their tickets (Sparpreis and Super Sparpreis) in the 9,90 / 14,90 to 49,90 price range (including for 1000km long distance journeys), train travel can be relatively affordable (but obviously still more expensive than car travel if you travel short journeys, fill the car with 7 adults and don't include the road maintenance paid for by regular taxes)

If you are flexible and plan ahead. If I decide now to go visit my sister tomorrow (~4 hours by the fastest train route), want to get there not much slower than by car, and travel at a time that is convenient for me, then I'll end up paying a lot more if I go by train, even if I'm traveling alone.

I’ve never owned a car, and stopped during the middle of my driving lessons because I didn’t see the purpose in it. That was 10 years ago, and I’ve moved halfway across the country, traveled a lot, never had a car, and overall I spend significantly less on travel than the friends who do own cars (while traveling more comfortably)

The FHWA is handing out $52B in FY22. Now, you might say, oh, well, more people drive, so the FHWA is clearly a more sensible place to invest. But Americans spent $743B on their cars, including payments, interest, and insurance.

It's a scam.

The northeast corridor, which is basically the only Amtrak route that is actually focused on being a useful route for passengers, runs at a profit.

Have you factored in all the costs associated with owning a vehicle (e.g. cost of purchase, maintenance, etc)?

It's basically a motorcycle on three wheels, those things have great milage.

The mileage really varies on a lot of things. Cruising on the highway with some side cases and a little bit of gear I usually only get like 35ish MPG on my 1050cc bike, into the low 40s without any cases and with my windshield fully down/off. Fully loaded with camping stuff I'd only get like 30mpg. My 650cc bike with some cases as well got like 40ish, mid 40s without any cases, but really didn't have enough power to feel great when needing to overtake on highways with big trucks.

Some really small motorcycles will get into the 80s, but its really not a given that motorcycles have high mileage numbers.

Around town at low speeds (therefore drag is negligible), size becomes an asset, and a small motorcycle or scooter can get very good fuel economy, assuming it doesn't have an insanely overpowered engine.

An electric motorcycle or scooter around town is extremely efficient.

For example, the Arcimoto (https://www.arcimoto.com/) gets 5.5 miles/kWh.

The Aptera (which blurs the line between motorcycle and car) gets 10 miles/kWh! By comparison the Model 3 (the most efficient current mass market EV) gets 4 miles/kWh.

I’m not advocating bicycles to transport wood (the most common industry here) to the train.

Also, it's +2 in Umeå right now, which is warmer than I thought.

Even if they're not as useful during winter, they're still everywhere.

In practice the market has spoken as to what kind of a form-factor people find the most useful for personal transportation in different climates and economic development scenarios. There’s no reason why ICEs couldn’t have supported the kind of vehicles some people imagine other people need.

The market has spoken, EVs only started gaining traction when they started resembling actual cars in form and function. Think of it as parallel evolution. Dolphins and fish.

But also bikes cause negligible damage to infrastructure and barely require any resources compared to cars, so the costs are usually much lower for bike infrastructure.

This is just BS/lies at the local level.

Moneyed PACs aren't fighting it out over councilor, selectman and planner positions for random suburbs.

Pretty much all the money these candidate dispense is either self raised or comes from an official political party who don't really doll out meaningful amounts to these elections

One would seem to win local elections by being the incumbent, and knocking on a lot of doors.

What about the state and federal subsidies for road infrastructure? A locality that wants to go a different (less car dependent) direction would be leaving that infrastructure money unspent, which isn't fair to the local voters who contributed tax money to the state/feds. They rigged it so that the locals paid for the roads via their tax money, their only choice is to take the money and build more roads, or kiss the money they sent to the state/feds goodbye.

Wouldn't the above kind of hamstring local politicians? Would it be safe to assume that the pro-car lobbyists at those higher level of government want to keep it this way?

When everyone already drives cars (the US), there’s significant opposition to investment in other types of infrastructure/built in support for investments in car infrastructure. Whereas there are plenty of cities around the global where such constituencies exist for other modes.

Having just spent a week in Utrecht it's very clear that "the market" can certainly show a preference for ebikes over cars.

Look at bentonville Arkansas for an example.

People want this kind of development, they flock to it, and they are willing to pay astronomically high prices to get it. The government keeps the supply low with exclusionary zoning that makes all types of construction except car-centric single family housing illegal.

There basically aren't any properly transit served and walkable areas in Sacramento. Closest would be Midtown and Richmond Grove, but they aren't really very good at all compared to neighborhoods in cities with actual infrastructure.

