The edge cases are the important cases though. Those parties I throw are the highlight of my year. My parents staying here with me is important to me, I wouldn't have it any other way. Yeah I have a desk job but that landscaping work I do in my weekend is one of my favourite hobbies.
I refuse to live my life as if these things aren't important to me. I refuse to average my entire life style down to my median day. My median day is boring.
But instead of spending the money on a house big enough to host those dinner parties, you could host them at a fancy restaurant, with better food and the ability to spend the entire evening with the guests instead of in the kitchen.
And for hosting occasional guests an extra bedroom, plenty of solutions exist for creating temporary sleeping space in the living room, while leaving your own bedroom to the guests. A small inconvenience to pay to save out a whole bedroom to pay for and maintain. There’s also the option of going on vacation together, which can be a really fun way to spend the holidays.
Plenty of landscaping places will deliver to the home, much more convenient, and cheaper overall when you can downsize your vehicle of choice. I ended up making life choices that let me not have a car at all, and I spend that money on traveling instead.
My point is: I find life to be more comfortable when treating edge cases like edge cases, and finding an appropriate solution. I see so many people maxing out their house and car within their budget, and then talking about but never doing things they really want to, like that far away vacation, or that expensive hobby. I never quite understand why.
> But instead of spending the money on a house big enough to host those dinner parties, you could host them at a fancy restaurant, with better food and the ability to spend the entire evening with the guests instead of in the kitchen.
Ultimately people do things they enjoy. People enjoy different things.
I love hosting groups of people at home. Yes, it's hard work, but it's satisfying. The meal planning, excitement of preparing the house, cooking, having a big party at home - I enjoy almost all of it.
Having a party at a restaurant is a totally different set of activities - it needs longer term organisation to book a date, work out exact numbers, maybe pay a deposit. When the meal's over, everyone goes home. Doing it with kids is much harder. There's a different set of societal expectations over payment (people are much less comfortable being paid for in a restaurant than eating food you've provided).
These are different sets of activities. Some people enjoy doing one set more. That's OK. From my point of view - I'm finally in the position in the last few years where I can host large parties at home, and I'm really happy about it. To me it's worth the cost.
Also, in restaurants there is usually less to do - you either sit and eat/drink, or stand. Home parties have more activities - people can cook their own food, browse books, play with other things. They also last longer, and in the end it can be just a few last people chilling on a couch discussing life and stuff in general - can't have that in a restaurant.
And if they drink too much they can stay longer or stay over. No rush to get home.
It’s also cozier and you don’t feel pressure of having to get going after a couple of hours —any kids can find things to do around the house, be it gaming, TV, running, going off to a corner, whatever. Adults can group into convos of interest, etc.
If people are worried about food quality (rarely is food the focus, but if it were that can be catered).
In my experience if you care about food quality you must cook for yourself. Catered food is always cheap, mass produced, and lacks taste and nutrition.
It depends. Local caterers can be good. This is a good option for people who are not great cooks. But yes, if you order catering from a run of the mill place it can be average. Another option is to hire a chef.
But not really this. Many other parts of the world have much rarer house parties and much more done in restaurants with private rooms, etc being easy. Cultural norms and etiquette largely determines what we can enjoy and what is available, we aren't really following our own personal preferences most of the time.
In the case of many of these things there's an early outlay of a lot of money to then pretend the incremental costs is negligible where something with less actual costs might be a lot more enjoyable but is harder to disguise.
The "totally different set of activities" and much higher effort also means that it often just doesn't happen.
The same problem happens with car sharing: If you have the car in your driveway, using it is trivial. If you add booking a rental/shared car, going to the station, checking it for damage, ... a quick trip turns into a major chore.
And even if it may be overall cheaper to rent as needed than owning the "overkill" solution the whole time, it won't be much cheaper, because renting is ridiculously expensive. Short time rentals and car sharing around here are typically $50-100 per day and/or not that expensive per time but $0.50 per km which makes it prohibitive for longer trips. You can get an OK used car for a couple thousand and it will cost you way less than that in maintenance.
Self-delivering self-driving cars could alleviate at least the hassle (since you'd be able to reserve a fungible car from a citywide pool, for pickup and return at your door), although the cost aspect will likely remain.
Exactly this! It's a bit frustrating that there seems to be no acknowledgment of friction being an issue, even though the vast majority of our industry is practically defined by it.
Everyone who's ever worked on a website knows the value of being above the fold, the value of reducing a single click in a checkout, etc.
I lived car-free for many years, and while I had carshares easily available to me and went through the high-friction bits already (had the apps downloaded, accounts signed up, license verified, everything ready to actually rent) - I rarely did it (in fact I did it exactly twice in about 10 years!)
I sympathize with the argument here - having 4,000 lb steel boxes rolling around with a single person in them and no cargo is terribly wasteful, but a lot of the alternatives suggested assume a physics-experiment-like smooth frictionless surface that doesn't actually exist IRL.
Aren't you completely discounting the friction inherent in ownership of a vehicle? Humans tend to find clever ways to justify their irrational decisions, but there is absolutely more friction involved in owning a large truck that is used to haul cargo once a year versus having the same cargo delivered once a year.
Two things. First, the time of friction is important. Pretty much all friction points with vehicle ownership are distributed throughout the year, *and are amortized across all uses of the vehicle*. When you want the vehicle to haul the mulch you press the button and you get bacon. Contrast with renting a truck to pick up mulch, or renting a restaurant for a party, or putting your parents in a hotel. Those friction points happen every single time you want to do the fun thing, and happen when you want to do the fun thing. Press button, pay tax, *then* get bacon. There's a big psychological difference there.
Second, I think you're framing it as {truck + self pickup} vs {no vehicle + delivered}, but I think the more likely comparison is {truck + self pickup} vs {sedan + delivered}. Nobody's going to get a truck as their only vehicle that they'll literally only use a few times a year. They'll be choosing between truck and sedan as their daily driver (or truck as second vehicle). In the replacement case in particular (truck vs sedan) the friction delta is very small.
If you own the vehicle and it breaks you have to fix it - but most of the time it isn't broken. You need to pay insurance, but that comes in a regular bill, and so is easy to budget. In return for this you get a vehicle ready to use when you want to.
If you don't own the vehicle and need one there is a lot more friction: you need to figure out where to get a vehicle. More than once I've gone to get one and found they were sold out and so I couldn't rent when I needed one. More than once I've gone to get one and discovered the fine print didn't let me use it for what I wanted.
Yeah, the people acting like carshares and rentals are low-friction feel like they live in a different universe than the one I lived for over a decade.
Open the app. Oh no, the car that's near my apartment isn't available when I need it. Ok what else is around? Ehhh the BMW is pretty expensive and unnecessary. Ah here's a Honda... but it's a 25 minute walk away.
Ok so I have to walk 25 minutes just to start the car. Then I can go where I want to - but if I bring anything back I'll have to find street parking in front of my apartment building to unload. Then I have to bring the car back to its spot, and then walk another 25 minutes back home.
Oh and don't forget to gas it up, because unlike owning a car, with a carshare more often than not you have to gas it up on the way back to avoid a penalty. You roll your eyes slightly at not just having to drop by the gas station but literally paying for the rental time to do it. But it's fine, whatever.
Like, I get that lots of people find this to be fine (I did, for over a decade!) - but it's anything but low-friction.
Traditional rentals are even worse - unlike carshares their pickup/dropoff locations are nowhere near you, so now you have to think about an Uber!
Where is the friction in owning the large truck? Paying for gas?? Finding parking?
(US-centric view.)
If you live in a major urban center, sure. Paying hundreds of dollars a month for a parking spot would quickly convince me that car ownership was a bad idea. Otherwise, at least in the US, cities spread out to make room for the habits of their inhabitants. There's going to be easy parking where you live because that's what all of your neighbors want.
Of course, I agree that you should just have the deliveries... but I'm not seeing this as an argument why. The costs are not great enough.
You’re paying considerably more all of the time – the vehicle is 2-3 times more expensive to buy, fuel costs are similar, every component will cost more to repair, and, yes, most buyers will have to worry about finding a parking spot on a regular basis. Insurance and, often, registration will cost more, too.
Now, if you’re in the 20% of truck buyers who really need them those are necessary costs but most people are buying them as a lifestyle accessory.
There’s also a fairly large group of people who live in urban settings who think they need all of that but are paying more than the cost of renting on the few times they actually do. Those people have been very good to the manufacturers’ profit margins but unfortunately all of the extra pollution and lowered safety affects their neighbors as well.
That's the key people are missing, it's classic upselling. You're not comparing "nothing" to "truck" you're comparing "ok I get this vehicle that does X" to "or I get this other one that does X+Y".
This is the real reason the SUV has eaten everything, because the so-called "crossover SUVs" and other small ones are just fancy hatchbacks, and a car with a square butt will always be more useful than a similar sized car with a trunk.
The question was a large truck, but there’s also a complication here which might be fading with high interest rates: low rates, pandemic shortages, and improved wages meant a lot of buyers went upscale and that pushed the average truck sale price north of $60k, with a lot of luxury models in the $80k range. That’s what I had in mind for my comment.
I think gas and parking are good examples. If your truck has had 30% less fuel efficiency than a car, then you're going to spend 30% more of your time at the gas pump, huffing fumes, than a car owner for exactly the same outcome in terms of utilization.
Parking is similar. I can fit a small 2-door car into x% more parking spots in a city than a larger truck. So you can spend x% more of your time looking for parking spots. Maybe you're still looking for a spot when the car owner has already completed the errand.
As someone else mentioned, this friction is amortized over time so for some the psychological cost is lower, but for those who understand the principle of opportunity cost, it is a very real and tangible cost of ownership.
So address the fact that there are 4000 lb boxes doing 70 mph.
Physics, to a first order approx, doesn't care about the car mass, btw. It does care about A*Cd*v^3 though. Especially the v. A lot of problems depends on that v.
A couple thousand is probably not enough. But I think people do tend to exaggerate how expensive used cars are. You can buy a ~10 year old Prius for around $5k, for example.
That still seems a bit high to me, unless you mean older ones? A ten year old Prius is >$10k here [1] and I don't see $5k until I get back to the 2010 model year (14-15 years old, and starting to get a lot less reliable).
Yea, location is definitely a factor. With my zip, kbb.com puts a 2012 Prius v Five Wagon with 120k miles in a private party sale at between $5900-$8200. A bit higher than I thought, tbh. I bought a 2008 Prius a couple years ago for $4,000. I'm thinking I may have just been a little lucky with that deal.
I've found KBB valuses a bit low for used cars since the pandemic, FWIW.
Did you buy your Prius at the beginning of the pandemic? There was a brief period when cars got super cheap (no one was buying anything, sellers were desperate) followed by one where they got very expensive (manufacturing was blocked on missing parts, more people were trying to buy used since they couldn't buy new).
Car sharing is mostly about the 300+$/month you spend on a parking space and insurance not the minimum car you can own.
I used to drive so rarely car sharing would have saved me several thousand per year and been less of a hassle because I could skip annual inspections, gas stabilization, etc. Driving weekly and owning a car is probably worth it but drive quarterly and it’s a hassle.
Exactly this and the rhetoric of ‘spending on a house’ isn’t really a fair comparison.
When you buy a house there is an implied level of investment/saving as a by product of the fact that bricks and mortar in many countries are seen as a good store of value.
When you spend money in a restaurant it’s just gone, there is no chance of your annual meal/get together being counted towards your savings if/when you need to rustle up some extra cash.
There’s also the fact that it is almost always cheaper to host a meal at home opposed to paying for an entire group of friends/family to dine out.
95% of the country is completely undeveloped. The problem isn't a lack of space, but too many people wanting to live in the most desirable eras. Many people don't seem to realize that the housing boom in the 50s and 60s wasn't people just building these buildings in ultra-premium areas, but building them in cheap, relatively undesirable areas. But the mass of people moving to these areas ended up making them desirable, and ultimately also not very cheap.
This effect was so substantial that from 1950 to 1960 the population of most major cities actually declined [1], in spite of a rapidly booming population!
This is the thing people miss and forget, that there should be natural ebb and flow, but population centers are instead just getting bigger and bigger without really getting more dense.
(It's actually still happening, but people dismiss where it is happening as "suburbs" but if you live in a "suburb" that is 60 miles from "the city" and basically never go to the city, it's really it's own thing.)
Your own example is pretty interesting. From 1950 to 1960, the population of Reno (capital of Nevada) increased by more than 40%! [1] Of course you're right there was also a huge surge in commuting, but people weren't the only ones leaving cities. Businesses also moved outside cities, taking advantage of cheaper real estate themselves, and new businesses also cropped up to service the booming suburban populations.
And IMO this is all a much more reasonable thing to aim for. Density can only take you so far. There are hard limitations and it comes with lots of nasty stuff. I think the only reason things are taking as long as they are to naturally go this direction is because of the hyper-centralization of businesses and seemingly endless low interest rates, making companies with billion dollar valuations quite trite. And at that scale, the long-term cost impact of real estate in an ultra-premium location versus in the middle of nowhere is a rounding error. But monopoly money economics will end, probably sooner rather than later - and it may well end up solving this problem, alongside a slew of others.
In theory, it means that young families should buy the absolute maximum house they can afford. Stretch and limit spending in every other area as much as possible, then hold it as long as possible. Then "old people" can sell and downsize to trade space for cash.
Looking back, it seems like a lot of places looked a lot like this for a long time. It is fairly recent that we see people swapping every 4-7 years, at surprisingly high cost.
You could probably host just fine without the dining room. And most people in your position aren't getting enough enjoyment that they would actually miss much if they didn't have the room.
The earlier comment isn't a critique on what people enjoy. It's a critique on people's inability to estimate how changes affect their enjoyment, instead making things into an inflexible checklist.
Ok, but the poster had clearly explained a reasonable thing that they want to do. And keeps getting pushed and gatekeeped/kept on that stance for some reason.
The point is that for every one person with a good reason, there can be several people with a bad reason.
People keep taking everything personally when it comes to personal anecdotes when this is about mere majorities. Gatekeeping is not the intent. It's to speak of a broader group that has an impulse to want a thing, but many in that group will be served fine with alternatives. And wanting something doesn't mean you thought it through.
Especially for gardening supplies, delivery has no real downsides, it's a straight money calculation.
> People keep taking everything personally when it comes to personal anecdotes when this is about mere majorities. Gatekeeping is not the intent. It's to speak of a broader group that has an impulse to want a thing, but many in that group will be served fine with alternatives. And wanting something doesn't mean you thought it through.
No, no.
They are simply saying 'cater for the edge cases'. No more, no less.
We know what you are saying.
They're just saying that you're ignoring nuance to their detriment (true), and therefore you are not trustworthy in decision making (true).
No, we are not prepared to let you make decisions for us ("But many in that group will be served fine with alternatives"). No, that's precisely the problem - Centralised planning thinks that the alternatives are fine, and they are often not. Similar to Google not having a phone number to unblock locked accounts.
>And wanting something doesn't mean you thought it through.
Sure. We will assume that this is charitable / general statement (if it weren't: It is this attitude that makes one unqualified to make decisions. They think they know better, and assume that the other person does not.)
> No, we are not prepared to let you make decisions for us ("But many in that group will be served fine with alternatives"). No, that's precisely the problem - Centralised planning thinks that the alternatives are fine, and they are often not. Similar to Google not having a phone number to unblock locked accounts.
You're making a jump here that is not at all warranted.
Many literally means many.
Not in the sense that they will get lucky, but in the sense that different people have different edge cases.
They're not trying to tell people what their needs are, it's that different people truly do have different needs.
A bunch of people are arguing that their purchases have to cater for needs that they don't actually have. Trying to argue them down is not trying to say nobody has those needs, it's that too many people are thinking about a problem for 5 seconds, not considering alternatives, and claiming to have needs, when the actual number is a lot smaller.
It's not about specific people being told they're wrong. It's statistical. We can count how many people are doing X or Y and it's not most people. People get aspirational about the future and make claims that are wrong. Or they consider a lack of an "expected" feature to be far more impactful than it actually is. It's not uncharitable to say this about statistical aggregates, it's a fact.
Yes, we live in a socialist / night-watchman / capitalist / legislative / etc. hybrid structure.
I'm not an absolutist anarchist, and I don't think that undermines my points (given an adult conversation where nuance and context is discussed).
We don't need absolutism across the board here (the "if you legislate against personal atomic bombs, you must be in favour of legislating against people having a 2mm knife blade!" whataboutism fallacy)
I think nobody in my country would say going out to eat is better than eating at home. Home cooked meals are way better. This is just a list of your personal preferences disguised as the right way to do things.
If you want a small house and flying around to vacations, you can do it without looking down on who decides for another trade-off.
100% agree with home cooked meals. You have the liberty of choosing among 100000 ingredients. No restaurant offers that variety.
And for the "dining room just for parties" argument from above: it is actually possible to invite your neighbours, your friends, your colleagues, ... to dinner more than once a year. I almost never had people turn down such an invitation.
Heck, I have a kid in my life who has a severe peanut allergy. Going out to eat is restrictive as we can't go to some restaurants, so cooking at home is way easier on many occasions.
We also like to sit an eat together "just because", so like you point out, a dining room can be used day-to-day, not just for parties (though it's also great for those).
It has nothing to do with the food, nothing at all, it has to do with intimacy and care. THIS is where I live and I invite you here, I take care of you because I care about you, THIS is food that I made for YOU, I'm sharing a part of my life, this is how I cook because I like it or because that's what my family usually eats or because I tried something new.
Maybe it's because I'm. Mediterranean and it's part of the culture but the idea that you invite someone to eat and it being about the food is oh god so depressing to me. It's like gifting someone a poem and caring about how good the poem is.
It depends on the household, and not exactly on the country and culture. However, those definitely affect prevalence. For example, I like to hold parties during which we cook together. But I have several relatives and friends who already prepares everything before anybody arrive. It’s not even family, because a lot of us do differently than how our parents and grandparents do. It’s a matter of taste.
That’s however a joke that home food is better. There are great home meals, and there are bad restaurants, sure. But the top is obviously restaurants. And not even just because they really know what they do, but it’s even way more difficult to get those kind of ingredients what they use. One time, one of my friends from one of the best restaurants from my home country (Hungary) left some beef loin from his restaurant in my fridge as gratitude. I made the best steak from it, that I’ve ever made. It didn’t matter how expensive meat I bought, or in which expensive meat shop. I tried different techniques, but no. I couldn’t reproduce it. Simply that kind of loin is not accessible for common people there.
> It has nothing to do with the food, nothing at all, it has to do with intimacy and care.
Right. So the act of cooking actually doesn't have much to do with it! Arguably, you are tying the act of making food to "intimacy and care" in a way that makes it feel to me like there's this big social pressure to feed people! There are a myriad of other ways to look after your humans.
I'm not from that culture particularly, but everyone needs to eat, and going to a nice restaurant can be a pain (e.g. transport) and be expensive as well. Having people into your home for a meal is a very good alignment of a lot of things at once; that's why cultures have been built on it.
Order some food, it doesn't even need to be from fancy restaurants. Low-end to cheap catering and delivery services (so not Uber Eats or such). You can prepare some appetizers at home if you really want some home made food.
Depending on where you order the food... people might not even realize you didn't cook it.
Slightly off topic, as we don't do this for guests, but one thing I do for cheaper takeout (which we have extremely rarely anyway) is order curry but cook rice at home. Although these days ready meals from some supermarkets (I'm in the UK) are pretty great, and you can get a half-decent curry for £3 or so, and again just cook your own rice.
Sharing meals is a cornerstone of human society. Nobody cares if you personally don't want to involve yourself, but the idea that it's the result of some social pressure is absurd. It is society or part thereof.
Honestly one of the most saddening comments I've read.
So why is it saddening to you? It's down to preference. Some people are natural feeders (and they are lovely people) but others aren't. The two coexist very peacefully.
You can feed your people because you enjoy it, me and my tribe of outliers can chill in other ways :)
FWIW: It's not like I'd ever let anyone go hungry!! Just that in my mind there's a big discrepancy between "fully preparing a home-cooked meal for several hours". If you're privileged to have the time, space, energy and knowledge to lovingly prepare big feasts for people, more power to you. Me and my cold-hearted mates will be content with, oftentimes, shoving some chips in the oven or frying a bag of frozen nasi goreng, or getting cheap takeaway to go with our beers ;)
But then why are we talking about having giant houses with huge dining tables? Invite as many people over as your living quarters can accommodate. Do whatever with them. Make whatever food. I agree with you that the value is not in the food but in the act and intention of making it.
I think this whole thread is depressing because it suggests you need a bunch of shit to be happy and have good relationships. But if you have good friends and relationships often you don't need all that shit. If you need a pickup once a year you probably have a friend you can borrow it from. Even better you can invite that friend to help you with the thing you need it for and help them with something else when they need it.
Enjoying it has nothing to do with it. It's better for you and better for taste even if you don't like it. I don't like brushing my teeth but I do it because it's better than not doing it and because I'm a functioning adult. I'm better at brushing than I was the first times I did it, and I'm also better at cooking than I was 20 years ago, because even if I don't enjoy it, I know I'll enjoy the flavor and the nutrition is good for me. This is basic "live your life" stuff.
Imagine lecturing people about saving the planet while defending going out to eat in restaurants or ordering all your meals.
There are many ways to life your life and thankfully in the modern day, you can live your entire life without cooking anything involved yet getting all the necessary nutrients plus enjoying delicious food.
It's just more expensive, so you need to afford it.
I'm intentionally skipping all the other soapboxing in the rest of the comment.
You can confirm that "probably" with 5 minutes of research and find out that the largest contributors to carbon emissions in eating are the production of the raw materials (which ingredients you use). Once that is controlled for, cooking method is the largest second factor (wood / coal / gas / electric). Once that's controlled for, going out to eat in a restaurant is worse than at home. The only communal eating that is more efficient is school / soviet canteen style eating, which is not what you were thinking about when you said restaurants.
Sadly, agreed. I love the idea of being self-sufficient and permaculture, but even myself as someone who grows vegetables on an allotment and batch-cooks nearly all my meals at home, I can't ignore the idea that, just as with agriculture, it's way more efficient to prepare food at scale than it is at the individual level -- unless we all shifted to just eating the food as raw as possible.
If we look at the full chains of:
- Equipment distribution (production and delivery of large domestic kitchen appliances)
- Energy distribution (residential delivery of electricity/gas needed to power kitchen appliances, and water)
- Space required in each home for a reasonably kitted out kitchen (more space to heat in winter, more materials used in building)
- Ingredients and materials distribution (including the production and packaging of intermediate food products made from raw products, since everyone's cooking with canned things, packaged things, cured meats, pastes, pasteurized things, grains, ...)
The restaurants, fast-food chains and ready-meal prep companies are able to operate on economies of scale that are vastly more efficient than the individualistic, nuclear-family domestic "you must cook home-made meals for your family, friends and guests" culture.
We've made eating out seem either:
- Decadent (cost)
- Unhealthy (take-out and fast-food)
But neither of those things need to be true.
The problem with scale is the storage aspect - preservatives we use to reduce spoilage etc., which arguably affect the healthiness of the food. "Just-in-time" distribution works well until it doesn't (see: COVID).
But I'd argue that the individual household probably spoils more ingredients than industrial production does - that just isn't evident; everyone has their little compost heaps or things go to landfill. Old ingredients go mouldy at the backs of cupboards, just as things run out their shelf life in supermarkets.
Maybe the raw-food vegans and paleo bros are on to something...
No problem, just charge your guests some carbon credits to offset for the meal you cooked for them. I even think there's an app there for you Dutch to easily request a transfer from friends and family.
It isn't about looking down on others. It is that in communities where the extra resource are spent on things like slightly better cars or houses eventually many of the local stores, restaurants or other places ends up closing.
Many on Hacker News have some sort of ambition. To create a startup, a side business, an open source project or have a hobby, be more knowledgeable or become better programmer. In theory that can happen having a home office and extra space in the garage. In reality it often doesn't because making any greater strides often requires coming together with others forming connections, exchanging information and sharing resource.
Yes, I can learn to cook for example Chinese food. But that isn't the same as having a good food industry with restaurants, entertainment, staff, importers and whatever else that actually enable a numbers of different experiences for many people.
Eventually many tend to realize that it isn't that great. But then they often end up blaming the government, the taxes, major cities, lack of investment or support, or anything other than the reality that they didn't invest in their local community neither through taxes for services or with their own income. But instead there are millions of dollars standing around in things like more expensive cars.
It isn't like I don't understand why someone would want those thing. I just don't think many who do want those things understand that to have a decent career many of their kids are going to have move somewhere where there are good education, successful companies, major airports or other resources. And then, while they get some use of their guest room, won't see them much overall.
There's got to be some name for the "tool fallacy". I like to buy tools. I like to have the capability to cut wood in certain ways. Yet I end up very rarely doing that.
I would like to have a personal garage workshop space. I can think about all the things I would build. I would like to be a person that builds things. But in reality, if I had it, I'd probably still be just sitting browsing Hacker News. It's just way easier than to actually get up and start doing something.
