The very first line begins: Take a look around the American automotive landscape
Which seems is a prevailing mindset of the US administration (which infects those at lower, but still leadership, levels due to the short term legal and financial 'influence' of the administration): Denial of the changing world. Classic uber-conservatism, which works until it, explosively or revolutionarily, breaks. The ripples of which affect the innocent most of all.
(I'm more progressive than conservative, for roughly my own definition of what those loaded terms mean, but I'm also aware of the social problems caused by uber-progressiveness, which bumps up against humanity's basic resistance to change, or too much change too quickly).
The world kinda feels stuck between the 'uber' of both sides, with very little conversation covering the majority middle.
All the major US OEMs are dead companies walking. Even the CEO of Ford said if Chinese automobiles are allowed into the US it will be the death of US manufacturing.
Total acknowledgment US vehicles are inferior, but no desire or drive to compete, only stifle.
It’s sad, and the outcome is entirely predictable.
It's even predictable and inevitable based on that fundamental tenet of capitalism: the market.
It's weird kinda knowing what the outcome is going to be, but not knowing exactly how we're going to get there and how long it's going to take. Feels like it's all in slow motion.
But you're right in terms of, if they don't get bailed out it could bring pain to certain demographics that any side of politics doesn't want to get blamed for. It's hard to see either side making the difficult decision to inflict mid-term pain for, maybe, very long term gain. Not a concept voters will accept.
Need a consolidation auto-makers in the US to maybe rationalise things a bit?
It will be interesting to watch such predictions play out.
I'll guess that it's not quite like that.
First, propaganda is powerful, and people buy based on what they believe. And right now, U.S. car buyers do not universally believe that EV is better than gas/hybrid, nor do they believe the cheapest car is best, or that features are the only thing that matters.
In fact, they go to a dealership, probably for a brand they are already somewhat loyal to, or the marketing worked. And they buy whatever their monthly payment allows, even if it's a lot more car than they need.
Second, they like big "American" cars like pickup trucks and huge SUVs. Take a look at how many full-sized pickups are sold every year in the U.S. Until the foreign-made full-sized electric trucks are palatable and competitive with what U.S. buyers are currently buying, those OEMs will continuing making and selling them.
"Vertical Takeoff and Landing aircraft are on track to provide urban air transit within the next few years, targeting the high-margin commuters who traditionally buy premium vehicles."
Okay. So... flying cars? Don't think so. Robotaxis make sense where taxis make sense and you can get by without a car already. The demographic decline is real.
They are talking about unmanned drones that operate as flying taxis. They have them in China. We will never have flying cars after 9/11 showed how flying objects can damage property.
It's not 9/11 that will kill it but people not wanting 2 tons of metal flying overhead. The occasional helicopter is one thing. Having hundreds of these flying around, when one can clip a building from a gust of wind and go plummeting into bystanders is a no-go.
Not to mention the noise. Residential neighborhoods will ban these immediately (and some won't have a choice because they have, you know, trees.)
There's the simple physics of a vtol craft when landing needing to push down a lot of a air very fast just to lift an average human - plus the weight of the craft itself. There's a reason helicopters today don't land on street corners even if there's no rotor clearance issues. And these "personal" VTOLs don't seem any lighter than a helicopter of a similar size - for example the "Air One" is twice the mass of a Robinson R22 - ~400 vs ~970 kg empty.
The idea that they would be common enough to seriously disrupt "personal transport", even restricting to the "premium" market as it's known today is crazy. Imagine a fancy party where every 10 seconds everyone on the red carpet is being blown away by the backwash of someone landing - also disrupting everyone else trying to land there at the same time.
Because a single autonomous vehicle operating in a shared
fleet can replace multiple privately owned cars, the
widespread adoption of this technology can’t help but
reduce new-car sales volumes.
The old "Thing will become more useful so we'll make less of it" argument. No mention of Jevons Paradox?
If we can travel and send stuff around from point A to point B cheaply and instantly by dropping ourselves or an item into an ocean of cars roaming our streets autonomously, there is a lot more demand for rides.
Also comfortably traveling longer distances might alter where we live. If we can walk out the door, sit down in a comfortable robotaxi right away and exit in the city center 10 minutes later, we might not have to live right in the city center anymore. Another driver for more demand.
I doubt that here. Cars are already near saturation, at least in the US.
Essentially everyone has a car. The car is mostly idle. If car availability starts to approach instant then people don't need personal vehicles that are idle 95% of the time. Car quantity overall goes down unless you can 20x current utilization, which is a lot of trips and fuel.
Not to mention that if anything resembling current quantity of extant cars becomes the current quantity of cars using roadways at a given moment, most cities will gridlock.
If the thesis is "cars will approach 50% or greater utilization" then car numbers must drop barring a massive increase in road capacity for which the land does not exist.
> If the thesis is "cars will approach 50% or greater utilization" then car numbers must drop barring a massive increase in road capacity for which the land does not exist.
You can build stacked roads a few levels up. Capacity doubles or triples without any significant land use.
Amsterdam is very dense because historic reasons. Streets are narrow and houses are the same.
Los Angeles on the other hand was built on virtually unlimited land and could expand a lot. I could say LA County is bigger than the whole of the Netherlands.
Both have their charm, but LA is so much better than Amsterdam.
Yeah, the 405 might suck, but at least the weather is better.
Cars that are idle 95% of the time are replaced less than once in a decade.
Cabs are replaced something like 3x more often than privately owned cars. And when they run 24/7 because of self-driving, that factor will even increase.
We don't need fleets of autonomous vehicles, each carrying two tons of metal for transporting a person or two and clogging up cities. We just need a train network that doesn't suck.
Well if we did that we'd only save 40,000 lives and ~$1T in transit costs a year. Such savings and improvements in quality of life are unthinkable in the US! \s
One of the most important ways to make a train network that doesn't suck is to aggressively police the sorts of antisocial behavior on public transit committed by the most marginalized people in society. There are a lot of political barriers to actually doing this, not the least of which is that it necessarily involves incarcerating more marginalized people, using more police violence against marginalized people, and inevitably having the police kill more marginalized people.
If you're reaction to Daniel Penny's killing of Jordan Neely on the New York City Subway isn't "Daniel Penny was a hero, Jordan Neely should have been incarcerated rather than allowed to freely exist on the train, and everyone involved in Penny's prosecution should be thrown out of positions of power", then you can't actually make the train network not suck.
I wish HN commenters would stop bringing up Jevon's Paradox:
1. We see it mentioned all the time now, i.e. When AI makes producing software essentially free, there'll be more jobs. As HN has maybe 75% of the frontpage filled with AI stories, it means we see it almost every single day!
2. It essentially describes outliers. Driving food costs down to a fraction of the peak price (basically down by 90% over the last 200 years) did not result in correspondingly higher food consumption.
3. It only applies when the market is not yet saturated. Making cars more fuel efficient (by going EV) in the last 5 years did not result in correspondingly more miles being driven.
Any time you feel compelled to bring up Jevon's Paradox, ask yourself "Are we talking about energy here?" and if the answer is "No" then it probably doesn't apply.
Keep in mind that even if Jevon's Paradox applies, it does not mean that the society actually benefits. If you drive the value of all human labour to almost zero, you can't use Jevon's Paradox as an argument that the increased efficiency means that we're all living a life of leisure.
> Also comfortably traveling longer distances might alter where we live.
You mean like last time? More cars being the answer to problems created by creating too many cars and reasons to use them is like more people buying guns to counter the gun problem, and I can't think of better "tragedy of the commons" applicable situations.
As I start to get older and I spend less and less of my time in the deep suburbs, I'm starting to be more aware now of the phenomenon for people to get less social and less trusting the further away from a core area (or, arguably also the ground in the case of skyscrapers, but much less so) they live. I don't think it would be a net win to hypothetically encourage further dispersement from one another.
