"Live in the city and want to go hiking 20 miles away?"
Yes, you want to use a car in this case. But, in the life I imagine, I would rent a car. I dislike driving intensely, but I can see use-cases in which cars are necessary. However, Americans have been largely forced into car ownership, despite the expense and hassle of owning one. A reduction in car ownership coupled with more pedestrian-friendly community designs is more my goal than making cars extinct. I would like my household to go from two to one vehicle.
I live in one of those european cities. We have at least six companies offering small electric scooters, even more for bicycles, pedelecs, larger electric scooter, cars, trucks everything. They litter the streets can be rented on a whim with your smartphone, totally hassle free. I used at least four different of these company in the last four days. BUT I still own a car, scooter and my own bicycles because it is super expensive if you use it regularly. Usually 1 Euro up front and then at least 20 cent per minute depending on the ride maybe even more. We have public transport but its depressing and annoying and also expensive. I usually go everywhere with my own bike but its broken down atm. I absolutely love driving and its basically the only way to get away from the city on the cheap! All those fancy new mobility solutions are only good for moving within the city and if you have a well paying job. I don't ever want to miss the freedom of leaving all of this expensive busy crap behind with my own car. Its all an addition but not a replacement.
And its true that if you have to rent you don't go hiking often because the money ticks away even while you are parked outside the zone (which would be the case for hiking) so you are always stressed out about hurrying. Also you always have to decide, do I want to/can I spend 50 Euros today just to go hiking? Or you know you could use your own car. Yes it also costs money but its way less and more spread out.
>Also you always have to decide, do I want to/can I spend 50 Euros today just to go hiking? Or you know you could use your own car. Yes it also costs money but its way less and more spread out.
That sounds like someone with very stupid money management. Unfortunately, this is probably the norm.
You're surely spending many hundreds of dollars/Euros per month to own and operate a private vehicle: loan, fuel, insurance, maintenance, repairs. If you go hiking every single weekend, that's 200 Euros (according to you), which still should be cheaper than owning a car. Most likely, you're not going to rent a car every weekend. So it should be pretty obvious that you'll come out way ahead if you sell your car and just rent a car for those occasional weekend hiking trips.
>I live in one of those european cities. ... We have public transport but its depressing and annoying and also expensive.
What city is that? The German cities I've visited had very inexpensive public transit, especially if you got multi-day (or longer) passes, which anyone living there probably would.
By my calculation, my car (including running costs) comes down to about 300 eur/month assuming I keep it for 5 years and get at least 1000 eur back when I sell or scrap it. (Reality: I'll probably get more out of it, or keep it longer)
Rentals start at around 28eur/day, so if I rented one every weekend (saturday+sunday), that'd be 224 eur plus fuel. Hardly cheaper.
Of course I don't travel every weekend, but when I do, it's more likely to be friday+saturday+sunday, and I do make week-long trips (and longer) a few times a year so it balances out, more or less.
Owning a car means I don't worry about making reservations, fetching and returning the vehicle, etc. It's always near the door, and I can go on a whim if a sudden need comes up, like it did just today.
> Owning a car means I don't worry about making reservations, fetching and returning the vehicle, etc. It's always near the door, and I can go on a whim if a sudden need comes up, like it did just today.
But it does mean you worry about parking, scheduled and unplanned repairs, car wash, etc.
I think there's still an untapped marker for on-demand car hire like Zipcar and similar.
Good point, I forgot that too. Here in my state, yearly inspection is a bit of a PITA but pretty cheap, but there's a "car tax" ("personal property tax") that's usually hundreds or even into the thousands per year for newer cars. Other states have something similar but they call it a "registration fee".
It's once a year here, for cars as old as mine. It's not a big deal though; it takes less than an hour and you can usually go without even having a reservation. Costs less than one tank of gas.
The last time I got any interest worth mentioning on money was more than a decade ago. Yes, assets depreciate, cars more than most. So don't buy new, buy second hand.
>The last time I got any interest worth mentioning on money was more than a decade ago.
What's "worth mentioning"? My bank gives me about 2% on savings; it's not huge but it's certainly enough to switch banks over. If you're not making any interest in a bank, you're at the wrong bank.
Depends how painful you make it to rent a car. If you're talking about a traditional auto rental where there is a half hour of filling out paperwork and doing checks with obtuse and baffling fees and gas options and everything then yes, that's an impediment.
A future where you have an Uber-like app where you summon an autonomous car that takes you to your destination for a nominal fee then who needs to own a car?
> A future where you have an Uber-like app where you summon an autonomous car that takes you to your destination for a nominal fee then who needs to own a car?
People which have items in their car that cannot be taken into the places they have to go, such as workplaces. Many people might not have that problem, but it is a problem.
Car rental doesn't mean going to your local car rental shop. It more often means using a car share service like ZipCar, Modo, or others, and it's so convenient that I often use it despite owning a vehicle.
This isn't true, talk to folks in downtown Seattle. Anecdotally, I have a group of 5 that rents a car to go hiking about every other weekend. Splitting $70 between 5 people twice a month beats buying a car by... a lot. Know tons of others that do this.