I've realized something similar with sports. I could go running any time, but I don't. I could buy some equipment that I rarely use. But if I sign up for some scheduled weekly team sport, and some friends are also going, it's much easier to keep the routine happening. Or if I do some sport together with my spouse.
The same happens with music. I could play and train on my own, and I do some. But it's really with a band and a commitment to an upcoming performance or upcoming recording session that I start more purposefully doing stuff, both on my own and in the rehearsals.
Computers, content and social networks and the pandemic have provided us opportunities to do cool stuff online and share with and learn from others, but I think we have atrophied some physical social aspects there. We need more electronics clubs or garage meetups or whatever method to do something as a group and share the motivation burden or get a bit of help etc.
The really boring answer is that if we could just go out and run we would and it wouldn't be anything extra. But that often isn't how the world looks. Just like how most of the projects we can do by ourselves in a home office have already been done so they don't lead to much.
It is when we do something with others that it gets better than average and the result in the form of being enjoyable or interesting is more than the effort of doing it. If we already don't have a lot of time, energy and motivation running isn't giving us enough to make it worth it. And often we don't because of other things or boredom.
Restaurant spending is one of the most wasteful sources of spending in America. If you sink money into a car you don't need, at least it has some sort of utility and ongoing (rapidly depreciating) value. Restaurants charge a huge markup and provide zero ongoing utility.
I personally hate to see the millions of dollars wasted on restaurant-cooked food, most of which is not good for you and a lot of it not even good. We would all be better off environmentally, socially, and financially if we returned to the earlier status quo of people cooking most of their own food. "Local communities" still thrived when there were 10% the restaurants there are today. In fact, they were much stronger. Of course, there is nothing wrong with the rare night out as a luxury. But the idea that not eating at restaurants enough is the source of some kind of decline is exactly backwards. Your insight that about the criticality of local connections is critical is true, but it has nothing to do with the number of local restaurants, and they have if anything hindered it rather than helped it. Inviting people over for dinner is an activity that has declined precipitously and forms much deeper connections than going out to eat and patronizing someone's (often vanity) business.
> I think nobody in my country would say going out to eat is better than eating at home.
You haven't eaten at a 2 or 3 star restaurant then. They use ingredients you don't have access too, using techniques you can't use at home and pair them with wines or juices you haven't heard about.
However good you think your home cooking is (I think I'm a fairly good cook), you don't come to the knees of a chef with such a restaurant.
Yes, they are not cheap. But neither is buying a bigger house.
And if it's about getting together, who cooked the food doesn't matter. Or even get together without food, that works too.
... I've eaten at enough Michelin-starred restaurants in my life that if you summed them it'd be well over 200. I'm not a stranger to fine dining.
... and I still want to host people at my house and cook for them?
Fine dining for you may be a strictly superior replacement to home cooking (or alternatively: home cooking is what you do when you cannot have fine dining instead) - but many of us don't see it that way. They are complementary.
Yeah, my cooking isn't Thomas Keller... but that's not actually what it's about? In the same way I'm not Chris Nolan but yet I want to take video at family events?
And if I can say so: seeing fine dining as a strictly superior replacement of home cooking is a regretful way to view the world.
It is very curious for me that in a lot of comments there is no allowance for even a possibility that there is more than a single metric of “betterness” for different people and different occasions.
What these “unnecessary extras” or in the contrary “smaller footprint” give is the increased freedom of choice for that particular individual’s situation.
There is no free lunch - every benefit comes with its set of drawbacks. Extra rooms need furnishing and taking care of, cars need maintenance and parking etc.
Different people put different multipliers for each of them.
And this is fine, by the standards of a modern western society.
Living in NYC I used to think this way. Why would anyone want to live anywhere else, from street food in Queens, Le Bernardin, Omakase only menus ...etc.
The 3 star restaurants get old very fast. too expensive, way too long to eat. Very pretentious. As I got older I came to value home cooking many times higher than any restaurant that NYC can offer.
I highly suggest people try these places to understand what is possible with food, but don't value them any higher.
I never said that you should prefer 3 star restaurant. I was responding to the specific claim that home cooked meals are always better than eating out.
> My point is: I find life to be more comfortable when treating edge cases like edge cases, and finding an appropriate solution
And that's fair enough, but I find the tyranny of "it works for me so you're doing it wrong" very real. In many areas, but in particular with electric car range discussions.
Thanks for reminding me what this post was about. After reading through all the depressing comments from people who think restaurants and hotels are superior to a family atmosphere at home, I had honestly forgotten.
> After reading through all the depressing comments from people who think restaurants and hotels are superior to a family atmosphere at home,
They don't say it's superior. Multiple things can be true at once. People often like to cook at home. It's all cozy. It also is a way to save money. People with smaller house have more disposable income, to splurge more liberally on luxuries, feel less constrained in their choice to go out. All those things are true. I think the main message is that people needlessly make conventional choices (e.g. big house, big car), and these choices then drive their decision making after the fact. They're reminding us that stuff (the actual tangible inanimate things) have a tendency to start to own you, rather than the other way around.
> but I find the tyranny of "it works for me so you're doing it wrong" very real
One could also talk about the tyranny of people living their freedom of personal choice to the maximum.
"My solution works for me but will never scale to work for the entire humanity as we're simply too many on this planet for that and also totally screws the environment for future generations, but hey, it works for me!"
Right now people have an issue with the edge cases of EV range. That doesn't mean they wouldn't ever replace their ICE car with an EV if the range story were better (meaning the range of the vehicle itself as well as the charging story).
I'm in a similar situation. My motorbike does, most of the year, ~50 km trips to go see my parents for the weekend (I take the metro or a bicycle for my commute needs). It could be electric, no problem.
But several weeks a year, sometimes on end, I'll go ride in the mountains where current electrical motorbikes would be useless. It's way cheaper for me to own my current motorbike (which I own outright) than to sell it and rent for my trips in addition to buying an electric one. If an electric motorbike could have the same range as mine and the charging infrastructure in the back roads were useful, I could see myself riding around on an electric bike.
It would be debatable whether buying a new motorbike when mine is still in perfect working condition would actually be better for the environment, but I'd say that's another question.
Also more importantly, the "edge case" argument is just another variant of "if I yell at people, the problem would go away". Rate of success for social problems: 0 (pretty questionable on personal ones too).
EV range concerns have an obvious solution: build more EV fast charging stations and guarantee cross-compatibility. Standardize the billing system (the EU strategy of "figure it out or we'll do it for you" would be a good one to pull on the automakers here).
The solution is not ever going to be another round of people posting caustic hot takes on social media trying to shame people.
Billing system is not standardized in EU though. And for some ungodly reason no charging company is able to just add a card reader, oh no, you got to download an app on your phone! And there's a whole bunch of charging companies, each with their own app. You can of course use a RFID chip, but you still have to add your card details in the apps and then add your RFID chip to the app for each company. I know there's some discussions about using the UUID the car exchanges with the charger and have a centralized payment system, but last I heard it's not going smoothly as every car maker and charging company wants to control the centralized system.
As an aside, range is not a problem with new EV's with 500-600 km range as long as the charging network is good. There was a lot of talk about range anxiety in the early days when cars had 150-300 km range and charging stations were rare. These days with charging stations on every gas station, mall, ferry port, grocery store, random parking lots and what not long drives are no longer a problem as long as you plan a little bit and don't drive through hundreds of kilometers of no mans land without charging up first.
Range is still a problem for many, just a reduced problem overall.
500km is a short drive for some, when you can only fast charge to 80% and cars get far less range in the cold. 500km becomes 400km at 80%, you have to start hunting at 70km range, and at 140km/hr that's just over 2 hours of driving.
(Speed reduces range too)
But as I said in another comment, this will self fix. Charging time will come down, range will extend.
When you can fast charge a car to true 600km range, even at 140km/hr at -20C, with the heater running, and in under 10 minutes, I'd say we're there.
500km is only 310 miles.. that isn't very good IMO, plus once you factor in cold weather, high speed(70-80 MPH speed limit is standard for my long distance road trips in western US), and only charging to 80%.. that ranges drops pretty hard.
Then there is all the routes that just don't have chargers, so you are limited to only the common roads.
Until EV gets way better range, I think plug in hybrids make way more sense.
500 km might not be enough in the USA, but here in the EU? There are seven countries within that range of my apartment (including the country I live in), with a total of five currencies and six languages.
And only two of them are close enough I'd consider it a day trip.
That said:
> Until EV gets way better range, I think plug in hybrids make way more sense.
I absolutely agree. 90% of the environmental benefit with much faster roll-out.
Grid capacity is a bigger problem than people want to admit, just saying charge at night isn't really a solution. My state is already struggling to update infrastructure just from legal marijuana (pot farms use a ton of electricity), more charging stations just makes that harder.
I mean conversely if it's not necessary, then it's not going to happen - that's how governments tend to treat vital services (and voters reward them for it: everyone's got an opinion on why construction crews are working on the poles outside their house).
The reality of grid upgrades is unless we make the problem worse, it won't get better.
> That doesn't mean they wouldn't ever replace their ICE car with an EV if the range story were better (meaning the range of the vehicle itself as well as the charging story).
TBH, that is mostly a communication problem. Tesla already does much better than most non-EV types realize. A shocking number of people think road trips require literal multi-hour charging stops. "I heard from this Tesla owner that he only charges overnight... I'd have to stop at a hotel every 200 miles!" sigh
Consumer education is still important.
Outside of a Tesla... road tripping EVs in the US is often not fun.
The problem is that that failure of the hypothetical scaling up is not priced in (an externality). In other words, individual choices are subsidized by the debt of the whole society. If we could agree on a tax that takes care of that, there’d be no tyranny and we can all go back to individual choices.
Sometimes creating sunk cost can increase the likelihood of things happening.
If I am a guest, I would rather use the guest room than a hotel room paid for by my host. The latter feels like I am free-riding, the first doesn't - even though the cost for a guest room is much bigger, it's already committed to.
Also, staying at somebody's place is a very different experience than staying in the hotel down the road.
With the hotel, you will leave at a reasonable time in the evening. With the guest room, you may end up staying up all night.
> Sometimes creating sunk cost can increase the likelihood of things happening.
If I buy a trailer I never needed, it does increase the chances of me using a trailer on a given occasion.
It does not, however, mean that I used a trailer any less than I wanted to before, and if I hadn't sunk that cost I'd have more money for more useful things. In your case, inviting for parties or going to restaurants more often and having more luxurious ones.
If you want to see your friends, don't buy stuff and hope they'll come use it. Invite them.
> If I am a guest, I would rather use the guest room than a hotel room paid for by my host.
If it's just one guest, they can sleep on the couch. Don't need spare bedrooms for that.
> With the hotel, you will leave at a reasonable time in the evening. With the guest room, you may end up staying up all night.
Not really. Leave late, stay up all night, whatever. The only thing they might care for is the checkout time if the hotel is expensive.
So they want to sleep at your place but are not comfortable having you around?
And if they have back pain they can't sleep on just any mattress either, as it might be the wrong hardness for them. And you might have another friend staying over so now you need two guest bedrooms for them both to have privacy, and both of which need fancy specific mattresses, ah and what if it's one of those couples that don't sleep in the same bed so...
Having an entirely unused room to cater to a very specific situation in which someone has to sleep in your house but also wants a hotel experience with a particular choice of mattress is a waste of effort. Guest bedroom by themselves is quite an American luxury thing. They're not at all a thing in Scandinavia unless you live in a mansion, and even then it would be weird waste of rooms to make spare bedrooms. Friends sleep on couches or fold-out beds if they need to sleep over.
> So they want to sleep at your place but are not comfortable having you around?
Yes, this is extremely common. All of my in-laws would go in this category, more or less. I might spend the night at their house, but it would be awkward to wake up with them in the room. Many friends who have moved far away and I don't see them regularly any more would also qualify.
> And if they have back pain they can't sleep on just any mattress either
There is an enormous population that exists between "can't sleep comfortably on a couch" and "needs some specific kind of mattress."
> an entirely unused room
Space isn't at a premium where I live, a whole unused room is no big deal. Plus if I have a another child there is a room ready for them.
That's the source of a lot of guest rooms, they are rooms for future/past children. My own guest room is also an office when there aren't guests.
If a space is repurposed from a previous permanent use, sure. Although, nothing is free, it's a more reasonable situation to end up in.
But then we've also deviated from the discussion of acquiring things with the intend to perfectly cover an edge-cases. On-topic, that would be like getting a long-range car because you drive the 1000 km constantly rather than for trips, and later lose the need and only use the extra range for leisure.
> There is an enormous population that exists between "can't sleep comfortably on a couch" and "needs some specific kind of mattress."
I'm actually not sure there are many people in that group. I don't think there's far between a decent couch and an "eh" mattress, closing the gap of people that cannot sleep on one but can sleep on the other. A decent futon or fold-out bed also goes a long way, and to theorize a bit I expect those that would not be able to have acceptable sleep on such would not sleep well outside their own home and bed regardless.
Either way, futons or fold-out beds are quite reasonable propositions comfort-wise and I sure wouldn't consider providing more for friends and family that needs to sporadically stay over at my home.
Home office with a fold-out bed/couch or futon, yeah. Guest room with a real bed, no.
I have the former, but the person clearly indicated that a couch would be insufficient to address back pains, in which case it sounds like they expect a copy of the master bedroom.
>But instead of spending the money on a house big enough to host those dinner parties, you could host them at a fancy restaurant, with better food and the ability to spend the entire evening with the guests instead of in the kitchen.
Maybe we can skip it all and send them a gift card from Uber Eats?
If you think eating at a fancy restaurant is a substitute for being surround by family while you cook a huge dinner in a large, cozy home then I feel bad for you.
>I find life to be more comfortable when treating edge cases like edge cases, and finding an appropriate solution.
I bet if we looked at your life, "car" and "house" are compromises you are willing to make, "edge cases", but there are other things in there that you are not.
Can I ask why you are so concerned about policing how other people want to spend their time and money?
For casual food, I prefer to have people over. And I don't mind the preparation time and the hassle of cleaning up afterwards. Restaurants are very impersonal and don't have the same vibe as a home cooked meal.
Same with landscaping and other hobbies. The joy they bring you cannot be replaced by getting it done by someone else.
And I think the cost of having a truck versus a sedan is marginal, especially in the US where the roads are wider and parking spaces can accommodate trucks without any issues.
There is another thing at play with maxing out on your house, which is that in many places it is a damn investment (unfortunately) and the primary residence usually has tax-free gains, and things like being not means tested for certain benefits. So maxing out on the house can perversely let you do that travel a few years down the road. It's not great, but that's the system.
Housing might be a long term ponzi but we'll see I guess :-). As long as they keep devaluing currency it is not a bad bet. Especially in a metro area.
> the primary residence usually has tax-free gains
Property taxes are worse than capital gains in that the whole value of the property is taxed each year, compounding, rather than the increase in value when sold.
> But instead of spending the money on a house big enough to host those dinner parties, you could host them at a fancy restaurant, with better food and the ability to spend the entire evening with the guests instead of in the kitchen.
I find it staggering that you would feel those are the same experiences. I feel there's a difference in what you consider to be a party and what people consider to be a party.
I also used to think like this, but ultimately it reduces your spontaneity / flexibility / optionality. What if you want to host a gathering last minute, but it’s a busy time for restaurants? What if you sold your car because your city has a car share, and last minute you want to get out of town for the holiday (just like everyone else)?
You obviously shouldn’t pay to cover every edge case, but if you can it’s worth paying for the ones you value.
Sure, but that restaurant is likely expensive and the homeowner won't get the $$ back years later when he sells his house.
Perpetual home price increases leads buyers into an "investing mindset". I don't particularly like it, but it is an easy one to fall into. This is doubly true since realtors make their money by encouraging it.
The point is a restaurant party would have to taste a lot better than home cooked food to be equivalent in value.
And I am a good cook, when the example above was given I was thinking it would have to be dinner somewhere like Chez Panisse for a party of 10. And even then it wouldn't be the same as a party at home--maybe SV tech people don't value this, but most cultures still value the social connection of cooking for ourselves.
It's not about being a good cook, it's about the joy of cooking and sharing a meal with friends. And the joy of having friends stay overnight and having a coffee together in the morning.
Spontaneity is the reason. In my mind if I have a truck (I used to) I could go to the big box store any day I want and pick up nearly anything in that store and take it home to do something. Its not hard to think ahead but if you feel the urge to redo your flower beds and you have a truck (or a van too) you can do it when the urge strikes and not have to be limited to only landscape places that deliver or having to rent a truck and then return it, etc.
Its spontaneity and freedom to do what you want when you want. Same goes for the OP story about EV's. The mental freedom of being able to drive across the country any time someone chooses is liberating vs. only being able to go 200 miles and having to plan out charging stations and wattages/volts/whatever.
>But instead of spending the money on a house big enough to host those dinner parties, you could host them at a fancy restaurant, with better food and the ability to spend the entire evening with the guests instead of in the kitchen.
Just because an alternative exists now, does not mean it will in the future and also does not mean it is equivalent.
>Plenty of landscaping places will deliver to the home, much more convenient, and cheaper overall when you can downsize your vehicle of choice. I ended up making life choices that let me not have a car at all, and I spend that money on traveling instead.
Congrats on choices that make you happy. Other people do have cars though, which enable your lifestyle and your landscapers probably do not have an electric or a car manufactured in the last 15years.
You just can't. You can deceive yourself all you want and skip all life events this way, but ultimately spending money cannot be substituted by not spending money and if attempted will cast long shadows onto your life if it going to exist at all. It's an ultimate bean counting, going over a same bag that never grows.
> A small inconvenience to pay to save
This thinking is literally penny wise and pound foolish. Taken me way too long to realize.
I've done the admittedly rough cost benefit analysis and for me it doesn't work out. There's hidden edge cases in each of these and other cases. I did optimize in other ways to make up for the inefficient choices though.
I have a huge house but live in a low CoL area where it costs the same as a condo in a high CoL place.
I drive a big passenger van but live in a small town where I can walk to the grocery store, gym, and library.
So you can mitigate in more ways than your suggesting.
> But instead of spending the money on a house big enough to host those dinner parties
ROFL no fancy restaurant will let me suspend a friend off the ceiling. Honestly most won’t be happy with board games.
Also, a home cooked meal is better - not because of the quality, but _because it’s home cooked_. And fyi cooking is a communal activity. The friends are in the kitchen then move with me to dining.
Not to mention I’m a solitary weirdo and I host people at least twice a month. Same with the last two generations of my family. The only time it was as bad as you describe (and “once per two years” is really bad) was when I was cripplingly depressed.
Edit: also, having a spare bedroom and a living room big enough to host even a dozen is hardly maxing out anything.
I wouldn't focus too much on it. Just so many activities that rely on people feeling comfortable, in a familiar, intimate atmosphere. You can't spoof that with a restaurant or an AirBNB. So even if the place would allow it, people would rarely be as comfortable.
Oh ok, I'm one of those people who do have such parties lol (though I'm normally the suspendee).
Funnily enough I have had parties outside with such aspects, there are actually venues that specialise in such things. Friends regular rent them out. Usually combined with finger food only though.
An Airbnb or Kinkbnb would suffice for that use case. I don't need a kitchen with two ovens for most of the year but when I'm hosting a large party, having the option of a kitchen of that grade is nice.
Different people have different incentive structures. Owning or having access to private property is highly appealing. Its more economical and convenient to buy than rent for some things, and until prices and transactional friction decrease this will not change.
You keep missing the point. People don’t go to visit a conference center but _me_. Yes I can go to an event but when it’s done to do private stuff (going to events for themselves is quite different) it really is just a substitute.
And you’re exaggerating the cost too. Two ovens? Seriously have you seen a Polish Christmas dinner? Dozen people, dozen meals, one stove/oven combo. It’s normal stuff done by normal people with small flats.
I mean, you're not wrong in general - if someone if sacrificing something they actually want (travel vacay) for something they only want the story of (hosting dinner parties) - then yeah.
But in specific, goddamn there's so many differences between hosting a dinner party at home vs at a restaurant, or getting someone to visit and putting them up in a room vs a hotel.
> But instead of spending the money on a house big enough to host those dinner parties, you could host them at a fancy restaurant, with better food.
This is borderline infuriating. To suggest that a day with the extended family, which might include people from three different generations, at home could ever be replaced with two hours at a restaurant.
I know there are significant cultural differences at stake here but if your party with family/friends at a restaurant only takes two hours, you're doing it wrong.
"But instead of spending the money on a house big enough to host those dinner parties, you could host them at a fancy restaurant, with better food and the ability to spend the entire evening with the guests instead of in the kitchen."
That just not true. Restaurant quality has plummeted and it's easy to out cook them. Go to your average fancy wedding and the food is mediocre (this summer I went to a wedding in Canada's fanciest hotel. Same "fancy" fare you get anywhere else).
By the time your guests arrive, if you're spending your time in the kitchen instead of entertaining, you've messed up.
Also, you're telling OP how to live his life. You'd hate it if someone told you how to live yours.
"And for hosting occasional guests an extra bedroom, plenty of solutions exist for creating temporary sleeping space in the living room, while leaving your own bedroom to the guests. A small inconvenience to pay to save out a whole bedroom to pay for and maintain. There’s also the option of going on vacation together, which can be a really fun way to spend the holidays."
The carbon cost of vacations is not zero. Close the ducts to the extra room and maintaining it is essentially free.
But again, you're telling OP how to live. You do your vacations with friends, I'll invite my in-laws to stay with me for a year.
"Plenty of landscaping places will deliver to the home, much more convenient, and cheaper overall when you can downsize your vehicle of choice. I ended up making life choices that let me not have a car at all, and I spend that money on traveling instead."
And the detritus afterwards? Since I don't have a truck Ive been slowly cleaning my yard one green bin a week at a time since moving in two years ago. With a pickup I could have finished in two weekends.
Your travel is not environmentally sound at all. Sure, a plane gets 100 mpgp, if its full, but the distances are massive and its way worse overall.
But that's your life, you can choose to do that if you want. I care too much for the environment to air travel much (and, as a "third culture kid" -yuck- I actually do have friends and family scattered through out the world).
"My point is: I find life to be more comfortable when treating edge cases like edge cases, and finding an appropriate solution. I see so many people maxing out their house and car within their budget, and then talking about but never doing things they really want to, like that far away vacation, or that expensive hobby. I never quite understand why."
You don't have to understand. Ppl like to bitch. They would have even if their choices were different. That is a message of basically all religions throughout time - be content with your now.
> Still, these replies show how spoiled, individualistic and entitled people are.
Are you living in a cave? Do you have children? Do you own a car? Do you fly anywhere? Are you sure your house has no glass walls before you throw rocks?
> Still, these replies show how spoiled, individualistic and entitled people are.
There is no flaw or entitlement doing whatever makes you happy. And there's nothing individualistic about not liking public transport (if you have access to it).
The whole glass ceilings concept is absurd: just because someone's situation isn't perfect doesn't mean we don't all benefit from pointing out flaws in a given system.
Who are you to decide what is better for the collectivity? You just decided on different tradeoffs. Should I link the amount of slavery that exists in EV supply chains? Everything has downsides and upsides and things change over time.
We're talking about how those things are impossible to do without a gas car. Half the thread is stumped about how one might go about such things without one.
Well, because the electric cars are not on par with gas ones.
You're also missing the point about how much it pollutes to make one car battery. There was a YT video a while back and you break even pollution wise at about 60-70k miles - basically your fancy electric car is pre-polluted. The only advantage over a gas car is the feel good sentiment.
The other advantage is environmental responsibility.
The pre-pollution you speak of is a myth, because after one year of use the total pollution crosses over in favor of the electric car. Even if the electricity is sourced from the worst source, coal burning, the net result is still a win for electric because electric drive trains use energy so much more efficiently than gas.
Even if it is pre-polluted, you can outsource the pollution to remote areas where the factories and electricity plants are instead of fuming around dense cities where the population lives.
... because winds are static and the greenhouse just affects the area where the pollution is created. And what about the people living there, aren't they entitled to some fresh air? And for the record, the areas are not that remote to local population centers.
The main point about climate change and everything is that you can't play ostrich and if you don't see happening it means you're gonna be ok. If the US pollutes too much (for example's sake) and the ice shelf at the North pole melts, you're gonna feel it all over the world because the water will rise equally.
Negative health effects to large populations of city dwellers PLUS global environment impact or outsourced pollution to remote areas PLUS same global impact?
It does, and it is not only greenhouse gasses but particles like soot, NOx, you don't need to tell me further. Go see how sooty old stone house walls look like in Italy or UK with all the personal diesel cars driving around.
> If the US pollutes too much (for example's sake) and the ice shelf at the North pole melts, you're gonna feel it all over the world because the water will rise equally.
"If the US pollutes too much", droughts and other rare-ish weather events in South America, Africa and South Asia will displace more people and lead to more instability. That's a much more tangible threat in our lifetimes...
No, sorry for the misunderstanding, I was referring to the comment I replied to: sharing more things is simply more efficient on used resources.
I agree with you on the supply chain of EVs... in particular if we're talking about electric cars which are extremely wasteful compared to smaller vehicles and public transit.