First, personal flying vehicles are definitely not going to be a common mode of transportation. If and when this happens, it will be for ultra rich, select few people, effectively replacing a private helicopter. We don't have the infrastructure, regulation or technology to have millions of people buzzing around in their astro-ford like the fifth element - this is still very much science fiction.
Second, scooters and bikes need infrastructure, which in 99.99% of the US, is not made for this. In fact, current infrastructure is very much hostile to bicycles and scooters, so in order for this to work, there's going to have to be a massive investment in new infrastructure all over the US. Is this very likely? I wouldn't say so.
The US locked itself into using cars through massive, expensive infrastructure and culture and I don't see this changing easily.
The population growth slowing might be true, but it's still growing, and there's still a profit to be made there.
The new factories are going to replace manufacturing in foreign countries. I'm not sure the effects on supply will be drastic. It's just a matter of building cars domestically, avoiding tariffs and securing domestic pipelines.
Finally, asking these corporations to "look 20 years ahead" instead of maximizing short term profits, is a common tradeoff that they are all aware of. Currently, short term gains is what's being preferred in almost every industry. I doubt any board members will vote to leave money on the table for long term benefits. More money now always wins.
> We don't have the infrastructure, regulation or technology to have millions of people buzzing around in their astro-ford like the fifth element - this is still very much science fiction.
If by flying cars you mean flying robotaxies, then all you need are landing pads. They can be easily accomodated on top of buildings. And regulation for what? We already know how to fky helicopters by autopilot, no need for innovation stiffling with more regulation.
If they are supposed to replace cars we'd need so many of these landing pads. No idea how this is supposed to work. I'm the suburbs it's unclear where you'd put them. Where do I walk to fly this to Costco? Does it land on the Costco warehouse next to an entire line of these arriving instead of cars today?
In proper downtown areas I suspect even if you'd cover every rooftop in these it wouldn't be enough capacity
Airtaxis can't retrofit suburbs just like cars can't retrofit 1850s cities. Imagine a city built around airtaxis and delivery drones. I think it is doable which means that they'll do it.
- what are the dimensions of a flying car? Double than a car? Triple?
- are they autonomous or need to be flown manually?
Looking at current drone designs, you could get away with a flying car the size of large SUV. If they are autonomous, then you don't have to worry much: Car, take me to Costco.
> First, personal flying vehicles are definitely not going to be a common mode of transportation. If and when this happens, it will be for ultra rich, select few people, effectively replacing a private helicopter.
I wonder what it would be like for most cars to be replaced with flying cars (i.e. helicopters). I think the noise alone would be a huge issue. Helicopters can be heard from extremely far away and are quite noisy. If you multiply that by like 1 million in a metropolis, I think that would approach unbearable, specially at nighttime, etc.. Also I don't think noise can be reduced too much, including electric propulsion. Propeller engineering would give you some reduction but still I think too much for near universal usage.
But I think the main thing is just cost. Electric aircraft like that would really be just too expensive for everyone to have em. Not everyone can afford a good old (electric) automobile today.
There's also battery technology needing a significant improvement.
Regulation and infrastructure is comparatively solvable I think.
Cities were originally built around walking. Later they expanded a little bit with horses. After that they were rebuilt for cars. They will be rebuilt again when transportation technology changes, at least for those that can afford it.
Amazon had approximately zero net profits for 20 years or so. It was a meme not too long ago--how much longer will investors keep pouring money into Amazon before either they stop or Amazon starts reaping a bounty they had been sowing for decades.
But everybody seemed to believe Amazon was building an insurmountable, monopoly-like position. That never happened. Then AWS came out of nowhere and that's when their profits finally took off, and investors won their bet, but in an unpredicted way.
The problem with the car industry is that, excepting Tesla for 5-10 years, nobody believes there are outsized profits to be made, and other than Musk (once upon a time), nobody with the personality to convince them otherwise. Though Amazon didn't need a personality; everyone just sort of assumed Bezos was an evil business genius biding time.
If your theory is true we might see an era where supply vastly exceeds demand and car manufacturers will need to offset brand new vehicles to keep cash flow going. Sounds great to me, sign me up for 20$k brand new Ford when the time’s ready.
> If your theory is true we might see an era where supply vastly exceeds demand and car manufacturers will need to offset brand new vehicles to keep cash flow going. Sounds great to me, sign me up for 20$k brand new Ford when the time’s ready.
The car manufacturers could have staved this off - they keep developing new models with little to no marginal improvement. Once we got seatbelts, airbags and similar in cars, there's literally no reason for a new model to drop, but here we are with new models dropping every 5 years, using parts that don't fit the old model!
Maybe if they were dropping only new types of cars (say, EVs), I could see a need, but there's no reason a 2010 Toyota has to be replaced by a 2024 - you have the jigs, the factory, the supply chain for parts already. Just keep making it and charge less.
There are plenty of 2010 Toyotas still out there, running great, if you want one. The market has instead demanded more different-looking cars (for variety), and generally larger vehicles with a higher riding position, not to mention newer creature comforts like air conditioned seats, and safety features like beeping at you when a car is in your blind spot and you try to change lanes.
The evidence that this is what the market demands is that Toyota is selling tons of new vehicles, despite the 2010 Toyotas still being available (used) for a lot less money.
> There are plenty of 2010 Toyotas still out there, running great, if you want one.
That's not my point. My point is that the billions poured into designing the three new generations of Toyota since 2010 did not have to be spent by Toyota.
But they did spend it, to design new cars, with little to no actual improvements, and so they have had to price their new cars appropriately, to recoup the cost.
What would a brand new Toyota cost today if billions of dollars were not spent in designing a whole new car, with all new incompatible parts, and all-new jigs? Would we still be looking at $40k for a brand new car?
My point isn't that you, personally, don't want to buy a used 2010 Toyota. My point is that everyone, collectively, doesn't want to buy a used 2010 Toyota -- and Toyota has correctly deduced that they also don't want to buy a new 2010 Toyota in 2026.
> and Toyota has correctly deduced that they also don't want to buy a new 2010 Toyota in 2026.
We cannot tell that for sure, because that 2010 model is not being sold new anymore.
I'm working off the assumption that the billions in dollars spent on developing the new generations are reflected in the price of the new generations.
Maybe I'm wrong, and the $40k on a new Toyota comprises only $1k to recoup the development cost, but I'm pretty certain that a market exists for a 2010 model Toyota sold new in 2026 for a lot less than the current-gen.
China has done this with their Haval brand. The new model is manufacturer and sold concurrently with the model it is replacing, and the price difference is significant.
There are quite a few dozen auto manufacturers. Why is Toyota one of the largest global sellers? Why hasn't a competitor simply made a "good enough" car and sold it in perpetuity, raking in higher profits than the manufacturers who keep adding features and redesigning the sheet metal?
The improvements were for things governments (fuel/pollution efficiency) and insurers (safety) wanted, not necessarily you.
A new 2010 Toyota likely wouldn't even be legal to sell today in many jurisdictions, and this is in fact one part of the problem.
Another part of the problem is that all the big automakers need to design a new car roughly every 5 years in order to keep from losing the ability to design one at all, as people age and retire. What's really been settled on is that "minor updates every year and a major update every 5-6 years" actually does work in terms of keeping know-how to design these things, as well as handle supply chain problems.
For example, if a chip you need goes EOL and you have to redesign around that, it's much better to have that happen in the last 1-2 years of your manufacturing, you do a last time buy to get through that last year, and move on. Much harder to do on a longer lifecycle: that 2010 design, sold new in 2026, and operated until 2040+. How many suppliers go out of business over 30 years, or stop making a critical component?