But despite that they are _still_ some of the most expensive neighborhoods in the area on a cost to sq foot basis. The trend of walkable transit served areas being in high demand is near universal across the US.

edit: comment not commit

I will break it down for you. The original poster said 'most expensive' not the 'most expensive on a per-sq-ft basis'. You are arbitrarily adding the words on a per-sq-ft basis because you FEEL like its much more useful. You provide 0 evidence to support this.

For example here is evidence that most people besides you feel that total cost is a much more important and useful metric. The follow sites selling homes list total cost as the main metric NOT the price per sq foot: https://www.zillow.com/ https://www.realtor.com/ https://www.movoto.com/ https://www.redfin.com/ https://www.trulia.com/ https://www.homes.com/

Edit: Here are the top three sites on google when you search "most expensive areas to live in the us". A three seems to use median home price not median price per sq ft. https://www.rocketmortgage.com/learn/most-expensive-cities-i... https://realestate.usnews.com/places/rankings/most-expensive... https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/08091...

Never forget that most statements, especially imprecise ones like the one you quoted can be interpreted in many ways. It is very easy to find an interpretation that is incorrect, especially if you disagree with/dislike the premise.

The reason I say this is that your single example didn't seem to disprove the statement in my eyes. I read the statement as meaning that walkable neighborhoods are in most cases in much higher demand than other neighborhoods in the same region.

I don't really think either of us is wrong, more that the imprecision of the statement and language in general can be unfortunate and cause disagreement.

Also note that nobody will ever respond well to being accused of a logical fallacy. They are useful to understand what is happening and to rile people up. Not so much to convince anyone (that doesn't already agree with you) about anything.

depends on the person. People might move there because of the "vibe" or "excitement" and that tends to go hand in hand with places you can walk.

If it counts I emigrated in large part to be somewhere nicer to walk, but I am unusual. Not unique, though! Jason Slaughter (of NotJustBikes) moved to Amsterdam from Canada explicitly for its urban design.

I'm not entirely sure that correlation implies causation in this case.

Do most people move to cities specifically because they're somewhat walkable with good public transportation, or do people move to cities for other reasons such as more access to better paying jobs?

Would people in cities rather drive to work if it was possible rather than taking a chance every day that the people next to them on the bus/train weren't some strange/risky people?

Similarly, when I lived in the US I had to go 1.1 miles to the nearest coffee shop (or shop of any sort), and opening a coffee shop in my neighbourhood would have been illegal, and shut down very quickly. And that wasn't even all that far from the downtown of a medium-sized city (Sacramento).

The justification for a lot of these zoning laws is explicitly that developers and the market will not provide adequate home sizes or parking, so minimum requirements are forced on developers. When law forces huge houses, no mixed use, and huge minimum parking lots, the only built environment that emerges is a car dependent one. Older US suburban neighborhoods, like the post-WWII suburbs, had smaller (900-1200 sq ft.) homes because these minimum lot and floor area size requirements weren't in place yet.

If you're curious about areas with different land-use requirements, there are cities in the US like Boston, Berkeley, or Emeryville (just off the top of my head) with more permissive zoning laws that have much lower car modeshare than other parts of the US.

None of which they have in the developing world yet those nations become wealthier people buy cars basically as soon as they can make the economics pencil out.

is not representative of common reality.

It is also not much representative of "market forces", cars have to respect very strict "Urban Access Regulations" (similarly across Europe, but in Holland in particular)

Not that it is bad in general, but Utrecht is not a good example of what will happen around the World and actually make a difference.

China + India will soon be inhabited by 3 billion people combined, Utrecht has only 500 thousand residents. It's basically a glitch in the matrix.

I do believe it is both interesting and frustrating that people (in general) fail to challenge the validity and utility of their own beliefs, even when those beliefs have been shown to not hold up under the scrutiny of others. Then, there is also normacy bias.

The fact that some US urban areas are less dense and more car dependent than most European urban areas is at least in part due to the reasons I mentioned already. Obviously people who live in rural areas will need and prefer cars but my point is that it is hard to say "Americans prefer cars" when most Americans have never had the opportunity to live somewhere where they don't need a car.

That market contains the heavy lobbying by oil firms and car industry to keep trains at the sorry state they are in.

There is nothing more shockingly unethical and disgusting to pretend that killing millions of people every year and destroying entire countries is somehow moral because of “the market”.

If lithium becomes scarce, electric vehicles become more expensive. An increase in the price of vehicles produces a similar effect to a decrease in people's incomes, so the market would push people towards smaller vehicles just like in the Third World now.

