That's a great idea. And since it'll be limited to in town use, something narrower might be useful - maybe give it two wheels instead of four? That'd be huge for reducing weight and increasing range. And for suitable geographic areas, it might even be possible to make one light enough that it could be powered by the rider, no external power source required!

Then, with the reduction in width required for these futuristic two wheeled eco-machines, we could utilize some of the road space freed up for an even more efficient way to move people around a semi densely populated area. If only we could invent a way to allow multiple people traveling on similar routes to share a common vehicle, then we'd be able to split the capital and ongoing usage costs among many different people, reducing costs for everyone.

It's a shame, really. If only we had the technology...

You have a weird dream of how people should use transportation. People like what they like. They like individual cars with 4 wheels. They don't want to share transportation with random people.

Pretty sure he's sarcastically talking about trains existing

and bikes too for that matter.

The train v car debate is for losers - cars won and will always win. Privacy and freedom will always be more important. Use trains to ship goods around, not people.

People like what they’re told to like by mass media and advertising.

You show me one of these that can be ridden [comfortably] in 2 degrees Fahrenheit with snow and ice everywhere and you have my money!

Or by people who are disabled/elderly. I have MS, cycling isn't really going to work on a regular basis because between heat intolerance and cold making my leg spasticity worse, I'm not going to have a good time. I can drive just fine, though.

While yes, a lot of the elderly continue to cycle in countries where the infrastructure exists (e.g. the Netherlands), those places also have universal healthcare. You can't just throw your average 60 year old American office worker on a bike.

Or for people with small children who need to be able to transport them. Or their groceries for a family of more than 2, particularly since American cities and towns aren't usually accommodating of the 'stop every day/every other day for food' method of food shopping that's more common in some European countries. A bike isn't really a great option for someone with a 20 month old and a 4/5 year old.

In cities such as Copenhagen, it's very common to see parents transporting small children (and a large number of pets from what I saw) using cargo-bikes.

Not having universal healthcare seems like a strange argument against active travel as it's well known that active travel can drastically improve people's health and reduce the need for healthcare - it would seem more important to choose to look after your health if you can't rely on healthcare being available if you lose your job etc.

Your disability point is perfectly valid, although some disabilities make it easier to cycle than to walk. However, if we can get as many able-bodied people to use active travel when feasible, it'll clear vehicles from the roads and make it easier for the people that rely on their cars for mobility.

Small children and 2 weeks of groceries for a family of 4-5? For 10ish miles one way? On the low end?

The healthcare point is because it means that a lot of elderly Americans have medical conditions that are unattended to, injuries that never healed properly, etc. It's common, particularly in the working class, to have your body be functionally wrecked by the time you're 55 (particularly for men). If we want the elderly to be active, we need the infrastructure to allow that rather than declaring that any health condition that won't kill you in the next two weeks is fine for the poor to deal with, actually. Heart conditions are really common, diabetes, COPD, poorly healed injuries for those who at one time worked blue collar professions, etc. Someone who lost their foot to diabetes isn't going to be cycling and sure, if they'd been more active 30 years ago that might not have happened, but it's the reality now.

I support public transit and biking infrastructure and totally agree it's great for disabled people as well - one thing I found interesting when I lived in a city with decent transit + universal healthcare is how many more physically disabled/elderly people I saw out and about going about their business.

I just find that the idea that we can just get rid of cars/that everybody who uses them just doesn't know any better overlooks a substantial amount of the population and their needs, and you need to address the needs first if you actually want to move away from the car. It has big 'everybody is a single, able bodied 25 year old man without dependents who lives in CA or the PNW' energy to assume those of us in cars are just not educated enough to know better. Like now even when I travel I don't like taking public transit because I'm immunocompromised and being jammed in with that many people is a health hazard. I'm not stupid. Neither is the exhausted mom with 2-3 kids and one hour to get across town to buy food for the week.

> I just find that the idea that we can just get rid of cars/that everybody who uses them just doesn't know any better overlooks a substantial amount of the population and their needs, and you need to address the needs first if you actually want to move away from the car.

I think the opposite tactic is better. Make it easier for young, fit, able-bodied people to get around without cars first and allow the increasing numbers of cyclists etc. to bolster improving the infrastructure. When you make it easier for the fit people to cycle, it also becomes easier for older/disabled people to cycle. The more people we got onto bikes, the less people we have driving and increasing congestion.

Ultimately, the U.S. has gone all-in on personal cars and designed cities around them. This pretty much excludes other forms of transport and increases the distances between homes/shops/healthcare etc.

Only the most rural americans live 10 miles from a grocery store. They are distributed like every two miles in the suburbs. Every half mile in the city.

