The widespread use of huge, highway-built vehicles (that is, all American cars) for short trips in US cities has been sticking out to me recently as a major safety hazard and detractor from pleasant urban living. Highway-built cars are fundamentally incompatible with human-scale living: they are loud and accelerate quickly while being soundproof, isolating the occupants from the effects they have on their environment. Sleek, reflective windshields and tinted windows also make it difficult for pedestrians and bikers to make eye contact with car drivers, dehumanizing interactions with vehicles and increasing reliance on inflexible measures like traffic lights that would not be required on a more human scale.
I would love to see small cars like these come into more widespread use in the the U.S., with carsharing programs providing cars as needed for highway driving. This change could come much more quickly than the large-scale urban design improvements we will eventually need to totally reduce reliance on cars in cities.
As it is, many city streets are too fast for these cars to be comfortable. I would love to see a general slowing-down of vehicles in US cities and towns that makes city vehicles like these practical, and, on top of the obvious safety benefits for all the cities that claim to have “vision zero”, I don’t think it would come with many downsides. Even outside of a city center for in-town trips of a few miles, 28mph is really quite fast—a matter of a few extra minutes compared to current dangerous city speeds.
> with carsharing programs providing cars as needed for highway driving
I feel like this is the missing piece for me for the car-less life I dream of: what to do when I want to take a few-day trip to any of the beautiful places in easy driving distance of my dense urban core?
Car sharing is an option, but it's quite expensive. If I take a zipcar for 1 drive out to a campground on a Friday, then 1 drive back on a Sunday, I'm spending $240 or more.
You can argue that the cost of car rental is way less than the amortized cost of an actual car, but a $5k used vehicle pays for itself after 20 such trips.
I don't know a great solution here. Trains + long-distance buses only work if you're going exactly where they're going, or if you're headed to another city with good post-train transit options. Rent other people's unused cars (à la Getaround)? Prices for that seem to be barely better than Zipcar. Maybe rentable driverless cars, eventually: they can drive me to the campground, then drive themselves to the nearest town and rent themselves out to other people for the weekend until I need them again? I dunno.
> way less than the amortized cost of an actual car, but a $5k used vehicle pays for itself after 20 such trips.
First of all, the days of getting a decent car for $5k in the US ended with the pandemic and the supply chain insanity. But even if you could do that, you also need to factor in:
* Gas
* Insurance
* Registration and taxes
* Maintenance
If you don't use a car as part of your commute or regular errands, it's likely cheaper to rent.
Honestly, the best compromise solution is usually to share a single car for a household. Not helpful if you're single, but if you have a partner, then you can usually get by fairly well with just one car and now your individual costs are cut in half.
Another way to balance the trade-offs is to own a car that's smaller and more cost efficient but doesn't cover all your needs. Then rent on the infrequent times when you're traveling, camping, bringing a bunch of kids to a party, hauling lumber, etc. and you need the extra storage or passenger space.
I agree with using a single car for a household: my wife and I have done that for the past six years (living in Tennessee, Oregon, and Arizona) with a 2006 Toyota Highlander that we paid $7,000 in cash for. The last two years, we've had a baby/toddler. We've encountered a few (one or two per six months) situations where we might have _preferred_ another vehicle, but the inconvenience was so minor (I Ubered, or someone picked me up) that another vehicle couldn't remotely be justified. Recently we got a beat-up F-150 to haul lumber and soil, but don't use it day-to-day and have never _needed_ it as a second vehicle.
Regarding the sub-$5k car: it depends on your definition of "decent used car." Most people are unwilling to accept a used vehicle with a slightly broken interior or other minor issues. Just today, I was looking for comparative prices for a 2003 F-150 that I've got, and I found multiple in the $2-3k range in my area that are in good condition (running motor, A/C works, non-necessary repairs required). And that's a pickup truck: if you want a coupe or sedan, there are even more options below $3,000. You just need to be willing to accept some flaws: right now I've got several tabs open of good "A-to-B" cars with under 200k miles.
Not sure why gas is on there, it's not like rentals come with unlimited free gas.