In the suburban US, nothing is 15km away. All of the stores you typically go to are 0-5 miles way (grocery store, gas station, pharmacy, doctor, etc.). It is a very convenient place to live and people who want a to live in a house love suburbia because it is affordable, safe, and in general a nice place to live.
People living in rural America have to drive a lot farther than suburbanites.
Also, note that people who prefer to not own a car can choose to live in places with good public transit (mostly big cities like Chicago, New York, Washington DC, Boston, Philidelphia, etc.).
> The 15-minute city (FMC or 15mC[2][3][4][5][6][7]) is an urban planning concept in which most daily necessities and services, such as work, shopping, education, healthcare, and leisure can be easily reached by a 15-minute walk, bike ride, or public transit ride from any point in the city.
Roughly 20mph on an electric bike, in 15mn I believe you do roughly 5 miles?
20mph is hauling it on a bicycle. A normal cruising speed on a bike is more like 12-15mph. So that's more like 3.75mi.
But yes, for all the suburbs I've lived in I've had the choice of dozens+ of restaurants, a few grocers, various stores, office parks, and more within 5mi. There's definitely places where this isn't true but it's not like all suburbs take two miles to leave the pure houses neighborhood.
No one claimed that the average suburban "Main St" is going to compare to high-density urban planning, but that suburban shopping options generally offer choices for most daily shopping needs within a reasonable (1-8km) distance independent from the city hub they're next to.
> No one claimed that the average suburban "Main St" is going to compare to high-density urban planning
You did. Dense cities are struggling to implement the 15mn trip to any amenities. Yet you are claiming that everything is in a range of 8km from the average house in an American suburb, that roughly 15mn on an e-bike.
>> a choice of restaurants, bars, cafés, hotels, etc.
You started this with a nonsense statement that suburban American's were somehow 15km away from the nearest shop, which you were corrected on. Then you decided to be pedantic about the reply so you nitpicked the fact the author didn't include restaurants or bars. Then when I corrected that, you decided to move the goal posts to suburbs being 15 minute cities. Now you've decided to triple-down rather than acknowledge maybe your understanding is flawed.
> Yet you are claiming that everything is in a range of 8km
No one said "everything", but "most shopping options". You don't seem actually interested on having an honest conversation rather than pushing a distorted view of American suburbs of which you don't seem to have any 1st hand experience.
In the conventional american city everything is 20 minutes away. Nothing is truly inconvenient, but nowhere has that glorious vibe of effortless living either. In the burbs, every errand is alright, but it's also low key demeaning.
> In the suburban US, nothing is 15km away. All of the stores you typically go to are 0-5 miles way (grocery store, gas station, pharmacy, doctor, etc.).
Then why are people using cars so much if everything is at a walking distance?
Because the roads are dangerous to cross on foot, and the footpaths stop suddenly for no apparent reason. And there's no AC outside, which matters more in some parts of the USA than others (Davis (CA) and Salt Lake City are above my comfort threshold, from memory).
For example, one time I stayed at the The Cupertino Hotel in CA and tried walking to One Infinite Loop, a junction which every sufficiently old iOS user will be familiar with because it's what Apple used to use as the icon for their Maps app before they relocated their HQ to the flying saucer campus. The junction looks like this, and was an awful experience as a pedestrian:
Other than the high annual death toll and millions of life-changing injuries annually, lowered health, significant impact on household income, and pollution, you mean?
And once all (or let's say most) vehicles are self driving and powered by sustainable energy, things will be overwhelmingly better on all those dimensions.
Meantime, you could adopt some driving-analog version of the following approach, but don't expect most of us to do so:
"The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards - and even then I have my doubts." --Spaf
> And once all (or let's say most) vehicles are self driving and powered by sustainable energy, things will be overwhelmingly better on all those dimensions.
This is only true for one of them and self-driving is still a long ways off. A self-driving EV still produces a lot of pollution (more than half of the CO2 is during manufacturing, and tire dust isn’t improved), costs a lot, and requires significant amounts of space to store and operate.
Nobody is saying there aren’t utility benefits but we shouldn’t continue massively subsidizing something while ignoring all of the problems. That’s why your analogy is nonsensical: spaf and the rest of the community didn’t say “perfect security is impossible, guess we shouldn’t do anything until AGI solves it for us!” and go to the bar.
> And once all (or let's say most) vehicles are self driving and powered by sustainable energy, things will be overwhelmingly better on all those dimensions.
Nope.
In term of general health, on average people will still lower their life expectancy every time they use a self driving vehicle instead of riding your bicycle or walking for the same short trip.
Plus the horror in term of land management and the general effect it has on psych.
Me? Well, the Americans don't let me vote, what with being British and living in Berlin (the original, not any of the 26 places of the same name in the USA), so the best I can do is point out to any Americans who feel like listening that there are better ways to design cities than the ways they've grown up with, and that "15 minute cities" are not the dystopian conspiracy theories that some seem to fear they are.
Beyond all the safety stuff, it's also because that car often saves a huge amount of time compared to walking/biking - especially when there are multiple stops involved in an outing.
And that car can haul groceries, etc. much better than a bike or hands can. I have a grocery store well within walking distance of me (on safe-ish sidewalks even), but I only walk when I only have a few things to pick up because otherwise I'm trying to haul 50lb of fragile and bulky stuff back half a mile to my house by hand (I also tend to go there mostly while I'm already out doing other things, so the marginal additional mileage is nearly zero). Yes, I could take the approach of going to the grocery store every day, but I flat out don't have the time for that (or the weather for that!). Or I could take the approach of buying a much nicer bike with more hauling capacity, but I already have a car (and do enough with it that there's no reasonable way to go without one) so I'm not going to spend $2k on a bike that would only reduce my mileage by 100 miles a year. Heck...just the savings from fixing things DIY covers the cost of my car in a typical year (I have an old house!), not to mention the car rental fees I'd incur for trips pretty much anywhere outside of a 5-10 mile radius.
But to your point, this is also highly situational. If I were in an apartment in NYC, that's a completely different situation than being in a house in a small-size city (honestly, my city in the US even has public transport that nearly rivals comparable cities in Europe...but they key there is comparing to comparable cities in Europe...where everyone still has cars because to go anywhere outside of a small radius, they need a car).
Because the infrastructure is designed such that it's not safe to do otherwise, and anything but driving is an afterthought. I have a shopping center just over a mile away from me but I'd be putting my life at risk walking or biking there.
I would love to be able to bike there safely. Wouldn't even take much longer than driving.
> It (suburbia) is a very convenient place to live
I just wanted to point out that this is missed on a lot of people. City planners in suburbs have come a long way, at least in DFW they have. I live in Oak Cliff which is about 3 miles S/SW of downtown Dallas. The northern suburbs of DFW such as Frisco are not the traditional boring/bland bedroom communities that get associated with suburbs. Well, there is that element but there are many good jobs, good restaurants/entertainment, and other amenities traditionally associated with city centers in the suburbs these days.
I suggest spending some times in a growing a suburb with an open mind. If you're a city person it's not likely to amaze you but it's not that bad either.
> I refuse to live my life as if these things aren't important to me. I refuse to average my entire life style down to my median day. My median day is boring.
Well said. And I think that you cut to the heart of what the electric vehicle advocates are doing wrong. They are telling us the only times we actually enjoy being in the car and travelling are the ones we should give up.
I don’t use a car in the city. An electric car can’t yet take me home in 2 days without perfect conditions and a tailored root.
As an ordinary driver, I cannot care less whether a car is electric or not. All I want is *A* car can cover all most if not all my needs around transport. Obviously those electric car advocate took what we *want* as what we *need*.
Oh those duplicitous monsters! Unlike those sincere marketing folks that spend their lives manipulating the multitudes over what their needs and wants are!
I wholeheartedly agree and am also going to bring another thing up that ICE cars have but EVs don't regarding range:
Peace of mind.
When we're driving an ICE car, we simply don't care about the range. We don't think about it; it's not a concern. That peace of mind is fucking priceless, especially if one's life is already busy with far more pressing concerns.
In an EV we have to constantly keep an eye on that battery level, on that Miles Remaining counter. We have to micromanage the A/C and other things that consume power. That is mentally draining, and for what? It's something we don't have to care about in an ICE car.
I drove an EV, I constantly worried about the range. Range was constantly on my mind, even when I wasn't driving the fucking thing. It was mentally fucking exhausting. Sincerely: No thanks.
I'll happily pay the $50~70 bucks at the gas station to fill up my car in a few minutes and be at peace. It easily beats paying almost nothing charging overnight and then worrying if I can come back home when I start another day.
I've not driven an EV, so I can't speak to that. But I have been in an ICE car that has run out of petrol (it was truly sitcom-worthy, with the infamous line "Don't worry, it always shows empty when it's got a 1/4 of a tank left" about a minute before the engine died), and this wasn't that far out from Sydney, and there are signs around here (east coast of AU) with how many km/minutes the next fuel stop is after the current one, so I'm not convinced that EV range concerns can't be managed in a similar way.
They're usually managed even better. (Some) EVs are pretty good at estimating actual range and can automatically tell the driver where the nearest charging points are.
The really good ones can also check if there are free slots in the chargers and optimise accordingly.
Eh, given the same set of parameters, I have trouble believing a driver who let an ICE car get that low on petrol would've taken the steps necessary to manage the battery charge for that trip.
Also, the fuel consumption of an ICE is going to be much more consistent and predictable especially later in it's service life.
The missing context (which I skipped) was that they had two identical(ish, I couldn't tell the difference, they were the same model though) cars, and the other one did have that behaviour (having witnessed it), I suspect the cause was confusion about which car the different members of the family were using that day. It was also on the way back (so no-one was that stressed about it), so waiting to get back to Sydney would have given much cheaper petrol (NRMA came and gave us enough to get back out of the mountains after 30m).
I think this depends a lot on the EV infrastructure around you.
Driving an EV in the SF Bay Area is super convenient -- I know all the chargers off the top of my head and maintaining enough range is second nature to me now. I regularly road trip my Model 3 as well without any issues. I don't even look at the miles, just battery %.
I recently got an ICE car for fun on the weekends and thinking about gas, oil changes, preventative maintenance, and repairs has been way more stressful than charging.
Give the infrastructure a few years to catch up. Now that NACS has taken over in the US, things will only get better.
Infrastructure is there, people just have a fixed notion of what the infrastructure looks like.
Even our least populated states are littered with fast chargers alone highways and interstates.
When I bought my model 3 in 2018, infrastructure was good enough in Idaho the meet my needs, though there were a few tight gaps.
Now in 2024 the picture has dramatically changed with every route having excess charge capacity and options.
Those down on EVs are having to come up with ever more convoluted scenarios and routes to justify why they aren't feasible. I literally saw one where a person posited they needed to drive from Edmonton to Winnipeg Canada every day during the winter and because an EV is a bad fit for that situation it's a bad fit for everyone.
If you've been raised in a deeply individualistic culture, the collective well-being doesn't affect your peace of mind. And if you can afford to choose to own an EV, you and your descendants will likely be amongst the least impacted by climate change, migrations, and supply chain disruptions.
Hah, so true. If you give up on your ICE now in one of the western democracies, it will be sold as a used car in your country first and continue being driven around by someone poorer, then eventually be shipped to Asia and be driven around there by even poorer people until it eventually goes to Africa and and be driven until it finally gives out. Getting a new EV and dumping the ICE won't change much on that in the short term.
So what I want to say is, that poor people have better things to worry about than EVs and sustainability, like getting through the day with food on their plate and maybe a roof over their head. While they will be the most impacted, they can afford to care about it the least.
Also, EVs right now just shift the problem around until we manage to produce electricity from renewable sources, which is still some way off, especially in the poor places that will drive the least efficient ICEs while they last.
In France we have a "bonus for scrapyard" to avoid that [1]. You get an extra discount if you prove that the old car you're replacing is going to be removed from the road.
I don't think it's well thought through given how broken the rating of cars is, but that's a step in the right direction I guess.
> Also, EVs right now just shift the problem around until we manage to produce electricity from renewable sources
Until we manage to actually reduce the amount of cars. The solution for transportation is quite clearly less and smaller vehicles, all EVs.
If you are broke you can buy a normal car for $1000 or less, that can get you to work and back home. You can't afford to live where you can take public transit or a bicycle to work. Electric is simply not an option for the majority of people, it is a luxury. Until a worker can get an electric car for a couple of thousands, no scrapyard bonus will make any difference whatsoever. It's just more tax money subsidies for rich people.
>Until we manage to actually reduce the amount of cars. The solution for transportation is quite clearly less and smaller vehicles, all EVs.
That's called a motorcycle, although they're not electric. There's a few hundred million of them already in the world, and greater adaption of motorcycles where possible would be incredible for reduced traffic and reduced pollution. On top of that they are cheap, fuel efficient and fun to ride. But nobody will listen to the solution, because there is too much money to be made from the problem.
Good to know, I had no idea of that! But it seems to be fixed with a cat without too much downside in performance. From my quick research, it seems that most modern motorcycles do have cats, and they don't add very much to the price of the vehicle.
Cars carry more people, and more stuff. And it protects you from the weather. But if you're just transporting yourself or yourself and a passenger, the motorcycle can be a good option many times.
Thanks, good to know they have “cats” too, didn’t know that. Hopefully it helps a lot. For the record, I assume what I’ve heard about motorcycles does not account for that.
> Electric is simply not an option for the majority of people, it is a luxury. Until a worker can get an electric car for a couple of thousands, no scrapyard bonus will make any difference whatsoever. It's just more tax money subsidies for rich people.
Note that "the majority of people" don't have a car, they have 2-wheeled vehicle at best. [1] I'm not conflating "electric vehicles" with "electric cars".
> That's called a motorcycle, although they're not electric.
No shit.
> There's a few hundred million of them already in the world, and greater adaption of motorcycles where possible would be incredible for reduced traffic and reduced pollution. On top of that they are cheap, fuel efficient and fun to ride. But nobody will listen to the solution, because there is a too much money to be made from the problem.
Fully agree, even though the maximum amount of public transportation is in my opinion desirable in areas that permit it.
> I'm not conflating "electric vehicles" with "electric cars".
My mistake!
To add a bit more to the discussion. Larger adaption of motorcycles instead of cars in cities can also reduce the pollution from public transport. Nothing spews more exhaust than a bus stuck in traffic. Motorcycles are also a good complement to public transit, since you can get to a station or terminal that is far away on your motorcycle and easily park there. Car parking needs much more space. In many cases it is better to get to a terminal that has express public transport by your own means, so that you don't have to live by the local bus schedule and wait for the slow route to the terminal.
Good point for the buses, I wonder which is more energy-efficient in-between putting all passengers in a battery-electric bus or on electric scooters.
The main advantage I see to electric motorcycles is that you barely need to change anything in most car-dependant areas to start mass adoption. They are fast enough for you to not feel unsafe next to cars at a red light, and can go quite far on a single charge.
I've been raving about Taiwan's Gogoros for a while, but still, too many motorcycles is a big safety hazard. Electric bicycles are much better in that regard, muscle ones even more.
I think both ICE and electric motorcycles will be more energy-efficient than both ICE buses and electric buses. But not everybody can ride a motorcycle, so my thought is that if more car drivers became motorcycle riders, then traffic would flow much better and the bus wouldn't get stuck in the first place.
It would also save a lot of money on infrastructure, if traffic could be improved without having to build larger and larger highways.
As for electric and muscle bicycles, I think they have their time and place. There's nothing wrong with people combining all methods of transportation in their life, depending on circumstances and weather. Car + MC + Bicycle could be in everybody's garage.
I wouldn't consider many motorcycles a safety hazard. It's mostly people riding like lunatics. And safety gear has become better recently, with airbag clothes. At least bikers only hurt themselves in an accident. In my experience motorcycles are safer than electric bicycles, unless you're in a place with very good bicycle infrastructure. Motorcycles can accelerate out of dangerous situations and have better manoeuvrability than large-wheeled bicycles.
> If you've been raised in a deeply individualistic culture, the collective well-being doesn't affect your peace of mind.
I don't know about that. It certainly affects mine. I may not be representative of the average person in my culture, but I was a product of my culture regardless.
As an aside, you can get a Model 3 for less than a Toyota Corolla now in many states so the “if you can afford an EV” perspective is starting to lose its edge. However I still agree with your overall point.
Tragedy of the commons. Your decision to abandon ICE car will not change anything in the grand scheme of things besides inconveniencing you so long as other people are allowed to use ICE cars and a myriad of other fossil fuel based conveniences.
If you're not using a train you're burning the only inhabitable planet as well. So stop feeling superior to others while doing the same crap they all do.
The point is that people are VERY worried about the working conditions of alleged children in lithium mines and battery recycling. (Child labour is used in _illegal_ mines, batteries can be recycled with 95% efficiency)
All the while the same people drive ICE vehicles and contribute to the insane amount of environmental destruction caused by oil drilling and transportation. But they don't go commenting on every new ICE vehicle article saying "But what about the Exxon Valdez, what about the birds covered in oil?"
This integration didn’t exist when the EV versions were just electrified versions of ICE cars.
This changed with the upcoming of car by traditional automakers that were designed to be an BEV first. I’ve used the route planning in a Kia EV as well as a VW EV without any issues. You can plan your route with charging points, select the desired remaining capacity, select the kind of charging you want, etc. AFAIK Porsche offers the same features too
My Renault Megane E-tech will tell me the battery % when I reach my destination, and will ask me to add a charging stop on the way if I won't make it. My previous BMW i3 did the same.
Range anxiety is a short term condition, you get over it after surprisingly quickly. Then you just enjoy driving as normal. Managing charging is easy once you get used to it (in Europe, at least). Actual owners of modern EVs do not micromanage like you claim, you just don't need to.
Personally I prefer paying almost nothing (in fuel) for a nicer drive with far less maintenance worries.
> Range anxiety is a short term condition, you get over it after surprisingly quickly.
My partner has had a series of EVs for 10 years now.
Just a few weeks ago dropped me off at the airport (~100 mile roundtrip) and started planning for it days it advance. How much needed to driver on day N-2, N-1, how much charge would be left. Then spent the morning of the trip sipping coffee at Whole Foods to bring the charge up to %100 (normally limited to %80). Then spent the whole trip hyperfocused on the mileage remaining, worried about getting home.
While the trip is quite a bit shorter than the advertised range, with hilly terrain it's always uncertain what the real world mileage ends up being.
It all seemed very exhausting. So I guess it takes more than a decade to get over range anxiety.
If you are hitting 100 miles range, then you do indeed have such a small range you need to hyperfocus. A modern Y or 3 will always do 200 miles without a threat. I charge to 70%, and I wouldn't even top up before doing a 100 mile rountrip.
Which goes back to.. more range REALLY DOES help. 100 vs 200 miles range is game cahnging. 200 to 300 would be huge for road trips. 400, 500, starts to hit some diminishing but non-zero returns.
Both of these look like very dependent on the personal situation. In my case I never really got over the winter induced anxiety (the range dropped severely for my expectations), combined with the lack of home charger, combined with high electricity costs, combined with the fact that I can walk, cycle, or take public transport for most of my needs. I eventually returned to a cheap, small, ICE car that I use occasionally but serves for peace of mind (it's there!) and makes me just as comfortable as an EV makes you. I wouldn't recommend to you a bicycle or even a small car because it's very important not to generalize to others based on my needs.
Did you have a heat pump? Did you have a car with 300 miles of summer range? The situation these days is far better than what it was but the infrastructure is still catching up to support those without home charging. That does make it more effort, I do not deny (I did it for a bit).
Of course all transport ownership is dependent on personal situation. That really goes without saying, just look out the window! I didn't recommend anything, to do so would be daft.
I simply do not believe range anxiety is still the problem it once was.
I gave it up and switched back in November 2022. While I always keep my options open and an eye out for what makes sense for me, I haven't seen any signs that the situation is radically different in general. It certainly hasn't changed for me personally.
> I simply do not believe range anxiety is still the problem it once was.
Maybe but that says very little. If your waiter told they don't believe the soup contains anywhere near the amount of spit it once did you wouldn't feel encouraged. I'm happy if the situation is improving and if I still care about owning a car in the future I'll surely reassess if that critical threshold was reached. Anything short of that will get a "very good, keep up the good work" but not my money.
Agreed. I've driven an EV for over 4 years and range anxiety vanished after the first few months. I live in a city with good charging options, but often have to take longer road trips to see aging parents who live in a very rural area with zero fast chargers for miles around. Yes, I need to do a top-up charge on the way down because I know I can't charge when I get there, but I'd likely have to do that in an ICE car because there are no petrol stations near them either!
I pay about 15% of what I would have previously paid for diesel, and the only maintenance I've had to do was a new tyre after running over a nail.
Hah, if only you've seen me in my ICE car.
Plenty of hoping and praying the glimmering fuel light doesn't die out and that I'll make it to the fuel station.
No peace mind of mind.
When my ICE car is getting low on fuel, which happens quite often because the tank isn't that big and I tend to avoid filling up when the prices are high (they vary a lot here), I also have to micromanage the A/C and anything else, because they consume just as much energy as they do in an EV car, and that comes from the gasoline. It's most definitely not something I "don't have to care about". It's actually more of a concern because when my car is low on fuel it's very hard to know exactly how much is left - is it half a liter, two, or three? There are way fewer fueling stations than in the past, so getting there also takes fuel. At least with an EV I could have charged at home or at work or at the shopping mall.. well, I'll stay with my ICE car for a while more but that's because there are other good things about it which aren't yet available for EVs, but I do wish it was an EV.
This is purely your behaviour though, the more general case is that most people dont have to micromanage their ICE vehicles or be concerned about range. Especially in the case where they are doing extended driving trips where even fuel can be scarce jerry cans are easy enough to pack.
But my point was that A/C and all electric appliances also affect fuel consumption of ICE cars, and if, for any reason, you're low on fuel you have to take that as much into consideration as with an EV car (except that it's often much harder to gauge how much you have left, with an ICE car).
That's probably true in the US. Not around here, in a semi-populated region of Europe. It's far shorter to somewhere to charge than it is to a gas station. There used to be lots of them, but they started to disappear even before EVs were a thing. For me the nearest one is quite a bit away, through a toll booth even.
If you provided that context, you would not have gotten such incredulous replies. Btw the US isn't special. I'm in India right now and there's a petrol station around every corner just like there's a gas station around every corner back home
I assure you that this is not normal behavior. Furthermore, why would you consider paying more ($10k to $20K more!)[0] for an EV if you're trying to time the market on gas prices and worried about spending a few cents on running the A/C?
That was not my point at all, the point was that, unlike what was implied in what I commented on, usage of A/C and appliances don't matter for ICE cars, which is not at all true. Energy use is just as for EV cars and has to be taken into consideration. In any case, pricing is different in various places - I own an ICE car, and I have always bought low cost, used cars. That place doesn't currently exist in the EV market.
There's an alternative though, at least for those who need an everyday car with low range and do big trips in rare occasions: renting a car when needed.
So it's part of the cost. Most people travelling long distance fly and rent a car at the far end.
Would you pay an extra $500 a month to avoid having to spend $1000 renting a car twice a year? Probably not, so the question is how much more does it cost to not rent the long distance car.
And I've never rented a car where a 1mm scratch would require fixing, nor a 1cm scratch
Bumper Damage IS: Dent/scratch larger than 6” (size of the damage evaluator), or hole/tear of any size
Exterior Body Damage (Non-Bumper) IS: dent/scratch larger than 2” circle, or hole/tear of any size
Glass Damage IS: Any ‘Star’/crack
I suspect companies like Europcar, Hertz etc would be similar.
I’m Italian, emigrated to the Netherlands and happily car-free.
Ever since Covid happened we rent one for 1 month a year in summer and drive to my in-laws, and further down in central Italy. Overall clocking ~3.5-4k km.
We rented all types, ICE, hybrid and BEV with no noticeable difference: while with the Model Y we had to stop N times to fast-charges and a snack, with the ICE we’d stop anyway to rest, drink or use the toilet even on a half-tank.
Range anxiety is a thing, but it’s over after a couple days.
It’s a solved problem in the US at least, as long as the car you buy comes from a manufacturer with a good fast charging network, of which there is currently exactly one. Australia is well on its way to being solved for most trips.
Even if we swapped every ice vehicle for electric and had the charging infrastructure in place, we wouldnt leave all that oil in the ground. Its just to useful, it would be used for plastics, chemical feedstocks, fertilizers, insecticides, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, etc... All those hydrogen carbon bond we dont have to pay the energy for are just to danm useful and valuable for so many industries to leave in the ground.
NL, hai letto bene. I don’t know what to make of this statement though.
I’ve clearly accounted for everything dude, including my own endurance and that of my family: every couple hours we need to get out, stretch, have a coffee and use the toilet. Plugging a DC 150kW takes 2 minutes, and we were never stuck in a queue waiting for that.
In any case the worse time wasters are roadworks and traffic jams on the German highways and the abysmal wait at the Gotthard Tunnel. If not for them I could easily make it in one day with a Model Y
Hotels can have electrical outlets. Not to mention chargers which are often faster than electrical outlets. Long trips in huge countries are easy peasy. Charging stops are like 10 minutes every couple hours and sometimes 20 when someone goes in a store for a few minutes. The long charging stops you are thinking of are non-Teslas.
