
Owning a Car Will Soon Be as Quaint as Owning a Horse - mistersquid
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/opinion/end-of-cars-uber-lyft.html
======
smush
This article is ridiculous. Sure for urbanite hipsters who just grab a Bird
scooter, but for the rest of us in the non-trendy parts of the country or who
live in the suburbs, a car is absolutely essential for living a modern life.
More rent-seeking to get those perpetually rent-happy Millenials I guess?

Who wants to wait for a rideshare when:

1\. We're all snowed in but mom-to-be needs medicine/insulin?

1\. Its time to go give birth...baby's here early!

1\. You have 3 children and equivalent amounts of diaper bags/soccer
outfits/bookbags and the schedule between school getting out and soccer
practice starting is quite close

1\. You get a call, grandpa's taken a turn for the worse, get here bc he's
gonna die in <1 hr

These examples are not perfect, they are just what I could get off the top of
my head, but c'mon, until we have People-Mover style monorails and/or
Hyperloops everywhere, you will need a vehicle of your own control IE
ownership.

To assert you can get full control over something you don't own is something I
would disagree with.

~~~
natefox
Even taking that to a more 'day to day' degree:

1\. I live near the coast. I want to go surfing, but not sure where. Is my
rideshare or autonomous car going to drive me around checking out different
breaks to see what waves are good?

2\. How about when I get out of the water, does it keep my change of clothes
with it? Many times I take a couple boards with me cause I'm not sure which
board is right for the conditions. And wtf do I do with my phone? Dont tell me
its waterproof cause salt water for 2hrs at a time == destroy just about
anything other than fiberglass.

3\. What autonomous car is taking me camping? Sure I dont touch my car much
once I'm done setting up camp, but I sure load it up and grab stuff from time
to time out of it.

4\. I need some 10' 2x4s from Home Depot, some plywood and also a bunch of
bags of soil. Whats my best option here?

5\. Going back to the beach thing.. how about taking my kids to the beach?
That's a shitshow of a mess.. which autonomous or ride share is going to work
best? Cause carseats + sand + water to rinse off + snacks + towels.. omg all
the crap we bring and need to take home.

For anyone who enjoys the outdoors, the autonomous/ride share thing just isnt
anywhere close. Same for anyone with kids. Same for anyone who does projects
with large-ish materials (aka runs to Home Depot).

~~~
francisofascii
For infrequent trips like camping or picking up Home Depot stuff, you rent a
large vehicle. I used to live near a Zipcar garage for these types of trips.

~~~
mindslight
Home Depot already rents trucks. Although 10' stock fits in a Civic.

~~~
masonic
Home Depot, U Haul, etc. charge _by the mile_ in addition to by the day.
Useless for long trips.

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ehnto
Yet people still find use in horses in rural parts of the country.

There are parts of the America, vast regions in fact, where owning a car for
individual use will remain an important part of life for years to come.
Electric or combustion, owning a vehicle with complete agency over it will
remain a strong part of the lifestyle.

I say that as someone who is trying to ditch the car and replace it with a
bike and who thinks cars should be removed from city centres so I am not at
all pro-car. It is just a requirement of modern rural life to be able get
yourself around long distances.

~~~
chr1
>Yet people still find use in horses in rural parts of the country.

that's why the title says "as rare as owning horses"

Many people will own cars, but not nearly as many as now.

~~~
ehnto
My point was that it isn't quaint, it's practical and useful. A unique tool
for a unique requirement of our modern society. Calling it quaint is showing
how out of touch the author is.

Don't get me wrong. I hope she is right. I hope cars go away. But I just don't
see how they could for rural citizens. Maybe part of her prediction requires
that people move closer to the cities. A real possibility.

~~~
aidenn0
A lot of horse ownership is quaint. Just given the fact that 2/3 of the
population of the US lives on 1/30th of the land area, the tiny fraction of
the urban and dense-suburban population that quaintly own horses will dwarf
the rural population that owns working horses.

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jdhn
The title should really be "Owning a Car For City Dwellers Will Soon Be as
Quaint as Owning a Horse". I live in a suburb in the Midwest, and taking an
Uber or Lyft to work every day is simply not fiscally wise, even taking into
account insurance, maintenance, and gas.

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
Hell, I live in a suburb in a pretty major tech hub with a 15 minute commute
from work and even then it doesn’t make fiscal sense to get rid of my vehicle.
Commuting via rideshare just to work and back (without even taking into
account the grocery trips etc that would be required without a car) would cost
me about $300 a month. That’s being extremely conservative, assuming no surges
and minimal tipping, and assuming I do literally nothing but commute back and
forth. My insurance, fuel and routine maintenance on my vehicle doing
everything in my life (not just commuting to and from work, but also shopping
and whatever recreational activities on weekends) is still less than that.