And at $250ish to rent a vehicle for the weekend it only takes a couple weekends to pay for the insurance, registration, and taxes (or is it just that much more expensive on the coasts? I'm in the midwest). There's a reason people own instead of rent, and it isn't because renting never occurred to them.
Zipcar in fishtoaster's example includes gas in the price. The rental car comes with a debit card to pay for gas. There's a surcharge if you drive more than an 180 miles per day (averaged).
You can argue that the cost of car rental is way less than the amortized cost of an actual car
I don't think people arguing this have ever actually run the numbers and realize just how expensive rentals get. Every year my wife and I plan a week long road trip. If I price out this years trip from the midwest to Utah in a full size suv or truck (need 4wd and space for climbing/camping gear):
Base rental: $970
mileage fees: $350 (1400 miles at 25 cents a mile)
Tow fees: $180 (optional, but I like to bring my small teardrop so $20 a day for the tow package fees)
We're now close to $1500. At this price I can buy a truck, title it, insure it, and then sell it at a slight loss when I get home and still come out ahead of the rental. In just one trip.
It can entirely depend on the deals you get; I was able to rent a Tahoe (largish but not huge SUV) and drive it across the country and back for about a grand; unlimited miles; and I've done similar with a minivan. You get a brand new vehicle that you can put miles on and it's unlikely to fail you.
True, deals can sometimes be found but that's more work and worry when you should be relaxing on vacation. Combine that with the other drawbacks (dealing with pickup/return, worrying about scratches/damage, not able to have customizations like roof racks, going offroad or through mountains with crap rental tires, etc) and it's easy to see why renting is not more popular.
With that $5k used car, you're also paying monthly insurance and any required maintenance on it. If you were averaging less than once a month, the zipcar probably works out to be cheaper indefinitely.
Maybe? It depends if your car is in the shop for repairs, or has a dead battery (especially if driven infrequently), etc. For most people, the carrying-cost of a car is probably a few thousand dollars a year (insurance, maintenance, parking, depreciation, etc). If you're driving frequently and parking costs are sane, it's definitely going to work out to own a cheap car, but if you genuinely use a car infrequently and rentals are readily available, it's worth running the numbers carefully.
Just get a Toyota and keep up with annual servicing. Too many people get "exciting" or "fun" cars as their daily drivers that are not reliable. It's entirely on the owner. What's the point of owning a car if you are not going to drive it? A light electric golf cart isn't much cheaper either.
I just got my annual registration bill from the DMV. $768. In most cases, it's probably cheaper, but that's another significant line item in the mere ownership of a car.
As someone in the US who doesn't own a car, I can rent a car in the event of an emergency. Emergencies are rare, and spending $200 (including gas) for a one-off rental is still way cheaper than the TCO of owning a car.
There's no fundamental reason a zipcar - profit should be more expensive than a personal car. After all, if it's an equivalent car, you'd expect equivalent purchase cost, financing costs, insurance, taxes, fuel etc.
The only difference is that Zipcar has a much stronger market position than an individual consumer, and thus can get better contracts & economies of scale for things like purchasing, financing, maintenance and insurance.
And there's no reason to think profits are a very significant part of the pricing. It's a competitive market and Zipcar has never turned a profit in the past 20 years.
There's overhead both for Zipcar and for consumers, e.g. to arrange for repairs on cars. Consumers are just doing 'unpaid labour' by arranging a car to get repairs for example and pay in 'opportunity costs', while Zipcar will pay staff to arrange such repairs, and charge the customer ultimately to pay their staff. But economically there's no difference, opportunity costs are still costs. And again, I'd expect Zipcar to get economies of scale, dedicated professionals working with optimised processes and tightly negotiated contracts on the overhead, to do better than an average joe having to arrange the same repairs.
So while I won't argue the $240 bill you referenced, or calculate exactly the equivalent costs of a personal car, I hope you'd agree there's no fundamental reason equivalent use of a car via a sharing service should be more expensive.
I do hope you agree that it should be as cheap, or cheaper for two reasons. One the economies of scale & professional approach to car ownership, being more efficient. But two, that some of the costs (like manufacturing the car) don't scale with usage, and thus become way cheaper when spread over multiple users. If you only use a car 1 out of 10 days, there's no way I can see how a personal car can get close to as cheap as a shared car.
