The economist really likes to paint everything as a gloomy picture.
The way I see it - the modern internal combustion engine is a threat to civilization.
Car Makers especially americans ones have a lot of blood on their hand. Everything from helping redesign cities to make it impossible to not afford buying their product.
To making walking a crime ( jay walking ).
"Young city-dwellers are turning their backs on owning a costly asset that sits largely unused and loses value the moment it is first driven."
Good - we really cannot have 7 billion people drive cars.
"we really cannot have 7 billion people drive cars" ... I think we will have to... for a while.
Education is the best way of reducing population. Cars (or any type of personal transport) is crucial, moving the effort from humans to machines, leaving the human with more time and options. This leads to education and caring about the environment, politics etc.
So for a while we'll have to have 7 billion people using cars (or at least that's what the goal should be) then this will drop to 6 billion, then 5 then 4 etc.
We can power cars using solar. Terrestrial or orbital.
> Education is the best way of reducing population.
Going slightly off topic.
Overpopulation can be solved in 2 ways: reducing population or expanding our habitat.
Education contributes to both, but the second sounds like a more feasible path to take.
There are around ~400k people born every single day. If we expand our habitat to other planets, we'd need the capability to launch a million people a day to have even the remotest impact on population in the near future. Unless anti-gravity or some new weird physics is invented, this isn't ever going to happen.
It's the net change after accounting for deaths that would count here. So the pertinent number is about 200,000/day. Not that this changes your overall point.
Does that mean you assume reducing population to be easy/easier?
Increasing our habitat isn't simple. But it at least is likely to get more feasible over time. While reducing population seems to be the opposite of our 'nature' (not that we aren't able to go against that) and it requires the cooperation of basically everyone. Which isn't required by the former. Cooperation seems to get [insert mathematical function] harder when more people are involved.
Sidenote: expansion would of course not exclude taking care of existing habitats.
The problem is more of over consumption than over population, but I can see why the two would be confused because their is significant overlap. However I find the "over population" argument a red herring to make wealthy Americans feel better. I can assure you if we cut the population of the planet in half but consumed at US levels, that is unsustainable. Just like if we double the population but consume at India levels we'd be fine.
The sentiment that interplanetary colonization is more feasible than education is perhaps the most characteristic HN filter-bubble statement I've ever heard.
I absolutely didn't intend to say anything about the importance of education. The transfer of knowledge is one of the most important features of humankind.
The comment was intended solely as an extra view on the overpopulation subject.
Does anyone have solid figures regarding automobile lifespan and what variables affect it. I've always been told that mileage--not time--is the main variable.
I wonder if driver-less automobiles will really reduce the need for cars. Sure, you can have a car run 3 different commutes a day instead of 1 typically done now. But that will produce 3X the wear and tear on the car.
In New York, taxis are used for 3-5 years.
Plus, with driveless cars we may end up driving much more and further. Instead of a bus, I may just have a car drive me to work. In fact, Uber already lets me commute by car instead of public transit 4/5 days a week.
Uber has already caused me to drive more, not less. I wonder what the end result is.
But they are right to be worried. Any major change in technology brings in winners and losers.
I don't have the data, but that's intuitively correct. Time does matter some when it comes to the corrosion of the underframe (in states that salt roads), dried gaskets, weather damage to paint. But miles matter for everything else including body damage from accidents.
I meant age, but time turned on is a better measure than miles, so in a way both.
Miles is definitely not a very valuable measure, at least not in my experience. An old (age) car, with few miles, means lots of city miles - those are the hardest for the car.
On the other hand lots of miles, and young age means highway, which is basically nothing for a car. But there are lots of miles.
It's basically a wash, so miles is not a good way to evaluate a car.
There are huge regional variations: someone who lives in an area where the roads are salted in the winter or near an ocean coast with salty air will have a very different experience with this than someone who lives in a desert. There's a reason why classic cars are so much more common in the Southwest than New England, Florida, etc..
That is absolutely correct. I did not account for rust.
Rust can eat away a car in 10-15 years, at least at latitudes that use salt on the roads. My car is galvanized, which I think was unusual for the 1980s. So I have not had rust problems.
I remember seeing a lot more rusted-out cars on the roads back in 80s and 90s. But not so much anymore. I think most manufacturers started using galvanized steel by the 90s.
Ok, this is from the "Steel Market Development Institute":
"In the 1970s, automotive sheet steel was simply cold rolled, primed, painted, and put on the road. Corrosion resistance wasn’t very good. By the early 1980s, however, carmakers decided it was time to eliminate rust failures in their vehicles. Ten years later, steelmakers had installed continuous electro and hot-dip galvanizing lines, and carmakers switched to two-sided galvanized steel for cars and light trucks. These steps improved the corrosion resistance of steel bodies so much that companies began offering corrosion-perforation warranties."