You must be unaware of all the recent safety improvements in cars: things like anti-lock brakes, collision avoidance, and traction control have saved countless lives, and they're being improved on even today.
"The things cars had in them when I was first driving are all they should ever need; everything else is frivolous, planned obsolescence, or fashion" is a very tempting position to hold, but it doesn't actually hold up to reality.
> You must be unaware of all the recent safety improvements in cars: things like anti-lock brakes, collision avoidance, and traction control have saved countless lives, and they're being improved on even today.
First, those are almost all in the 2010 Toyota that I used as an example. Other than those things (which are in the 2010 model), what did the post-2010 models bring?
Second, none of those require an entire new model to be designed that shares no parts with the previous model.
> "The things cars had in them when I was first driving are all they should ever need; everything else is frivolous, planned obsolescence, or fashion" is a very tempting position to hold, but it doesn't actually hold up to reality.
Please go back and re-read my post - I was not comparing cars from 1990 (when I first started driving). You are doing that comparison, and it's a strawman.
Collision avoidance in a 2010 Toyota? Pretty sure that didn't become a mainstream feature until a few years later, along with lane keep assist and adaptive cruise control.
Regardless, many features that existed in some form in 2010 that time have improved since then. Maybe just slow incremental improvement, but over time it adds up.
A few other new/much improved features since 2010 that come to mind: backup/turn signal cameras, carplay, hybrid engines.
You're making an extremely bold hypothesis that your internet armchair knowledge about what investment auto manufacturers make in research, design, and marketing to remain competitive in the marketplace of car sales easily exceeds what auto manufacturers know about that same topic.
You would need some strong supporting evidence to convince people of that. One would be any 6+ year old model of vehicles that sells as well as or better than any 5 year old or newer model of vehicles, even if it only competes on price. Can you name such a model? What share of the U.S. car sales goes to that model? What is their profit margin, and how to does it compare to models that Toyota sells?
An ad in a 1972 Race Program touts a brand new Toyota for $1200 (for a sedan, not including tax, freight and handling, etc.).
I ran an inflation calculator and… where are the $10K cars for sale today?
(To be sure, I know there are safety standards, other things that will make the Datsun sedan un-sellable today, but come on, can't we get even close to $10K?)
You sell less to people living in the cities but maybe you sell more to the operators of fleets of rental cars, even self driving if that really becomes mainstream. Not enough to match the decrease of sales.
You keep selling to people living in countryside, where you don't go anywhere without a car and where fleets of cars would have to be very large to be able to cover the territory in a meaningful way. There will be less and less people living there but it could affect the kind of cars that are manufactured. By the way, a self driving car would be very useful to elderly people living in their house far away from the nearest town.
> People in cities demanded EVs, yet didn't show up to keep buying them.
That's only natural, because two kinds of people want EVs in cities (with some overlap). The first kind wants less noise, less pollution and fewer gas stations inside the city - they want other people to buy EVs, but don't want a car themselves. The second wants to own an EV because it's green and efficient.
> The second wants to own an EV because it's green and efficient
For suburbanites with off-street parking, overnight charging and few road-trips or long distance commutes, an EV is these days simply more convenient to operate, and has cheaper total cost of ownership.
For many people, the case for an EV is simply pragmatic - better convenience and cost.
Little of what you said is based on fact, only grievance.
Very few cities in the us are actively anti car, and the ones that are, are dense enough that vehicle emissions are a local problem for them.
We’re not demanding evs for ourselves, we’re demanding gas cars stop gassing our homes. You want to drive a v8 dually? Great, go nuts! Keep it out of SF!
They're ripping up lanes of traffic in my city and replacing them with bike lanes that nobody uses.
The busy intersection next to my home used to take all of 15 seconds to turn at, now I get stuck for five to six minutes at a time because they now forbid right turns on red and stuck left turners in front of right turners.
Meanwhile, nobody is using the bike lanes.
The bike lanes are gender and age inequitable, favor low-commercial activity, and hamper productive economic activities. Not only that, but they're unusable in inclement and hot weather, which my city experiences frequently.
I drive a car because I'm buying things, traveling with family, and spending hundreds of dollars. People on bikes are not doing these things and are not contributing to the tax base as much as car drivers. A typical bike rider's coffee and book reading activities do not match a trip to Target and a local restaurant with family in terms of economic impact.
Now multiply that times every car rider who is being delayed and disrupted. All of this spending is now being delayed or even prevented.
We're going to feel really silly when we need more lanes for all the autonomous vehicles that will come online in the next 15 years. Autonomous vehicles - transportation, logistics, last mile delivery, ordering robotics services, etc. - are going to be a billion times more important than bikes.
Just go to a park or get a gym membership if you want to exercise. Or, better yet, take your bike with you on your car and drive to the countryside trails.
I think it takes time for demand to build. Certainly cities like London have seen huge growth in bike use. In my own home town(which is by no means flat) I'm seeing lots of cargo bikes, especially around tge school run.
To your point on bike owners not contributing to the economy. They probably have a similar income, and are paying similar taxes. They are still buying groceries. But where they choose to spend their money is different. It's all still economic activity though.
As someone who enjoys riding their own bike, but uses their car for needs that cannot be met by bikes, I don't think this is just grievance. You can be sour about reality.
SF in particular can be a pain in the butt. There are scearios where public transit works, and many where it doesn't. Biking there from anywhere else is not viable. I need to drive into it in cases when transit doesn't work, and the city is hostile to me trying to spend money. Great for some of its own residents, not for all of them, definitely not for visitors.
No turn on red is a pedestrian safety issue. Many intersections don’t have adequate visibility, and right on red is very frequently dicey. So I’m glad that my city (Seattle) is banning it.
That’s different for small-town low-traffic areas.
On bike lanes, it takes up such a tiny amount of space relative to cars. The real problem is that they are not put in with much thought, not made very safe and are ultimately not very attractive.
But in cities with a higher level of decent bike lanes (Seattle), you’ll absolutely get many people using them. But it also depends on the culture. Reality is that Seattle is geographically constrained, and I’m sorry, there is no room for more car lanes essentially anywhere in the city without destroying property.
So finding smarter, more efficient, cost-effective ways to use that space (like bikes and public transit, which are vastly more space efficient) is a fantastic idea.
If you go all-in on car infra (eg everywhere in the USA, including places like Seattle), you still get congested roads. Cars just use space so poorly that a small increase in number of cars when the streets are full will have massive compounding effect on how long it takes anyone to get anywhere.
Besides, your city is already fully designed around the MOST EXPENSIVE form of local transit, by far. You know what might help stimulate the economy? Make it easy for someone to take a bike to a restaurant. No gas or car payment (or parking, in the city), and now you might have more money to treat yourself
> That’s different for small-town low-traffic areas.
The two towns close to my home (10k and 5k people each) have 3 and 2 traffic lights. It's a different world with different problems and different solutions than the ones of the cities with 1M people one hour away. It could be a different country with different legislation.
Right turn on red is an insane idea that any sane person would heavily disagree with. Only North Americans are crazy enough to believe that a red light should mean go.
>The bike lanes are gender and age inequitable,
How? Everyone can ride a bicycle, even kids and seniors, meanwhile cars are locked behind expensive driving lessons, licenses and exams. Not to mention car ownership is inherently expensive due to fuel, maintenance and insurance requirements. E-bikes give anyone a motor assist and can carry you uphill without any problems while still being good for your health.
>and hamper productive economic activities.
Most productive economic activities just require people to show up to work. Buying something is not a productive activity by definition and nobody is suggesting that deliveries should be done on bicycles.
>I drive a car because I'm buying things, traveling with family, and spending hundreds of dollars. People on bikes are not doing these things and are not contributing to the tax base as much as car drivers.