So apart from personal convenience & psychology around personal ownership, I think car sharing wins as an economic model long-term. Just like we share airplanes, hotels etc. Now convenience wins because there's not a car available everywhere and always. But as soon as every car has self-driving tech, given the amount of cars I see around me in a city that are just sitting there, I think in urban centres car sharing will become the norm. In less dense places personal cars will likely remain.
> I would love to see small cars like these come into more widespread use in the the U.S
While I agree with the sentiment, I don't think this is possible.
The first layer of the many problems is that people don't have unlimited funds to purchase multiple vehicles. Remember that every vehicle must also be insured.
This means they must make a selection based on life's realities. For a family, in most urban areas in the US, that means highway travel to go just-about everywhere, including shopping for food, school and work. A relatively small percentage of people in most towns have the luxury of living so close to work, school, stores, church, whatever, to be able to use this type of vehicle.
And then you have the issues you alude to: Speed and size. My street, which is in a nice neighborhood, is supposed to have a 25 mph speed limit. I can't tell you how many people who live here fly down this street doing 40 to 50 mph. It's mind blowing, really. If you can't be considerate in your own neighborhood, I hate to think what someone might be like on the highway.
I have almost been hit a few times in the 25 years I've lived here just coming out of my driveway. People are moving so fast that you look right and left, it's clear and, when you are on the road someone suddenly is right on your ass. It's terrible.
We've had multiple neighbors call the police for some enforcement. They put on a bit of a show and nothing happens (those signs showing your speed). They don't want to write dozens of tickets on a neighborhood street. They have more important things to look after, I guess.
And so, most people look at a car like this and think "That would be nice, but...".
I suppose there might be a potential future where self driving cars might be software-limited to maximum speeds based on where they might be and actually cooperate to increase safety (the car coming down the street knows my car is pulling out onto the street and plans appropriately, etc.).
I think that's the only hope really. Which means it is at least 25 years away.
What does your residential street look like? My guess is that is is wide and has no physical traffic calming features to make it uncomfortable to drive fast. If you and your neighbors want to slow people down on the street, you should fight for measures that make people feel like they should go slow naturally. Studies have shown [1, 2] that drivers often base their speed more on the "design speed" of the road more than the posted speed limit---and this likely resonates with most drivers.
Certainly software limits on self-driving cars would solve the speed issue, but I don't think that is the only hope---nor do I think it (or self driving cars in general) is the best answer.
> Remember that every vehicle must also be insured.
The vehicles in the OP aren't in the same vehicle class as cars. For example, you aren't required to get insurance or have a license to ride a bike. These are basically just e-bikes with a passenger seat (or alternatively, electric mopeds), which may or may not require insurance based on your jurisdiction (usually maximum speed is the determining factor).
I would not drive anything on the road without insurance. Imagine if someone were to hit you and leave the scene after causing serious injury. Or, of course, the culprit does not have insurance or is under-insured.
The bottom line is you could be a serious financial trouble if you are not insured. You can also be sued if you hit someone or cause injury. In the US, it simply isn't smart to expose yourself by not having insurance for activities where injury or liability could be a factor. An unrelated example: I have been flying model airplanes and helicopters for decades. I have a million dollars insurance to cover that activity.
Try telling a family who needs to haul multiple children, dogs, and gear for even short trips to the park for soccer practice that they should use a tiny city car instead of a van or SUV. You buy vehicles for the life and city you have, not some aspirational version that exists in a fantasy of urban design.
You're supposed to buy a second car just for long trips? Even if you live in a dense city, America is inescapably huge and requires highway travel unless you never want to leave your neighborhood. We don't have a functioning passenger rail network like China etc.
Even if this were remotely feasible, which it's not, this kind of tiny car is a total death trap for your family when everyone else is driving large vehicles. I would love to see a crash test video of this against an F-150.
Finally, let's say you do live in a city and you are already a two car household. Try telling your wife that she has to buy this ugly toy-sized car that she looks ridiculous in while you get to drive a Tesla or Rivian. Like it or not, cars are lifestyle status symbols where the aesthetics matter.
