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Comment by pengaru | Hacker News Reader

> People will simply grow up without a car, and that will be their normal

If my last in-office experience ~5 years ago is any indication, that's already pretty common. A good portion of the younger employees had never owned a car, some didn't even have a drivers license. This was in The Mission district of SF.

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In Europe, it looks like it is becoming the norm now for young people not to own a car. I'm not sure if it is price or ideology driven. For sure it is becoming harder and harder to own a car in the city, you need to shell a lot of money to pay the parking and meet the emission criteria

Having grown up in a small village, requiring you to have a car, I can not imagine my life without a car

It doesn't have to be price or ideology driven (though it can be). It's the rational choice for a lot of people. When a car is the slowest form of transport, costly to own, and you can rent/borrow a car for the very few occasions in the year you need to have one, it doesn't make sense to own one.

Add to that that a lot of young people in big cities don't even have a driving license.

Obviously it depends a lot on where you live. A lot of places in Europe still require you to have a car to get around.

we have 2 cars and we could get by owning just one. I also don't really need one because I work 40min away out of the city with a train connection. I see it as a freedom, I'm free to go where I want when I want, that's priceless for me. I will be very unhappy if I will be forced to not own a car.

My car died just before the pandemic hit, and I never got a chance to replace it. My wife and I have just shared her car since then, and neither of us get out and drive that often.

Now, with forced RTO, it looks like I may be forced to buy a car in order to do the commute. That's like a $25-50k hit in one fell swoop. I can't really look for an alternative job in town, because all the other employers are likely to expect me to also commute.

I could look for a different remote-only job, but there aren't that many around for DevOps Engineer types. If I was a Software Development Engineer, that would be much easier.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I'm not sure what I can feasibly do.

I think I may just be screwed.

> If my last in-office experience ~5 years ago is any indication, that's already pretty common. A good portion of the younger employees had never owned a car, some didn't even have a drivers license. This was in The Mission district of SF.

In SF that's nothing new. My family lived there in the 80s and my mom tells me that while we had a car, they never used it because it was a pain to find parking but it was very easy to catch the bus that came by every 5 minutes.

I get that, but practically nobody working in SF/SV startups is actually from SF/SV or even CA. It was surprising to me... but I'm from the midwest where getting your DL and your own car are as much the definition of Adult as an apartment is.

One of the very few places in the U.S. that even kinda pretends to be livable without a car. And even SF is pretty limiting without a car.

> And even SF is pretty limiting without a car.

Right? Especially if you consider all the short-drive destinations for recreational activities the rent certainly charges for.

Yep. I lived in downtown SF for 10 years, and only after fleeing during summer 2020 and buying a car do I realize how my social life in SF had really become so geographically limited even within SF. Obviously you can always Uber anywhere, and by public transit most of the city is only 90 minutes and 2 transfers away (snark), but the truth is that I see more areas of the city now when I visit via car from 25 minutes away than I did when I lived downtown.

The cell phone killed the need for young people to have a car. All you really need is a way to know where all your friends are going tonight (or right now). Used to be you needed a car for that but now a cell phone will do it and it's a lot cheaper than a car.

I am seeing this even in my small rural community. Growing dependence on our bus service, bikes, and walking for demographics that can't really afford a car.

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