Ok now this is turning into a parody. Do you know what's even more expensive than driving a car? Building and maintaining a road for cars. European bike lanes cost almost nothing in maintenance.
Sprawl in North America is actively bankrupting cities because drivers don't bring in enough tax revenue to maintain the roads they drive on. Driving to a property tax optimized big box store at the outskirts of the city doesn't bring in as much property tax as you think it does.
If you want to optimize traffic throughput you can replace numerous intersections with roundabouts. Then everyone can go when it's "clearly safe to go", not just those who are turning right. An optimization that sacrifices the lives of cyclists and pedestrians is not acceptable.
In any city I saw there are people crossing the road with a green light in front of cars that would have turned right on red so those cars wouldn't go anywhere until they get a green. In areas with little pedestrians, maybe it's OK. Anyway, the general rule of precedence in my country is cars yield to pedestrians and I think it's the same in all of Europe.
Here in Oslo, Norway they've also been ripping up roads to make bike lanes, make streets one-way to accommodate the bike lane and so on. And yeah, initially not a lot of bikers.
But it's been a few years, and in the meantime good e-bikes are affordable for most here now, so these days there's quite a lot of bike riders all over.
Of course when the snow and ice sets in there are fewer, though a fair few carry on with studded tires and good clothing.
It took some years but there's no denying there are significantly more people riding bikes to and from work, to and from kindergarten or similar.
However I can see my 80 yo self driving a car (I know plenty of them that still drive) but I can't see my 80 yo self riding a bicycle in winter, especially on snow. I know some 80 yo cyclist but not many of them. So there must be some balance. In cities the balance often takes into account metro, buses and trains. In the countryside it's almost only cars.
Of course it's different in the countryside but we're talking about cities, that's where these changes are taking place, and most 80 year olds shouldn't be driving cars in cities or riding bicycles in the winter. They should have heavily subsidized or free public transport available.
Yeah my 80 year old mom uses the "pink busses"[1], basically a multi-passenger taxi where she books a trip in advance and they go from A to B, but also the other's trips. So takes a bit longer but it doesn't cost more than a regular bus.
> A typical bike rider's coffee and book reading activities do not match a trip to Target and a local restaurant with family in terms of economic impact.
... Most people going into cities, whether on bikes or cars or trains or buses or the largely fictitious VTOL aircraft from the article, are doing so to _work_, not to buy stuff. "Buying stuff" has been shifting away from city centers for about fifty years, initially via retail parks, then the internet.
True for Long Island, NY. Can’t go to to the store 0.3 miles away without driving your cage. Kids take the bus to school in even the best weather, that is if their parents don’t drive them.
Coming from a country where almost everybody rides a bike. I would say US is the worst place to ride a bike. Also the utilization is inherently low due the city layout and weather is bad in winter in most US cities. It would be much more efficient to use the space for bike lanes for better pubic transport.
Technology is a fickle thing. The first production passenger car was created in 1886. The model t came out in 1908. We have had cars for 150 years, but that doesn't mean that they will be the standard for the next 150 years. In my life I have seen the land line telephone and radio go from core fixtures in a house to rare techno-memorabilia. (My house actually has a telephone nook. How many houses have tv nooks built for old CRT displays that will never be needed?) If you told me 25 years ago I wouldn't have a land line in the future I would have been shocked. Now it is ridiculous to even consider getting one and I haven't had one for a decade. Can you even buy a land line phone anymore?
Transportation is going through many massive changes right now. I haven't driven to the office in a decade. Huge segments of the workforce are migrating to exoburbs because they don't need to drive to work anymore. My son hasn't mentioned wanting to drive. My neighbor's kid flat out says she doesn't want to learn (both will be able to soon) and many of their friends don't want to learn either. There is a generation growing up far less invested in the car than the generation before them. Some of the points in this article may not be perfect, predicting the future is a fools bet, but it sure feels like the trend they are bringing up is real.
Some car companies are purposefully positioning themselves to have fewer customers as they've learned that they are much more profitable selling a small number of high margin vehicles to a few people instead of a large number of low margin vehicles to a lot of people.
It used to be that they were happy to sell small cheap cars to new buyers because it would build brand loyalty. I'm not sure people are so wedded to car companies now though, especially so when so many brands are owned by a handful of companies.
Small cheap cars have been disappearing from the ranges of most manufacturers.
Manufacturers were also in competition with the used market. A small, cheap car was there to try and attract budget-conscious buyers towards something new instead of something used. But then COVID shutdowns interrupted the supply of cars. At one point, used cars were selling for more than equivalent new models. That allowed manufacturers to crank up the price of new vehicles, which has had the knock-on effect of reducing how many vehicles make it onto the used market even now that production capacity is back to normal, which continues to allow these escalated prices. Lather, rinse, repeat. Auto executives have not been shy about proclaiming that they have no interest in returning to a volume-based business.
They eventually might have no choice, especially with Chinese manufacturers starting to make inroads, but for now they do believe they are better off with higher margins and fewer customers. As long as the USA remains the car bread and butter with a political climate that keeps out the competition they can hold out for a while. The risk of not offering a small, cheap car now is not buyers going to another brand, but buyers giving up on the idea of car ownership entirely and finding an alternative. Once they've become accustomed to other modes of transportation, they aren't apt to come back to owning a car. That is going to be a harsh realization when manufacturers are forced to compete on volume again. But, hey, current executives will have moved on by that point and the next guy can take the blame.
It was going so well until it mentioned VTOL aircraft. It's been 100 years of this sci-fi dream man... People need to understand that nobody wants drones or "flying cars" above their head or property...
Maybe if companies actually cared for their employees, paid them more, provided excellent security, worked with unions. Maybe it won’t all come crashing down.
Maybe if the venture capitalists private equity, and their billionaire handlers didn’t fuck around with every industry that working people depend on. Then maybe the flow of goods would continue.
Maybe if C-level idiots invested profits into the companies rather than in short term gains (ie, stock buybacks). Then maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation where a collective <1% of people own a majority of the capital.
If we had a government that actually cared about the welfare of its citizens, we wouldn’t have to depend on companies that enshittify their products and betray their founding principles. Imagine an ecosystem where you didn’t have to force yourself to go to a shitty job you hate because you depend on it for healthcare (fuck private health insurance), an income, and other needs.
America is the richest country in the world yet a majority of citizens are pushed to the brink of poverty despite working 40+ hrs.
> Because a single autonomous vehicle operating in a shared fleet can replace multiple privately owned cars, the widespread adoption of this technology can’t help but reduce new-car sales volumes.
The idea that that a huge number of people will give up their private cars for robot-taxis in the next 20 years is laughable. They don't even exist in the vast majority of the country, and it's not even clear that they can function everywhere with our current technology. In just the past year we've seen how the technology we have today is still struggling with how to properly deal with basic things like red traffic lights and school buses.
They haven't even come close to replacing the private cars in the few areas where they do operate. Most people like to be able to go wherever they want whenever they want without begging someone else to come and get them then waiting around for the ride to show up. They like to keep stuff in their cars. They like not having to worry about availability or surge pricing/price gouging or that a lost phone or dead battery or broken app will leave them stranded. If anything will keep Americans from buying new cars it will be because they can't afford them. You can bet it won't be the sudden popularity of "Vertical Takeoff and Landing aircraft"!
One reason I'm starting to see turn people away from new cars are the anti-features. My next new car will already be an old car because I don't want a camera recording my face the entire time I drive, or microphones recording my conversations, or basic controls buried in touchscreen menus, or features that cause my car to brake unexpectedly or jerk the wheel suddenly from under my hands, or make me pay a monthly subscription fee for anything. I don't want a car that gets software updates over the air. I don't want it internet connected at all. I want my car to work for me and do what I tell it to do.