As a concrete example, tiny electric cars are common in China. Amusingly, the government doesn't like tiny cars because they are hard to regulate. It really is the market that has spoken. https://restofworld.org/2021/tesla-vs-tiny-cars/

It's just never considered because the types of people working on policy in this area aren't motorcyclists.

- I’m not from the US and I’m not talking about the US market;

- I don’t believe “the market” provides some value judgement. Rather, it’s just the aggregate behavior of people under their existing realities. We can and should aim to change those realities, but ignoring them because “they’re wrong” will not yield workable solutions.

Gas would cost more. Car ownership in cities would cost more. Roads outside of cities would cost more. Trucks damage roads more than cars and would have to pay more. Etc. It's not a free market if these things are being paid for by all taxpayers, including those who don't drive.

You are simply wrong.

There is also the problem of solving family transport, which has no good answer other than EVs. Although, for a lot of people, work-from-home has reduced their annual mileage several fold.

And yes I know plenty of people do endure weather conditions for their two wheel drive, most never will unless forced to do so.

I’m not entirely sure what your point is.

I know pretty well what it means to cycle everywhere, regardless of weather conditions or not having a place to exchange clothes.

in your opinion? Better in what way? Does everyone think like you?

Between your and their assumption, I personally think theirs sounds more realistic, they just assume the norm continues to be the norm.

Frankly I would love it if that was a reality and everything was within easy walking or biking distance, but it simply doesn’t match reality as things are currently built.

Plenty of people bike all 4 seasons, the Netherlands is the go-to example... it rains a lot there. Driving to work under-dressed in a heated box is a luxury that's kind of harmed a lot of people's ability to know how to dress for the weather. It's not particularly difficult.

My needs are:

- have place for a family of four, two of which are small children;

- be something I can use with said family in -15 Celsius;

- Be able to be used for a 200km trip weekly with said family;

I have an EV.

- layers, and canopies for aforementioned e-bikes

- train

Of course, speaking in the ideal. Just because the car has been the only option for so long doesn't mean it's replacement has to replace every trip either.

I think bicycles certainly have a place in the Netherlands, with actively car-hostile policy, a very high population density and hardly any distance longer than 300km; but any nationality that enjoys their personal space will probably be better of with something else.

I do wonder if rails or road are more efficient ecologically and economically. I've been wondering about smaller-and-slower-than-airliner planes or even eVTOLs, since they don't need a lot of infrastructure and the physics are surprisingly efficient. The technology isn't there yet but sooner or later I don't think flying is a bad idea. A small 4-seater airplane uses about 10-20 liters of fuel per 100km at faster speeds and more direct travel than a car, and if legislation allowed barrier-less mass-use and thus mass-production, planes wouldn't cost much more to the end user.

I just moved here from the US. I live in the Noord Brabant in NL and currently own a car. The village I live in does not have a train station, not to mention that it is pretty pricey to take the train to work, both in time and money. My commute costs about €15 per day on public transport and up to 2 hours each way. I also have family that live in Belgium, about 150km away, also in a small village with no train station. Driving makes a lot of sense for me currently.

Sorry, to the actual question. When you travel abroad, what is your cutoff for taking the train versus flying? From where I live to Brussels, it's about half the price to take the train versus flying, but go out a bit further to Paris, and it's about 25% cheaper to fly. If I'm in NL, it seems like it would almost always be more economical to fly if the destination is more than 300km away. These are also cursory Google searches so the timeline is 3-4 weeks out. When planning a trip months in advance, I would assume the flights and train tickets will be cheaper, but likely still comparable in terms of percentages.

My car is also very efficient. A full tank to drive 600km costs about €60. I realize I would need to pay for parking at the destination, but if I'm staying at a hotel or outside the city center, I think it would still be cheaper. Another cursory train search, Eindhoven to Prague is €140 per person round trip. Traveling alone, probably worth it, but with a family, driving seems more economical.

I feel a bit ramble-y but hopefully that makes sense. I'm trying to figure out how this whole "European" thing works :)

If you're not interested enough to invest in an ebike, an escooter is a good way to try... though it removes the exercise element and restricts you to what can be carried in a backpack.

Not so long as a "never in a lifetime on average" crash remains an acceptable justification to spend tens of thousands of dollars it's not. And that's ignoring weather and convenience.

What does this mean?

That’s a strong argument against SUVs, a type of vehicle that is notoriously dangerous because drivers can’t see children in front of their hood. It also flips over and kills people inside at minor incidents.

Cargo bikes don’t have those issues.

>a strong argument against SUVs

This kind of hubris to think you can plan the exact details of the market for a product followed up by cognitive dissonance when it doesn't work out drives me up the wall.