Are you thinking of full on rental like Enterprise or car sharing like Zipcar? Zipcar is pretty dang easy and it's what car-free people think when you absolutely need a car for a trip.
Thats more or less prohibitively expensive, because your hiking location would be outside of parking zone most likely, thus you're on the clock the whole time. Not my idea of a relaxing experience. Looks like zipcar is even station bound which makes it worse. You have to get yourself and all the stuff to the station somehow and then take it back from there again when you are done.
> Thats more or less prohibitively expensive, because your hiking location would be outside of parking zone most likely, thus you're on the clock the whole time. Not my idea of a relaxing experience.
An extra hour or two doesn't make a lot of difference when you're already booking for a weekend. Of course if you get stuck on a mountain overnight or something then you'd have a penalty charge, but frankly that would be the least of your worries in that case (and it would still be a problem if you had your own car but were worried about e.g. missing a day of work).
Of course hiring a car for a weekend costs a couple of hundred quid, but realistically you're going to do that what, ten times a year at most? You'd end up paying more in fuel, insurance and deprecation on a private car.
> Looks like zipcar is even station bound which makes it worse. You have to get yourself and all the stuff to the station somehow and then take it back from there again when you are done.
The "station" is around the corner at most. Walk 5-10 minutes, collect the zipcar, drive it to your building and load up, and then the same in reverse when you get back.
Owning a cheap car is way less expensive than renting a ZipCar. My car's only cost beyond gas was insurance. And my insurance was cheaper than renting a ZipCar for one weekend.
Obviously it depends on the car you own, but ZipCar's here can certainly be more expensive and more inconvenient than owning.
When I looked at it in London, the monthly charge for a parking space in my building alone would've cost about 6 weekends' ZipCar rental. I could've rented a cheap garage further out and bought a cheap beater, but at the point where I'm walking further and driving a less reliable car (and likely less safe in a collision) the ZipCar ends up more convenient.
Go on then: how many times did you actually go hiking over the weekend in the last 365 days? In my experience people greatly overestimate how much time they're actually going to be able to spend on their hobby; they plan things out with the idea that they're going to spend every weekend doing xyz, but life gets in the way.
>Note that I'm only asking about city travel, not intercity transportation.
I don't know why these conversations always seem to descend into talking about the suburbs. Urban environments can (and should) reduce car traffic inside them. Talk about leaving the city to go hiking and suburban living (designed specifically around personal car ownership) are not what we're talking about here.
I mean personally I go on day-hikes relatively regularly and I just catch the train to my starting point. I appreciate that isn't always possible though.
"Options for people who don't want/need to have a car" is very different than "maybe no one should have a car". Cars are pretty necessary if you have kids in most of the US, for example. While there's an argument that much of the US was designed in a way that forces this necessity, the reality is that the road system in US exists, the US is gigantic, and mobility within the US is generally considered desirable.
It's good to encourage cities to find ways for residents to get around without cars, if only because it can increase social mobility by increasing options for people who can't afford one. But pretty much all of the evidence I've seen suggests that Americans very much choose to have a car once they can afford one, and that is very much rooted in the fact that they're phenomenally useful.
> Cars are pretty necessary if you have kids in most of the US, for example.
Yet, there is a significant portion of the US population that can not afford a car, and the next level to afford to maintain a car, or afford to adequately insure a car.
If you read to the second paragraph of my comment, I acknowledge exactly that and agree that increasing non-car transportation options can be a good thing at the same time as cars being a pretty necessary (or at least substantially life-improving) technology.
> However, Americans have been largely forced into car ownership, despite the expense and hassle of owning one.
Indeed, car ownership is a big part of most household budgets in the US. There's the initial cost (in the $25K to $35K range now), insurance, repairs & maintenance - cars are huge money sinks. So much capital tied up in cars. A few years back I estimated that there were 3000 cars in our tech company parking lot which represents $75Million in capital (at $25K each) that's sitting idle about 95% of the time. The combination of public transit, on-demand self-driving cars, better city design, telecommuting could allow us to redirect that capital more productively.
Why are you buying a new car? You can get a very decent car for $8K. And if you did buy a new one, you don't have repairs and maintenance expenses.
> The combination of public transit, on-demand self-driving cars, better city design, telecommuting could allow us to redirect that capital more productively.
Doubtful. Public transit usually takes 3 times as long, so you are wasting human time in exchange for capital (there's a reason people buy cars - it's not because they want to waste money). Self-driving cars will never happen, and city design can't help all that much.
From your list, only telecommuting can help, but only if you do it full time.
(Also your dollar estimate assumes all new cars, which is far from accurate.)
Yes, you want to use a car in this case. But, in the life I imagine, I would rent a car. I dislike driving intensely, but I can see use-cases in which cars are necessary. However, Americans have been largely forced into car ownership, despite the expense and hassle of owning one. A reduction in car ownership coupled with more pedestrian-friendly community designs is more my goal than making cars extinct. I would like my household to go from two to one vehicle.