The article isn't talking about total number of cars in America, which likely won't go down substantially. It's taking about new car sales. If people start using robotaxis more, the car in their driveway gets used less and replaced less often. Old people own as many cars as young people, but drive less so replace less frequently.
> The idea that that a huge number of people will give up their private cars for robot-taxis in the next 20 years is laughable. They don't even exist in the vast majority of the country, and it's not even clear that they can function everywhere with our current technology. In just the past year we've seen how the technology we have today is still struggling with how to properly deal with basic things like red traffic lights and school buses
(2007)
The idea that smartphones will replace landlines in the next 20 years is laughable. The CEO of the biggest competitor even wrote it off as too expensive.
Same identical story with reusable rockets, right down to the competition saying it will never happen.
Same identical story with other industries and products.
My point is, When it happens, it will happen fast. Also cars are even more likely to do this because you have to Keep in mind that outside enthusiasts, nobody wants the expense and hassle of private car ownership.
They want the convenience of personal transport, but they’re stupidly expensive.
The first company that gives the mass market what they want at scale will be massive.
Robot-taxis don't offer the same convenience and status gain of a private car, while a smartphone does every single thing a landline can and more, this is not a good analogy.
The question is how much less convenience will people accept for how much of a saving compared to depreciation, insurance, gas, maintenance, tires, parking repairs and all the rest.
If it’s slightly less convenient and a decent saving, I’m quite sure the vast majority of car owners won’t want to own anymore.
Robotaxis will have to pass the costs of depreciation, insurance, gas, maintenance, tires, parking repairs and all the rest onto the consumer anyway, and then also charge consumers even more because they want to stuff their pockets with cash and not just break even. If it takes $8.00 in gas to get you where you want to go, you'd better believe you're going to be paying $8.00 no matter who is driving.
Cars have become obscenely expensive and auto makers seem to be incorporating more and more planned obsolescence into their designs, so I've decided I'm just going to keep driving my aging car for as long as I can and maybe just get an e-bike for short trips to the market. It really feels like the auto industry is made up of dinosaurs who don't see the asteroid coming their way.
Will robotaxis actually reduce demand? A taxi that does 10X as many passenger miles a day as a normal car may theoretically replace 10 cars but because of dead heading might be traveling more than 10X as many miles.
Cars today have an approximate lifespan of 200,000 miles. It might take a set of conventional owners 20 years to hit that, or a taxi company 2, but either way it's getting replaced after 200,000 miles. The taxi might be in slightly better shape, but taxi customers have higher expectations than buyers of 15 year old cars.
Replacing 1/10 the number of cars 10x as often is the same demand.
With EV technology it should be possible to design a million mile car. Electric motors can easily do that, and LFP batteries can get close. But interiors and suspensions still cannot do a million.
When we see interiors made out of the same materials as subway cars, that might be a sign of future lowered demand.
BLKNSLVR | 16 hours ago
The very first line begins: Take a look around the American automotive landscape
Which seems is a prevailing mindset of the US administration (which infects those at lower, but still leadership, levels due to the short term legal and financial 'influence' of the administration): Denial of the changing world. Classic uber-conservatism, which works until it, explosively or revolutionarily, breaks. The ripples of which affect the innocent most of all.
(I'm more progressive than conservative, for roughly my own definition of what those loaded terms mean, but I'm also aware of the social problems caused by uber-progressiveness, which bumps up against humanity's basic resistance to change, or too much change too quickly).
The world kinda feels stuck between the 'uber' of both sides, with very little conversation covering the majority middle.
testing22321 | 16 hours ago
Total acknowledgment US vehicles are inferior, but no desire or drive to compete, only stifle.
It’s sad, and the outcome is entirely predictable.
BLKNSLVR | 16 hours ago
It's even predictable and inevitable based on that fundamental tenet of capitalism: the market.
It's weird kinda knowing what the outcome is going to be, but not knowing exactly how we're going to get there and how long it's going to take. Feels like it's all in slow motion.
testing22321 | 16 hours ago
BLKNSLVR | 16 hours ago
But you're right in terms of, if they don't get bailed out it could bring pain to certain demographics that any side of politics doesn't want to get blamed for. It's hard to see either side making the difficult decision to inflict mid-term pain for, maybe, very long term gain. Not a concept voters will accept.
Need a consolidation auto-makers in the US to maybe rationalise things a bit?
neogodless | 6 hours ago
I'll guess that it's not quite like that.
First, propaganda is powerful, and people buy based on what they believe. And right now, U.S. car buyers do not universally believe that EV is better than gas/hybrid, nor do they believe the cheapest car is best, or that features are the only thing that matters.
In fact, they go to a dealership, probably for a brand they are already somewhat loyal to, or the marketing worked. And they buy whatever their monthly payment allows, even if it's a lot more car than they need.
Second, they like big "American" cars like pickup trucks and huge SUVs. Take a look at how many full-sized pickups are sold every year in the U.S. Until the foreign-made full-sized electric trucks are palatable and competitive with what U.S. buyers are currently buying, those OEMs will continuing making and selling them.
testing22321 | 6 hours ago
Do they genuinely like them, or do they just not know they could have it better?
Even the people that speak loudest against universal healthcare quickly turn to go fund me when life happens.
owyn | 16 hours ago
Okay. So... flying cars? Don't think so. Robotaxis make sense where taxis make sense and you can get by without a car already. The demographic decline is real.
justaman123 | 15 hours ago
tyre | 15 hours ago
Not to mention the noise. Residential neighborhoods will ban these immediately (and some won't have a choice because they have, you know, trees.)
kimixa | 15 hours ago
The idea that they would be common enough to seriously disrupt "personal transport", even restricting to the "premium" market as it's known today is crazy. Imagine a fancy party where every 10 seconds everyone on the red carpet is being blown away by the backwash of someone landing - also disrupting everyone else trying to land there at the same time.
mg | 16 hours ago
If we can travel and send stuff around from point A to point B cheaply and instantly by dropping ourselves or an item into an ocean of cars roaming our streets autonomously, there is a lot more demand for rides.
Also comfortably traveling longer distances might alter where we live. If we can walk out the door, sit down in a comfortable robotaxi right away and exit in the city center 10 minutes later, we might not have to live right in the city center anymore. Another driver for more demand.
croes | 16 hours ago
margalabargala | 16 hours ago
Essentially everyone has a car. The car is mostly idle. If car availability starts to approach instant then people don't need personal vehicles that are idle 95% of the time. Car quantity overall goes down unless you can 20x current utilization, which is a lot of trips and fuel.
Not to mention that if anything resembling current quantity of extant cars becomes the current quantity of cars using roadways at a given moment, most cities will gridlock.
If the thesis is "cars will approach 50% or greater utilization" then car numbers must drop barring a massive increase in road capacity for which the land does not exist.
ExoticPearTree | 15 hours ago
You can build stacked roads a few levels up. Capacity doubles or triples without any significant land use.
vrganj | 15 hours ago
Visit Amsterdam, then visit LA. Tell me which place is more pleasant to be in.
ExoticPearTree | 9 hours ago
Amsterdam is very dense because historic reasons. Streets are narrow and houses are the same.
Los Angeles on the other hand was built on virtually unlimited land and could expand a lot. I could say LA County is bigger than the whole of the Netherlands.
Both have their charm, but LA is so much better than Amsterdam.
Yeah, the 405 might suck, but at least the weather is better.
rockskon | 15 hours ago
ElProlactin | 15 hours ago
samudrijan | 15 hours ago
mg | 15 hours ago
Cabs are replaced something like 3x more often than privately owned cars. And when they run 24/7 because of self-driving, that factor will even increase.
