Pros of golf carts and neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs) replacing all private cars within a city:
- Only goes as fast as a bicycle, so isn’t a viable suburban commuter vehicle, meaning you’ll probably only take it to the nearest transit station
- Only goes as fast as a bicycle, so isn’t likely to kill people
- Excellent visibility, so less likely to run over children
- Much smaller and lighter, so building parking garages for park-and-rides would be a lot cheaper and less objectionable than with our current style of cars
- Electric
- Smaller batteries than jumbo EVs
- Compatible with dense, transit-oriented city development
- Could be installed with mandatory speed limiters
Cons:
- Less profit for GM and ExxonMobil
The reason cars became so popular in rural areas is that they’re the thing that allows people who live there to be connected with their neighbors. They divide densely populated areas and connect low population areas. The relationship cars have to people’s lives is incredibly complex and putting forth solutions like this will alienate people from joining the movement. Advocating for walkable cities makes sense because rural communities aren’t going to be atomized by regulations like that, and thus it becomes easier to implement.
This post is talking exclusively about cities, I’m not sure why this argument about rural areas comes up so often when it’s not relevant.
There are cities like New York, and then there are cities like Reading, PA. The places where you could swap cars with golf cart style cars are pretty limited. It would have a huge and beneficial impact in NYC, and it would be great if smaller cities also had better public transit. But that’s why people bring up objections to this sort of idea.
Yes but that’s a different argument again. The post said cities and the response was about rural areas
Rural people know their way of life is utterly unsustainable and feel very defensive because of that
Really? That is very naive of you. I don’t see a lot of farming In city centers. Rural life is just as sustainable as city life. I have always driven much less when I have lived in the country. Being able to live where you work makes a commute unnecessary. So just the once a month drive to town for supplies.
Both cities and the country have its place. One is not better, the worst way to get people to listen to you is to insult one of the basic qualities of who they are.
One of the worst ways, absolutely worst ways, to get people to listen to you is for “rural can’t survive without cars” people to wade into a post about cities and keep going on about them, as if they’re the only ones that matter and city dwellers shouldn’t solve their city problems without the permission of someone far away who doesn’t live there.
It’s just not about you. Please try and have the humility to not act like it is.
Weird enough I never said anything of that, but thank you for the reminder on the importance of reading comprehension.
They just shared their perspective with people in this thread, not agreeing with the person posting this comment. If it was according to your logic, I would’ve agreed that rural places require cars (even though I’ve been in rural areas that mostly move around with public transport) just because I disagreed with someone saying that rural living is unsustainable as compared to urban living.
What rural jobs are you talking about?
Yes, farmers tend to have to live on their farms, because farms need frequent attention. Each farmer needs to live on their own farm, so they do necessarily need to be spread apart. But, other than farming:
Forestry: people don’t live there full time because they’re cutting down trees or planting trees, then moving to the next area. They might want a temporary camp, but for a permanent house, there’s no reason not to live in a city.
Mining, oil drilling, etc: has to be where the resource is, but, with everybody working at the same place, it should be a pretty densely populated area around the mine / well, etc.
Wilderness guide, tour guide, park ranger, etc: A park ranger overseeing a wilderness area might need to stay in a very remote area, but AFAIK they rarely live there. Instead they’re temporarily posted to very remote areas, but when not “on the job” they live somewhere else (could be a city). For wilderness or tour guides, they might need to do the guiding in rural areas (hiking trails, ski slopes, etc.) but most of those wilderness activities start from some central hub, at least a small mountain town.
Am I missing some jobs that have to be done in rural areas?
I think you missed my point. All I was saying was I think you might be missunderstanding the amount of daily driving done in many rural areas.
Remember all resources are grown or mined. That is literally the only way to get more raw materials. activities that predominantly in rural areas. Pre industrial society was something like 85+% rural and it wasn’t until after WWII that more people lived in cities in America than in the country.
So whether it is the food in the cupboard, the clothes in the closet or the lithium in the phone battery. It has come from a rural area.
As I said before cities and the country both have their place. Attacking one will never be helpful.
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Remember all resources are grown or mined.
Yeah, and I addressed both of those. There’s no reason that they should be in low density rural areas where golf-cart type cars wouldn’t do.
