Why many of us may have already bought our last car, according to the BBC

[Imnotgoing Sideways]

Given I just bought a partially restored 1962 Beetle, this does not bother me. =^-^=

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

It may be an attractive alternative ine for people out of step with the daily 9-5 work cycle (students/retired/home-spouses) but terrible for anyone that's part of the regular commute.

Actually, public transport works best for people in-step with the regular commute. Automated taxis would just be fill-ins for when you want to do something out of step with your daily grind. And if people are using them routinely your wait would be lower and the cost would be lower. It wouldn't be like Uber or Lyft, because private car owners will never be able to compete with automated fleets.

Individual private cars will become increasingly like tractors and flatbeds and other specialized commercial vehicles, something specific professions and people in rural areas own.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

Actually, public transport works best for people in-step with the regular commute. .

It seems okay for people living near down town to get in and out of downtown, or for people in low income housing to get to the nearest shopping center and back.
But industrial parks often seek out cheaper land on the edge of town instead.

I live a short 2 minute walk from stops for several major bus routes. It would take nearly 2 hours by public transportation to get to my old job that's a 17 minute drive away. To get to the university across the freeway from my old job, takes nearly 90 minutes. And that's only if everything goes well.

It could be much much worse for anyone in the suburbs who may have to go miles to get to whatever solitary line occasionally serves their area.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

That's not a scheduling problem, that's a problem of having shit public transport. In a scenario where automated taxis are actually replacing cars in significant numbers that frees up resources and creates middle-class demand for non-shit public transport and every city becomes Hong Kong or Zurich.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

San Diego is apparently a major testing area for driverless technology (though I've yet to see one go by).

I really don't think that it's going to help people embrace mass transit. If anything, the simplicity and speed of -staying- in a driverless vehicle for the entire time will more than make up for the extra cost-savings and unlikely time-savings of switching to higher-occupancy transit for part of the trip.

Which will certainly help reduce the demand for parking in high-density areas, but will actually be -worse- for traffic because now we have cars on the road, that aren't currently in use, on their way to their next fare. Something we're already noticing with the growing use of Uber/Lyft

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Automated taxis don't have the economies of scale to replace private cars, because they are not much more efficient than private cars. But if they're common enough and cheap enough they can close the gap between public transport and private cars. I can see cities at the top of the list of public transport quality banning private cars within city limits, which will drive the development of automated taxis as a business model. That will spread until, finally, even Houston falls in line.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

Ban private cars? Lordy, how will the new bigger replacement DMV being built a few blocks away from me ever make enough in registration/licencing fees to pay for itself!!?

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Ban private cars? Lordy, how will the new bigger replacement DMV being built a few blocks away from me ever make enough in registration/licencing fees to pay for itself!!?

At least you've got a new, expanded DMV. We've still got the same DMV in the same cramped building we had when I took my very first driving test more than 30 years ago - and the wait time is horrendous!

I can't see private cars ever being banned, at least not in the US. Public transportation and cars-as-a-service may work great in heavily urban areas, but get out into the suburbs and beyond into the wide rural areas, and the model falls apart. And if you're unfortunate enough to work in another city 35 miles away from your home town, public transportation is a no-go, and cars-as-a-service become prohibitively expensive.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

They haven't actually started demolishing the existing DMV to make room for the new one. I've got a serious case of NIMBY over it, the current one is a smelly filthy blight, literally 2 tiny blocks from my house. At night it and the churches adjacent to it are 'dead space' that draws a lot of homeless and shadier types. On the positive side, the space is used for an outstanding farmer's market on Sunday, which might not fit into the new DMV's more 'fortress like' parking area. Anyway. At least in California, the DMV can offload a lot of its services to third party agencies like AAA, so for a $80ish membership a year, many people don't have to go to the DMV except very rarely.

And yeah, I don't see 'banning' as being a real thing for a very long time. They may make it more cost prohibitive to register and licence for private driving, but there will be strong economic pressure to allow commercial and semi-commercial vehicles to continue to operate.

 

[Robert Jung]

I may get my car back on nthe road, but at the moment I'm riding the bus. It takes about an hour on the bus compared to 20 minutes (including looking for a parking space).

The bus is good for people watching though

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

I can't see private cars ever being banned, at least not in the US.

I don't see them being banned in general anywhere, but I can absolutely see them being banned within London without a hard-to-get certificate for like disabled and diplomats. And once "automated cab plus public transport only" becomes an established model, it will eventually come to the US for city centers at least. And that will require non-shitty public transport at last.

 

[danielravennest]

I don't see them being banned in general anywhere, but I can absolutely see them being banned within London without a hard-to-get certificate for like disabled and diplomats. And once "automated cab plus public transport only" becomes an established model, it will eventually come to the US for city centers at least. And that will require non-shitty public transport at last.