I've never lived in a city or suburb in the USA that has such a distribution of grocery stores.

You should check out electric Bakfiets, they solve a lot of the problems you’re talking about for having kids and hauling groceries. I’ve even made trips to Costco with mine.

You are an edge case though. Feel free to continue driving. If we get the common case on a bike for a few trips out of the week however, that saves a lot of carbon. When people worked from home in the peak of the pandemic in socal the air was never cleaner; 50mile crystal clear visibility.

Did he say that exactly everybody in the world has to ride a motorcycle? Of course there will be people who can't, but most people can.

Groceries can easily fit in a top box for a motorcycle, that you usually have anyway to stove helmets.

Biking in winter is easier than you might think actually - you might find this article about how the Finns in Oulu do it interesting: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231220-why-oulu-finland...

That still wouldn't be comfortable

Pedaling warms you right up :)

Warm is not the same as comfortable. Listen, I'm from alaska and have several family members who routinely ride bicycles to work and around town in the winter. Except when it's storming. Except when their hip hurts. Except when it's breakup. Except when they need to get groceries or run an errand across town at the end of a workday. Except ad nauseam. You still have to own a car to make life in alaska livable in the winter, and snide remarks by able-bodied dipshits about just using the trike referenced above deserve derision.

Why are you coming at me like I'm suggesting we ban cars

you're misreading me: I'm coming at you like you think a drive-by-link-drop to a niche product is giving a good answer to GPs valid criticism that winter biking is not very comfortable during common winter occurrences. I think you should consider a wider perspective, and when I see such behavior online I like to give a little snark back.

Meanwhile light city EV's exists - such as the Volkswagen e-Up. Much more fun to drive than it has any right to be.

Hoping that the ID.1 will be half as good, if it ever sees the light of day.

It's perfectly fine to have both a car and a motorcycle. Motorcycles are dirt cheap, so it pays for itself in gas costs pretty fast.

For the weekend trips you could put in an engine with a power splitter

Oh what's this, turns out the ideal car was already invented twenty years ago, it's the Toyota Prius

Casually gets 50 mpg city and highway

Small, lightweight battery

Not a super expensive status symbol

The plugin models use very little gas for the daily commute, but you can always drive it like a pure ice car if you need to flee the country on zero notice

The Volt was a much better idea. It could be an all electric car—at any speed—for 50 miles or so.

Agree, the Volt seemed like a good idea. I don’t know the inside story of GM discontinuing that car. I imagined it was corporate dysfunction.

I owned two of them. They were great. Worked flawlessly.

My first generation bmw i3 is exactly this. Later models got much bigger battery packs.

Prius is just doing what a 90s civic did but with more onerous maintenance due to complex powerplant over dead simple 4 banger and manual transmission.

I'd love one of these as an electric commuter vehicle: https://pressroom.toyota.com/album/toyota-i-road/

Unfortunately it seems to have gone nowhere

A fair number of people do own bikes. But almost certainly the majority of people don't want to own a second vehicle--focused on transportation, rather than recreation--when they need/want a primary, probably ICE, vehicle anyway.

There's billions of motorcycles in the world.

On a motorcycle, I need to wear special clothes and a helmet and it's still rather unsafe.

This thing I just can get in and out like with a car. I can throw my normal backpack in there. I don't need to worry about rain. Very importantly, I at least have some material around me if someone hits me.

Those are called e-bikes

What stops me from biking is cars. I simply don't feel safe on a bike next to a giant pickup truck where I gotta pray the driver sees me, isn't on the phone or otherwise distracted.

E-bikes are unusable at this time of year. It needs to stand stably on it's own to not kill me the instant some ice appears (so, four wheels) and have an enclosed cabin to stop frostbite.

Dress warm, studded tires. People are so averse to any non ideal weather for cycling. Texas, Arizona and Nevada people say it's too hot, West coasters say too much rain, other places say snow and ice. All excuses that can be solved by better personal preparation mixed with safer better maintained cycling infrastructure. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

Infrastructure and prep can do a lot for cold and ice. But unless we're installing locker rooms everywhere, it's less helpful for rain and not at all helpful for sweating in the heat.

You do you, I personally would never bike on roads I would hesitate to drive on, which is what we have here in the winter, especially not an ebike that is going as fast as a car but without any of the protections, in traffic with cars and trucks that will run right over me if I wipe out on some ice.

Exactly, which is why we advocate for safe, separated, regularly shoveled bike lanes.

I’ve biked to work in -15C. Get studded tires.

The vast majority of the population is simply not going to do that if they bike at all.

See what happens in other countries. Are they just tougher?