I like how you completely forgot that a night at a hotel costs you 1 day of vacation, plus the cost for the hotel itself.
Most healthy people don't need toilet breaks every 2h, and you're not accounting for the line at charging spots. 10 minutes * 5 cars isn't a short stop really.
There are no lines though. And you are making things up. There is no need for a hotel. As an example, a recent long trip I took in a BEV (Tesla) was 1442 km in one day. No hotel needed. How is that a bad thing? Are you going to tell me that is a short distance?
Have you tried going to the mountains in France? Or anywhere not on the main roads, even? I mean actually traveling around, not just taking the highway across.
My ICE motorbike has a range of around 300 km on the highway, around 200 in the mountains if I'm enjoying myself. I've had range anxiety with it to the point I now cart around extra gas. None of the gas stations I visited had any kind of charging available (outside your regular outlet, but it's unlikely the attendant will let you hook up your car to the outlet inside the office – if it's even open).
Not everybody has the same usage patterns as you do.
> Not everybody has the same usage patterns as you do.
Sure, but keep in mind that bikers riding on the rolling hills of the French countryside are a significantly smaller demography than the millions driving across the highway infrastructure.
Absolutely. But that doesn't mean we should push everybody to ride electric bikes just because those riding in remote places are few and far between.
The feeling I get whenever these discussions come up is that there's a distinct lack of nuance, and a tendency to shove a one-size-fits-all solution down peoples' throats, even though the solution might only fit-most. I get that it's easier to reason with absolutes, and that sometimes some people may need a nudge to take the jump. But I also understand being pushed like this with no apparent concern for peoples' situations can make them close down to the argument, even if it could actually make sense for them in the end.
People complaining about range anxiety are usually told "nah man, it's just FUD!" Maybe it is just FUD even for a sizable portion of those complaining, but just dismissing their concerns out of hand doesn't seem like a good approach.
And this isn't just a bunch of people on a random discussion board. It's actual policies being enacted affecting peoples' actual lives.
Talking about France, in a few years' time my motorbike won't be allowed inside Paris (where I live). I rarely use it. I'd really love to see the proof that building and buying a new one, to replace the one that is in perfect working condition, is actually better for the environment. Especially given that the newer model which complies with the current pollution standards consumes the same amount of gas as mine (judging by the manufacturer's specs). Of course, this law is stupid because it only considers the year the vehicle was sold, but it's just one example of many why people may have a knee-jerk reaction to being forcibly pushed to adopt new things.
This year we visited the Dolomites and the weather was insane. The place was full of old photo's of meters high snowfalls but all they got this year was a couple centimeters in early December. We need to change our habits, this pace is unsustainable
So you're saying that trashing a perfectly good bike and building another one, only to be ridden what? 10000 km at most a year, is a good deal for the environment? And consume the same amount of gas, so put out the same amount of CO2? My bike was an example where the general one-size-fits-all solution is actually counter-productive.
This is exactly the issue I'm talking about.
I'm all for preserving the environment, I really am. And I think that moving the immense majority of (sub-)urban commuters from ICE to EV is great and will make a difference. Or, even better: stop commuting if possible!
Isn't the mantra "reduce, reuse, recycle", "in that order"? How are we reducing or even reusing here?
But this whole "replace all ICE vehicles now" just screams of disguised "won't somebody think of the economy?"
Electric is quieter, so many people you probably would never even notice or be aware of, who are out there seeking a peaceful direct experience of the mountains, will appreciate the absence of your motorcycle in that respect.
Also you make a common mistake of motorcycle owners in equating the amount of gas consumed with the amount of pollution. Smaller engines are by far vastly more polluting per kilometer than larger ones.
Which is saying something even worse than saying their per-litre pollution is bad since motorcycles get more kilometers per litre. In other words even with their better per-kilometer gas usage, they still pollute more per unit of distance travelled. That is truly bad, from a pollution perspective. It’s a mistake to think the small amount of gas used means there is less impact.
I would also love being able to ride a quiet motorbike. One of the reasons I have my specific model is that it's very quiet. I'm not against EV bikes, mind. I'm talking about practical issues, here, and saying that as of today, electric bikes' range combined with the existing infrastructure would have a hard time replacing ICE bikes.
I'm all for your considering that I shouldn't get to enjoy the mountains, but please, come out and say that, instead of dancing around the subject and saying that a newer ICE bike would be just fine. The argument just loses credibilty.
> Smaller engines are by far vastly more polluting per kilometer than larger ones.
How small are we talking, here? My motorbike's engine is bigger than many modern ICE cars' (I'm in Europe, so big-ass V8s aren't that common).
Be that as it may, you seem to ignore what I'd say is the most important part of my argument: I'm not complaining that I wouldn't be allowed to ride any bike. I'm complaining that the powers that be figured that a newer bike, with the same weight and similar sized engine (smaller, actually! – so more polluting?) and the same gas consumption is somehow better than my older model, and I should be allowed to ride that and not the one I already have.
Yeah I see what you're saying, it would suck if they forced you to change over abruptly. And if you have a bigger engine as you say the pollution is probably less of an issue. In any case the pollution picture is getting massively better as EVs roll out and I'm guessing the transition period will be long (as long as the lifetime of your current bike, maybe).
Then one would hope we will have swappable battery pack options for motorcycles in the future as well, which could make refueling more widespread. Easier to do for motorcycles than cars. And with a smaller battery by necessity, swapping makes more sense. Anyway I'm just rambling on here, who knows what will happen.
As far as you getting to enjoy the mountains, I had (maybe mistakenly) been thinking you were talking about a dirt bike, versus a road bike. I don't think of the sound of road bikes as annoying to anyone, especially a quiet one. Not quite as Edward Abbey would say, "if there's a road there, the place is already ruined" but definitely you get more leeway to make noise on a road.
> Absolutely. But that doesn't mean we should push everybody to ride electric bikes just because those riding in remote places are few and far between.
The situation you described is purely recreative. Others might argue that the climate is much more important than the personal hobby of a few motorcyclists and would warrant banning ICE vehicles altogether.
One can change recreational activities easily.
> I'd really love to see the proof that building and buying a new one, to replace the one that is in perfect working condition, is actually better for the environment.
I am with you on that one and I believe that if all this wasn't an hypocritical way to save the automotive industry, the governments would push and force car brands to develop and sell homologated EV conversion kits for all cars builds in the last 30 years.
The endless focus on hobbies involving ICE misses the forest for the trees and has pitted tons of large hobby communities against environmentalists for decades because many environmentalists would much rather pick a fight with car guys than with the inter-global corporations and the defense forces that actually make up most of the worldwide emissions pool.
International shipping is single-handedly the greatest contributor by a small margin, tons of which just does not need to happen, full stop. We send products around the entire world because it costs pennies less to package pineapple in one country than another, and most of it goes in the fucking garbage anyway. And the products that do require shipping could be done in a much, much more efficient manner to save tons and tons of ship traffic per year. The other major contributor is industry, which could be trimmed significantly if we put serious work into ending the production of stupid, useless, shitty items that no one actually wants (knockoff electronics, basically anything drop-shipped, single use fucking lithium phone chargers).
And all that's not even going into shit like the FIELDS of e-bikes and e-scooters being stacked in China because there's just nowhere to go with that.
Military dick-wagging especially but not solely by the United States accounts for absolute shit-tons of CO2 going into the atmosphere, too, absolutely none of which needs to happen. Military vehicles, construction vehicles, LTL trucks, service vehicles like garbage trucks: this is where we can make big dents in climate change. Not by taking away Jerry's Corvette that does, at best, 10k miles if he has a good year where he gets in a lot of track time. As far as I'm concerned this is just the "check your carbon footprint" garbage with extra steps: blaming consumers for the state of the environment while completely letting off the dozens of multi-national corporations actually holding the power and making the decisions that are collapsing the biosphere.
Certainly, but it's a matter of priorities. I recycle and minimize my consumption of useless goods, and all the rest. These are unambiguously good things to do. But at the same time, going after people for their recreational hobbies just because said hobbies are not something you find personal fulfillment in is shit activism when they are barely enough to be considered a rounding error in the larger problems of climate change.
If at some point in the far flung future, things like dirt bikes or even track monster race cars owned by folk turn out to be the biggest environmental problem, fine. Then we'll deal with it. But from my perspective we have an entire ocean of fish much bigger and far more worth frying first than them.
I felt compelled to mention the hobby vs need situation because it used to be one of my hobby too but I also acknowledged it wasn't necessarily a smart thing from my part.
Now despite still enjoying riding a motorbike I am doing more recreationnal cycling and only transportation focused motorbike riding[1]. I just embraced moving a but slower. Turns out that with a simple bicycle you can get way enough thrill in the downhills, and with much less risks. As an ex elite road cycling racer, I am no stranger to catching and overtaking cars and motorbikes descending mountain passes.
[1] I basically only ride my motorbike if I have my partner with me and I am going to a specific place we wouldn't be able to make it and back home within a time constraint.
Not the OP but I have been to the Pyrinees and Dolomites in my Model 3 and was perfectly fine. Many, maybe even most of the small villages had at the very least a 50kw charger somewhere on them, often at a hotel or supermarket. I don't think I've ever been further than 100km from a fast charger.
I agree with you as that's my reality as well, however the original article is about the US market so the discussion here is for a US context and for them, as far as I understand it, their infrastructure is a lot poorer so the concerns are far more justified.
95c/kwh at rapid chargers in Italy this summer, that's over €800 to recharge for your journey compared with petrol at €1.80, which would be about €400.
no man, 21€c/kwh at Tesla SC stations outside Italy, something x2 in the country. Besides, gasoline was outrageously priced last summer, an epic gouging.
Everywhere in Australia is far away. I'm actually pretty keen on getting a Plugin Hybrid for where I live, we often go on 400KM+ drives into national parks or into state forest areas that get more and more remote as things go on.
Should we structurally stick with ICEs in EU and the US because everything is far in the Australian Outback and for that once in a lifetime road trip in the US?
That's your choice, and it's fine, and I'm not going to criticise it, but just suggest that sometimes (not always, and depends on what you consider "better") it's possible to cater for both the day to day case and those edge cases better if you make your starting choices more around your day to day needs.
E.g. maybe your parents staying specifically in your house is too important for you to give up, but for those whose actual need might well be to want to spent holiday time or the occasional long weekend etc. with family or friends, many places you can finance a lot of trips and big fancy AirBnbs for all of you together for the savings from a smaller mortgage.
For some it might similarly be even more of a highlight to throw the parties in a lavish rented location or fancy restaurant (but again: it might not be; if part of your enjoyment is to host at your home, that's your choice).
Depending on how frequently you need that truck, you might be better of renting/signing up to a car-sharing service.
Sometimes people genuinely want to be able to handle the very specific edge case and that's fine. But often people also just haven't considered the cost of buying for the edge cases vs. the cost of renting on occasion and what it might allow.
I wouldn't want to suggest you shouldn't make decisions that takes your edge cases into account, but I find to me at least that there are often alternative ways of addressing edge cases than people's "defaults".
I don’t know how you calculate things but airbnb/hotel/rental car prices - are priced that it never makes sense I did calculations couple of times.
It only makes sense to rent something if you don’t have any of your own options.
Getting bigger mortgage and having your family once a year instead of paying for a hotel gets you ahead really quick.
TCO of a bigger car is not that much bigger to match having a smaller car and then renting out a bigger once in a while. Unless it is like once in 10 years.
Adding a room to my house where I live would add about $4k/year in mortgage costs. If you have your family staying over often, you'd easily exceed that in AirBnb's, sure. For me, my family is a 2 hours international flight away, so they're around rarely enough that $4k exceeds what I spend. The point is not that this is always the right choice, but that you should do the maths for your specific circumstances before you decide.
Similarly, with respect to a car, if the only alternative was a smaller car maybe I'd have chosen that, but my average total transport costs over the last 10 years is about 1/10th of the average UK car costs when factoring in occasional months with hundreds spent on Uber. That works for me, because I live somewhere with excellent public transport and don't need to use even that much. It won't work for someone who don't have my life or my transport options. That's fine.
That was my entire point: Do the numbers. And that also includes for people who think they're saving by holding back.
It's also critical to remember in this discussion that that $4K is not gone. Generally speaking, you'll pay less in mortgage costs than the value of the house by the time the mortgage is paid off. That means that you benefit from both the option to host people and the added equity which you could release later in life if you need that cash, or you can leave for your descendents.
At least, as a rule of thumb, property value gains tend to exceed mortgage interest paid. It's not universally true, but generally you'll at least recoup a significant proportion of what you paid.
That's true, but most places you need to spend fairly close to the full mortgage cost not to get a better return if you're able to put even a small proportion of the cost increase in an index fund. It's worth taking into account, but if you do, you should also take into account whether the other option will leave you money left over and if so how you'll spend or invest that.
> Across the country's 35 largest metro areas, homes that boast of a formal dining room ask a median of $325 500, 23% more than the national median home price[0]
I didn't find specifically the median house price, but reversing the 23% increase puts the median at $265 000.
This suggests a median 'dollar value difference' from adding a dining room of around $60 000.
With a median down payment of 13%[1], and an average interest rate of around 7%[2], you'll pay back around $550 000 over a thirty year mortgage[3].
In order to pay back less than $610 000 (i.e. the $60 000 value difference), the mortgage shouldn't exceed $293 000, leaving you with only $28 000 to build your dining room and come off better off at the end of the mortgage term.
Obviously if you can do better than the median rates, down payments, and values, then the maths changes, but on average, it looks like I might be wrong about you recouping the full amount you spend on adding a dining room.
> Adding a room to my house where I live would add about $4k/year in mortgage costs.
You can't compare that to an AirBib bill dollar for dollar. The money you give to AirBnb is gone forever. The money you pay in mortgage partially goes to your equity and may partially be a tax deduction.
It's tax deductable extremely few places (US and Norway are the only generous ones I'm aware of; I'm sure there are more, but it's not all that common) and decidedly not in the UK. And you're right the money I give to AirBnB is gone forever, so I do need to take that into account.
However there are other issues to take into account: 1) it's not a given the added value of a room will be as high as the cost of adding it, and it can severely prolong the time before you're in the black. E.g. my house is one of the largest on my street already, and that typically results in a lower return for adding additional space, 2) you need to also consider whether the cost to cover the needs you otherwise would meet by adding a room is met by more, the same or less than the amount adding the room adds to your mortgage payments. If it is less, then it takes fairly little less before you're able to increase your capital faster by putting the difference in an index fund at the point in time when most of your mortgage payments still go towards interest.
By all means, it can pay off to build, and odds are I in fact will add a room to my house over the coming year whether or not it will be profitable. I'm not saying you shouldn't. Just that it's worth doing the numbers and figuring out what actually works best for you (and, yes, that does include factoring in equity) and sometimes the right choice for you might not be what is financially most prudent anyway. But it's worth going into it having run the numbers.
I took great care to multiple times make clear that the choice is yours, that your needs might not be suited for this, and that whatever works for you is fine. Exactly what made you think I was implying the person to decide what works for you should be anyone but you?
We were wondering if we could drive to glacier national park in our BMW i4. There doesn’t seem to be any charging infrastructure outside Kalispell, so we are better off flying and renting an ICE car (Yellowstone or Grand Canyon doesn’t seem very possible yet either). Same with driving up to Alaska ATM, which maybe might be possible in 5 years but is impossible today unless you leverage slower charging at RV parks. They are unfortunate sacrifices, they definitely do matter.
Honest question - can you rent a car for the trip?
Whole my kids were growing up we had a big people-mover vehicle. They grew up, we stopped using it, send I sold it. Recently I had a group visit and we wanted to see the sights. I simply rented (a much more modern and nicer) people mover for a week. Renting local, away from the airport, was really cheap.
My daily drive is negligible. For road trips I'll just rent a car. I can also rent a truck if I need to carry stuff, or something with a towbar to drag stuff.
Being "cheap " 350 days a year leaves a big budget for renting the edge case.
I use an electric cargo bike. It's a really expensive one that cost almost $7000. You can get a perfectly usable one for less than half that price. I use it for what most people use their car for in 90% of their trips, including picking up 2 kids from daycare and school. And I use it year round, including days like today when it is -11 degrees C (12F).
I don't pay fuel. I don't pay insurance. I don't have to finance a car.
When I need to move something big or heavy I rent a full size van or a box truck for about $100 for the day. Most people pay more than that just for car insurance in a month. And then I get a vehicle that is exactly what I need, including a lift gate when suitable. I rent a nice sedan when picking up my in-laws at the airport and a big station wagon when going on holidays with the family.
And I'm still ahead thousands of dollars every year compared to the average car payment which is more than $500 per month even for a used car.
I don't drive, and instead spend what sometimes seems like a fortune on Uber. But in the UK the average monthly spend on a car is ~500GBP when include the amortized cost of the car itself.
Even when my son was swimming competitively and we had to Uber him around to 6 training sessions a week plus often competitions many miles away, I only briefly averaged 400GBP/month in total transport costs (though with the caveat that I work from home; had I commuted full time it'd have added ~200/month to get in to the centre of London, but then again I'd likely have spent that even if I had a car because commuting in to the centre with a car is a nightmare)
And I got to sit and relax and read or talk to my son or listen to music and not have to pay attention to the road.
I get that some enjoy the actual act of driving and/or driving a comfy, fancy car, but for many, it's a really expensive enjoyment and I suspect a lot of people have not considered just how much they could "paper over" edge cases and issues with public transport (yes, I know this is not a viable options for huge parts of the US) or choices like yours with Uber or rentals.
The 2 mile trip to my local train station typically used to cost ~6 pounds outside of surge pricing. I's gotten more expensive, so if I had to do it again now I'm sure it'd start adding up.
Most of his trips would be to local leisure centres within about a two mile radius that would have been walkable in 20m-40m if not for the lack of time to finish up work, get him ready after school etc.. Normally I'd prefer to walk, and that's a large part of the reason my transport costs are very low.
EDIT: Just checked my most recent few trips, and I paid 16 pounds for a trip Google Maps tells me is 7.4 miles driving distance, and 20 pounds for the return the same distance. The last few trips to my local station have been between 6.50 and 8 pounds, so definitely gone up.
You can get cheap car in UK for like 2000GBP and maintenances + insurance would be around 1000GBP per year. When I was in UK we even got a car for 450GBP and drive it for 2 years without issues.
You can, and yet your total costs including fuel will still far exceed my transport costs. As I've said elsewhere, do your numbers for your use and pick what's best for you.
That's nice and all, but if I were to have done that, when I was living in a small town, I'd have been cold and wet a lot of the time. Don't see how to use the savings to fix that.
I’ve bicycled (on a normal purely human powered bicycle before I got kids) all year round in Scandinavia (and Michigan) in both small and bigger cities for decades. I’ve been neither cold or wet very often. It’s not particularly hard to dress for the weather.
I have cycled year round too, with proper waterproofs. Unless you wear some kind of helmet with a mask, which is not usual, you still get rain in your face. Cold rain. And it rains a lot of the time here.
Rain in the face has honestly never bothered me. Somewhere between -5 and -10 degrees C I replace my bicycle helmet with a ski helmet and ski goggles. Somewhere there I also start wearing a baklava.
We recently went through our first car purchase in over 5 years. Even when you choose a cheaper EV (so worse in non-range aspects) or even compare used, the math still doesn’t work out. EV + rentals for trips costs more over a 5-10 year span even after accounting for the gas and maintenance savings. So I’m kind of confused why people are suggesting rentals for trips as an alternative. You don’t even break even.
KIA Niro: $26,840. KIA Nero EV, $39,600. Plus taxes, fees, and loan interest. If you splurge on the Niro EX trim to get a few features that you don't really need but can't decline on the EV, that brings it to $29,540 - still $10K (25%) less. https://www.kia.com/us/en/vehicles
Yes, for the mainland locations at least. We would fly to Kalispell and rent a car for glacier, nice airports exist for Yellowstone and Grand Canyon. We would be skipping the great American road trip, however, which isn’t really practical in a rental. Glacier is only 9-10 hours away from us by car, so it is definitely road trip feasible. I might wait to go to glacier for a year or two since the charging infrastructure should be better by then.
There wouldn’t be much point to an Alaskan road trip with a rental. Again, just fly and rent a car I guess, but we could get up to Prince George maybe.
These guys [1] took an iX3 to the Kruger Park in South Africa and back with careful planning. They managed to do 100km of self-driving game viewing thru the remote park per day for 4 days without issues.
They recharged out of their accomodation while they weren't out driving. We don't even have electricity 24 hours/day here due to our ongoing generation crisis, so I'm surprised you wouldn't be able to do something similar in the USA or are those two parks just really that remote? Or is it the 120V AC that's the issue?
> These guys [1] took an iX3 to the Kruger Park in South Africa and back with careful planning.
This is not as impressive as you might think, to be honest. What they did is the ideal situation for using EVs: drive short distances and charge overnight.
>> over the course of our 4-night stay, despite driving over 100km per day in the park.
Their needed range was 100km/day, over four days, with overnight charging for each 100km drive.
To get there, they drove for 3 hours, then stopped for 1.5 hours to charge.
Honestly, the story makes it clear that range is an issue, not that range is doable in an EV.
If you read their account, they actually believe they would've made it there without stopping to charge, also they used a fast charging station on the trip which would've charged to 80% in 30 minutes (a much more usual break on a long 3 hour trip). Many people stop for lunch on their way to Kruger, I suspect they did this here.
Charging overnight on the slowest plug point in Kruger also delivered up to 210km range, double what they needed per day in Kruger.
It's not really an issue they were just extremely cautious, something you'd expect in South Africa if you know anything about their power grid.
I believe the author was actually trying to show it is actually feasible and range is not a concern.
> 30 minutes (a much more usual break on a long 3 hour trip).
I am fascinated by this comment, because I don't consider a 3 hour trip to be particularly long. Certainly not long enough to require a half hour break in the middle of it.
That said, "range anxiety" isn't the reason that I won't buy an EV at all. Most of my driving would be well covered by EV ranges, and I'd be fine renting a car or using other transportation methods for the occasional long trip.
I personally know my attention span will not be 100% driving for 3 hours straight, a short break is necessary and parking, ordering a coffee can take a bit longer than you'd think.
This is an interesting point. I'd like to see some stats on the cost of battery usage.
I'd also like to know how fast charging a lot but only from 20% to 80% works out cost wise over time. i.e. more stops to fast charge on a long journey but spending less time at each stop.
I have a feeling that if the car companies could get battery leasing and fast charging costs under control then a good charging network would cure a lot of range anxiety.
I've done long journeys in someone else's EV in the UK. Fast charging at motorway stops we'd make anyway really wasn't a problem but I don't know how that affects the cost depreciation.
(I still have the same old diesel car I've had from new for the last 10 years. I'd buy an electric car but I don't really drive much and I don't really like the current offerings).
> This is not as impressive as you might think, to be honest.
Not sure what argument you think I'm making, but OP already owns the car, I'm not making a claim about anything being impressive or trying to convince anybody to buy one.
I shared somebody's detailed log book for a potentially similar kind of trip in a similar vehicle in a more challenging charging environment. I've never been to the US parks in question, and I don't know how much driving one does on those trips, so I made some caveats.
> Honestly, the story makes it clear that range is an issue, not that range is doable in an EV.
How is it an issue? They had a great trip and found that the animal viewing was especially enjoyable in an EV, and the experience was significantly different from driving an ICE. If it doesn't work in OPs particular scenario, that's fine, but I don't know why you're making generalised statements about a specific trip.
100km is a short distance, i driver further then that for a day of snowboarding at the local big mountain (130km each way) - I’ve driven 2x that fora day hike
And road trip? Between 500-1000 a day on travel days.
> > Honestly, the story makes it clear that range is an issue, not that range is doable in an EV.
> How is it an issue? They had a great trip and found that the animal viewing was especially enjoyable in an EV, and the experience was significantly different from driving an ICE.
That's not relevant to "range is an issue".
> If it doesn't work in OPs particular scenario, that's fine, but I don't know why you're making generalised statements about a specific trip.
Because it is being presented as newsworthy when it really isn't - 100km/day is not what people refer to when they say "range anxiety". A long trip in which 50% of the trip duration is spent waiting for charge is also not newsworthy.
> What part of my comment made it sound like I was presenting something newsworthy?
Can you clarify what the point of your comment was? I'm just a little bit confused about the point of responding to a range-anxiety post with a link to a news article that demonstrates 100km/day range.
It's my understanding that no one is discussing and/or concerned about a range of 100km off a full charge, so my interpretation of your initial post was that it was an attempt to alleviate fears about range, so ... I (naturally) thought that you were presenting the 100km/day range as something new that I (and others) might not have know about.
This is in reference to a game drive. You normally drive in the mornings and late afternoons only, and you stop, wait and watch whenever you see something interesting. You could find one spot and happily spend your hours there e.g. a herd of elephants taking a bath.
Correct, I'm not. I'm replying to someone who already owns an EV and sharing somebody else's logbook with them in case it's useful but for some reason my comments are being completely misinterpreted.