~~~
emj
I agree that a renting car by the hour is not fiscally responsible, but
neither is owning a car in the really long run. I do have a beautiful bikepath
all the way to work, and being carless saves more than $300 per month, sure I
spend it on other things, but I buy time with friends and family using that
money.

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thorwasdfasdf
There's nothing in there that explains how we'll get away from car ownership.
In order for car ownership to be a thing of the past, we'll need a cheaper
option. But what?

Wait 10 min for an uber to arrive everytime i need to go to work? Not
happening in this country, that's for sure.

Flying cars will probably never arrive, the regulations won't allow it. Maybe
Autonomous cars could do it, but they are another 20 to 40 years into the
future: maybe then.

~~~
bryanlarsen
A car costs about $6000 per year, so about $30 per workday. That makes sense
if your Uber costs about the same price, but if you can uber each way for $5,
most people would be willing to wait 10 minutes to save $20.

~~~
clarry
> A car costs about $6000 per year, so about $30 per workday.

And I thought owning cars in America was comparatively cheap.

Meanwhile in Finland, 500-600 eur is enough to cover my tax & insurance. I'm
coming close to 2000 eur on repairs and maintenance but I've got somewhat
expensive and unusual stuff in this year's bill (like a new bumper & paint
job). The rest is all gasoline. About 100 eur per refill, and that's usually
enough for a month. Add up, 3800 eur. It's been by and far my most expensive
year yet!

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
OP is dead wrong on those costs. It's extremely cheap to own a car in America.

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eckza
It’s as if the entire Midwest doesn’t exist.

~~~
abhiyerra
Or anywhere 1 hour past San Francisco. Not having a car works great when in SF
but once outside you can’t really have a life without it.

~~~
hodgesrm
Actually 5 minutes if you are talking Marin County. It's pretty tricky to get
places in Marin without your own vehicle.

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abruzzi
One thing that interests me is how there is such a vastly divergent set of
opinions and relationships with vehicles even in just the HN community. When
autonomous vehicles were getting a lot of press a few years ago, there were
utopian articles predicting the banning of manually driven vehicles by 2025.
On the other hand there are a lot of people absolutely convinced that these
things are snake oil.

I can see part of the gap being location. When I lived in Philadelphia 20
years ago, I had already “cut the cord” on cars, and simply lived on public
transit. I suspect many/most city residents in dense major cities have lived
car free for decades.

The current optimism for leaving cars behind may be confined to suburban
residents of those same cities. The density and lifestyle in those areas may
be suited to these predictions. But there are a lot of parts of the country
that conditions like density preclude these things, or at least make them a
less valuable proposition. I live in a city of 200k. I know there is Uber
here, but I’ve never known any person I know to use it. Cars and insurance are
cheap, parking is free, and everything is spread out. The Uber proposition
makes much less sense here.

But I also imagine lifestyle can have a big impact on how convenient you see
the idea of Uber or the autonomous vehicle subscription fleets that have been
discussed in the past. A number of other posters have brought up these things
that are more problematic in shared vehicles. But if you don’t repair your
leaking roof yourself, you may not see the value in owning a vehicle where you
can carry a few sheets of four by eight for home maintenance.

I wonder if there are other factors that influence what side of the divide you
fall on. (If my comments seem like I favor the car-owners, I do, but I
certainly see how non-car-owner ideal can work for some people, though not
me.)

~~~
Fins
HN community, obviously, skews young, urban, and often "progressive". Quite
the demographic that may not (right now!) be interested in car ownership. When
I lived in Chicago, it was quite possible to live w/o a car (I still had one,
because, hell, it's convenient). If you're an overpaid hipster in the SF
bubble, you can absolutely do without a car, riding over little old ladies and
baby strollers in a Bird or Lime scooter, and having some poor gig economy Joe
Schmoe lug groceries and packages for you. And that it does not actually work
for the rest of the world... well, they try not to set foot there, so why
would they care.

As for people who point at China, or some European country with lower car
ownership, sure, you CAN do without. And 200 years ago people did without
electricity and (gasp!) computers, too. But not many people want to go back
there.

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artgon
I mean I'm all for it, in principle, but this is about as out of touch as it
gets.

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madcaptenor
I have a baby. Are these cars I don't own going to have car seats?

