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Comment by skrause | Hacker News Reader

Where I live (in a dense German city) there wouldn't even be space at the roadside to install charging points; even the street lights are attachted to the houses because there was no space left. I have the same situation at work, so personally have a difficult time imagining to own an electric car anytime soon.

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On the other hand,car ownership in dense urban areas shouldn't be the norm. The future is also in active transport (walking, cycling) and transit, not only electric cars.

So if you want a car for hobbies (e.g. getting to backcountry) or transporting your kids around, you shouldn't live in an urban area?

If you want a car for hobbies, you should figure out where to store it when you're not using it. Maybe rent a spot in an underground car park somewhere in the city. Public transport is just fine for transporting your kids around, and will be much better when there're less cars on the city roads.

There's no reason you can't have a car in an urban area, but we should work towards a transport model that doesn't require you to own one. Public transport in combination with cycling for short distances plus a solid carsharing infrastructure should be sufficient for a large chunk of the population. Even removing 30% of the cars from the streets would go a long way to improve the situation.

When I was living in Montreal for a couple of years I signed up to a community car share scheme. No insurance, no maintenance, no road taxes so it worked out cheaper to "rent a car" just when I needed it: https://www.communauto.com/index_en.html

With a good, cheap, reliable public transport system with this as backup I could easily get rid of my car if I lived in an urban area but still needed to get around at the weekends.

That's what I don't get about 'car sharing'. Everybody wants the car on the weekend. If the service has to have enough cars for everybody, what's the difference between that and leasing/owning? It doesn't save on cars that's for sure.

Do you really want a car every day of most weekends? What for?

(I suspect the "good, cheap, reliable public transport" thing the parent mentioned is important)

In my experience of using the service, and Montreal is a much smaller city than London (where I am from), you don't want a car every weekend. I was usually able to find a car for hire as long as I booked in advance (esp for Bank Holiday type weekends) but sometimes it meant going to a different location than the one right next to me. As the system get's more popular and more people use it then they are able to purchase more cars.

> It doesn't save on cars that's for sure

I disagree. Several of my friends also used the service, just between us that saved having several cars. If you need a car all weekend, every weekend then the service is probably not for you. But if, like me, you needed it every so often then it saved a lot of money over the course of a year.

I doubt that everybody needs a car on the weekend: People that want the car to go to work are actually less likely to need a car on the weekend. However, even if we concede the point that everybody want a car on the weekend, there's still the question of whether everybody needs a car on the weekend at exactly the same time. Given that most parking spots on my street are still full at any given time during the weekend, I doubt that.

Hah yes. In the early days of Zipcar in NYC (not sure if this is still allowed as I moved to the country and now drive a gas guzzling truck), I reserved every weekend for 48 hours for a full year in advance. Then on the Friday before the reservation started I would decide what I really needed, as there was no cancellation penalty. I probably only used it every second or third weekend, but noticed it really improved my "get out there and do something" motivation, as I set the default for "I have a car."

Probably wasn't good for Zipcar though.

We have a system like this in my hometown, Bergen. I live 50 meters away from two parking garages containing four share cars each. I can reserve any of these at any time via a web app, given that no one have reserved them already.

Payment is $10 per usage plus a surcharge per kilometer driven. Key management is handled either with an electronic card key which checks the current reservation status, or key drop boxes to which all members have access. It's both cheaper and more convenient than owning a car, since I only use a car once per week on average.

If you only use it a couple of times a month, it would be cheaper to rent one than to own one.

If you are over 26 then maybe....at least in the UK if you are younger than 26 you have to pay a MASSIVE young driver surcharge(a car can cost 30 pounds/day to rent, but a young driver surcharge can be 100 pounds/day). It's literally cheaper to lease, a brand new Citroen C1 will cost you 100 pounds/month + ~80/month in insurance. The car is new so whatever goes wrong with it you are covered, you just have to put petrol in it.

As someone who comes from a place in the world that can see -30C in winter, I disagree. For 2-3 months of the year cars(and in cities buses) are the only way to travel anywhere.

Where do the normal cars park?

By the side of the street. In between the street and pedestrians passage. Or between street and bicycle path. Sometimes diagonally.

The only possible charging would be some stuff that's underground and comes out of the ground right next to the car. Hopefully attaches to the bottom of the car, so there're no hoses/wires flinging around.

And some cars are parked at grey-legal spots blocking other cars. People just leave their phone numbers if someone needs to get out earlier. That is super common when you know people around and can expect to drive away sooner than your neighbour.

Or overhead?

Here is an example of such a street: https://www.google.de/maps/@51.2310008,7.0720156,3a,75y,127....

You bascially park your car somewhere half on the street, half on the curb. The sidewalk is just wide enough for people to walk there.

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