Fine, I will tell you that. The Station Wagon format was perfect for all of that before the CAFE (Corp Average Fuel Efficiency) standards came in with the exception for trucks, btu not a requirement that those trucks have commercial license tags.
At that point, the entire production and marketing of the major car companies shifted towards SUV form factors, since they didn't count against their fuel mileage standards. Now, the behemoths are the norm, but what is really selling is the "Crossover", which is in fact indistinguishable from the old station wagon format.
Yes, this thing won't likely do well when run over by an F150 or Yukon. Which is why standards should be set such that the larger vehicles are not such a hazard to pedestrians, cyclists, and smaller cars (eliminating the front "wall" would be a start). It's likely you can do just fine with a station-wagon/crossover format, although this is obviously small for a bunch of kids and dogs. No car is not made for every purpose, and I wonder why the mere existence of this thing seems to annoy you so much?
The existence doesn't annoy me. It's the sanctimonious tone that this should be the norm, when it's clearly not even remotely built for the reality of how families actually live, despite their marketing.
The actual solution to this short trips problem is better mass transit and cycling infrastructure, with cars reserved for highway travel and other long trips or cargo hauling. Good pre-car suburban neighborhoods existed on a network of walking and electric streetcars. That is the future of urban design, not cars designed for Oompa Loompas.
The typical household != the typical new car buyer. The average age of a car buyer is decades older than the average American, and >90% of them own their home. So they're likely to either be families or elderly. https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2019/01/new-car-buyer-demogra...
Except having 1 young child hardly requires an SUV. The “minivan years” is really a small percentage of the average American adult’s lifetime.
Exclude people who never have multiple kids, and those you have yet to have kids or whose kids have left home and large vehicles simply don’t fit most people’s lifestyles.
Which is why pickup trucks can be so popular cars just don’t have many passengers on average.
> pickup trucks can be so popular cars just don’t have many passengers on average
Where I live they mostly drive enormous, 4-door "pickup trucks" which can seat 5 grown adults very comfortably. While it's not quite a 7-passenger full-sized SUV, I just want to make sure you're picturing the most popular size and shape of truck when you think about pickups :D
“4 door” pickup trucks are the most popular but many of those don’t actually fit 5 full sized adults. Some don’t even have 3 seatbelts on the second row because people really need to sit sideways.
The breakdown is somewhat vague but Regular, Extended, Crew, Quad are noticeably different cab sizes.
> Fine, I will tell you that. The Station Wagon format was perfect for all of that before the CAFE (Corp Average Fuel Efficiency) standards came in with the exception for trucks, btu not a requirement that those trucks have commercial license tags.
Eh... we have to thank CAFE for SUVization of the world... the stupid trend is slowly trickling over the pond and it's getting more and more annoying... I do hope that either US will fix CAFE or UE will regulate to have smaller cars (usually hatchback is enough and wagon for bigger families)... or ideally both.
Aren’t they selling more for higher eye level and more upright seating position/posture, than that people are tortured into buying by conspiratory schemes among international corporations?
> You buy vehicles for the life and city you have [...]
Agreed, there's a place for all forms of transit. I think the argument that the parent commenter was making was that we already have the density in many places for vehicles of this type make sense for residents, but the barrier is that road infrastructure is built to prioritize larger vehicles, making these vehicles unsafe.
In places where safe infrastructure exists, families frequently plan their lives differently, and I know many (with the means to choose freely) who get by with carshare, good transit, cargo bikes, etc...
OP suggested that the solution should be to regulate in favor of cars like the one in the link. This is totally unrealistic and wrongheaded idea, because there are real use cases and needs that drive the decision to purchase larger, faster vehicles. Outside the functional reasons, there are also highly intractable cultural and emotional forces driving car trends in the opposite direction today.
The viable solutions are 100% to encourage the kind of alternatives you listed to give people meaningful tools to decrease overall single family car use of any kind.
> [...] actively discourage or outlaw normal car designs in favor of cars like the one in the link.
I read their comment as encouraging city-specific measures. They specifically reference "urban living", "human-scale living", or slowing down vehicles for "in-town trips". I agree that use-cases exist for larger vehicles, as even in the densest city centers delivery vehicles continue to need access. IMO larger vehicles need not be the vehicles we optimize for, or even allow at all times, in city centers, where such vehicles aren't needed by most residents.