The SUVs back in the day when they were becoming a thing had fine visibility, great even by modern standards. Then you people said they rolled over too much and were too unsafe so they grew wide to be stable and they got thick bodies and doors and strong pillars and high belt-lines to be strong and nobody could see out of them. And then you people backed over your kids. And then we got backup cameras and all sorts of tech. And now you people complain the screens are distracting and un-ergonomic. You see the pattern here?

Just stop trying to tell everyone else what's good for them and then force it on them and we wouldn't have this problem.

Want me to do zoning too? Because it's basically the same story.

Increasing car size (sometimes) increases safety for the driver at the expense of anyone in a smaller car or not in a car. Road deterioration also increases exponentially with vehicle weight so people that opt for no-car or smaller cars are effectively subsidizing the excessive vehicles of other people with their tax money. iirc a Hummer causes 21x more damage than an "average car."

https://www.gao.gov/products/109954

"Most of the world" is a big place.

Are there more cars or mopeds in the world? I assume that the typical family in Asia has either a scooter or no vehicle, so an ebike would be an improvement for them. Probably the same for Africa and a lot of South America.

I mention this to demonstrate that most of the world doesn't have cars, and they get along ok. Such a thing is not impossible.

There are roughly 1.4bn cars in the world for 7.8bn people... so most people get around without one.

You can see it if you travel a bit, in India and China you'll see families getting around on bikes and scooters. Over 1/3 of the Dutch use a bike as their primary means of transportation. People often cite weather as a reason not to, but if the Finnish can regularly use bikes to get around (another European country with high bike use)... nearly anyone can.

And I say that as someone that's managed 18 years of adult life without owning a car or motorised bike living in a country with one of the densest (but still entirely unsuitable for most long distance journeys) rail networks around...

I'm very curious, what country has such a dense rail network that isn't very good for long distance journeys? Is it because it's in a hub-and-spoke system with the capital/largest city as the hub, and if you want to go from spoke to spoke it sucks?

There are certain things train services are excellent at, like serving people's daily commute at predictable times into a congested city centre (with the caveat crowded trains aren't necessarily a pleasant experience) and letting you travel whilst drunk or putting the finishing touches to your presentation, but they're not going to eliminate many of the most common uses for cars.

There is a disconnect here with you replying to someone who was talking about the ideal, with your reality. No one is saying train systems in a lot of places, right now, are perfect. We can make them more perfect in addition to moving more freight onto rail, doing more last-mile deliveries on e-cargo bikes, and making it reasonable for people to replace more or most of their sub-5km car trips with a bicycle. Not only is that possible, but it's necessary to approach that ideal.

Their ideal is my reality, because I've never owned a vehicle with more than two wheels and live in a country whose rail density and usage is arguably exceeded only by Japan. So I think I'm pretty well placed to comment on the impracticality of most people forgoing the use of cars altogether in favour of ebikes and rail.

If you don't have any answers to points like trains being unsuited to carrying luggage, rail schedules being suboptimal for individual journeys outside peak use zones and times and most places not being close to a station even with a rail network as dense as the UK's, please don't resort to strawmanning it as "trains are bad" and insisting that everything I said about rail logistics boils down to British Rail[1] management...

I'm all in favour of people walking and cycling more and getting trains when that makes sense, but that isn't going to result in many of them not needing cars (and associated batteries) for other journeys.

[1]an organization with this name was wound up in 1997 and replaced with a succession of franchises - many with exprience running rail networks overseas - awarded by competitive tender. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, changing the management wasn't a panacea...

His experience in the UK seems like it would be relevant to most people in the US, and I assume Canada and Australia also. You can't sell this to people on just your terms, you have speak to them on their terms, too.

I agree with what you said that the problem needs to be attacked on multiple fronts (public transport, mining, zoning, doubling grid capacity, current subsidies and special interest groups, etc).

I assume we'll get there, but it's going to take a while, likely more than a couple decades to make a huge dent in countries with a lot of car-dependency.

And if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle. The odds of the US or Britain improving their rail systems in order for them to be more efficient/usable are vanishingly slim, to the point that we should likely bake their crappy nature into our assumptions of requirements.

We can't even figure out how (here in the US) to build subway tunnels as cheaply as ones in Europe, if I recall right. I am very skeptical that we will ever manage to approach the ideal here, for a variety of reasons (suburban / car-centric lifecycle being so deeply embedded here, etc) which I don't think can be addressed by science. It seems like an economic problem, where paying to rebuild everything is so expensive that no one will do it in the short term, even if the long term gains could be great.