JuniperMesos | 15 hours ago
Pretty much every self-driving car will be electric; battery charge has a very different set of considerations than fuel tanks do.
vrganj | 15 hours ago
We don't need fleets of autonomous vehicles, each carrying two tons of metal for transporting a person or two and clogging up cities. We just need a train network that doesn't suck.
danny_codes | 15 hours ago
JuniperMesos | 15 hours ago
If you're reaction to Daniel Penny's killing of Jordan Neely on the New York City Subway isn't "Daniel Penny was a hero, Jordan Neely should have been incarcerated rather than allowed to freely exist on the train, and everyone involved in Penny's prosecution should be thrown out of positions of power", then you can't actually make the train network not suck.
rjrjrjrj | 7 hours ago
US already has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world; far higher than that of many countries with train networks that don't suck.
lelanthran | 15 hours ago
I wish HN commenters would stop bringing up Jevon's Paradox:
1. We see it mentioned all the time now, i.e. When AI makes producing software essentially free, there'll be more jobs. As HN has maybe 75% of the frontpage filled with AI stories, it means we see it almost every single day!
2. It essentially describes outliers. Driving food costs down to a fraction of the peak price (basically down by 90% over the last 200 years) did not result in correspondingly higher food consumption.
3. It only applies when the market is not yet saturated. Making cars more fuel efficient (by going EV) in the last 5 years did not result in correspondingly more miles being driven.
Any time you feel compelled to bring up Jevon's Paradox, ask yourself "Are we talking about energy here?" and if the answer is "No" then it probably doesn't apply.
Keep in mind that even if Jevon's Paradox applies, it does not mean that the society actually benefits. If you drive the value of all human labour to almost zero, you can't use Jevon's Paradox as an argument that the increased efficiency means that we're all living a life of leisure.
brailsafe | 14 hours ago
You mean like last time? More cars being the answer to problems created by creating too many cars and reasons to use them is like more people buying guns to counter the gun problem, and I can't think of better "tragedy of the commons" applicable situations.
As I start to get older and I spend less and less of my time in the deep suburbs, I'm starting to be more aware now of the phenomenon for people to get less social and less trusting the further away from a core area (or, arguably also the ground in the case of skyscrapers, but much less so) they live. I don't think it would be a net win to hypothetically encourage further dispersement from one another.
magic_hamster | 16 hours ago
First, personal flying vehicles are definitely not going to be a common mode of transportation. If and when this happens, it will be for ultra rich, select few people, effectively replacing a private helicopter. We don't have the infrastructure, regulation or technology to have millions of people buzzing around in their astro-ford like the fifth element - this is still very much science fiction.
Second, scooters and bikes need infrastructure, which in 99.99% of the US, is not made for this. In fact, current infrastructure is very much hostile to bicycles and scooters, so in order for this to work, there's going to have to be a massive investment in new infrastructure all over the US. Is this very likely? I wouldn't say so.
The US locked itself into using cars through massive, expensive infrastructure and culture and I don't see this changing easily.
The population growth slowing might be true, but it's still growing, and there's still a profit to be made there.
The new factories are going to replace manufacturing in foreign countries. I'm not sure the effects on supply will be drastic. It's just a matter of building cars domestically, avoiding tariffs and securing domestic pipelines.
Finally, asking these corporations to "look 20 years ahead" instead of maximizing short term profits, is a common tradeoff that they are all aware of. Currently, short term gains is what's being preferred in almost every industry. I doubt any board members will vote to leave money on the table for long term benefits. More money now always wins.
ExoticPearTree | 15 hours ago
If by flying cars you mean flying robotaxies, then all you need are landing pads. They can be easily accomodated on top of buildings. And regulation for what? We already know how to fky helicopters by autopilot, no need for innovation stiffling with more regulation.
ajmurmann | 15 hours ago
In proper downtown areas I suspect even if you'd cover every rooftop in these it wouldn't be enough capacity
Atheros | 12 hours ago
ExoticPearTree | an hour ago
- what are the dimensions of a flying car? Double than a car? Triple?
- are they autonomous or need to be flown manually?
Looking at current drone designs, you could get away with a flying car the size of large SUV. If they are autonomous, then you don't have to worry much: Car, take me to Costco.
thinking_cactus | 15 hours ago
I wonder what it would be like for most cars to be replaced with flying cars (i.e. helicopters). I think the noise alone would be a huge issue. Helicopters can be heard from extremely far away and are quite noisy. If you multiply that by like 1 million in a metropolis, I think that would approach unbearable, specially at nighttime, etc.. Also I don't think noise can be reduced too much, including electric propulsion. Propeller engineering would give you some reduction but still I think too much for near universal usage.
But I think the main thing is just cost. Electric aircraft like that would really be just too expensive for everyone to have em. Not everyone can afford a good old (electric) automobile today.
There's also battery technology needing a significant improvement.
Regulation and infrastructure is comparatively solvable I think.
Atheros | 12 hours ago
jgilias | 15 hours ago
wahern | 14 hours ago
But everybody seemed to believe Amazon was building an insurmountable, monopoly-like position. That never happened. Then AWS came out of nowhere and that's when their profits finally took off, and investors won their bet, but in an unpredicted way.
The problem with the car industry is that, excepting Tesla for 5-10 years, nobody believes there are outsized profits to be made, and other than Musk (once upon a time), nobody with the personality to convince them otherwise. Though Amazon didn't need a personality; everyone just sort of assumed Bezos was an evil business genius biding time.
quijoteuniv | 15 hours ago
swarnie | 15 hours ago
Better get to it.
usernametaken29 | 15 hours ago
lelanthran | 15 hours ago
The car manufacturers could have staved this off - they keep developing new models with little to no marginal improvement. Once we got seatbelts, airbags and similar in cars, there's literally no reason for a new model to drop, but here we are with new models dropping every 5 years, using parts that don't fit the old model!
Maybe if they were dropping only new types of cars (say, EVs), I could see a need, but there's no reason a 2010 Toyota has to be replaced by a 2024 - you have the jigs, the factory, the supply chain for parts already. Just keep making it and charge less.
reverius42 | 15 hours ago
The evidence that this is what the market demands is that Toyota is selling tons of new vehicles, despite the 2010 Toyotas still being available (used) for a lot less money.
lelanthran | 15 hours ago
That's not my point. My point is that the billions poured into designing the three new generations of Toyota since 2010 did not have to be spent by Toyota.
But they did spend it, to design new cars, with little to no actual improvements, and so they have had to price their new cars appropriately, to recoup the cost.
What would a brand new Toyota cost today if billions of dollars were not spent in designing a whole new car, with all new incompatible parts, and all-new jigs? Would we still be looking at $40k for a brand new car?
mpol | 14 hours ago
reverius42 | 12 hours ago
lelanthran | 10 hours ago
We cannot tell that for sure, because that 2010 model is not being sold new anymore.
I'm working off the assumption that the billions in dollars spent on developing the new generations are reflected in the price of the new generations.
Maybe I'm wrong, and the $40k on a new Toyota comprises only $1k to recoup the development cost, but I'm pretty certain that a market exists for a 2010 model Toyota sold new in 2026 for a lot less than the current-gen.
China has done this with their Haval brand. The new model is manufacturer and sold concurrently with the model it is replacing, and the price difference is significant.
neogodless | 7 hours ago
structural | 4 hours ago
A new 2010 Toyota likely wouldn't even be legal to sell today in many jurisdictions, and this is in fact one part of the problem.
Another part of the problem is that all the big automakers need to design a new car roughly every 5 years in order to keep from losing the ability to design one at all, as people age and retire. What's really been settled on is that "minor updates every year and a major update every 5-6 years" actually does work in terms of keeping know-how to design these things, as well as handle supply chain problems.