RV parks let you do that here in the state, you can even get to L2 charging in most cases (this is the only way to drive an EV to Alaska ATM), but it isn’t what I would say convenient, or very practical.
Yeah it sounds like the nature of your trips there are quite different from what we would do here (mostly low mileage game drives), so not as applicable to you.
Three phase 16-25A outlets are available (common in buildings/houses) in Europe (230V each phase to neutral, 400V phase to phase). Charging Li-Ion is not a linear process at all, but at so low power (0.02C, compared to the target's battery one) it'd be, as it'd be limited by the source instead.
I live in Livingston MT which is the closest proper town to Yellowstone. We have a two-bay charger at Clarke and Main. I've only seen it used once though.
Ya, the issue for Yellowstone is mostly when you are in the park. You need to head out to charge, but maybe the math works out better than glaciers where the town with charging is farther away, and the roads in the park more vast.
> I refuse to live my life as if these things aren't important to me. I refuse to average my entire life style down to my median day. My median day is boring.
Surprised nobody mentioned externalities yet. Carbon tax, and then you can take a more wholistic view when planning your life.
By the way, landscaping as a hobby does not automatically imply trucks, not outside US at least. Unless you actually do it often and need to transport large loads—then yeah, go for it. You’re part of a small minority that might actually need a truck.
I think you are making an important point: it is easy to think that the value to you of having a car with loading capacity or a dining room for parties can be calculated from the utilization alone.
Right now my car has broken down. I don't actually use it that much since I commute to work on my bicycle. But as it is broken down I realize that those "corner cases" actually occur much more frequently that I had thought. For instance, this week I've needed it twice. Next week I need to take a trip where I could either drive myself to the airport, allowing me to sleep in for another hour or so, or I can use public transport. If I use public transport I will be home much later so a social engagement I was planning to take part in has to go.
Sure, I don't use my car that often anymore since I try to ride my bike when possible. Even in winter. But that's not really how I use my car these days.
As for houses: they're a lot more complicated than I thought. You don't actually know how you are going to use a house and whether it will "work" before you move in. It took us years to figure out what a couple of the rooms would be used for. During covid the room at the top of the house, which was kind of a second living room up until then, became my wife's office. And it works great for that.
Quite the contrary - the edge-cases are not important here. Not because they do not matter, but because trying to address them this way leads to worse results.
Instead of having a giant living room with chairs and table space for 30-50 people, you can temporarily set up something on a lawn, in a park, or rent a dedicated space.
Instead of having a pickup truck to carry a heavy thing once, rent a van that one time or have a trailer hitch on a smaller car (for the confused Americans, in EU even the smallest cars have or can be had with trailer hitches for small utility trailers from 750 to 3500kg).
Instead of having a car with a 1000 km range and 10 minute refuel when you only drive 30km a day, rent a nicer car for those trips or take a train/airplane.
Don't optimize for edge-cases - you get better and cheaper results by optimizing for the median and doing something else for edge-cases. Think of it like trying to do everything with a swiss knife vs. using a few good dedicated tools, renting those you rarely use.
>hose parties I throw are the highlight of my year. My parents staying here with me is important to me, I wouldn't have it any other way.
There is a silver lining in smaller houses. They tend to be in denser neighborhoods and hence has some benefits in raising kids. There is no need to setup play dates, they can literally hear each other screaming and come out to play.
In my bigger house neighborhood, I see very few kids just playing casually outside and hence we have to setup play dates. Yes now I have place for table tennis table that I always wanted but I have to call my friends over because bigger house in my case also is bit more further in suburbs.
So big house might be great for parties and hosting guests but i probably traded away closeness to my existing friends for myself and kids both. I just made my median day more boring than before.
Put it another way divorced from the politicized issues. Airbags are for an edge case. Backup parachutes are for an edge case. Having a "rainy day fund", rather than going all-in on more profitable long term investments is for edge cases.
> I refuse to live my life as if these things aren't important to me. I refuse to average my entire life style down to my median day. My median day is boring.
Maybe that's the biggest problem and your current solutions are inadequate?
Totally agree that the edge cases are important. But people spend too much on owning equipment for them that would make more sense to rent.
Take the dining room example. A quick search says it costs ~$20,000 to build a dining room, so let's say a house with one costs $10,000 more than a house without. So by foregoing a dining room, one now has an extra 10k that they can spend however they want.
But that DOESN'T mean that they can't spend it on throwing parties! I'm pretty sure that even spread over many years, 10k dollars can produce a lot of fun times.
This math doesn't make sense. You would only have to use your dining room 2-3 times a year to come out ahead; whereas most people likely host in their dining rooms 12 - 48 times per years. Even at once a month, over 10 years, you aren't going to find a rental place for $83.
From this post, I'm not sure if you have underpriced dining rooms are exceedingly cheap, or if you are unaware how much a rental place actually costs. My parents have a rather nice dining room that they host every major holiday in and they still spent more than 10k in the last ~2 years alone for family gatherings they did away from home.
Edit: Reading through the thread I've come away with the feeling most people are just talking past each other with no frame of reference for how the other lives. There are people it seems coming from cultures centered on weekly/monthly gatherings that are bewildered that someone would consider a dining room superflous.
Not only that, those people simply cannot recognize the costs associated with those hustles. Imagine the scenario: your friends are visiting you, and you are telling them I'm going to book a function room...
Actually it's the opposite. The costs people can't recognize are the massive opportunity costs of having rooms that they don't use 99% of the time. (DISCLAIMER: I am not talking about the people who do use them! Don't bring up your cousin Bob who hosts events all the time and think that you are refuting me.)
This is because people look at the utility of the room when it is used, but forget to multiply that by the frequency of its use.
And yes, sometimes a dining room can surprisingly come in handy for something that comes up. However, this is true of almost any use you can think of for the room. I would venture to say that most people who have dining rooms, who don't routinely host dinners, would be better served making it a video game room, or an aquarium, or a giant closet, or a room for whatever hobby they actually do. Yet across America, millions of dining rooms sit empty for months at a spread, screaming to be made into something that more accurately reflects the lifestyles of their owners.
>Yet across America, millions of dining rooms sit empty for months at a spread, screaming to be made into something that more accurately reflects the lifestyles of their owners.
Every day, my money sits in my bank account screaming to be spent on something intangible...
I guess I question of prevalence of these large dining rooms that are only used for large dinner parties a few times a year and gather dust unused the rest of the time as opposed to somewhere the owners eat day to day and possibly use the surface for various hobbies.
Most people I know don't eat day to day in the dining room. They do probably use it for various hobbies, which kind of shows how little it is used for its intended purpose. They would be better off making it primarily the hobby room.
If you have to rent and pay money, then you are forced to evaluate if you actually need that. The end goal is to prevent you from doing it, even infrequently
I just looked up how much it would be to rent at the closest park to my house (and yes alcohol is allowed). It starts at $25/hour and goes up to $50/hour for a grand ballroom holding 120 people.
Yeah, I've realized that culture just isn't translating. I think dinner party was the wrong word to use because it has primed the conversation where people are imaging the only use for a dinner room is hosting an evening ball.
I know a group, where 8 people + a dungeon master meet weekly/bi-weekly to play DnD. It's a little on the larger side but this would be "dinner" party size. Of course they bring food and drinks as well. It would be a little ridiculous (and expensive) for them to rent a grand ballroom every weekend.
Similarly there are plenty of people I know who look forward to college football and hold similarly sized game days with themselves and significant others. Again nothing special, just 6-12 people ultimately watching tv. Food is brought, and drinks are had, but they aren't having a "rager". Renting a park every weekend to watch college football every weekend would be expensive.
The fact that you would think to rent a park for these kind of things just leads me to believe we are talking past each other. We are missing significant cultural context on the utilities of these rooms. If you don't watch sports or don't play DnD I can see how the idea of needing a dining room is superfluous.
And most people would't throw away their friend groups in order to invest $10k on the S&P. At that point, why even have the money?
It’s not like you even need a large grand dining room. My parents had one and used it fairly regularly for parties. I don’t—the smaller one I had got opened up to the kitchen during a remodel.
I do have a couple rooms that can accommodate 8 or so people each and I use them when I have guests. Also outdoor space in the summer. But I use those spaces for other things as well.
See my edit. This is primarily what I mean. It's like the elderly guy who's incredulous that someone could spend $700/year on video games (~1 new video game per month). They can't begin imagine that anyone could spend so much on something they have no exposure to. Yes, there are people out there who do dinner parties, nothing crazy, every week. Maybe the word dinner party is conjuring the image of a crazy frat party with 300 people. I consider someone like a DnD group that meets every week a dinner party. Would you rent a space to host 8 people every week just to play DnD? How might someone feel being told to consider playing DnD less just because they now have to rent that space?
I am specifically responding to the use of "most people". Certainly some people have parties 1-4 times per month. But most people? As in, more than 50% of people? Not where I am from in USA, but maybe there are cultures where this happens.
Notably I am not imagining large parties (the 300 people you mention). I just haven't had more than 1 person over to my place at a time in over a year.
> Would you rent a space to host 8 people every week just to play DnD?
No but in such a situation only 1/8th of the people involved need to have a living room.
>As in, more than 50% of people? Not where I am from in USA, but maybe there are cultures where this happens.
You got me there, I'm not a sociologist and I can only draw from experience. I come from an immigrant family in New England and one my of my best friends is an immigrant from Europe which places high priority on the eating together thing. That said you could be right as more and more relationships move online.
>No but in such a situation only 1/8th of the people involved need to have a living room.
In a perfect economy with 100% efficient utilization there will never be any waste or duplication of resources. We don't have a perfect economy.
> In a perfect economy with 100% efficient utilization there will never be any waste or duplication of resources.
I guess I am just thinking about it from an urbanist point of view, and how our view of personal space and a relative lack of focus on publicly accessible community spaces affects our land use and exacerbates the housing crisis. I say this as someone in a family which has been in this country for generations, and probably focused too much on personal wealth and access to large homes. I am learning to appreciate the value of smaller private spaces and bigger public spaces as I have slowly moved from the country to a dense city throughout my life. I go to weekly gatherings with friends, but that's at the local hackerspace not at anyone's house.
I can see how from an immigrant background there is more focus on familial togetherness and I think that is a good cultural trait for us to encourage and support in city design. Though as a queer person my family is not who I want to spend time with on a weekly basis.
Either you're an outlier or I am, but I don't have the data to tell which.
We host a few people, often using our dining room, at least once a week and often more. Sometimes two people sometimes twenty. Sometimes dinner, tea, craft night, board games, dungeons and dragons, birthday parties, whiskey tastings, family visits.
We aren't exceptional in this among our friend group - everyone shares the fun and stress of hosting.
I'm not in some exotic culture either, just a medium sized city in the southeast US.
Yeah, even the 'party people' I know only had 3-4 a year. And just having one or two people didn't entail 'bringing out the fine china' and using the dining room.
My friends have potlucks at at public parks/beaches. For me I often gather at the local hackerspace which is a collective that I’m a member of. I’m joining another collective that’s a tiny farm and they have potlucks. Theres “bike party” where a bunch of rowdy people meet in the streets, ride bikes for 5 miles or so with music blaring out of special speaker filled bike trailers and we take over both lanes of traffic until we ride to a selected location to throw a dance party.
And I don’t have a spare bedroom. Also most of my friend group doesn’t drink.
You're forgetting opportunity cost. The $10k is not stuffed in your mattress, you can do stuff with it. You can buy CDs that return over 5% APY right now (giving you a $500/year budget without even touching your principal). Let alone investing in stock ETFs.
> You can buy CDs that return over 5% APY right now (giving you a $500/year budget without even touching your principal)
Not really, because your principal loses value because of inflation.
If you buy that $10k CD, you get $500 out per year; you pay a couple hundred bucks of that in taxes, leaving $300. If inflation sticks around 3.2%, you'll be losing $20/year before you spend anything.
You still generally owe taxes as the interest is accrued. So, the situation doesn't change-- that CD loses money unless your tax rate is low.
Even with compounded interest not subject to taxation until withdrawal, it's not much better. Even in a ridiculous case with 30 years, 10000 * (1.05^30) = $43220 ; minus .4 * 33220 = $29932; 29932 / (1.032^30) = $11401-- or about .4% real return per year.
Opportunity costs beyond inflation make the picture even more ridiculous.
(10000 * (1.05^10) - 10000) * .67 = 4213. 14213/(1.032^10) = 10372; or about a .36% return.
Not surprising that a lower tax rate gets to the same number sooner through compounding.
BUt the bigger issue is that you have to pay tax on interest as it is accrued, not all at the end. So in your case there's a 3.35% return vs. 3.2% inflation or a .15% net return.
It doesn't matter when you withdraw the money, the taxes will be the same. $10k earning 5% compounded monthly will be $16,470 in 10 years. After paying 1/3 of the gains in taxes, you'll be left with $14,313 which has a present value of $10,446 at 3.2% inflation.
So yeah opportunity costs must be accounted for, but in your scenario the opportunity cost is negligible. We're talking 0.4% per year. Investing in a CD is like pissing in the ocean
Yeah but I can live with a gross car covered in shit that children drop and I get the convenience of a car whenever I want. I never have to pay some peak season pricing.
Owning things means you get to be your own master. That is worth different things to different people.
I know couples without kids who only rent cars but that number goes way down for people who have kids.
Cars are daily-use items for most people, so not in the frame of discussion. Unless you only drive your car like once a year or something, in which case yeah you might be better off renting.
That's pretty much unique to homes (well, real estate in general), and that's because there's pretty much no way to own the land your house is on, at least in the US (maybe there's some really rural parts where it's possible, not sure).
Can't really think of anything else I own that has anything equivalent to a property tax.
I don't have the experience of living in US-style McMansion, but I think I would loath to do all the necessary cleaning, repairs, mowing the lawn, etc. I really don't want to spend most of my weekends doing that.
I said that at my last place. It was a pain to clean and I wasn't getting any benefit out of the space (admittedly that might have been different had it not been lockdown and I'd been able to invite friends around).
Well first of all, it's not "I wish I had less space" but rather "I wish I had the goods and experiences I had to forego in order to obtain and hold onto this extra space".
But anyways you're missing the point. For instance my house had a 'dining room' when I bought it, but I made it into something that I use every day (music studio/band practice room).
The conventional part of me would have just kept it a dining room, and used it maybe once or twice.
The $10k extra the dining room costs when you buy it in 2025 is worth $15k when you sell in 2035. You'll have paid $400 a year in interest, but you'll have made that in appreciation alone.
$10k would get you about $500 a year long term (5%).
$500 a year doesn't go far, and that assumes you don't use the dining room for any other purpose than a couple of parties a year.
In most cases I don't think it will be that simple. The cost of a dining room is not necessarily paid in money. You might for instance find two houses that are the same price where one is a bit bigger because it has a dining room but it is also on a smaller lot. If you choose the first house you are paying for the dining room by accepting a smaller lot.
It might cost that in some cookie cutter subdivision, but in the city it would cost significantly more than that (try finding a 2br condo with a dining room in a big city...). Not to mention furnishing the room and the extra property taxes per year.
Let's say you're into fly fishing, so instead of a dining room you have a room for making lures, which you do every day. You can still have those parties and utilize that room; in fact, that room will look a lot more interesting, have more to talk about, probably be cozier because it actually gets used so its layout will have been refined through real-world testing. And you can still fold out a dining room table if you really need to.
Well, you do have a genuine need for a truck of you're doing landscaping work every second weekend. You could use a tow behind cart as well, at least that's what most people do in Europe.
I got a compact crossover to carry my bike. It has the same size of an engine and emissions as my previous car (a sports mini), just the space inside is bigger, one can carry four people without getting crowded and it doesn't look funny with a tow hitch on. Most sensible people drive these kind of cars in the US as well, I saw a lot of Subaru crossovers.
>I refuse to live my life as if these things aren't important to me.
How about living it as if those things are more important to you that the way they are achieved?
You can see your friends and throw parties without a dining room - set a table in the living room or set up a meeting in some place. Or go see your parents more often at their place, and when they come, spend more time with them and do stuff wherever they stay at. Or do the landscaping work without a pickup truck, like millions of people managed.
An insistance on the rare edge cases is not about "refusing to average an entire life style down to the median day". It's acquiscing to the median day, and then using the edge cases as if they mean you haven't.
> It's not about "refusing to average an entire life style down to the median day". It's acquiscing to the median day, and then using the edge cases as if they mean you haven't.
Thank you for this, this seems like the most rational take.
I went through the more extreme version of this debate myself, I don’t own a car anymore and despite what everybody told me, I haven’t lost any flexibility at all. Between financing the vehicle, gasoline, insurance, vehicle tax and maintenance I save about 4800€/yr. I can do about 360 days of the year without a car. I can rent a car best fitted for the occasion and still save tons of money. I used a van for when I got stuff from ikea, I had a sedan for a road trip and a compact EV for when we had a city trip. With this being a no brainer I’d argue I gained flexibility and improved my not so median days.
The same thing can be said about just switching to a BEV. The BEV will, for the vast majority of people, be an improvement for their median day. You can charge at home, you have less maintenance hassle and the range will be perfectly fine for your median day. At the same time it won’t hinder your above median days not significantly. You can plan out your trips with a little more breaks and you’ll be fine, at the same time, with the money you saved on ToC you can also just rent out a nice ICE for the extra ordinary occasions.
Yeah, I've managed 8+ years in my city without owning a car, and still did lots of things with a car. Just had to change my mindset about costs. Like, paying €50 to rent from a carshare outside the apartment to go skiing for 2-3 hours felt really expensive in the beginning. But then I realized, that with the money saved from not owning a car, I could actually probably do this twice a week during winter season and still come out far ahead.
It's just that when you buy a car, you don't see the price tag on each trip.
Delivery is a thing and the price tag may sting but it’d take a shitload of it to pay the price difference between a truck and a sedan. Plus the cost of worse gas mileage, pricier insurance, higher property taxes, and so on.
This perspective leaves me with little hope for the future of the environment. Nobody is willing to give a single inch when it comes to their comfort, convenience, or self image, externalities be damned.
> Those parties I throw are the highlight of my year.
That's what renting is for. You can rent a better party room than your dining room for very little.
> My parents staying here with me is important to me, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Fine, but I don't think it's this important to most people who have a spare bedroom, they just don't think about it.
> that landscaping work I do in my weekend is one of my favourite hobbies.
Mine too, doesn't mean I need a pickup. But anyways if it's one of your favorite hobbies and you do it every weekend, that's not what I was talking about.
Those solutions are totally inadequate with regard to intangible values. It's as if you simply dismissed the emotional weight of GP's very real point, which is that the edge cases are singular and important. A rented room regardless of how nice is not a substitute for hosting friends and family at ones home.
And don't get hung up on this example. There are endless examples of the same sort and that pose the exact same conundrum.
I think it's one of those things that if you don't get it, you don't get it(and that's fine). There is an emotional element to hosting your guests in your own home - if you don't feel that way then well, there's no need to argue about it, no one is right or wrong here.
- A pub to exist nearby. While I as a presumably fellow Brit would not buy a house without being able to walk to multiple pubs, that is not the common case in the US where I actually live.
- The pub to have a room that it rents out. Again, not the common case even in London, let alone in the US.
- Your potential guests to be OK with being at a pub.
- Potentially childcare. If you have to have your party away from your house, you can't put your kids to bed and return to your guests, you have to go home. That part, if you will pardon my French, really fucking sucks.
Hosting your own party has a lot more planning. And don't discount the planning that went into obtaining your own party room in the first place.
> A pub to exist nearby. While I as a presumably fellow Brit would not buy a house without being able to walk to multiple pubs, that is not the common case in the US where I actually live.
Don't get hung up on the 'pub' part. It can be a restaurant, public park, street (block party), arcade, bowling alley, or whatever is fun and convenient for you.
It can even be another room in your house. Move some furniture around, put in some speakers, BAM, party room.
It really doesn't. I have a backstock of beer and wine and cheese and a subscription to Apple Music, I can literally do it with 15 minutes notice, and have had plenty of practice at doing so. Most of my neighbours are the same.
> a restaurant, public park, street (block party), arcade, bowling alley, or whatever is fun and convenient for you.
- Restaurants do not like large groups showing up without reservations, and the cost is wildly different.
- Drinking in public parks is not typically permitted, nor is street drinking.
- Arcades and bowling alleys are out in the burbs and require driving to.
What is fun and convenient for me is to have parties at my house, in the entertaining space space that does not require manual labour to reconfigure.
I don't care whether you like that or not - I'm not the one who was getting "kind of annoyed" by the preferences of others.
Yeah. In practice I’d probably coordinate food, make something, and make a run to the liquor grocery store but I could also easily handle 8-10 people showing up at my door.
> I have a backstock of beer and wine and cheese and a subscription to Apple Music, I can literally do it with 15 minutes notice, and have had plenty of practice at doing so.
The party you're describing doesn't sound like it needs a dining room.
> Restaurants do not like large groups showing up without reservations, and the cost is wildly different.
Keep in mind this cost is compared to an extra or bigger room in your house. You can throw many restaurant parties for the money you'd spend on a larger house. (Invest the difference and the restaurant parties are effectively free)
I don't really understand what people are imagining here though - it's not like "entertaining space" is some gilded-age ballroom for most people making this choice, and the price difference matters if and only if there is an otherwise comparable house you can buy that meets your other constraints.
Even if you buy a house with an entertaining space, you can use it for something that you do more often. For instance, my house had a 'dining room' but I use it as a music studio/band practice room. This way it gets used every single day.
Ours is being used as an office right now, and has been like that since 2020. Still has a dining table, but it's pushed up against a window and home to indoor plants right now, and we've gotten rid of the chairs since then (they were old and beaten up anyway).
Also I don't think it always makes sense to get a smaller house. We got a smaller house and I kind of regret it now, since housing prices and mortgage rates have shot up so much it's now so much harder to upgrade (and the house we got was intended to be a starter home), and also we'd get so much more if we sold a larger house today than our house now.
For example, let's assume prices went up about 50% on average in the past five years for the sake of easy math (not too far from how much my home actually did go up after a reappraisal last year). Buy a house at $300k and it goes up 50% means you can sell it for $450k and make $150k out of it. But buy a $500k home and it goes up 50%, means you can sell it at $750k and made $250k out of it. Granted you're making higher payments that whole time as well but not as much as it went up.
That math doesn't make as much sense now, with prices starting to dip a bit and high mortgage rates muting demand somewhat, however.
You are overstating the difficulty of finding and renting a public place. It takes about 20 minutes starting with looking up 'party space' on google maps.
You are also discounting the costs you have already sunk into throwing your own parties ("I have a backstock of beer and wine and cheese and a subscription to Apple Music, I can literally do it with 15 minutes notice, and have had plenty of practice at doing so.")
> What is fun and convenient for me is to have parties at my house, in the entertaining space space that does not require manual labour to reconfigure.
Good, I'm happy that you know what you want and are pleased. But I didn't say it was impossible to derive value from that.
> "kind of annoyed" by the preferences of others.
More frustrated with the way some people try to fulfill those preferences, and that every time I bring it up people get so defensive.
Look, no offence, but I'm a lot less likely to go to your rented public space for a party than I am to drop over to the over poster's house for dinner. They're not comparable experiences, other than being social events.
I also think you underestimate how often many people (especially in more social cultures) socialise. It could be literally 100's of times per year.
Exactly. The insight in this thread into how solitary (I would say lonely, one-dimensional) some HN users' lives are has shocked me.
I'm not going to go to the room you rented at a local business, bring a six pack of interesting beers to try together, bring my baby that my friends have been so excited to meet and play with, etc. My friends who like weed aren't going to show up. Not to mention holidays, the hardest time to rent public spaces and the most likely time for friends to gather...
> It takes about 20 minutes starting with looking up 'party space' on google maps.
Sure. “Hi, I know it’s closing time, but can I rent your party space for my friends and I to drink our own alcohol in starting in 15 minutes time” is not exactly the kind of call a landlord would be particularly receptive to.
> There are endless examples of the same sort and that pose the exact same conundrum.
Yes, there are countless cases of it actually making sense to have a spare bedroom. But that's beside the point. My point was that for a lot of people it is a decision that they take instinctually, but does not really make sense.
I really think that's the crux of the matter: these things are all personal preferences that stem from a deeply emotional place, and emotion rarely makes sense according to the laws of logic.
For example: my parents have a truck, a van, and an SUV. Do they need all of those vehicles? No. Do they get used all the time? Yes: my parents are both avid gardeners, they generously lend their vehicles to those who happen to need a truck or a van for the day, and I have several younger siblings who occupy them the rest of the time.
And even if they didn't, I could well see my dad still owning a truck purely for the convenience of being able to drive to the local garden center and pick up a load of mulch on a whim - even if in practice that happened twice a year.
I guess I don't understand the advantage of having a truck over just doing Home Depot scheduled deliveries, if it's only a few times a year. He's paying like $1,000 for each of those two mulch runs, it's much cheaper just to pay someone else to deliver it to you in their truck, and I'd say it's a lot more convenient, since they're doing all the work there. What am I missing there?
The point is loss aversion is a cognitive blind spot which results in people being less happy.