> [...] 100% to encourage the kind of alternatives you listed to decrease overall single family car use, not try to force everyone to change car designs [...]
Honestly I'm thinking of this more like a large cargo bike, and less like a car. It's like a Canta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canta_(vehicle)) in the Netherlands. It's not meant to serve the same purpose as today's cars, and we probably both agree it would feel unsafe to drive one amongst fast-moving traffic. It fills a gap in the transportation spectrum that's well-suited to certain areas, and I believe we should devote more infrastructure to vehicles which match the needs of an area, which I don't believe is always full-sized passenger vehicles.
We’ve already seen that vehicles like the Canta are abysmal failures in America. Smart Cars finally exited the US and Canada market in 2019 after years of poor sales.
Meanwhile, cargo bike sales are climbing steadily.
I used to be a near pathological classic car fan. It's a unique kind of terror driving a 1500 lb '73 beetle or 2500 pound 1995 ford escort alongside 7000 pound modern SUVs.
That being said, I'm sure these cars will see some adoption in dense/regulated historic neighborhoods. Manhattan has had tolling debates for the last decade - on current trajectory I'd expect lower manhattan to be restricted access by the end of the decade.
I think you loose your pathological classic car club membership by touting a '95 Ford Escort. Just because it is 25 years old and qualifies for gov't definition of classic car does not make it the ideal car someone thinks of when the phrase classic car is used in normal conversation. (=
We're a one car family for two working parents and two kids, living in Pittsburgh (in the city, not the burbs). We make it work but there's a bit of Uber involved sometimes, and some compromises. Generally worth it - cars are both very convenient and a burden that requires ongoing care and feeding and money.
If we do decide we need a second car as the kids get older, this is _exactly_ what I want. No gas stations. Super easy parking. Low capex and opex. Awesome on all fronts. (But as a second car.)
Like it or not, not all marriages are dysfunctional like that. Sometimes (okay, rarely), the people in the marriage like each other! Two uneven sized cars is not a problem for every marriage, but for those that have that sort of weird power dynamic, the solution, of course, is not talking to each other, or couples counseling/therapy. No the solution is to buy two ugly toy-sized cars, and one more Tesla.
Everything about the suburbs makes sense when you have kids. Nothing about the suburbs makes sense without them.
I’m not arguing that the US style suburb is the best we can do, but you’re not going to come up with anything better that really sticks without understanding why it’s built the way it is.
For people who don’t have kids I don’t feel like I can even explain it to you. Nothing can prepare you. You have to experience it.
What about the fact that your kids are reliant on you to shuttle them between school, activities, friends’ houses, etc? This makes no sense to me. In a city they can walk from age 11 or so.
That’s great for pre-teens and teens as long as the city is fairly safe for kids. I was talking about smaller children and babies.
It’s also important to note that not all cities are kid friendly. Some are places I’d never allow a kid to go, with open air psychiatric hospitals on the street and people passed out everywhere on drugs. Of course this is a different problem that has more to do with incompetence and corruption in government and non-profits.
We can also prevent people from driving 50MPH through residential neighborhoods with good street design. Current safety standards with open roads encourage people to ignore the speed limit. Safety features like raised crosswalks, curb bulb-outs at intersections, and roundabouts at small intersections like those used in Seattle all make it uncomfortable to drive fast. This would go far in reducing egregious speeding without the claims of authoritarianism that would certainly come with technological speed controls.
I live on a street that is an arterial in Oklahoma. Generally in tulsa people drive 45-50mph on our grid (major streets every mile). I had to have a 125cc scooter to keep up with traffic. Even on an e-bike going 25mph I had people trying to run me off the road if I used the full lane.
I am seriously wondering if we just need to setup camera speed traps and red light cameras to solve this and fund better human scaled infrastructure. Imagine trying to cross one of these streets where there isn’t a crosswalk for a half mile
You're right and the thought of this always makes me chuckle and think of a neighborhood nearby that has enacted these traffic calming measures along a heavily trafficked corridor. The curbs of the pinch points and chicanes are black from tire rubs. You probably don't have to wait more than 10 minutes to see a car come along and smack into a curb.
