> I can go the mountains, the beach, work all in under 30 minutes. The user experience is great (minus traffic, but that is orthogonal to the vehicle itself).
That last part is the logical flaw: you’re acting like traffic is some random coincidence when it’s actually inherent to the design. Cars are inherently inefficient because you’re using over a hundred square feet of space and 2-3 tons of metal to move on average 1-2 people but because they’re familiar people who drive a lot tend to make excuses or simply not recognize those drawbacks - it’s always someone else making traffic, adding another lane will fix it even though that’s never been true anywhere in the world, it’s “under 30 minutes” because they’re thinking the best-case travel times from where they parked to the general vicinity of where they’re going rather than realistic door to door times including traffic, parking, etc.
Similarly, it’s not rolling back the standard of living to acknowledge that this lifestyle is expensive ($11+k USD/driver/year), unhealthy, and soaks up a lot of time. Yes, it’s nice to get in and go and that even works okay in a rural setting but in practice an awful lot of people are spending large fractions of their non-work time sitting in traffic and paying a large quantity of money to do so, all of which lowers the standard of living even before you consider the annual death and life-altering injury rates, effects of pollution (not just fuel but also tire and brake particulates), and the social cost of reserving so much public space for vehicle motion and storage.
> Similarly, it’s not rolling back the standard of living to acknowledge that this lifestyle is expensive ($11+k USD/driver/year), unhealthy, and soaks up a lot of time. Yes, it’s nice to get in and go and that even works okay in a rural setting but in practice ...
I have a family of 5. For me, a car is cheaper, faster, and healthier (less sunlight, less smoke, less pollution (or at least filtered once before it goes in your lungs), more capacity, flexibility in where I go...). It's cheaper for actual transport, for housing, for groceries, holidays, ...
But, frankly, even going to work by myself in the morning the car is still the cheaper and faster option when it's just me by myself. Even if I have a 15/20 minute walk from where I park to where I work (I can, and do, take public transport for that if it's too hot or raining or ...).
And when we're 5 it starts at an order of magnitude cheaper. Except perhaps compared to flying, but compared to public transport it's just not a contest.
That last part is the logical flaw: you’re acting like traffic is some random coincidence when it’s actually inherent to the design. Cars are inherently inefficient because you’re using over a hundred square feet of space and 2-3 tons of metal to move on average 1-2 people but because they’re familiar people who drive a lot tend to make excuses or simply not recognize those drawbacks - it’s always someone else making traffic, adding another lane will fix it even though that’s never been true anywhere in the world, it’s “under 30 minutes” because they’re thinking the best-case travel times from where they parked to the general vicinity of where they’re going rather than realistic door to door times including traffic, parking, etc.
Similarly, it’s not rolling back the standard of living to acknowledge that this lifestyle is expensive ($11+k USD/driver/year), unhealthy, and soaks up a lot of time. Yes, it’s nice to get in and go and that even works okay in a rural setting but in practice an awful lot of people are spending large fractions of their non-work time sitting in traffic and paying a large quantity of money to do so, all of which lowers the standard of living even before you consider the annual death and life-altering injury rates, effects of pollution (not just fuel but also tire and brake particulates), and the social cost of reserving so much public space for vehicle motion and storage.