Perhaps you really do make use of a guest bedroom often enough it’s worth spending 10’s of thousands on. But isn’t the case everywhere. Perhaps you’re wasting money on excessive car insurance etc across a lifetime of choice it adds up to a massive drag.
In terms of EV’s people are spending more time driving to stations because they picture the once a year vacation driving taking 1 hour longer rather than the wasted 5 minutes 48 weeks a year which costs them 4.
> My point is that there is a cognitive bias towards overweighting the allocation of resources toward low-frequency events.
As I pointed out upthread, low frequency is not the same as low probability.
It might not make sense to upfront allocate resources for a low probability event, but it certainly could make sense for a high probability event even if it was low frequency ... like a spare bedroom, or a dining room, or a car with good range.
The probability of using those things are 1 i.e. guaranteed.
I think you’ll probably also find that the “spare” bedroom in many houses ends up getting used for other things—storage, a hobby room, (famously) perhaps an office or second office.
My spare bedroom has a futon couch but I actually use the space for various other things most of the time. Most people may have space that’s underutilized much of the time but that doesn’t mean it’s sealed off until they have an overnight guest or a large dinner part. Things aren’t that binary.
I'm surprised to see such a bad take on resource allocation on HN.
When provisioning servers, do you average your throughput and get enough capacity for that average?
Of course not, that would be assinine. You need to be able to serve 24 hours a day, even - especially - during your edge cases. Follow your advice and explain to the CEO that since Black Friday is a "low frequency event," it's fine that your site was down during that one day.
A better argument is that you should choose things, including houses and cars, based on edge cases since that is where meaningful differentiation occurs. If I take one road trip each quarter and my car is unable to handle it, then I bought the wrong car.
No, the correct analogy would be paying for, maintaining, and storing enough servers for Black Friday year round when the option existg to rent them on Black Friday for 1% the cost.
Maybe not with the once per quarter road trip. That might not be a bad frequency for renting a nice road trip vehicle. But I generally agree with what you are saying.
Okay. Then how should we measure the emotional value of seeing and smelling gasoline? Experiencing the nostalgia of pumping gasoline just like the good old days of yore? Can you see the problem here? People ascribe emotional value to all sorts of things that may be financially unwise or environmentally damaging. You waste your money I don't care; but we all have one earth to protect.
My point is, climate change is an extremely big threat that we simply don't have much room for these affordances. 2024 is the year to make personal sacrifices to switch to EVs because that's how urgent the situation is.
I’m pro-ecosystem and pro-weaning off fossil fuels. I’m also tired of the argument that we’re at the point where it’s a do-or-die for individuals to make monetary/QoL sacrifices to switch to EVs as if we had reached the point where this is what’s left and blocking the world from putting an end to global warming.
Maybe focus on area that will have a bigger impact then yet again, foisting the responsibility onto the consumer. Subsidize railroads and public transit, build out commuter rail, reduce air travel, electrify the railroads, move more freight onto rail, electrify trucks.
There are far better targets to reducing the amount of oil and gas burned, ones that are more uniform and less varied them peoples lives not to mention moving people to transit and commuter rail is better then evs anyways
The areas you are describing may have bigger impact like switching to railroads and public transit, but they are more difficult to achieve than switching to EVs and represent a bigger change to people's lifestyles. Relying on that is not going to work. Be practical. If I'm downvoted when I said let's make personal sacrifices to switch to EVs, can't you see the amount of personal sacrifice is way bigger to switch to rail and public transit?
The carbon comes from the ground. The car’s just the delivery mechanism. Why not phase out fossil fuel production à la the Montreal Protocol? If somebody somewhere someday can make money burning oil, they will. Buying an electric car isn’t going to keep carbon in the ground by itself.
Finally! Someone who says it the way I see it. I believe the personal-responsibility-as-a-framework (PRAAF) for solving pollution problems is a joke. I genuinely believe that big petrochemical companies and other stakeholders pushed this story to be able to d business as usual for as long as possible. I know it's true for the "plastics recycling" narrative. Which is and has always been a joke¹ and the petrochemical companies know this. We should not strofe about whether range anxiety is a real problem or not. We should unite to keep oil companies responsible for destroying the climate. They are the ones that made sure every little town in america had a fuel station, thus creating demand, they lobbied against electric cars, they downplayed climate change. We should not wave our finger at other individuals who's contribution to climate change is negligible. We should unite with people who have range anxiety and fix these problems. Force Exxon Mobile/BP/Shell to install fast chargers in every town where there is a fuel station. Force them to install fast chargers all over the country as a start of the reparations for destroying the climate.
Isn't phasing out fossil fuel basically already announced as a goal by various governments around the world? To make that goal realistic, EVs are a stepping stone; you simply can't phase out the production of something when the consumption hasn't been phased out yet.
It's easy to get hung up on specific examples you can't connect with, but our entire lifestyles are centered around preferences, not needs - and I'm sure it's also true for you. All you need is a 3 x 3 x 8 ft sleeping pod, a waste chute, and a dispenser of protein slurry. Almost everything else is there to accommodate the odd whimsical desire.
Do you really need an oven? Most techies don't cook all that often, and it can be cheaper to order take out. More efficient due to the economies of scale, too! Do you really need a smart phone? Do you really need a gaming PC? There's always some other, more barebones way of achieving the same result.
We tend to have a lot of tolerance for what we think enriches or streamlines our lives, but little patience for the same in others. It's also true for politics, where we're always eager to regulate other professions or lifestyles, but not our own.
A lot of people are misunderstanding my point. It's not that intangibles don't matter or that people shouldn't spend money on their preferences.
Trust me; I spent $2,000 on a bicycle recently. Not a sports bike or mountain bike or anything. Just a bike for getting around town. Am I under some illusion that I needed to spend 2k on a transportation bike? Of course not. But it's something that I use every single day and derive great joy from using, so I prioritize having a nice one. So I am no stranger to spending money on optional things.
I also enjoy mountain biking, but I only really do it when I'm with my dad which is like 2 times a year. So instead of buying a mountain bike, I rent them. And I rent nice ones (nicer than I would buy, man those things get expensive).
My point is that there is a bias toward ownership of certain conventional things that don't get used very often, and are easy to obtain temporarily. (And of course every example I used had people responding, "I have that and use it all the time!", which is also missing the point.)
It's not obvious that buying the frequent item and renting the infrequent item is the reasonable thing to for all situations and contexts.
I don't see a complete argument where doing so is strictly more rational than doing the polar opposite, i.e. hypothetically, renting the frequent item and vice versa.
I also think the frequent vs infrequent products are not equivalent in the first place. A dining room is just not the same as a restaurant setting, so a rational trade-off must account for that inequivalence. So far, you have assumed that a home dining room party and a restaurant room party are equivalent social experiences. They probably aren't.
> It's not obvious that buying the frequent item and renting the infrequent item is the reasonable thing to for all situations and contexts.
Owning something means taking on the liabilities of storage, maintenance, and depreciation. Renting allows you to only pay for the parts of those liabilities commensurate with your time of usage. Therefore if your time of usage of something is small, there are relatively more gains in reducing your share of these liabilities in this way.
Conversely, owning confers the benefit of reducing the friction involved in each individual use of something. So it stands to reason that the more useages, the more benefits owning confers.
> I also think the frequent vs infrequent products are not equivalent in the first place. A dining room is just not the same as a restaurant setting, so a rational trade-off must account for that inequivalence. So far, you have assumed that a home dining room party and a restaurant room party are equivalent social experiences. They probably aren't.
I agree that they are different. But the attitude I am arguing against is that of 'if I don't own this thing, these experiences will never happen'. In other words, people seem to be completely discounting the substitute experiences. In reality, there are other places to go besides one's house, and even at one's house there are other things to do besides eating dinner, and even if one wants to eat dinner at one's house, it is not that different whether you eat it at the kitchen table, on a fold-out table in a game room, or in a bona fide dining room.
To the first point, I get the heuristic of a cost-benefit analysis of buying vs renting, with hidden costs being things like maintenance (liabiliities), opportunity cost, transactional convenience (friction). But this heuristic is just that, it has no validation power over e.g. the commenter who pointed out "I want the long car rides to be in my own car which I know and love". Etc. Your mistake is using a heuristic (from idealized spherical cow economics) as a totalizing theory for human motivations.
To the second point, what a dining room offers is social intimacy and formality at once. This is something a kitchen table does not do (formality, think a White House dinner), and a restaurant cannot do either (intimacy, think traditional cultural celebrations at home such as Chinese New Year entailing many social rituals and practices). A dining room has the fundamentally distinct property of being a setting for both. That's the actual source of disagreement which is why there were so many objections by other commenters given your continued insistence that "it's not that different".
> You can rent a better party room than your dining room for very little.
I think this depends on what you value. I've never seen a party room available for rent that was better than a home, personally. The fanciest party room you can rent may look fancier, and if that's the important thing to you, then that's a great solution. Others, however, may place greater value on what you give up when you rent: convenience, intimacy, fewer restrictions on what you can do, etc.
It's about how often the edge case comes up. 4 to 12 times a year, I need to drive 300 miles to visit my family. 10 to 30 times a year, I'll drive 50 to 60 miles to visit friends/family or see specialist doctors or take trip to some interesting event. But on the vast majority of days I drive less than 10 miles a day.
My edge cases come up fairly frequently and I don't really have a good fall back for them i could spend a huge amount of money or time to do the 50 mile trips via uber or transit. Or, I could own a hybrid. I could do something similar with less reliability for the 300 mile trip. Or I could own a hybrid. In both cases, i could keep an app that tells me where the charge stations are and account for any possible needed charging... or I could just own a hybrid and gas up at any random station I pass in 5 mins.
This is the problem of EVs. Yeah edge cases, but a lot of people can have their edge cases come up fairly frequently. And worse this changes over time. People like to plan for probably outcomes over the life of the vehicle. It's not strange to think you might a few hours a handful of times a year. The more people you need to transport with you the more alternative travel methods and the uncertainty of the charge network starts to matter.
If an EV were significantly cheaper than an ICE, then maybe it would be worth the extra hassle and expense of figuring out an alternative for an occasional long trip. But EVs are often more expensive, especially compared to a used ICE. So the benefits, at an individual level, often don't outweigh the downsides, even if it is only relevant occasionally.
Used cars, sure, but you're often either paying for someone else's problem or losing out on modern safety features.
For new cars, especially with the tax credit (which most americans qualify for), EVs are cheaper. That's not even factoring in maintenance costs over 5 years nor savings from charging at home (of course not everyone can charge at home).
The point is EVs cost more (sticker price) than gas cars and have less utility.
I'd consider an EV for my daily commute if I could buy a new one for $10K. I think that's a reasonable price for a small car that has maybe a 100 mile range.
But automakers are offering $50K cars and above that don't fully replace gas cars. No thanks.
The sticker price is just the "obvious" price you see when it comes to owning a vehicle. But everything else still matters, routine maintenance and gas alike. Ignoring it only sets yourself up for being surprised when those bills come due.
> I'd consider an EV for my daily commute if I could buy a new one for $10K.
I'd consider an ICE vehicle if I could buy a new one for $10K. Have a suggestion?
There's a steady supply of used vehicles which you can expect another 100K-200K miles out of (i.e. the lifespan of a set of EV batteries). My two vehicles are both 8+ years with more than 100K miles (one approaching 200K) and neither requires significant maintenance outside the standard replacement of fluids and filters each year - the total amount I spend on them is less than a single car payment on a Model 3 or Mach-E, perhaps three payments if you count gas.
12,000 miles / 25mpg * $5/gallon = $2400
Maintenance is, at a very high estimate, $1000 per year, and that's paying a shop for everything - far less if I did it myself
Payments on a 5 year loan at 6% for a $40K EV (such as the Tesla 3) is $773/month or 9276/yr
On my local Craigslist I can find my vehicle, one year older but significantly lower mileage (85K) for $18000. I can find my vehicle but with more miles (222K) for $4000 (admittedly that sounds low and I have suspicions) or my vehicle with slightly higher mileage (115K) but in a higher trim for $11K.
You'll forgive me for continuing to drive my car or for buying an exact replacement rather than rushing to buy an EV.
We are still pretty close to this even with inflation, cheapest is around $16k sticker from a quick search. I remember not too long ago Hyundai was giving cars for sub 10k new.
My in-laws bought two new—yes, new—ICE cars (some Chevy model, I think) for under $10k, total, not each, 12ish years ago. Car prices have gone totally bananas since then. I hate whatever’s happening with that.
People who like to stand out buy big cars. Big cars make people in small cars feel unsafe. So people replace their small cars with big cars. So, people in big cars buy bigger cars.....and so on.
So now every car has to have more 'safety'. Maybe if the car hitting me wasn't 5000lbs, at chest level and didn't accelerate like a bullet..... I wouldn't need more 'safety'. So now every one has bigger, "safer" and more expensive cars....... all while American road deaths keep growing with no limits in sight.
One day I will see a Ford-150 bed used for pickup truck tasks. Today is not that day.
No, it's the fact Cash for Clunkers ruined the used car economy. I've always driven used cars. A 2007 VW Jetta. A 2008 Mazda Protege, a 2002 Oldsmobile (until 2018). From 2018 to 2023 a 2007 Toyota Prius. 2023 a 2013 RAV4.
I looked at EVERY used car in a 100 mile radius on every platform you can think of and the 2013 RAV4 with 105,000 miles at 15k hit the dealer lot the night before I purchased (they had multiple calls for that vehicle while I was filling out paperwork). Its because all the old people sold off there late 90's and 2000's cars that there STILL are no used cars anymore that aren't absolute junk (155k mileage plus junk selling for 15k - 20k). This lets dealerships sell new cars & trucks for way, way too much. If Cash for Clunkers never happened, used cars would be the competition for new cars like the Toyota Camry which are uncomfortable, basic vehicles but which set the pricing floor for the other manufacturers vehicle lines. No competition so set it at a high price point marketing it as new even though the rest of it is junk and then you can charge a premium on oyher vehicle options. (Hate the Canry but I love Toyota vehicles don't get me wrong).
All us poor people who just want a to work and back vehicle & who would buy off craigslist from private sellers don't have a market anymore and have to go dealerships. Pickups are overpriced I'll agree, and are faux status symbols, but the used market itself reaked havoc on trucks too.
The cheapest Chevy from 2010 I can find is the 2010 Aveo LS at $11,965. My only guess is that it was some 2010 model that had been sitting for 10+ months and they needed to get them off the lot.
Even with this, a new Aveo for $12k in 2010 would now be ~$17k with inflation. New cars today seem to be around $17k and that includes the Versa and the Mirage. Of course wages haven't risen with inflation but that's another can of worms.
To be fair, I don’t think they’d have gotten a single one for $5k or less, and only got that price by buying the pair, and I think the new model years were about to arrive or just had. But they were new cars!
So because she ignored both the beep and the reserve light turning on you spend quite a bit extra up front. More than once!
I'm willing to bet she isn't that dumb.
I will admit that I ran a car out of gas once in the last 40 years: driving to Flagstaff AZ in a Prius there aren't many gas stations and I ignored the reserve light and the beep because I thought I could make it. Nope! 5 miles short. Maybe the 3000' grade I had to climb just before had some influence. However... never again. OTOH, that Prius that ran out of gas traveled several thousand miles over the years at over 90mph across the West, getting ~40mpg which works out to ~400 mile range. That right there is the entire argument, done.
To be fair, the car she had at the time did not beep on low gas.
That said, most of the utility comes from not having to spend time stopping by a gas station to fill up. Just park in the garage and spend about 10 seconds plugging in the car, and it's filled up in the morning ready to go.
The flip side of this point is for non-trivial distances the people in the ICE vehicles with 400+ mile ranges mostly invariant to speed only now begin to realize how amazingly convenient it is to only have to stop for < 10 minutes every 5-6 hours or so.
Do people who think the only use of a vehicle is the home-work-supplies circuit? Don't you ever take a weekend off and go out of town? You really want to deal with the whole rental car scenario when you're supposed to be off? Or, oh well, I'm just gonna commit to spending a good chunk of my time on this vacation sitting around twiddling my thumbs at a charging station. I got an acquaintance who drove a decaying Tesla with <200 mile range from Atlanta to NYC and back and then bragged to me "it wasn't that bad". Yeah, I was polite.
Lotsa magical thinking going on here. And I haven't even pointed out that in vast swathes of the country the rental car option isn't even remotely convenient.
Honestly, it just depends. Atlanta to NYC would be a 2 day for me. Even in the gas car, I'd only do ~650-700 before a stop.
In an EV, that's ~11 hours on day 1, charge up at the hotel, and do one 15 minute stop on day 2. Before I had an EV, I'd do the same thing, just with ~10 hours on day 1 and my stop on day 2 might be at a different place.
But this is traveling for leisure with family. It might be different if I were really desperate to get there fast. I'd never rent a gas car to save the couple of hours, but also arrive much more tired.
>"Used cars, sure, but you're often either paying for someone else's problem or losing out on modern safety features."
Even though I can afford it I've never bought new car. Call me lucky but I did not feel like I was paying for somebody else's problems either. All my cars worked fine for me. Some maintenance and repairs but nothing major / expensive. For example used Grand Caravan I paid $5K for on the auction cost me another $1K to put in proper order and then served me faithfully 10 years. Only got rid of it because the rust had taken the best of it.
Yeah, I made a spreadsheet about this, and (at California gas prices) my Tesla breaks even with most ICE cars surprisingly quickly (just gas costs, add in maintenance and it’s even better)
I've been considering an EV, but this got me to look at the break even point for how much I actually drive (5,000 mi / year), my gas mileage (30 mpg), my offpeak power costs ($0.20 / kWh), and typical gas prices here ($4.50 / gal). It would take me about 20 years to save $25,000, which is about the difference between my current car and a Tesla. That said, I probably shouldn't consider a Tesla, since it occasionally snows pretty hard here in Northern Nevada and the Tesla's snow handling is not the best.
I’d be curious to see your numbers.
Based on my electrical costs of about $0.35/kwh and 87 gas holding steady below $5 for nearly a year, 1000 miles driven in my real-world 45 mpg Camry hybrid costs about $110 while the same in Tesla Model Y costs about $95.
Tesla however is $10k to $15k more.
The only maintenance my Camry will need for the next decade or so that does not exist in Tesla is regular fluid changes which amortize to about $200 per year
Ps in SF Bay Area and don’t qualify for tax incentives
I agree. In the SF Bay Area, especially in PG&E’s regions where average KWh is $0.40, a hybrid makes more economical sense and it isn’t even close.
The math is skewed even further once you add the extra $500 you pay for CA annual registration for an EV vs. Hybrid (personal experience, Mach-E vs. Accord Hybrid).
Definitely it's massively less compelling in areas with extremely high electricity costs. That's pretty much as expensive as electricity gets in North America, isn't it? I think it's significantly more compelling basically anywhere else. E.g. in Ontario where I live, if you're set up appropriately and charge between 11pm and 7am it's $0.028/kWh (CAD), i.e. less than 3 cents per kWh, or roughly 1/35th the price you're paying.
If I've done my math right, that's works out to be less than 2$ USD per 1000km? A difference of 108$/1000km is 1728$/year for the statistically average-driving Ontarian. Adds up pretty fast!
SF Bay Area is an outlier for electricity pricing, average US rate is less than half that according to: https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices...
and off-peak rates are typically less than average where time of use metering is in effect (my off-peak rate is less than 1/3 of your rate). My family's EV costs about 1/4 to 1/3 as much per mile to fuel as our ICE (and I typically drive the EV with more spirit). For me, over 100k miles, I expect to save about $10k in fuel costs. I agree that the savings isn't as substantial to you because of your extremely high electric rates, but for many, a standard model 3 or y will offer lower TCO than a camry.
All of California is an outlier, but here we are with 10% of the US population.
I live in Ventura County and the cheapest my electricity gets is around 33 cents per kwh. During peak it's a whopping 60 cents per kwh.
I also assume that chart includes baseline credits and averages out the tiers - your first kwh is cheaper than your 600th kwh. Any brand new EV charging will be charged at your top rates and be more expensive than what those averages represents pretty much everywhere in the US.
> I live in Ventura County and the cheapest my electricity gets is around 33 cents per kwh
If you have an EV (or some other devices), you can qualify for the TOU-D-PRIME plan which gets you $0.23/kWh[1]; at this rate, for my car usage patterns, the Tesla Model 3 is a clear win over any car more than $25k or so. If you have solar, you can drive the prices even further down (I offset basically all of my 2022 bill, but 2023 was cloudier and rainier than typical and so I'm doing worse this year).
Wow that blows. I'm on TOU-D-5-8PM because I work from home, and in a place that can have warm summer nights.
I stop work at 5pm so I can power down my computer before electricity gets expensive.
And 8pm works great for us because in summer it can be 70 degrees overnight, and the kids start going to bed at 8pm so I can cool down the house a bit without paying crazy prices for that.
I do a lot of thermostat trickery in the summer. During the day we set it to 76, from 4-5pm set it down to 72 (to avoid running in the expensive hours), then we raise it to 78 from 5-8pm, then we set it down to 74 at 8pm.
The formula is pretty straightforward, the sheet itself is a bit of a mess. Take the price you pay for each car; take your number of miles driven a year; use the mpg and kWh/mi to calculate the operational cost of each for a year (I think I used a conservative value of like 180 kWh/mi for my 3). Then multiply by the number of years owned and add the purchase price.
Let me guess: you are low-balling your Tesla maintenance costs, because you haven't yet had an issue. Well, guess what, when you do, dealing with it will be expensive.
RepairPal says the average annual cost to maintain a Model 3 is twice that of a Honda Civic.
I’m not counting maintenance for either vehicle, though: and, over the expected ownership time, I save enough with electricity for the Tesla to pay for a $16k battery pack replacement (and, over the four years I’ve owned the tesla, I’ve probably spent like $2000 on Tesla maintenance and $6k on maintaining the Odyssey, so I think I’ll save enough on regular maintenance to break even when I have to replace the battery)
The thing about EVs is that they are new so I'm not sure how to calculate maintenance cost reliably. I'm thinking about after 8-10 years. Some ICEs can reliably run "forever" if well maintained, like some Toyota ones.
They’re not _that_ new anymore: the original Model S was sold in 2012. So, while they’re still young compared to ICE cars, we still have at least a decade of data on them.
I do agree, though, that there’s some novelty risk but (a) my numbers only include gas (and I’m not factoring my solar savings in at all because I ran the numbers before I installed solar) and (b) I’m spending quite a bit every year to maintain my Odyssey and basically $0 to maintain my Model 3 (only exception is I’ve changed the tires once, but I’ve gone through a couple sets of van tires in the same time period for a similar total expenditure). I think that I’d come out ahead even if I had to replace the battery (or sold the car when this is needed). Also, the depreciation on my Tesla over the last four years is much more in my favor than the van’s depreciation in the same time.
Although, there’s a question of under warranty vs. out of warranty replacement here: replacing the battery under warranty doesn’t really add to the TCO; also, I assume the battery packs across the Tesla models are similar enough that newer cars incorporate the learnings from older models.
I fly a couple times a year but don’t own a plane. (Of course, that would be impractical)
I think the issue is largely around having to adjust the mindset to plan in advance.
For the roadtrip scenario, it might be better to just rent a vehicle for a week. For transporting large or heavy items, renting a truck beats owning one.
Renting a car for a week is close to a monthly car payment(less true today) - and the more frequently you have to do this- the less sense it makes. I've also found it increasingly difficult to book rental cars in advance that will actually meet my needs. it's a bit of a gamble to depend on that.
Mainstream rental car industry being a complete mess doesn't help - they don't bother to even promise you the make and the model, best they can do is "a sedan with 4 doors and automatic transmission." I have no idea why people don't care as if that's something normal.
There are services like Turo, where you know the exact car you're getting, but, sadly, they're far from universally available. And it's pricier, of course.
In their defense, they have a lot of consumer-friendly policies (free cancellation, the ability to add on days to your rental) that would make it difficult to promise particular makes.
That's fair, but I guess my problem is that they don't even seem to try.
All rental agencies surely know what fleet they have - typically it's as uniform as possible, to make the maintenance easier. Yet, it's not exactly unusual to see that a particular location has a fleet of entirely different make than they had listed on the website. Or, e.g. I know a place that doesn't have "compact" cars (or have so few of them I've never seen one on the lot), and just automatically "upgrades" everyone to "mid-size" - no clue why, they're a good (aka not scammy or too blatantly overpriced) company otherwise.
My only guess is that no one complains or cares about it.
Obviously, if all you care about is getting from point A to point B somehow then you're probably don't care much.
However, different cars have different characteristics, such as safety ratings (how likely you're to stay alive if you crash is important factor for some people), instrument clusters (my personal pet peeve - most cars have very poor UI/UX), rear window and mirror usefulness (in some you can get a clear view, in some you can barely see if someone's directly behind you or not), and all sorts of "luxuries" such as additional convex mirrors, backup camera or smartphone integration (CarPlay/Android Auto).
All those things - save for safety ratings - are quite subjective, so while some folks may just shrug and wonder how those matter, they make a lot of difference for others. The difference between a car that can drive and a car than you can drive pleasantly (or confidently) is probably significant.