For example, if a chip you need goes EOL and you have to redesign around that, it's much better to have that happen in the last 1-2 years of your manufacturing, you do a last time buy to get through that last year, and move on. Much harder to do on a longer lifecycle: that 2010 design, sold new in 2026, and operated until 2040+. How many suppliers go out of business over 30 years, or stop making a critical component?
danaris | 12 hours ago
"The things cars had in them when I was first driving are all they should ever need; everything else is frivolous, planned obsolescence, or fashion" is a very tempting position to hold, but it doesn't actually hold up to reality.
lelanthran | 12 hours ago
First, those are almost all in the 2010 Toyota that I used as an example. Other than those things (which are in the 2010 model), what did the post-2010 models bring?
Second, none of those require an entire new model to be designed that shares no parts with the previous model.
> "The things cars had in them when I was first driving are all they should ever need; everything else is frivolous, planned obsolescence, or fashion" is a very tempting position to hold, but it doesn't actually hold up to reality.
Please go back and re-read my post - I was not comparing cars from 1990 (when I first started driving). You are doing that comparison, and it's a strawman.
rjrjrjrj | 7 hours ago
Regardless, many features that existed in some form in 2010 that time have improved since then. Maybe just slow incremental improvement, but over time it adds up.
A few other new/much improved features since 2010 that come to mind: backup/turn signal cameras, carplay, hybrid engines.
danaris | 50 minutes ago
> Once we got seatbelts, airbags and similar in cars, there's literally no reason for a new model to drop
now you claim it's all about the 2010 Toyota?
And this:
> an entire new model to be designed that shares no parts with the previous model.
is hopeless overexaggeration. Most new models share significant numbers of their parts with the ones around them.
neogodless | 6 hours ago
You're making an extremely bold hypothesis that your internet armchair knowledge about what investment auto manufacturers make in research, design, and marketing to remain competitive in the marketplace of car sales easily exceeds what auto manufacturers know about that same topic.
You would need some strong supporting evidence to convince people of that. One would be any 6+ year old model of vehicles that sells as well as or better than any 5 year old or newer model of vehicles, even if it only competes on price. Can you name such a model? What share of the U.S. car sales goes to that model? What is their profit margin, and how to does it compare to models that Toyota sells?
Arainach | 5 hours ago
JKCalhoun | 3 hours ago
I ran an inflation calculator and… where are the $10K cars for sale today?
(To be sure, I know there are safety standards, other things that will make the Datsun sedan un-sellable today, but come on, can't we get even close to $10K?)
pmontra | 15 hours ago
You keep selling to people living in countryside, where you don't go anywhere without a car and where fleets of cars would have to be very large to be able to cover the territory in a meaningful way. There will be less and less people living there but it could affect the kind of cars that are manufactured. By the way, a self driving car would be very useful to elderly people living in their house far away from the nearest town.
In any case, less cars.
echelon | 15 hours ago
People in cities demanded EVs, yet didn't show up to keep buying them.
People in cities apparently know best what car companies should build, yet they don't buy the cars.
Car companies build for suburbanites.
Suburbanites buy cars.
lopis | 15 hours ago
That's only natural, because two kinds of people want EVs in cities (with some overlap). The first kind wants less noise, less pollution and fewer gas stations inside the city - they want other people to buy EVs, but don't want a car themselves. The second wants to own an EV because it's green and efficient.
SideburnsOfDoom | 12 hours ago
For suburbanites with off-street parking, overnight charging and few road-trips or long distance commutes, an EV is these days simply more convenient to operate, and has cheaper total cost of ownership.
For many people, the case for an EV is simply pragmatic - better convenience and cost.
King-Aaron | 15 hours ago
And for $100, where are the majority of consumers often located
karlgkk | 15 hours ago
Very few cities in the us are actively anti car, and the ones that are, are dense enough that vehicle emissions are a local problem for them.
We’re not demanding evs for ourselves, we’re demanding gas cars stop gassing our homes. You want to drive a v8 dually? Great, go nuts! Keep it out of SF!
echelon | 15 hours ago
They're ripping up lanes of traffic in my city and replacing them with bike lanes that nobody uses.
The busy intersection next to my home used to take all of 15 seconds to turn at, now I get stuck for five to six minutes at a time because they now forbid right turns on red and stuck left turners in front of right turners.
Meanwhile, nobody is using the bike lanes.
The bike lanes are gender and age inequitable, favor low-commercial activity, and hamper productive economic activities. Not only that, but they're unusable in inclement and hot weather, which my city experiences frequently.
I drive a car because I'm buying things, traveling with family, and spending hundreds of dollars. People on bikes are not doing these things and are not contributing to the tax base as much as car drivers. A typical bike rider's coffee and book reading activities do not match a trip to Target and a local restaurant with family in terms of economic impact.
Now multiply that times every car rider who is being delayed and disrupted. All of this spending is now being delayed or even prevented.
We're going to feel really silly when we need more lanes for all the autonomous vehicles that will come online in the next 15 years. Autonomous vehicles - transportation, logistics, last mile delivery, ordering robotics services, etc. - are going to be a billion times more important than bikes.
Just go to a park or get a gym membership if you want to exercise. Or, better yet, take your bike with you on your car and drive to the countryside trails.
steve_gh | 15 hours ago
To your point on bike owners not contributing to the economy. They probably have a similar income, and are paying similar taxes. They are still buying groceries. But where they choose to spend their money is different. It's all still economic activity though.
Oanid | 14 hours ago
If you live in car dependent suburbia, sure. And it sounds like you do.
And again, little of what you said is based on fact, only grievance.
quantified | 14 hours ago
SF in particular can be a pain in the butt. There are scearios where public transit works, and many where it doesn't. Biking there from anywhere else is not viable. I need to drive into it in cases when transit doesn't work, and the city is hostile to me trying to spend money. Great for some of its own residents, not for all of them, definitely not for visitors.
rsynnott | 7 hours ago
> Great for some of its own residents, not for all of them, definitely not for visitors.
Cities primarily exist for the convenience of the people who live and work in them, not for people visiting them.
anon7000 | 14 hours ago
That’s different for small-town low-traffic areas.
On bike lanes, it takes up such a tiny amount of space relative to cars. The real problem is that they are not put in with much thought, not made very safe and are ultimately not very attractive.
But in cities with a higher level of decent bike lanes (Seattle), you’ll absolutely get many people using them. But it also depends on the culture. Reality is that Seattle is geographically constrained, and I’m sorry, there is no room for more car lanes essentially anywhere in the city without destroying property.
So finding smarter, more efficient, cost-effective ways to use that space (like bikes and public transit, which are vastly more space efficient) is a fantastic idea.
If you go all-in on car infra (eg everywhere in the USA, including places like Seattle), you still get congested roads. Cars just use space so poorly that a small increase in number of cars when the streets are full will have massive compounding effect on how long it takes anyone to get anywhere.
Besides, your city is already fully designed around the MOST EXPENSIVE form of local transit, by far. You know what might help stimulate the economy? Make it easy for someone to take a bike to a restaurant. No gas or car payment (or parking, in the city), and now you might have more money to treat yourself
pmontra | 10 hours ago
The two towns close to my home (10k and 5k people each) have 3 and 2 traffic lights. It's a different world with different problems and different solutions than the ones of the cities with 1M people one hour away. It could be a different country with different legislation.
imtringued | 14 hours ago
>The bike lanes are gender and age inequitable,
How? Everyone can ride a bicycle, even kids and seniors, meanwhile cars are locked behind expensive driving lessons, licenses and exams. Not to mention car ownership is inherently expensive due to fuel, maintenance and insurance requirements. E-bikes give anyone a motor assist and can carry you uphill without any problems while still being good for your health.
>and hamper productive economic activities.