~~~
francisofascii
Sure, some can, why not. Or you bring your own. When you get to the boaster
seat age, it is not a big deal. If city street speeds were limited to 20 mph,
would car seats be necessary? You don't need a car seat when boarding a bus.

~~~
derp_dee_derp
Bring your own car seat?! And then what, carry it around all day when I get to
where I'm going?

Limiting speeds to 20 mph? What? It would take way too long for anyone that
doesn't live in the city center to get anywhere!

~~~
wahern
We won't need to limit speeds to 20mph, it'll happen naturally. Ride sharing
substantially increases traffic--180% is the latest research.

Uber and Lyft are the worse things to happen to traffic since... cars, I
guess.

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stunt
The same people who are owning more and more every day are pushing and trying
to convince the rest of people to do not own anything by saying that owning is
a bad thing and people should move to subscription models instead of owning
anything.

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RickJWagner
Hello! Person living in 'fly-over country' (that vast stretch between New York
and LA) here.

This idea is completely silly. Rural life (where all the food comes from) and
the surrounding counties and cities aren't sustainable without cars.

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baud147258
I don't know what drugs the author took to write this headline, but I want the
same!

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Someone1234
> a quaint hobby, an interesting rarity

Owning a home is a "rarity?" 67.4% (2009) of people own their own home. That's
almost a super majority.

~~~
madcaptenor
Owning a _horse_ , not a _home_.

(I misread it in the same way at first, because who expects to see "horse"
there?)

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moate
Spoken like someone who lives in an area where owning a horse is a luxury and
doesn't serve an actual purpose.

I want to believe in things like this, but it just doesn't make sense unless
you expect complete urbanization and everyone vacating rural areas.

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leecarraher
wasn't owning a horse made quaint by the fact that owning a car was far more
advantageous? so what is replacing the car? even the authors own
anecdote/ethos plug isn't that they cut the landline cord because they could
just share a landline phone with their friends, it was because a personal cell
phone was a more advanced replacement. maybe i am looking too deeply into an
opinion piece from an author who thinks that their ability to predict the rise
of cell phones in 1998 makes them an authority prognosticator. well him, zac
morris, my fellow arrl, and anyone whose had the pleasure of cruising the
citizen's band.

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Tade0
_Car-sharing continues to increase (Uber and Lyft are set to go public this
year)_

I don't see how these two fit the definition of "sharing".

To me they were always just "taxis but with a tax-dodgy flavour".

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apacheCamel
I do not understand the bitterness on both sides. Yes, people will still find
ways to need a car, it just happens like that. Not everyone lives the same
life or are in the same geographical location. People still find uses for
horses. On the other side, people find ways to not have cars. Just because you
need one everyday doesn't mean my single friend Bill who lives downtown NYC
needs one too. Everybody has their life, let them live it the way they want
to.

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kyralis
* for well-off individuals in a major metropolitan area.

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whalesalad
Delusional.

~~~
Areading314
Somebody is having an IPO and hired a PR firm...

~~~
nytesky
This was EXACTLY my thought, but Kara is generally a respected journalist.
Does she own shares in either Uber/Lyft?

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SllX
I’m holding out for the Cowboy Bebop future. Sure the Moon might have exploded
and everyone on Earth forced underground, but personal transport will be
basically a cheap ship with military-grade weapons and ability to escape the
atmosphere and the planet’s gravity under its own power.

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ginger123
Seriously, nothing can beat the convience of owning a car.

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stunt
Car sharing will grow up more and more as people are getting used to not
owning stuff.

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smogcutter
> one of the next major secular trends in tech

Secular trends? What the heck does that mean?

~~~
aidenn0
A secular trend is roughly any trend that is not either a fad or cyclical.

Basically the claim is that opting out of car-ownership will be a sticky long-
term movement, not just something that urban hipsters do for a few years to
signal how green they are.

\- Ice cream demand going up every summer is a cyclical trend.

\- Bell bottoms were a fad.

\- Smartphones replacing dumbphones is a secular trend.

~~~
smogcutter
Thanks, haven't heard that before

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hexo
no it will not