I think about the all the time, as I'm in one of tens of thousands of cars blowing by "55 mph" signs at 75-80 mph regularly, right past cops who are supposedly looking for "speeders", etc. obviously if civil society wanted to actually eliminate "speeding" this solution is one of many that can do it immediately.
however I suspect there are various large political roadblocks, not the least of which it would eliminate the jobs of cops who sit on roadsides and make money giving out tickets but I'm sure also including car manufacturers, consumers, maybe DMVs for some reason I can't think of, etc.
you know it's one of those things that would be commonplace in an imaginary "imagine we traveled 50 years into the future" things, but how it actually happens is not at all clear.
We already have that technology for any non-manual car. But nobody would want to buy it - I'm not sure geofencing is reliable enough to do what you're asking for, GPS drifts.
In the US, I think it is more likely that we will regulate automobile speed than guns. I thought there might be a joke here, but sadly, this is just true.
When all cars are connected we will 100% have geofencing that controls cars. I suspect that this will become a political wedge issue. The right will see it as unnecessary government control, and/or the left will be pissed that rich people coordinated with officials to prevent most people from driving through their neighborhood.
You obviously don't live in LA. Google maps does everything it can to route you around rich neighborhoods. And there are countless extremely rich neighborhoods with no gates.
But slowing down means every vehicle is on road longer, so even more vehicles in peak traffic.
I think problem is that many of high speed roads are also very "interfering"; highway circling a city is not really a problem and can be decently isolated, but high speed road full of streets flowing into it just makes for many more chances for accidents.
Slowing a road down doesn't decrease its throughput (at least not until you get to very low speeds). The minimum spacing required between cars is proportional to speed.
Slowing down roads also means they are more comfortable to bike in and to walk alongside, which will move some people from cars to other modes and decrease peak traffic for drivers.
True but people don't have that either, regardless of speed.
> A fancy 10GBe switch without any flow control or collision detection is basically useless.
basic 10Gbit switch works far better than fancy 1Gbit switch in vast majority of cases. Only if you need single digit ms jitter while running storage loads on same switch does it start to matter.
It's also absolutely terrible comparision at every level because
* now even lower end switches can sustain max speed between every port at once, while traffic often have clear bottlenecks
* pentalty for stopping traffic (by congestion) for 10ms is 10ms delay. Stopping car traffic (with say red light) means multiple second delay till everyone gets up to speed. Even single car acting badly can make massive traffic wave slowing down people behind them for minute or more.
>pentalty for stopping traffic (by congestion) for 10ms is 10ms delay.
That's because Ethernet has flow control, while car traffic doesn't. That's why my example was about a very fast switch with no flow control or collision detection. Basically, a fast but otherwise terrible hub.
We can't solve the inherent problems of hubs by making them faster, but somehow we think it's okay to solve inherent problems of bad road design by adding more lanes or increasing speed limits.
> Highway-built cars are fundamentally incompatible with human-scale living: they are loud
Most modern cars are very quiet. There is an alley behind my house, I mostly hear the stupid whirring noises that electric cars make and large trucks, I don't even hear modern ICE cars go through the alley. The safety systems for blind people in electric cars are much much louder than the exhaust of a modern car.
Urban living detracts from pleasant urban living. Pleasant urban living is an oxymoron. If not highway-built cars disturbing the peace, then it's the emergency vehicles, the sirens, the construction. Sound aside, the pollution, the disease, the trash, the smell. It's always something in the city.
I would love to see small cars like these come into more widespread use in the the U.S., with carsharing programs providing cars as needed for highway driving. This change could come much more quickly than the large-scale urban design improvements we will eventually need to totally reduce reliance on cars in cities.
As it is, many city streets are too fast for these cars to be comfortable. I would love to see a general slowing-down of vehicles in US cities and towns that makes city vehicles like these practical, and, on top of the obvious safety benefits for all the cities that claim to have “vision zero”, I don’t think it would come with many downsides. Even outside of a city center for in-town trips of a few miles, 28mph is really quite fast—a matter of a few extra minutes compared to current dangerous city speeds.