Most productive economic activities just require people to show up to work. Buying something is not a productive activity by definition and nobody is suggesting that deliveries should be done on bicycles.
>I drive a car because I'm buying things, traveling with family, and spending hundreds of dollars. People on bikes are not doing these things and are not contributing to the tax base as much as car drivers.
Ok now this is turning into a parody. Do you know what's even more expensive than driving a car? Building and maintaining a road for cars. European bike lanes cost almost nothing in maintenance. Sprawl in North America is actively bankrupting cities because drivers don't bring in enough tax revenue to maintain the roads they drive on. Driving to a property tax optimized big box store at the outskirts of the city doesn't bring in as much property tax as you think it does.
jjav | 14 hours ago
Obviously not since it is so widely adopted.
Right on red is an extremely useful optimization so you don't sit waiting for nothing when it is clearly safe to turn.
dns_snek | 12 hours ago
pmontra | 9 hours ago
alextingle | 14 hours ago
magicalhippo | 13 hours ago
But it's been a few years, and in the meantime good e-bikes are affordable for most here now, so these days there's quite a lot of bike riders all over.
Of course when the snow and ice sets in there are fewer, though a fair few carry on with studded tires and good clothing.
It took some years but there's no denying there are significantly more people riding bikes to and from work, to and from kindergarten or similar.
Build it and they will come...
pmontra | 13 hours ago
dns_snek | 12 hours ago
magicalhippo | 11 hours ago
[1]: https://ruter.no/planlegg-reise/aldersvennlig-transport
rsynnott | 7 hours ago
... Most people going into cities, whether on bikes or cars or trains or buses or the largely fictitious VTOL aircraft from the article, are doing so to _work_, not to buy stuff. "Buying stuff" has been shifting away from city centers for about fifty years, initially via retail parks, then the internet.
xtiansimon | 9 hours ago
True for Long Island, NY. Can’t go to to the store 0.3 miles away without driving your cage. Kids take the bus to school in even the best weather, that is if their parents don’t drive them.
dd8601fn | 6 hours ago
rsynnott | 5 hours ago
Is this due to a lack of footpaths? Or just a cultural thing?
up2isomorphism | 9 hours ago
jmward01 | 15 hours ago
Transportation is going through many massive changes right now. I haven't driven to the office in a decade. Huge segments of the workforce are migrating to exoburbs because they don't need to drive to work anymore. My son hasn't mentioned wanting to drive. My neighbor's kid flat out says she doesn't want to learn (both will be able to soon) and many of their friends don't want to learn either. There is a generation growing up far less invested in the car than the generation before them. Some of the points in this article may not be perfect, predicting the future is a fools bet, but it sure feels like the trend they are bringing up is real.
gmerc | 15 hours ago
Rover222 | 15 hours ago
win311fwg | 15 hours ago
tonyedgecombe | 13 hours ago
Small cheap cars have been disappearing from the ranges of most manufacturers.
win311fwg | 10 hours ago
They eventually might have no choice, especially with Chinese manufacturers starting to make inroads, but for now they do believe they are better off with higher margins and fewer customers. As long as the USA remains the car bread and butter with a political climate that keeps out the competition they can hold out for a while. The risk of not offering a small, cheap car now is not buyers going to another brand, but buyers giving up on the idea of car ownership entirely and finding an alternative. Once they've become accustomed to other modes of transportation, they aren't apt to come back to owning a car. That is going to be a harsh realization when manufacturers are forced to compete on volume again. But, hey, current executives will have moved on by that point and the next guy can take the blame.
artisinal | 15 hours ago
mikelitoris | 15 hours ago
RealityVoid | 15 hours ago
Are these teenagers buying new cars in the room with us now?
lopis | 15 hours ago
rapidaneurism | 15 hours ago
xyst | 15 hours ago
Maybe if the venture capitalists private equity, and their billionaire handlers didn’t fuck around with every industry that working people depend on. Then maybe the flow of goods would continue.
Maybe if C-level idiots invested profits into the companies rather than in short term gains (ie, stock buybacks). Then maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation where a collective <1% of people own a majority of the capital.
If we had a government that actually cared about the welfare of its citizens, we wouldn’t have to depend on companies that enshittify their products and betray their founding principles. Imagine an ecosystem where you didn’t have to force yourself to go to a shitty job you hate because you depend on it for healthcare (fuck private health insurance), an income, and other needs.
America is the richest country in the world yet a majority of citizens are pushed to the brink of poverty despite working 40+ hrs.
autoexec | 15 hours ago
The idea that that a huge number of people will give up their private cars for robot-taxis in the next 20 years is laughable. They don't even exist in the vast majority of the country, and it's not even clear that they can function everywhere with our current technology. In just the past year we've seen how the technology we have today is still struggling with how to properly deal with basic things like red traffic lights and school buses.
They haven't even come close to replacing the private cars in the few areas where they do operate. Most people like to be able to go wherever they want whenever they want without begging someone else to come and get them then waiting around for the ride to show up. They like to keep stuff in their cars. They like not having to worry about availability or surge pricing/price gouging or that a lost phone or dead battery or broken app will leave them stranded. If anything will keep Americans from buying new cars it will be because they can't afford them. You can bet it won't be the sudden popularity of "Vertical Takeoff and Landing aircraft"!
One reason I'm starting to see turn people away from new cars are the anti-features. My next new car will already be an old car because I don't want a camera recording my face the entire time I drive, or microphones recording my conversations, or basic controls buried in touchscreen menus, or features that cause my car to brake unexpectedly or jerk the wheel suddenly from under my hands, or make me pay a monthly subscription fee for anything. I don't want a car that gets software updates over the air. I don't want it internet connected at all. I want my car to work for me and do what I tell it to do.
bryanlarsen | 9 hours ago
testing22321 | 7 hours ago
(2007) The idea that smartphones will replace landlines in the next 20 years is laughable. The CEO of the biggest competitor even wrote it off as too expensive.
Same identical story with reusable rockets, right down to the competition saying it will never happen.
Same identical story with other industries and products.
My point is, When it happens, it will happen fast. Also cars are even more likely to do this because you have to Keep in mind that outside enthusiasts, nobody wants the expense and hassle of private car ownership.
They want the convenience of personal transport, but they’re stupidly expensive. The first company that gives the mass market what they want at scale will be massive.
dumberquestions | 5 hours ago
testing22321 | 3 hours ago
The question is how much less convenience will people accept for how much of a saving compared to depreciation, insurance, gas, maintenance, tires, parking repairs and all the rest.
If it’s slightly less convenient and a decent saving, I’m quite sure the vast majority of car owners won’t want to own anymore.
For most, car ownership is a massive burden.
autoexec | 2 hours ago
testing22321 | 2 hours ago
I’ll wait and see.
whatever1 | 15 hours ago
Eventually, the truth will emerge, possibly with the collapse of the auto subprime loans and the car financing industry.
mlhpdx | 15 hours ago
But what to do?
Don’t build factory capacity and manifest decline? Not likely.
They’re betting success will find a way and those factories will be needed. It’s all they can really do.
sohrob | 15 hours ago
quantified | 14 hours ago
bryanlarsen | 9 hours ago
Cars today have an approximate lifespan of 200,000 miles. It might take a set of conventional owners 20 years to hit that, or a taxi company 2, but either way it's getting replaced after 200,000 miles. The taxi might be in slightly better shape, but taxi customers have higher expectations than buyers of 15 year old cars.
Replacing 1/10 the number of cars 10x as often is the same demand.
With EV technology it should be possible to design a million mile car. Electric motors can easily do that, and LFP batteries can get close. But interiors and suspensions still cannot do a million.
When we see interiors made out of the same materials as subway cars, that might be a sign of future lowered demand.
HardwareLust | 7 hours ago