It's a matter of time: the political polar-opposite states of Texas and California are both working on high-speed rail projects, though they are rather unambitious in scope.

I'm curious if the dysfunction of British Rail is also related to the patchwork privatization like it is in the US. Is that still a thing? last I read, parts of the network - and/or trains - were owned or operated by a Virgin subsidiary.

Patchwork privatization hasn't helped matters and allows some companies to extract a bit of monopoly profit from a subsidised industry (the infrastructure remains nationalised, franchises are awarded to private companies for running rolling stock in certain regions routes for fixed terms, some companies were really struggling and had their franchises taken over the government and there are other quirks of the franchising system like franchises being required to lease rather than own trains and some services being mandatory to run, and prices are regulated).

But the root cause is that running rail networks is a hard problem: demand fluctuates from hour to hour and decade to decade more than the infrastructure can, optimisations for network efficiency aren't necessarily going to align with individual passengers' demands, when stuff breaks down a well-used part of the network gets cascading problems, governments have lots of other things crying out for more subsidies (and a purely for-profit network would be smaller and thinner). The UK also has older than average infrastructure and very expensive and occupied land right where new lines are most needed, although other countries are cursed with geography which is more challenging in many other ways

Slight correction. Renationalised, rather than remains nationalised.

The infrastructure was renationalised, because Railtrack preferred handing out dividends over maintaining tracks, eventually leading to a derailment that killed 4 people and injured 70, and led to trains being restricted to 20MPH across the country for months afterwards, because they had no idea how fucked any of the rest of the rails were.

This works if you live in a perfectly flat country with completely contiguous landmass and no islands.

If it doesn't ever get hot or cold where you live, or ever really rain, then yes. If an ebike works 90% of the time, then I'm getting the car. Might still get the bike, but I also have to have the car, and that will take just as much battery material as if I drive it 100% of the time.

It was -15ºC today. Most people I saw outside were on bicycles.

Is this true? I can go through a 630Wh battery in 2-3 hours of riding and I can't imagine current solar being able to keep up with that. I think you might get an extra ~30 minutes of riding, but not ~forever~ unless you mean pedal power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EyRqQhuwio

I think a vast majority of people in the United States that choose to drive cars, suvs and pickups would disagree your assumption.

It’s a classic case of not taking into account enormous externalities.

It's a classic case of not taking into account enormous externalities.

I used to own a car. More then a year ago we moved to a cargo bike (electric) which is enough for most of our needs. It can even have an extra trailer, so we can do all groceries and bring our kids with us, in safety and all weather conditions. Even visits to the recycling park are possible with it.

When we do need a car we use a car sharing service for which i have a subscription and can take any type of car available at any time within walk or cycle distance from my house.

As such i think city families probably are fine just owning a cargo bike (or two) and for long distance trips make use of a shared car (or train).

That is definitely not to say that there is no place for bikes and trains. US certainly needs more of both.

But please stop pretending that a family of 4 can go anywhere on bikes in the weather. Or even going to the beach with all gear in perfect weather. Just not going to happen.

More roads aren’t a solution.

I would take sitting in traffic jam in my car in comfort with audiobook and AC anytime over being in freaking people jam in subway.

Especially during flu and covid waves.

For those 4 millenia, people have gravitated to a 30 minute each way commute, on average.

More roads implies bigger cities and more amenities / economic growth. If bikes mean more people can commute to the city, then they will eventually win.

Electric bikes are more unsafe than motorcycles ! This is irregardless of infrastructure (eg. I checked stats in Netherlands which is cyclist utopia according to HN).

I used to ride a motorcycle but I would never actively encourage someone to start it - it's just irresponsibly risky. If you chose to do it regardless (like I did) that's your choice - but me advocating it is like promoting smoking or alcoholism/drug abuse.

I agree with you: we should get rid of that part.

Not to mention that the older/less fit you get the harder it is to react to these situations (tire slipping, hitting holes, stuff hitting you in the face, pedestrians jumping in front of you)

I've said this before - if I put a child seat on a motorcycle I would get social services called instantly. Puting it on an e-bike and I'm a progressive hipster caring about the environment.

The biking propaganda is getting ridiculous.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/13/23023361/e-bike-injuries-...

This is in Netherlands - Mecca of bicycle infrastructure.

I mean how is this even controversial - riding on two wheels vs driving on 4 between a steel cage is inherently more dangerous - you have to be a zealot to deny that.

It's like saying "cocaine isn't that bad, look at what heroin does to people".

The only way I see this changing is regulation, and that would be political suicide for whoever pushed it in the US (the main place where it would be relevant)