A lot of cars to destroyed in car accidents every year. If you assume ~50,000 fewer totaled cars per year that's a lot of extra miles.
Also, several cars have made 1+Million miles as I the odometers roles over. Considering many people drive less than 8k miles per year that's a lot of driving.
PS: The real issue is both age and driving reduce value. But, age is automatic as soon as you know the cars model year so people care about high vs low mileage because they are already buying an old car.
If the car is going to be used a lot, then it becomes economical to use more durable parts. For example components could be used that last four times longer while only costing twice as much. This is pretty much economies of scale, and it will be far easier for a company like Uber to get them, than individuals.
It entirely depends on what kind of mileage and what kind of time. 100tkm in city traffic only could easily be more devastating than 500tkm on highway. (Or some similar-ish proportion.) Conversely, time spent in controlled storage, with appropriate precautions taken before and after, doesn't necessarily count much. Yet time spent in active use even with low mileage (say, a single one-stretch 100 km trip per week) will wear out parts and components. Changes in temperature and humidity have an effect there. I've also observed common replacement cycles mostly regardless to mileage for some parts: a ten-year car is likely to need similar parts replaced regardless of whether it has 100tkm or 250tkm on it. Some parts are more worn by miles, some parts more by time in active use.
This article seems to overlook the obvious. Self driving cars are still cars. Someone has to make them. Car makers are not going out of business in that scenario.
Self-driving cars drastically reduce the total number of cars necessary, and, as the article notes, limit the ability of manufacturers to upsell features. If the fleet of cars on the road were largely self-driving, there is no way it would support the present variety of car manufacturers. I would hazard that most would go bankrupt.
>Self-driving cars drastically reduce the total number of cars necessary
The fact that the cars drive themselves really changes nothing. Car pooling reduces the total number of cars necessary. Public transportation reduces the total number of cars necessary. You might try to argue that car pooling will increase as a result of the change, but I don't think that is a given. You'd need to explain away surge pricing to convince me otherwise.
But certainly, if you'd like to sell me your Tesla shares now at half price and get to safety, I'll be a friend and take them off your hands for you :)
Seconding shakethemonkey's comments and would ask: how much thought do people put into the car they buy versus the cars they rent?
The car companies have enjoyed brand loyalty and the ability to sell feature bundles because many people associate their car with their identity. When you say “Mustang owner”, “Subaru driver”, etc. specific images come to mind, and across all cars you see things like people paying considerably more to e.g. have a fuel-inefficient engine because there are a few times where they can step on the gas and enjoy the rapid acceleration. Manufacturers made billions selling SUVs to people who thought safer, cheaper minivans were too boring.
That doesn't completely go away with self-driving cars – someone with 4 kids will still have different needs than the avid bicyclist or single urbanite — but a lot of it will become less important if people start thinking about their car as, say, the place where they play games or catch up on Netflix while they head home from work. Why pay Ford for the premium sport package when you can put the money into a faster mobile data plan or a better tablet? They certainly don't go out of business in that scenario but the business becomes tighter and less exciting if it becomes more of a commodity where people generally just buy whatever's cheaper.
Carmakers always fret. SUVs, the decline of suburbs, gas prices, hybrids, in-dash entertainment ... there is always something just around the corner that is to revolutionize everything. That's business.
...And consumers are licking their chops. Car buying and repair is a racket from top to bottom. This is in no small part the fault of the manufacturers from design to actively campaigning for policy that's bad for customers and good for car makers/sellers. I hope they rot.
I see this exact sentiment all the time. Even people who have a favorite brand will gripe angrily about getting ripped off on the purchase and how repairs are so needlessly expensive.
I think this is one reason why car makers (except that one that always shows up on the front page here) love having dealers. The maker gets all the love for a great machine, and the dealers get all the hate for dishonest sales practices and ripoff repairs.
So true. I have zero loyalty to my car maker. Or, to formulate it positively, in all the years of owning a car I have only once been positively surprised about the service I got.
Disruption all around...1.8l gas engine that gets over 35mpg and produces 170hp on regular gas, cars that are reliable ten years later, fully electric cars, self driving cars...it's awesome.
36 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 73.3 ms ] threadThe economist really likes to paint everything as a gloomy picture.
The way I see it - the modern internal combustion engine is a threat to civilization.
Car Makers especially americans ones have a lot of blood on their hand. Everything from helping redesign cities to make it impossible to not afford buying their product.
To making walking a crime ( jay walking ).
"Young city-dwellers are turning their backs on owning a costly asset that sits largely unused and loses value the moment it is first driven."