New York City has had excellent public transit for 80 or so years, and Manhattan (i.e. the city center) is still full of cars and parking garages. You don't even need a cab to reach the public transit within the city limits. My mom had a bus stop across the street from her apartment building. My brother has three bus routes within a couple of blocks, and a subway and express bus route 8 blocks away, easily in walking distance. NYC express buses are plushier and more expensive than the subway.

The actual limiting factors on cars in Manhattan are the bridge tolls, cost of parking garages, and how slow traffic is due to the number of cars, taxi's, buses, and trucks on the streets.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

New York is 23rd on the list of best public transport systems in the world, and probably first in the US. I don't see it banning private cars outside of exceptional circumstances first, though, there's too many super-rich people... though come to think of it they'll probably just buy a Taxi medallion.

 

[Amelia Freund]

When the day comes where I can go from Sydney to Brisbane with only a single 1hr recharge along the way then I'll listen.
I'm about 4 hours drive north of Sydney but as it stands a Tesla won't get me there in a non-stop trip.

 

[danielravennest]

When the day comes where I can go from Sydney to Brisbane with only a single 1hr recharge along the way then I'll listen.
I'm about 4 hours drive north of Sydney but as it stands a Tesla won't get me there in a non-stop trip.

Google maps shows the distance from Sydney to Brisbane is 569 miles, and the Extended Range Model 3 is rated for 310 miles on a single charge, so it is barely possible to do it with one stop. The Model 3 isn't yet available outside the US, but it will be next year. Their supercharger stations can do a full charge in about an hour. So assuming they place one of their stations halfway, your requirements would be met. More likely they would put two or more stations on the route, because not all Teslas have that high a range (depends on which battery you get). In that case you can do shorter stops and top off the battery each time.

 

[Ashiri]

Google maps shows the distance from Sydney to Brisbane is 569 miles, and the Extended Range Model 3 is rated for 310 miles on a single charge, so it is barely possible to do it with one stop. The Model 3 isn't yet available outside the US, but it will be next year. Their supercharger stations can do a full charge in about an hour. So assuming they place one of their stations halfway, your requirements would be met. More likely they would put two or more stations on the route, because not all Teslas have that high a range (depends on which battery you get). In that case you can do shorter stops and top off the battery each time.

That illustrates perfectly the current issue with battery electric cars in a sparsely populated country. Melbourne - Sydney - Brisbane are the easy routes. Hydrogen might be a better option. BTW, what is this "miles" stuff?

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

On the other hand, unless there's been some kind of Mad Max civilizational collapse since I left it's already not at all difficult to live in Sydney without even owning a car, and I'm pretty sure other major cities in Australia have similar quality transit systems. If you live in the outback (anywhere west of Parramatta) you fit into the rural exception. If you want to go bush bashing rent a kombi or take a bus up to Ku-ring-gai Chase. That's what I used to do.

And I mean, honestly, everything's in Sydney. Why would you need to leave the area?

 

[Sid]

Google maps shows the distance from Sydney to Brisbane is 569 miles, and the Extended Range Model 3 is rated for 310 miles on a single charge, so it is barely possible to do it with one stop. The Model 3 isn't yet available outside the US, but it will be next year. Their supercharger stations can do a full charge in about an hour. So assuming they place one of their stations halfway, your requirements would be met. More likely they would put two or more stations on the route, because not all Teslas have that high a range (depends on which battery you get). In that case you can do shorter stops and top off the battery each time.

Have you ever seen footage of the Black Saturdays during the vacation periods on the German and French highways? Completely over crowded roads, traffic jams up to 100 km. At the gas stations waiting times up to 10, 20 or even 30 minutes are quite normal. And then we are talking about a fill up time of maybe 5 minutes per car. I wonder how many supercharge stations would be needed to replace one gas station.

As long as electric cars only have a range of 300 miles ( measured under ideal laboratory circumstances) I don't see it happen on a large scale. Maybe for cars in and around cities, used only for commuting and shopping. But not for cars used for long distance tarveling.

 

[Ashiri]

Have you ever seen footage of the Black Saturdays during the vacation periods on the German and French highways? Completely over crowded roads, traffic jams up to 100 km. At the gas stations waiting times up to 10, 20 or even 30 minutes are quite normal. And then we are talking about a fill up time of maybe 5 minutes per car. I wonder how many supercharge stations would be needed to replace one gas station.

And here I was thinking getting out of Auckland was bad.

And I mean, honestly, everything's in Sydney. Why would you need to leave the area?

What, don't you like the other cities... like Melbourne?

 

[danielravennest]

BTW, what is this "miles" stuff?

1.609344 km of course. Backward countries like the US still use those units.