Many of those are dependent also on trim level, not just make and model; which makes the original point moot, no?
But maybe I've also been spoiled by German car rental places — literally every single car I got here in the past ~5 years has had CarPlay, backup cameras, etc.
And I'd care about all of the above if I were to _buy_ a car, but for a week (or two) long trip, I genuinely can't imagine caring.
(Though, I guess, I am quite opinionated when it comes to picking my computers and phones, etc; and if I had to use a loaner Windows PC for a week I'd probably be mad too. I guess people can have that kind of preferences in cars?)j
Not to mention something I've been running into lately when renting cars: They will only rent to you if you are from out of state, and oftentimes you have to show them that you have a valid flight ticket. They don't like renting cars to people who live in the local area, and they're getting more and more strict on not doing it.
I got refused a rental in the middle of Manhattan once because I wouldn't show them a return flight ticket (I actually did have one, but it's none of their business).
I charged the company back via my credit card provider, and have never even considered doing business with that company again.
That one was Hertz. I use Avis pretty much exclusively now. They're mostly "ok" but certain pickup locations (SFO for example) are notoriously terrible at actually having a car ready like they are supposed to.
The most recent one for me was in Chicago at Routes Car Rental, and yes it was near the airport. It has also happened to people in my group in New York and New Jersey.
This is very strange. I rent cars routinely from a few blocks away and it's never been a problem. (I don't own a car and occasionally will take a day or weekend trip with a rental car...).
That's not really a good analogy, unless you already own a short range plane that you use for your daily trips, and to accommodate your occasional long trips, you'd need to own a long-range plane that's actually cheaper than your short range plane, albeit with slightly higher operating expenses (and of course, greater emissions)
If gas were much more expensive, it'd be much easier to sell people on EV's, but since there's not a huge difference in operating expenses between an EV and ICE car, why wouldn't people stick with the ICE car to meet 100% of their needs instead of an EV that meets 90% of their needs?
If the USA had a robust charging network for all cars (not just Teslas), then it'd be a different matter but I've regularly encountered broken chargers (shown as operational in the app) as well as long lines for chargers (at 20-30 minutes per car, even a few cars waiting in front of you makes for a long wait).
I thought I'd have traded in our second car (a Hybrid, not a plug-in) for a BEV by now, but have run into enough charging difficulties on long trips to make me hold on to it. Renting an ICE car for long trips isn't really a good option since it's 30 minutes to the nearest car rental place and they have no parking, so it means my wife and I have to drive an hour to pick up the car and bring it back home and may the same trip after we get back from our trip.
Most rental vehicles kind of suck unless you pay a fortune, which quickly eliminates any cost savings. And the rental agencies don't even allow for reserving a specific vehicle. In my experience at busy times you have to take whatever is left, which might not be suitable for a long road trip.
Renting is a pain. You need to get from home to the rental place. Hope that they have the vehicle you reserved and don't dump a smaller or massively larger one on you (which seems more typical). Then do your trip being extra careful not to avoid any vehicle damage at all (or else pay the high daily fee for full coverage). Then when you return it, you need to drive around to find a gas station to make sure it's full (or pay some inflated fee), then return it, and then find transportation back home (which can be a pain with a lot of luggage).
Sure it works if you're doing those trip once ever year or two. But if you do 1 or 2 road trips per year? Or more?
It's much more convenient just to have the vehicle in the first place. Plus you get the benfits of having it all the time.
I walk the dog through a strip mall parking lot every day. There are some U-Haul rental vans that are always there. So pretty clearly, someone is doing daily rentals on a permanent basis. The prices are painted right on the vans: $19.95 / day plus mileage.
Or maybe they just bought the vans from U-Haul and never repainted them? Interesting question. But U-Haul has a box in the strip mall for dropping off your keys, so I suspect they are rentals.
I was thinking of doing a comparison between actually buying or leasing a van vs. paying the daily rental fee. Could there be an economic inefficiency where it's cheaper to rent every day than buy? I'd need to know the year of the van, for one thing.
> Could there be an economic inefficiency where it's cheaper to rent every day than buy?
It's never going to be cheaper to rent daily than to buy. Renting daily has you paying the amortised purchase cost and a little extra for the costs of the rental provider (real-estate, offices, employees), and then a little more for the profit of the rental provider.
If the rental provider charges only what the amortised purchase cost is, they'll be out of business in a few days, if not hours.
> The fact is, they are doing it. You're right, there might be some good explanation, but just dismissing the fact is never a good look.
I didn't make any statement about whether or not they are doing it, I pointed out that it costs more to do so. That's the fact in this case: the selling price of a non-loss-leader item can't be lower than the cost of providing it!
That there are people doing it is no indication that it is at all cost-effective to do. They may have some good reason for paying more (poor credit so cannot buy a vehicle, need the "daily" for only 3 months, it's a temporary solution while their own vehicle is being repaired, etc).
The fact is, it costs more to rent daily than to simply buy. The theory you have is that it must be more cost-effective to rent daily than to buy.
I have been doing this for 5 years. EV for daily commutes, rentals for hauling stuff for my landscaping hobby and ICE rentals for roadtrips. I must have rented close to 100 cars for those roadtrips. Ended up getting a large ICE wagon in the end:
- rentals for the roadtrips cost a lot (about 1.5-2k p/w for a SUV like an X5), and those cars are still poorly equipped. It ruins the fun of a roadtrip if the car audio sucks or the windshield is made of cheapest, thinnest glass. I never knew car companies sell premium vehicles with such low trims. Its a hassle too as the rental companies around where I live examine the car like they were buying it from me. One has to interact with various people and spend the time, and its not always an enjoyable experience,
- rentals for hauling stuff are perfectly ok even for weekly use. I'd still love the luxury of owning a toyota proace full time, but there is less of a reason to own sth like this for me.
Today I saw a sign above the dropbox: "please park your returned trucks <in the lot>"
So I think what's happening is: U-Haul keeps the vans in the strip mall parking lot. (Do they have to pay the mall for that? Who knows?)
Possibly some of the mall tenants rent it occasionally, and this lets them get the van right at their place of business, instead of having to go somewhere and pick it up.
Maybe the keys are always left in the van! I could test that, but I don't want to get in trouble for car theft. Maybe U-Haul doesn't have to worry about someone stealing it, since they could have a locator device in it.
If the edge cases are about missing charging infrastructure: this is not an inherent issue with EVs since the infrastructure for ICEs is simply way more developed. It will slowly become better as EVs become more prevalent.
It's a more difficult issue for very long range drives where an ICEs full range is required to get to the next gas station.
So, my Tesla is about as convenient as my Honda Odyssey to drive from Los Angeles to Houston. And, since I need two cars anyways (because of a wife and kids), the Tesla is a great car to have for all the trips where I don’t need more than five seats.
The sense of self-entitlement in this thread makes me depressed. Intelligent, educated adults react like children when you tell them they can't have all the toys.
> But I like living in this kind of excess!
Sure, and I'm sure you deserve it. As do we all. But guess what? In the hard cold reality that we live in, it's not sustainable or feasible for everyone to own a huge hulking gas guzzling vehicle just to enable your yearly road trip. Wish it was, but it isn't. Not even close.
> How preposterous, I certainly don't live in excess!
Oh yes you do. On a global and historical scale, if you can afford a car, then you live in excess. I'd bet that all of us that read this website do. You need some perspective.
> But I pay for myself!
No you don't. If the planet is failing to even sustain civilization from this lifestyle, clearly somewhere there are costs that aren't covered. The market has no solution for the external costs that most things in our lifestyle incur.
> But the alternatives would mean a slight inconvenience to me! I would have to adjust and re-evaluate things I've grown used to. They're not the 100% optimal solution for me personally!
Well, I'm sorry that the freaking possible end of future civilization causes an inconvenience in your modern life of abundance. Actually no, I'm not. If stopping and waiting at a charging station those three times a year you make an 8 hour trip is what it takes to ensure a healthy life for future (and even current) generations, then I'm saving my concern for more pressing matters. Heck, I'd even argue that renting an ICE car on those occasions might be a reasonable price to pay, no matter the (in the grander scheme of things) slight inconvenience this means.
> If stopping and waiting at a charging station those three times a year you make an 8 hour trip is what it takes to ensure a healthy life for future (and even current) generations, then I'm saving my concern for more pressing matters.
The meaningful changes we would need to ensure a healthy future are way, way harder than getting used to electric vehicles. The fact we cannot even do such a straightforward transition is beyond ridiculous.
> it's not sustainable or feasible for everyone to own a huge hulking gas guzzling vehicle just to enable your yearly road trip.
"everyone" doesn't own a car in the first place, and owning one to go on family trips is not contingent on "everyone" owning a car.
Sustainability is a moot point. We're undergoing an aggressive shift to renewables in the West, including with vehicles, as a matter of policy. Issues pertaining to climate cannot be abated solely with a reduction in emissions.
Notwithstanding, "degrowth" is just demanding that people in developing countries not be permitted to improve their quality of life, that Westerners race to an arbitrary bottom to worsen theirs, and put lives at risk. The rise in emissions year over year stem from demand in East Asia.
> "degrowth" is just demanding that people in developing countries not be permitted to improve their quality of life
I did not know that "degrowth" people are for banning quality of life improvements for all economic strata. Do you have any sources because this just sounds like a giant strawman.
"If one wants to keep world GDP more or less as now one must (A) “freeze” today’s global income distributions so that some 10-15% of the world population continue to live below the absolute poverty line, and one-half of the world population below $PPP 7 dollars per day (which is, by the way, significantly below Western poverty lines). This is however unacceptable to the poor people, to the poor countries, and even to degrowers themselves.
Thus they must try something else: introduce a different distribution (B) where everybody who is above the current mean world income ($PPP 16 per day) is driven down to this mean, and the poor countries and people are, at least for a while, allowed to continue growing until they too achieve the level of $PPP 16 per day. But the problem with that approach is that one would have to engage in a massive reduction of incomes for all those who make more than $PPP 16 which is practically all of the Western population. Only 14% of the population in Western countries live at the level of income less than the global mean. This is probably the most important statistic that one should keep in mind. Degrowers thus need to convince 86% of the population living in rich countries that their incomes are too high and need to be reduced."
The quote doesn't even support your claim. Clearly, alternative (B) does not ban economic growth across _all economic strata_. Unrealistic as though it might be, still.
Also, you're equating "quality of life improvements" with economic income. Which is troublesome in many ways, especially if the economic income incurs major (huge) environmental problems that even jeopordizes the future of civilization as we know it. Or at the very least leads to _massive_ health and quality of life issues on a global scale. Then "income" is a worthless "quality of life" metric.
Anyway, your original reply comes off as very arrogant and/or hypocritical. You express concern for the developing countries, and at the same time acknowledge rich countries' rights to a lifestyle that you yourself acknowledge isn't sustainable if adopted by everyone. So as long as only the rich (us) have cars, it's ok?
> Clearly, alternative (B) does not ban economic growth across _all economic strata_. Unrealistic as though it might be, still.
My claim is that either it does, or B is the alternative. Neither is realistic.
> Also, you're equating "quality of life improvements" with economic income. Which is troublesome in many ways, especially if the economic income incurs major (huge) environmental problems that even jeopordizes the future of civilization as we know it. Or at the very least leads to _massive_ health and quality of life issues on a global scale. Then "income" is a worthless "quality of life" metric.
In the first place, growth need not lead to such catastrophic problems (see the Noah Smith links), in the second, that has no bearing on whether lifting a country out of poverty improves their quality of life; it clearly does.
When immigrants move to the West for a better life, what makes it better is easily be qualified: houses, vehicles, electricity, gadgets, consumption in general, and better jobs. It's not for the healthcare. Those things are made possible, or imply, higher income.
> Anyway, your original reply comes off as very arrogant and/or hypocritical.
Stop projecting. That is arrogant.
> at the same time acknowledge rich countries' rights to a lifestyle that you yourself acknowledge isn't sustainable if adopted by everyone
I did no such thing. It isn't unsustainable. Unsustainability would have to imply global population growing in perpetuity. Not only are we nowhere near lacking resources, global population growth is projected to stagnate.
What's more, between innovation and aggressive transition to renewables, we more efficiently use resources and can expect diminishing global carbon emissions in the near future.
Western fertility is already stagnant. The only reason we grow is a matter of federal policy: the immigration rate. And immigrants come because of quality of life.
> your claim that westeners are not the biggest emitters is factually incorrect
Again, I made no such claim. I claimed that the *growth* in global emissions is primarily driven from East Asia.
1. No, you claimed that any degrowth strategy is equivalent to banning quality of life improvement across all economic strata, which is clearly not the case as one strategy that you yourself quote offers an alternative that clearly does not prohibit an increased income across all economic strata. The realism of its success comes down to politics, not economic or technological factors.
2. Our current model of economic growth is clearly and demonstrably catastrophic. There's no sign of turning it around in any kind of relevant time frame.
3. A nation's economic growth is not equivalent to improved quality of life of individual people living in poverty. GDP as a measure of quality of life is deeply flawed. You need to look at income distribution, costs of living, availability of basic services such as healthcare, human rights etc etc. Sure, lifting an individual from poverty through a raised income raises quality of life but that is a very simplified picture of what is actually going on. And of course, most relevant for the discussion at hand, you also need to look at the long-term effects of the growth model that is driving the economic growth. If you look a few decades ahead, our current model doesn't work. It's starting to fall apart even now.
4. I apologize for commenting on your personality, of which I know nothing.
5. That is a very narrow point of view on sustainability. Why are you defining it as perpetual population growth, or lack thereof? Clearly, if we are consuming resources at a rate much higher than they are reproduced, it's not sustainable. Regardless of what your techno-optimistic hopes for future miraculous technological breakthroughs might tell you. They aren't coming. It's over.
6. You are clearly dismissing the content of even the article you're commenting. Which is of course well within your rights to do. There's no aggressive transmission to renewables happening in the transportation sector. It's not even close to happening in a time frame that's relevant. It would be interesting to see what data you're looking at that suggests otherwise.
7. I apologize for misinterpreting you. But either way, the West is still a far greater emitter per capita. So again, going back to your concern that we shouldn't limit developing nations from achieving the same wealth we have, we have no right to point any fingers.
> which is clearly not the case as one strategy that you yourself quote offers an alternative that clearly does not prohibit an increased income across all economic strata.
I wrote : '"degrowth" is just demanding that people in developing countries not be permitted to improve their quality of life, that Westerners race to an arbitrary bottom to worsen theirs, and put lives at risk.'
This is meant to be an and/or for the first two. I hope that's clear.
> Our current model of economic growth is clearly and demonstrably catastrophic.
This is a mantra or truism, but there's no reason to believe this. It's also why "degrowthers" themselves are pivoting in their messaging. GDP growth does not scale 1:1 with resource extraction. Between technological innovation and the aggressive pivot to renewables, blaming "the model" stops making sense.
> A nation's economic growth is not equivalent to improved quality of life of individual people living in poverty.
Improved quality of life for impoverished countries depends on it, which isn't the same as saying they're equivalent.
The percentage of people on earth living in extreme poverty as defined by the UN has been diminishing for decades. This is because of growth.
> You need to look at income distribution, costs of living, availability of basic services such as healthcare, human rights etc etc.
If a country is poor as fuck, these are all a moot point. The bottom rung of countries will have worse quality of life regardless of distribution scheme.
> Why are you defining it as perpetual population growth, or lack thereof?
Tautology. Lack of sustainability by definition implies a scenario, not unlike the Malthusian argument, that there is a perfectly linear upward trajectory for land encroachment, resource extraction and emissions (which will lead to exhaustion of one resource or another, or ecological collapse).
The reality is it's a curve. The upward trajectory is temporary, there's zero reason to believe in some scenario where resources and land are completely exhausted; no prediction model suggests that.
We need short-run solutions, surely, because climate is an imperative problem in the near-term. That's what the shift to renewables and investment in innovation is for, and the Green New Deal spin from re-grouped degrowthers is starting to sound a lot like that anyway.
> Regardless of what your techno-optimistic hopes for future miraculous technological breakthroughs might tell you. They aren't coming. It's over.
lol emissions are a solved problem, there's no miracle necessary.
The lingering issue will be climate, not strictly speaking CO2 emissions.
> There's no aggressive transmission to renewables happening in the transportation sector.
Large transport is more difficult to abate, but that is still happening, yes. Hydrogen and nuclear.
> greater emitter per capita
Total emissions matter most. Canada has high emissions per capita but it has a population a fraction of the size of the US, and very spread out, so per capita tells you very little.
> we have no right to point any fingers.
I argue that developing countries are within their right to increase emissions to improve their quality of life.
> I wrote : '"degrowth" is just demanding that people in developing countries not be permitted to improve their quality of life, that Westerners race to an arbitrary bottom to worsen theirs, and put lives at risk.'
> This is meant to be an and/or for the first two. I hope that's clear.
No, that was not clear to me. Especially not as you replied to someone else and confirmed that yes, degrowth means preventing improvement of quality of life across all economic strata. But let's not make this a "I-said-you-said" argument. Fair enough. We all seem to agree that degrowth doesn't necessarily imply degrowth across all economic strata.
Either way, note that nowhere did I even propose a "degrowth" strategy. I was merely saying that going on defense and conjuring all kinds of emotional arguments for why you personally can't dispense with your huge gasoline truck for reasons that are really quite trivial in the grander scheme of things, is very immature and selfish. Also very short-sighted, even from a selfish perspective. Nowhere did I suggest that you can't at least shift consumption from CO2E-heavy goods to less CO2E-heavy goods. That would in theory not require any degrowth whatsoever, merely a shift to more sustainable consumption even if the level of total economic consumption stays the same.
> This is a mantra or truism, but there's no reason to believe this. It's also why "degrowthers" themselves are pivoting in their messaging. GDP growth does not scale 1:1 with resource extraction. Between technological innovation and the aggressive pivot to renewables, blaming "the model" stops making sense.
Again, I don't share your narrow view of sustainability as equivalent to "resource extraction". Clearly, if the model induces external costs that threaten to end civilization as we know it and the economic models or at the very least radically decrease quality of life and incur huge economic and human costs in the foreseeable future, it is not sustainable. Sustainability, by the definition I know, means that you can keep the system or behavior unchanged. It doesn't matter if we have the potential to keep extracting fossil fuels in the current rate for millennia, if a side effect is a civilization-ending environmental catastrophe. The amount of resources is irrelevant. Unless you factor in "livable climate and environment" as valuable resource, it doesn't work.
> The percentage of people on earth living in extreme poverty as defined by the UN has been diminishing for decades. This is because of growth.
That model has obvious flaws and has been criticized by many. For one, the available data is lacking and hand-picked. Secondly, there have been many instances where GDP has risen alongside with poverty, if measured on a national level. See India for example.
> The reality is it's a curve. The upward trajectory is temporary, there's zero reason to believe in some scenario where resources and land are completely exhausted; no prediction model suggests that.
Really, there's no prediction that suggests that the current trajectory of emissions is catastrophic? Well, if you're gonna dismiss all climate models or predictions, then this whole discussion is irrelevant and I have nothing more to say.
> lol emissions are a solved problem, there's no miracle necessary.
> The lingering issue will be climate, not strictly speaking CO2 emissions.
> Large transport is more difficult to abate, but that is still happening, yes. Hydrogen and nuclear.
You are way too technology-centered. It doesn't matter if there are technological solutions on a lab table somewhere. You have to factor in rates of adoption, political incentive, scale, regulations, economics, etc etc. Given that, there's absolutely no indications that we are anywhere near on track for deploying technological solutions on a time-scale that is relevant. I'd love to see your data if you think otherwise.
> Total emissions matter most. Canada has high emissions per capita but it has a population a fraction of the size of the US, and very spread out, so per capita tells you very little.
Of course total emissions of a specific nation doesn't matter most. Total global emissions matter. It doesn't matter for the climate if people are spread out - it only matters for the local environment which is a different issue. And from a fairness perspective, of course you need to look at per capita. Why should you or I be entitled to a lifestyle that we acknowledge would not be anywhere near feasible if adopted by everyone?
> In the hard cold reality that we live in, it's not sustainable or feasible for everyone to own a huge hulking gas guzzling vehicle just to enable your yearly road trip. Wish it was, but it isn't. Not even close.
It actually is. The only impediment is neurotic busybodies who are obsessed with making everyone poor because they've fallen for the current strain of doomsday millenarianism.
I think what makes it hard to be realistic about these things is that they're all aspirational. People want to be the kind of people who have parties, have guests often, do big projects that need a truck. Admitting to yourself that you don't need these things is admitting that you're not living up to the ideal in your head.
This take is overly cynical. Burying a house with a nice entertaining space or a good set of tools is about reducing the friction of doing the things you want. Owning a treadmill and walking to the other room is way easier than going to gym after work when you're tired.
It's far far easier to throw a party when it just means inviting people over and making or ordering food than renting an entertaining space. It's easier to work on a project when you have the tools in your garage than if you had to go to the hardware store or go rent a u haul.
For all the talk of rampant consumerism the stuff on the bottom of my list of things to complain about are purchases intended to reduce your reliance on buying things. Owning nothing, making nothing, and renting other people's stuff and labor for every task is peak consumerist behavior disguised as "efficient" "minimal" living.
The point probably doesn't land as well on this particular website where incomes skew high, BUT...
a LOT of people do not have the rosiest finances. Maybe it is student loans or credit card debt or whatever. But sure, maybe it makes sense for people with more wealth than they will ever spend to have extras around 'just in case'. But if you're not in that situation, I think it's something a lot of people should look at a lot harder than they do.
In my mind these things aren't really at odds. It can both be true that in a society where folks have disposable cash they're willing to spend it to optimize low frequency events, and companies are willing to encourage this behavior for the reasons I mentioned above.
> People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo.
Not in this situation. If you take a family trip[1] once or twice a year, that's not an edge case, that's an annual case.
The other thing you are missing is that those routes that are longer than the EV range are busy every day!
If you go out, today (non-peak season), and see 2000 cars drive that long route today, that's 2000 car owners today that need that range, or 2000 car owners who would tell you "range anxiety" if you asked them to move to EV.
On peak times, popular long routes get over 2000 cars per hour. We're talking 100s of thousands, if not millions, of this need coming up per year, so its hardly an edge case.
This is purely a semantic difference. If you travel once or twice a year beyond the standard EV range, then by definition it’s an edge case. Assuming you take one trip a day, then you’re literally only hitting that case 2/365 days.
Obviously there’s people where this doesn’t apply, but there’s outliers everywhere and they’re free to continue buying gas cars today.
> This is purely a semantic difference. If you travel once or twice a year beyond the standard EV range, then by definition it’s an edge case.
I humbly beg to disagree; it's most definitely not an edge-case as the phrase is defined.
You're using "edge-case" to mean low-frequency event. How I see the phrase used everywhere I've ever seen it, is "edge case" referring to a low-probability event, i.e. an event that is predicted to so rarely occur that it can be dismissed from consideration.
>> an extreme or not typical example of something, that should not be considered when forming an opinion about it:
An annual trip is an almost guaranteed event, so it's a very high probability event. I get that it is a low-frequency event, but "edge-case" is the incorrect term used to describe the event. Use "rarely" or similar instead.
> People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo.
Yes, but in life, many of the most meaningful things are the edge cases. That's what makes them special. If people don't statistically have many dinner parties, then the dinner parties they do have might be even more special. This is life, not a statistical model.
Those meaningful edge cases can still happen. You don't need to own, store, and maintain the equipment for them year-round for this.
In fact, I would argue that the edge cases feel even more special when you rent. For instance, my family rented a large passenger van for a road trip. The van itself became a sort of icon of that trip, and the source of distinct memories.
Yes, but it often depends more on specific social dynamics, rather than a cost-benefit analysis.
"Hey, you have a car, let's go do XYZ" doesn't happen to people who don't have a car. Replace 'car' with whatever else as appropriate. These social factors drive human decision making to a large degree. People might care about what others think, they might care about spontaneity, they might be influenced by their own desires and the desires of people around them.
Or consider the dinner party example. Sure, I've had dinner parties in rented spaces. It can be done, but they're not the same as being in someone's private space.
> It can be done, but they're not the same as being in someone's private space.
Yeah. Let's put the kids to bed while we continue our meal. Oops, forgot to rent a crèche. Want to stay over and continue chatting? Oops, forgot to rent a hotel and the space closes at 11:00.
Do this enough - like I did renting cars for roadtrips - and you Will have both good and bad memories. I have been doing this for 5 years and for every "that was such a fun drive for us" there is a "we needed something spacious and we got a compact city Suv because they screwed up our booking and there were no alternatives" kind of stories. Or "we got an X5 with a steering wheel making funny noises" or "we ended up getting a hybrid with a very small trunk" or "the car started smelling funny a few hours into the ride" or "they got us a car with a slow leak in a tire". And when that happens, its sometimes enough to suck all the fun from your rare vacation and it costs a lot of time to get a new rental, in relation to the time you have at your disposal. Its also not really cheap. I owned a range rover before deciding on switching to EV plus rentals combo and my total costs of using a car stayed at the same level.