Good - we really cannot have 7 billion people drive cars.
Education is the best way of reducing population. Cars (or any type of personal transport) is crucial, moving the effort from humans to machines, leaving the human with more time and options. This leads to education and caring about the environment, politics etc.
So for a while we'll have to have 7 billion people using cars (or at least that's what the goal should be) then this will drop to 6 billion, then 5 then 4 etc.
We can power cars using solar. Terrestrial or orbital.
Going slightly off topic. Overpopulation can be solved in 2 ways: reducing population or expanding our habitat. Education contributes to both, but the second sounds like a more feasible path to take.
Increasing our habitat isn't simple. But it at least is likely to get more feasible over time. While reducing population seems to be the opposite of our 'nature' (not that we aren't able to go against that) and it requires the cooperation of basically everyone. Which isn't required by the former. Cooperation seems to get [insert mathematical function] harder when more people are involved.
Sidenote: expansion would of course not exclude taking care of existing habitats.
The comment was intended solely as an extra view on the overpopulation subject.
I wonder if driver-less automobiles will really reduce the need for cars. Sure, you can have a car run 3 different commutes a day instead of 1 typically done now. But that will produce 3X the wear and tear on the car.
In New York, taxis are used for 3-5 years.
Plus, with driveless cars we may end up driving much more and further. Instead of a bus, I may just have a car drive me to work. In fact, Uber already lets me commute by car instead of public transit 4/5 days a week.
Uber has already caused me to drive more, not less. I wonder what the end result is.
But they are right to be worried. Any major change in technology brings in winners and losers.
And my experience is exactly the opposite. I have never had a car die from mileage. I've had several die from time.
In my experience cars last about 10 year, 15 if you are careful. How many miles you drive during that time is mostly irrelevant.
Personally I think cars should track hours when turned on, not miles.
Miles is definitely not a very valuable measure, at least not in my experience. An old (age) car, with few miles, means lots of city miles - those are the hardest for the car.
On the other hand lots of miles, and young age means highway, which is basically nothing for a car. But there are lots of miles.
It's basically a wash, so miles is not a good way to evaluate a car.
Huh? How can 'time' kill a car?
My car celebrated her 30th birthday. Under 200K miles. Time does not kill cars, and neither does mileage.
It just gets to a point where it is cheaper to replace then to repair.
I remember seeing a lot more rusted-out cars on the roads back in 80s and 90s. But not so much anymore. I think most manufacturers started using galvanized steel by the 90s.
Ok, this is from the "Steel Market Development Institute":
"In the 1970s, automotive sheet steel was simply cold rolled, primed, painted, and put on the road. Corrosion resistance wasn’t very good. By the early 1980s, however, carmakers decided it was time to eliminate rust failures in their vehicles. Ten years later, steelmakers had installed continuous electro and hot-dip galvanizing lines, and carmakers switched to two-sided galvanized steel for cars and light trucks. These steps improved the corrosion resistance of steel bodies so much that companies began offering corrosion-perforation warranties."
Also, several cars have made 1+Million miles as I the odometers roles over. Considering many people drive less than 8k miles per year that's a lot of driving.
PS: The real issue is both age and driving reduce value. But, age is automatic as soon as you know the cars model year so people care about high vs low mileage because they are already buying an old car.
The fact that the cars drive themselves really changes nothing. Car pooling reduces the total number of cars necessary. Public transportation reduces the total number of cars necessary. You might try to argue that car pooling will increase as a result of the change, but I don't think that is a given. You'd need to explain away surge pricing to convince me otherwise.
But certainly, if you'd like to sell me your Tesla shares now at half price and get to safety, I'll be a friend and take them off your hands for you :)
The car companies have enjoyed brand loyalty and the ability to sell feature bundles because many people associate their car with their identity. When you say “Mustang owner”, “Subaru driver”, etc. specific images come to mind, and across all cars you see things like people paying considerably more to e.g. have a fuel-inefficient engine because there are a few times where they can step on the gas and enjoy the rapid acceleration. Manufacturers made billions selling SUVs to people who thought safer, cheaper minivans were too boring.
That doesn't completely go away with self-driving cars – someone with 4 kids will still have different needs than the avid bicyclist or single urbanite — but a lot of it will become less important if people start thinking about their car as, say, the place where they play games or catch up on Netflix while they head home from work. Why pay Ford for the premium sport package when you can put the money into a faster mobile data plan or a better tablet? They certainly don't go out of business in that scenario but the business becomes tighter and less exciting if it becomes more of a commodity where people generally just buy whatever's cheaper.
http://wardsauto.com/news-analysis/number-new-car-dealer-ope...