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Comment by cjsuk | Hacker News Reader

I am in a similar situation albeit in suburban South-West London. I bought a car in 2006 and it's still hanging on but I have no intention of replacing it. It gets used as a shopping trolley mostly. Literally every use case it had historically is covered by online services now. There's barely even any point going to retail outlets these days as the probability of success is so low compared to online.

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Your story is atypical given that you live in an area that's a)difficult to drive in (lots of traffic, little parking), b)incredibly well-connected by about half a dozen public transport options. You shouldn't be making generalisations that no one needs a car anymore just because you don't.

Urban and suburban areas cover about 20m people, a third or so of the population.

so the minority of users, seeing as 2/3rd of the population don't live in a Urban and suburban area.

I live in a Rural area in the UK, i have a 20 mile commute to work, and its 6 miles to the nearest city. There is 2 bus services that run though the "town" I live in both run one an hour and take about about an hour to to get anywhere useful.

I would be unable to work, and get around without a car, I live where i do because it was one of the few places i could afforded to buy a house in the area that I live, that was also close enough to where i work.

If they want to get rid of fossil fuel cars, then by 2040 they need to have far longer range than they do now. To me that seems to be far more important than public transport.

By 2040 you can probably hail autonomous EV taxis whenever you need one. Also note that you choose to increase your carbon footprint (an externalized cost hitting everyone) so you could have a cheaper home. It's not exactly unfair that people who made such a choice might end up with a slight disadvantage.

I made no such generalisation, merely stating my own situation.

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