I'm extremely confident that our guest bedroom that sits empty most of the year has increased the # of family visits we get by a whole lot. It's still mostly empty and it's true they could stay in a hotel, but they feel welcome, they have a place they can make their home, and it's just less commitment and planning.
If you're middle age and only see your family once or twice year when you visit them on holidays, it's sobering to make a guess as to how many more times you'll see them in your life.
I'm guessing my empty guest bedroom that might as well be replaced by a hotel visit has doubled the number of high quality visits I'll have with some family members.
Why? Do the life choices of other individuals really cause you that much harm? I could see being annoyed that they're _marketed_ into over sized solutions that aren't actually correct for their use case, but to just be annoyed that other people appear to enjoy prosperity as an edge case is unusual to my way of thinking.
> People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo.
Similarly, and sorry to do this in reverse, but why do you think that is? Marketing, experience, habitual, unfairly priced?
> need
Anyways, personally, I'm more annoyed that corporations get to do this kind of edge case thinking. Shifting the growing of food, the use of labor, and the capital markets they sell to around in pernicious ways simply to add a few points to a publicly traded stock. Then using these profit streams to purchase selfish legislation and reduced taxes all to grease the wheels of this odd machine. Then we're all expected to accept a reduced quality experience just to paper over their decades of environmental abuse? That is madness.
> I could see being annoyed that they're _marketed_ into over sized solutions that aren't actually correct for their use case
Yeah, it's really not the thing itself that's annoying. It's just knowing that it's an unconventional opinion and I'm not going to change anyone's minds on it and I better just keep it to myself to be polite. Not the end of the world of course, but slightly frustrating.
If I were writing the post again, I'd definitely take the 'annoying' sentence out of it.
> I'd definitely take the 'annoying' sentence out of it.
I think it's right to be annoyed. It's an important issue, but I'm a fan of regular people, in general, and I always try to offer a defense of them at the expense of corporation whenever possible.
> It's just knowing that it's an unconventional opinion and I'm not going to change anyone's minds
You're a bit of a hipster. No shame in that. My argument comes from the same place, and wasn't phrased to target you, but to withstand HN.
Is it really so bad to say that a lot of people should do certain things differently than they do? Like, if I said more Americans should get more exercise and eat less junk food, would that be a horrible thing for me to say?
The fact that you're equating your opinion on this to health advice shows your disdain for the perfectly reasonable opinions of others. Your thoughts on this are not the one truth in the matter.
Honestly, some self-reflection may be in order here.
> you're equating your opinion on this to health advice
No I'm not, I'm using health as an example of a general principle.
Anyways, as I've said up-thread, the 'kind of annoying' thing is referring to the feeling of having any unconventional opinion that is better to keep to yourself (except on HN where such things are slightly more tolerated).
It's not that other people are annoying because they like other things than I do, or whatever the current straw man is.
I have a 200 mile range EV, which is to say a practical range of 120-160. It's great for running around the bay area. It's not so great for the monthly travel I do going 500-2000 miles in a stretch because stopping every 120-160 miles for anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours is mind-numbing, and that doesn't even account for the mercurial state of the national charging network. It's also not so great in places less friendly to EVs. I'm upgrading to a 400 mile range EV down the road and I hope the charging network upgrades itself as well because it still sucks.
I'll believe it when I see it. I lost a great deal of faith in EVs when the local dealer refused to service mine because I didn't buy it from them. On the bright side, Ford gave me a 5-year extended warranty to make up for their behavior, but WTF?
Lived that when I blew my Class B RV's transmission in Crescent City, CA on the 101 (Van life! Van life! #PortlandiaReference). I was going to be stuck there for a month waiting for parts until I galaxy brained my way out of it by getting my car towed to a dealer in Medford, OR and bought an EV there for below cost the same day, the first EV the dealer had ever sold hence the discount.
That accountant driving to Lowes twice a year to pick up mulch, finds out he's missing a shovel or a reticulation fitting or something unexpected. The pickup truck is a solid work horse in new edge cases.
There's nothing worse than finding out that your hatchback can't fit a ladder you needed to buy because you broke off a section of the gutter when you tried to pull a broken branch off your roof.
A guest bedroom is often extra storage, kids sleep-over room and a communal signal that there's a spare bed for friends and family if they ever need it. The social signalling is worth the price of admission for the home owner.
Just saying the edge cases cover more outcomes than direct use.
I've had family over and ended up turning rooms into temporary bedrooms.
Basically, these things happen rarely enough that it is not such a crisis to put a little effort and adapt to them.
Whereas the drag of being prepared for every situation all the time is constant.
> a communal signal that there's a spare bed for friends and family if they ever need it.
This is true.
> The social signalling is worth the price of admission for the home owner.
I don't think you can just flat-out say this. The opportunity cost of an unused room is pretty terrific.
It might be bearable if you're wealthy, but most people are not. It also might be bearable if you LOVE hosting, can't get enough of it, it's what gets you up in the morning, but for most people it's not.
So you just stating that it's worth it without any further justification is actually an example of my point which is how the opportunity costs of these things are routinely ignored.
When that edge case makes for an absolutely terrible experience of driving across North Dakota in 0F weather and having to stop every 150 miles then you definitely don’t forget that pain when buying your next car.
Usually renting is an easy workaround. For instance you can rent a private room at a pub for your yearly gathering. Or rent heavy equipment when you need it for your garden.
It sounds like you have actually considered the options, weighed them against your own tastes and preferences, multiplied by the number of times you expect to host, etc., and come to that conclusion. So you are not who I was talking about.
I was more talking people like my family members who insisted that the must have a dining room in their next house, even though they don't use the one they have now.
Just the fact that you acknowledged that other options exist puts you ahead of many.
One of things is not like the other. Gardening can happen anytime, but gatherings happen on holidays, so the party space you describe is already booked or closed for the holiday.
Your argument is the same as saying most people that live in cities don't actually need a car at all - just use public transport and perhaps hire a car for those odd occasions where you really need one.
I lived in a city for a decade without a car - and did exactly that - but when I had children - I found I needed both more certainty and more flexibility for my travel - so I got a car.
Don't underestimate those aspects - range impacts that flexibility ( not just range on a single journey, but cumulative range over a number of journeys without charging ).
Availability of charging points impacts both flexibility & certainty.
These are real concerns.
Range and charging are of course linked - if charging was easily available and very quick then range on one charge ceases to be much of an issue. If the range from a single charge is massive, then frequency of charge points is less of an issue.
So the good news is any improvement on either has a synergistic effect.
From a programming perspective, "edge cases", are actually failure modes. A single failure can be extremely expensive and wipe out years of marginal benefit that was accrued by ignoring them.
I'm not sure I can think of a strong argument for consciously living your life in a way which ignores potential failure modes, unless you're pretty sure you've projected the hidden costs and are prepared at any moment to pay them.
The cost of finding and paying someone else twice a year to haul wood or supplies can easily justify the extra cost of a larger vehicle, for example.
If you've actually multiplied the likelihood by the costs & benefits of the different options and come to that conclusion that's fine.
There are an infinite number of edge cases that can lead to total failure, so it is not rational to try to account for something solely on that basis.
> The cost of finding and paying someone else twice a year to haul wood or supplies can easily justify the extra cost of a larger vehicle, for example.
Wait, what? It costs like $50 to rent a pickup truck from Lowes. You don't have to hire somebody just because you're renting the truck. Driving a larger vehicle probably costs most people that much in gas costs alone in one month.
idk. I pay $250 a month on loan for a car the size of a piñata, which goes fast and holds absolutely no cargo. I'm sure I've spent at least $2k on edge cases in the past few years renting or hiring when I had to move heavy objects on interstate journeys. Spread that out monthly, I could have saved money on a truck. Heck, I coulda bought a truck cheaper than my car. In my own calculation it's not worth it (because I don't want to drive a truck).
>> There are an infinite number of edge cases that can lead to total failure, so it is not rational to try to account for something solely on that basis.
I disagree here, because again you need to divide the probability by the severity of the consequences and only then rank the priorities. A $500k house on the side of a volcano that only erupts every thousand years is substantially different from the same house on a prairie, because the chance of total annihilation measurably increases the volatility of your bet. In gambling parlance, "risk of ruin". Once you see a possible risk of ruin you need to avoid it. I'll tell you why. Imagine that you had thought of it and discarded it as wildly unlikely. You did nothing to mitigate or plan for it. And a year later, it happened. You'd feel pretty stupid. You'd wish you had never even imagined it.
I didn't initially want to bring this up as an example, but it was actually the first on my mind: I live in a dangerous neighborhood. Some nights I fall halfway asleep without remembering to take my gun out of the safe and put it next to my bed. I look at the clock; it's 5am; it's probably fine; I don't want to get up. Then I think, imagine if ten minutes after I make this decision some guy breaks in and points a gun at me, how stupid I'd feel.
0.1 per cent vs. 2 per cent both look like a banal edge, but it is a 20:1 difference. If you do something 0.1 per cent of the time, you spend 1 day in 3 years doing so. If you do something 2 per cent of the time, you spend 1 week every year doing so.
Also, it matters what the consequences are. I spent nontrivial money securing my home from potential burglary, because I just don't want to experience it, ever. I don't have a guest bedroom, but your example with the hotel down the street actually assumes that there is a hotel down the street; what if the closest hotel is five miles away and taxi services are unreliable?
Etc.
I get that some people overspend, but the original topic was range, and in a country like the US, with its vast rural regions, a lack of chargers on some trips may be a serious concern.
Needing to drive extended distances is not an "edge case" in this country but something that the vast, vast majority of the population does on a regular basis.
>People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo.
Edge cases can mean life and death sometimes. Is my vehicle going to get stuck in an emergency if no one plows snow on a 1 mile stretch of unpaved road between my home and the major road?
If unrest/war/natural disaster happens and major infrastructure is non functional can I pack my family in to my car and just go 3k miles without worrying about charging infrastructure? You can just siphon fuel from other vehicles. Good luck doing that with an electric car (especially with some random half destroyed car dumped on the side of the road).
Edge cases may not matter much for daily life, but when they become important, they are really important.
Also, there is one thing regulators (and car makers) could do to make EVs a lot more interesting for everyone. A compatible modular batteries. Why were standardised batteries invented (AAA etc?)? So you can swap them yourself even if rechargeable. Imagine your Tesla, a Mercedes eqe or VW ev had their battery as a number of 10/5kWh user replaceable units? Perhaps you can't afford, or you don't need a 120kWh battery pack, so you buy a new car with 20kWh only. You could benefit from a car lighter by few hundred kg and you could buy the rest later (assuming total capacity was 100kWh let's say).
Then, on an old car, you could put new battery modules, or you could keep them when selling your car to stick in a new one.
It is an obvious thing to do, why are regulators not even talking about it? Would you rather have a single, horribly expensive part in which tiny element fails and the whole vehicle is essentially scrap value, or am ability to swap it part by part? If we're in any way serious about EVs being a true replacement for Ice cars, and not just a toy for wealthy people to feel better they need user replaceable batteries.
Which one is ridiculous? It seems regardless which part of the world you live in at least one is applicable. For me it happens to be war, for others it may be natural disasters or civil unrest. Tell all the raped/burned corpses in Bahmut they are in fact still alive and their existence is capitalist propaganda.
Why is it annoying? What you need is very subjective. Before I had a family I had no idea I'd want a guest room because I'd want extended family to stay. And when they stay in a hotel they spend way less time with us. I'm glad I live in a society where I can choose to spend my money and decide the trade offs for myself.
I disagree with your general statement because the edge case is entirely dependent on the individual circumstances. Let me provide some examples:
I have two ovens purely so I can host Christmas Day. 99% of the time that second oven is unused but it massively reduces the stress of that one day. It was worth every penny.
I own an MPV so I can take my bicycle to races/events. I can hire a car for the purpose but the flexibility and reduced stress of that 3/4 times a year (plus I can use it for other things) makes it worth it.
That's not to say all edge cases are justified. Some are silly, such as owning a pickup truck, which pollutes like crazy and is inconvenient as fuck for parking. Other things like buying an expensive machine for a job you'll do once (just hire it or pay someone to do it, you'll save money).
All I'm saying is you can't generalise from the specific cases.
When planning for the scale of a new system, do you plan for the worst case or best case? Which method would create a more resilient system?
Put another way, if a service can only respond to 93% if requests, I wouldn't call it a very well architected service. EVs have a long way to go for many people.
I’m willing to bet you do the exact same thing. The vast majority of people drive alone every day, and only occasionally have passengers. Do you have a passenger seat? A back seat? A trunk? If so, you’re buying for the edge cases, not the average, and you’re not special.
I would not consider my having a trunk as being an edge case as I use it weekly. Back seat less so, but still quite often. But if I didn't, I probably wouldn't choose a car that had them (assuming such options were available)
I think you're interpreting it wrong. Edge-cases matter a lot for quality of life, as some other comments illustrated well.
The solutions to these edge-cases don't need to be solved by the same thing that solves your average case though. Give me a fleet of large cars that I can rent whenever I have a long-distance drive, and maybe I'll consider not even owning a car.
The edge case I’m worried about is travel time during the holidays. Between LA and Phoenix is a desolate stretch of freeway running through a small number of essentially truck stop towns. The most isolated one, Quartzite, has an enormous Tesla supercharging station, which just doubled in the last year. It’s virtually essential to stop in Quartzite on the drive in a Tesla. I made that drive a week after Thanksgiving, and the new Tesla superchargers are behind a brand new gas station. While stopping, I asked the clerk how the wait was during Thanksgiving, and he indicated that it was through the roof. Now, Quartzite and its grid can currently handle the peak Tesla traffic between LA and Phoenix on the busiest holiday travel weekend, with significant wait time, but can it handle the 100x increase required for full electrification? I’m skeptical. And the we have square miles of essentially idle chargers outside of this peak travel period? Seems wasteful. How do we feed the peak power demand to these tiny towns? New huge transmission lines to these isolated towns? Diesel generators? Tesla power packs?
> How do we feed the peak power demand to these tiny towns?
Like petrol station: charge some reservoir batteries during off hours and then you're able to discharge this energy fast. The problem then is the energy density of batteries making it so you'd need a gigantic battery / capacitor to replace a lot smaller fuel tank.
Now you’ve got to have a 75KW of grid storage available for these peak use cases for every car.
Quartzite currently has 120 charging spaces. 100x increase boosts that to 12,000 spaces. That’s all the parking at the Mall of America. Mind boggling. 150KW for each spot, and that’s 1.8GW of power. To put it in perspective, one of the three Palo Verde reactors produces just 1.4GW. Mind blowing.
I agree. Although part of the challenge is that people are accustomed to jumping in their car for a roadtrip without thinking twice about their vehicle’s range. Once you’ve upgraded your lifestyle for the convenience of “not thinking about it”, well it’s hard to go back.
The “edge” cases in life are what many people live for. Tho, in the car scenario, it can definitely be handled by renting what you need when you need it.
A hotel is not a replacement for people staying with you. You do not get the same intimacy.
You don't need to purchase, maintain, and store the equipment for those edge cases to happen. You can rent them. In fact, that makes them even more special.
5 years ago I spent 20K on a second hand Merc that I love driving. At the time, hybrids let alone electrical were way more expensive than a diesel car.
I'll be damned if I have to spend 50K on a car that doesn't even get me to the south of France in a day. Yeah, I only take long road trips a few times a year but if I do, I want to be able to do it in my expensive car.
It's like buying a top spec macbook pro but if you want to edit video even once or twice a year, you got to rent another computer.
You heat an indoor, that you leave for many hours regularly. Also you put fridge in heated room to make food cold even though outside could be same temperature asi in your fridge.
I make a 7-hour, ~600 mile trip 3-4 times a year. Most of that trip is through very rural areas in the Southeast, and I’m generally doing this at the end of the year (cold temps), or in the heat of summer, when batteries have the least range. It does seem like the next generation of batteries will be where I need them in the next year or so, but I’m also not going to spend $50k on a mid-tier vehicle, so we’ll see.
A guest bedroom isn't so guests can stay at a hotel. A guest bedroom is so I have a room I can offer people unconditionally if they need it due to a crisis. The situations in which this happens are hopefully never but they do arise, and the value of it is that it is in my house, with me and not at a hotel where I am not.
I like that you didn't tackle the actual "need" you're trying to criticize, namely the need for a car which is compatible with road trips.
For some people, it would look like this:
> We need a car which can take us to our vacation home
(goes to vacation home once per year, it's unreachable by train or bus
and in a location where having a car is important; they could just rent
out a rental car for a month for a billion dollars instead of having a car
which can be used for the trip)
That's the reality a bunch of people are looking at.
Granted, for a bunch of other people, taking one or two stops to recharge at well-maintained and nice charging stations along the way would suffice. But as I'm sure you're aware, that's not the universal experience with recharging EVs along the way yet.
From my perspective, your example of a yearly month-long vacation to a personal vacation home is unthinkably extravagent, and anyone in that situation is rich enough not to worry about the inefficiencies I am talking about (from a personal finance POV I mean. From an environmental standpoint it is an abomination)
What part of it is "unthinkably extravagant"? Having a vacation home isn't very uncommon, 4 weeks of vacation in a year isn't uncommon. You don't need to be stupidly rich to be in the situation I described, you just need to 1) have had enough spare money or luck ant some point to end up with a vacation home (inherited or otherwise), 2) not have severe enough financial trouble in the present to sell it, and 3) value it enough to prioritize it over the benefits of selling it.
I'm in Norway, so that probably skews my perception a bit. I'd say it's almost more common than not to have some vacation home in the family, and 4 weeks of paid holiday is the legally mandated minimum.
I see your point, people do overvalue edge cases. At the same time people also undervalue edge cases, think health insurance.
> We need a dining room for when we have parties
(Our community group needs a friendly reliable place to meet weekly)
> We need a guest bedroom
(My in-laws hit hard times, they need a safe place, now)
> I need a pickup truck
(I get to help out my friends with their projects and when their pressed to move)
And
> I need long range to take the semiannual road trip
(There was an earthquake/hurricane/flood/tornado/(in many counties /civil disturbance) and I need to move my family/haul supplies now)
I have plenty more examples, and I doubt I'd ever have a dining room for example, but I have personally benefited from each of the above. Edge cases can make or break lives. Just look at software people rely on.
>People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo.
Spending dozens of thousands on a personal people mover I would like it to enable and expand my freedoms. I.e. supporting painless weekend road trips. Fossil fuel cars answer this requirement, EVs don't.
For the extremely constrained happy path of commute in urban areas it is much more efficient to develop public transport. Living in a city with developed public transport I'd rather take the train than drive an EV to get to the same destination.
My wife loves to craft and to stich and make clothes - the dining room gets used as a cutting, crafting table as the porch room where she sits during winter is too hot during summer.
I guess this is a cultural dependent thing as well. In Mediterranean cultures I believe the preparation of the dinner (in a dinner party) would often be part of the social event.
The first 2 are not so silly as these "unused rooms" can have other functionality. The dining room becomes an office, or a retreat. In a crisis this extra capacity could be accommodation for an out of luck friend or relative, or rent out the room.
The 3rd one might be more silly :-)
I agree people should consider how much of an edge case it is though, and make a good decision. Even if "well it is an edge case but what the hell". Owning a Christmas tree ain't so bad.
The 'annoying' part of my comment was not well thought out on my part, and I would take it back if I could. I guess that what is annoying is being in the situation of having opinions like that which are unconventional.
Buying stuff we don't need because of far-fetched edge cases creates insane amounts of pollution.
Most of those far-fetched edge cases have simple solutions (such as renting).
I can't count the massive amount of stuff we have at home and don't use at all despite my active pushing against those, literally everybody I know is in the same situation.
I find it hilarious that this comment was written just three years after the height of COVID closures.
During that time I was so happy to have access to my home gym, to have a spare bedroom we could turn into an office, etc.
You're welcome to make the personal bet that a pandemic was a once-in-a-lifetime event, but it's amazingly self-righteous to criticize others who prepare for edge cases.
The entire point of ownership is to hedge against right-tail demand scenarios. If you don't care about them, you should just rent everything and own nothing at all. "Own nothing and be happy", as they say. You will just occasionally find yourself screwed when demand is high.
Probably we should let people decide for themselves what level of hedging is appropriate.
So what am I supposed to do, never host my friends or family? Never go on road trips?
2 to 4 times a year is a hell of a lot more often than "never". If I can only afford one car, why wouldn't I get one that fits _all_ my needs? If I can only buy one house, why wouldn't I get one that fits _all_ my needs?
X meter tsunami waves -> nuclear reactor barrier walls
X days without replenishing vital supplies -> warehouses and buffers.
I loath to think how many bad decisions are made because someone decided "three stdev" is good enough because they don't even know what a long tail is.
On the pickup truck example — maybe the person only buys mulch a few times a year, but the person has the capabilities of the truck all year. When I lived in the U.S., I had a home backup generator. Only really become useful once or twice, but when it was useful, it was extremely useful. Certainly one could instead rent a generator right? Except you don’t necessarily know when you’ll need it and that’s assuming there are even places from which to rent when you need it.
A pickup truck is a vehicle you can use every day that also has the capability of additional utility — you don’t lose everyday utility because it’s a pickup truck, but you have additional utility that’s there when you need it.
Why do most people own suitcases? Why not rent those when you need them? Why do people own skis? Or anything else that has occasional use?
In Spain, I drive a big diesel van. When I bought it, many commercial vehicle dealerships were pushing the electric version — for my daily driving which involves transporting motorcycles to the race tracks roughly 1.5 hours away, an electric would work, but the 10 times per year I have to drive across Spain for races, electric would be a nightmare — drive several hours, potentially towing a trailer then having to stop for hours to recharge? That turns a one-day 9 hour drive into a two day drive. Barcelona to Jerez for example. That also assumes that chargers are ideally spaced along the route and that time while I’m waiting for the van to charge? That’s wasted time. Then there is the matter of daily charging — parking in the Barcelona area, especially for a van isn’t easy. And finding a charging spot available that’s close to home would be an exercise in luck. Even if there were an order of magnitude more chargers, there’d presumably be an order of magnitude more EVs to compete with.
Then there is the question of weight — a large van requires large batteries which makes the weight of the vehicle substantially more than diesel — that means either a bigger vehicle is required or I get less payload. And driver licensing is based on weight.. so the EV version of my Crafter van would either mean I carry less (not an option,) or I have to move up to a higher weigh class which would require a commercial license.
While my personal situation is an “edge case,” the fact is that everyone’s life consists of their own version of edge cases. That’s the point of the free market — we can optimize around our own edge cases. The problem is when do-gooders are reductive, trying to fit everyone into a box based on what they think their needs should be rather than what they are.
You are pretending that owning a truck doesn't have a downside compared to a normal car or a station wagon. The truck will use more fuel and is way less nice to drive if you not in a very rural region. Which is why driving a truck instead of a car is mostly a US thing.
And yes, if the bottom line is, you want to own a truck, by all means by one.
Absolutely. I drive a small two seat convertible, and I could just as easily go without it on account of taxis, friends cars, rentals, home delivery, etc. And in many cases, I do rely on those.
I don't think it is edge cases as much as aspirations and pretence.
To take your examples, I want a large dining room and guest bed because they signal popularity and I can imagine all those people coming over. I also want a pickup because I can tell myself that I'll weather the next zombie apocalypse, or I'll imagine transporting building materials back home and build that outside sauna my now divorced wife always wanted. That will show her. Or something.
You can tell who these people, they say things like: "I don't mind waiting an hour to charge every 300 miles because I have to use the bathroom and stretch my legs".
That's all well and good when you are on a long trip once a year. It's unfathomable to stop that often, for that long, when traveling regularly.
> I'm glad I live in a prosperous society where this is possible and all, but it's kind of annoying.
You don't, you live in one that took a huge loan against the future and counts on dying before it needs to be paid. The kind of environmental and socoetal damage caused by these kinds of inefficiencies is immeasurable.
If you had a dining room, maybe you'd throw parties more often than every two years. We use ours every Thanksgiving and Christmas at a minimum. It's also a great place to simply eat dinner without retreating to one's bedroom.
Same with guests; people aren't going to visit you if they have to pay for a hotel, and have to travel from the hotel back to your house for breakfast in the dining room you don't have.
My town doesn't even have a hotel. You'd have to go to the neighboring city. The hotel is on the side of a mountain overlooking the river, which makes it hard to get to. About 20 minutes away is 20 minutes too far when everyone is exhausted and drunk at the end of the party. First to bed gets the spare bedroom, and the last one up crashes on the couch. In a pinch, a cot can be put in the dining room.
A spare bedroom is also an excellent location for a home office. Having extra rooms is capital. It greatly increases the quality of one's life, every day. You might as well say you don't need a kitchen. You don't really need to cook when you can get all your food prepared from outside, in our prosperous society. While technically true (there exist apartments without kitchens), it is an austere standard to live by.
You're getting flak for this, but this kind of thinking is prevalent in Europe from what I see. Especially the car part. Almost everybody drives small cars. Pickup trucks that don't have a company name on them are as rare as exotic cars.
> We need a dining room for when we have parties
> We need a guest bedroom > I need a pickup truck I'm glad I live in a prosperous society where this is possible and all, but it's kind of annoying.