For mining the mine entrance is going to be a single point everybody has to get to, so it makes sense to build a dense area around that point. It may once have been a rural area, but due to the presence of a useful resource, it becomes densely populated. For drilling it’s basically the same, but people don’t need to live next to the drills. For forestry, the area you’re harvesting or replanting keeps moving, so you need to commute to that point, it makes sense to live in an urban area and go from there to the forest.
Pre industrial society was something like 85+% rural
Yes, and it was mostly farming. And now it’s 2%. The 2% who are still farmers do need to live on their farms, the other 98% don’t.
As I said before cities and the country both have their place. Attacking one will never be helpful.
Why is it that you think rural areas have their place? If rural areas use significantly more energy than dense urban areas, and we need to reduce energy use per capita so we don’t kill the planet, then what is it that makes rural areas necessary, other than the 2% for farming?
Okay I really am not sure what to say here. The way you address those things sounds like you don’t have any understanding of how either rural life works, or how those industries work.
You have proposed making company towns for mines, which used to be a thing (and sadly still are in some places). The loss of workers rights and the solidification of corporate power. Is guaranteed with company towns. Two things that I think we can both agree are not good for the world.
Second you proposed. Centrally located services for the few farmers who are allowed to live in the country. This could easily put them 6 to 8 hours drive from any kind of service. I am not just talking about a guy to fix the tractor, but banking and insurance services (I don’t want to go into the details but no those services are unique to farming and can’t be online only). Plus we have things like groceries, medical services, farm surplus, and ect. All happening on an individual scale, ignoring any kind of economy of scale. Plus I don’t want to drive 16 hours for milk, do you?
All of your proposals seem to require longer drives not shorter ones. This would of course require ICE not EV because the charging infrastructure is not there. Of course we could put the infrastructure in that would allow charging. Though as long as we are doing that maybe we could just let these people live near their point of work. It is cheap to move electricity down wires it is expensive to move people.
You also missed my point about the rise of the city. First as you point out a very small fraction of the population lives in the country. So even if they had a much higher energy use(I have never seen any information to suggest that is true.) It would still be a small fraction of total energy use. It seems like we would get a lot more energy savings by getting the urban environment to reduce energy use buy just 1% per person than say a 10% per person reduction in the rural environment.
As for the idea that the country uses more energy. You are welcome to cite a source if you have one. I would be surprised if that was true. We don’t have street lamps that on on all night. Or 24 hour stores that keep the lights on for just a few sales. Nor do we have the all night clubs or all the ride share people idling their engines. That and more is all energy use only found in cities.
Lastly it was not until the industrial revolution and the rise of the urban environment that there was any significant rise of the mean global temperature. Here is a handy graphic from xkcd https://xkcd.com/1732/ It shows how it took 22000 years for the planet to warm 4°C as it left an Ice age and a hundred years to raise 1°C with the start of the industrial revolution. It is on track to raise another 3.5°C in the next hundred years. This rise in temperature has a very strong positive correlation with the rise of industrial cities. It seems quite possible it is not the country that is the problem but the cities.
As for why I think the rural environment has its place. It has much lower noise, light, water, and air pollution. I have drunk water right out of the mountain steam, watched comets from my front porch and seen the pine trees light fire when the morning sun hit the ice on them. I don’t hold it against people that enjoy the city, but it is not for me.
Did I miss any of your points?
Not agreeing that you need a car to live in rural areas, considering the ones I’ve been in before primarily uses public transport, but their primary appeal is that you could own land of your own far cheaper than in the cities, you can do recreational husbandry/farming/gardening, you just like the natural environment compared to the urban environment, also YOU CAN GROW TREES!!! Not everyone wants what the urban environment has to offer, and they also dislike its limitations because it just limits what they want to do in life.
Am I missing some jobs that have to be done in rural areas?
Tradespeople that fix their stuff.
They need to travel to rural areas to fix the stuff, but they don’t need to live there. Given that they’re probably servicing a big area, it makes sense for them to be centrally located, in a city for example.
Nah, I’d say that most city living is unsustainable, just without it being visible to most people. The huge amounts of people in a city benefit from unsustainable commercialised farming practices, for example. I mean in rural areas (the ones that aren’t corpo-owned at least) you’re likely to have people growing locally-adapted seeds that don’t require lots of watering/fertilizer/pesticide. There’s more cooperation, too.
Replace rural with suburban sprawl.
allows people who live there to be connected with their neighbors
Why do you say that? Losing connection with community is the exact reason the Amish ban cars. You rested your whole argument on this, too, so you’ll need to convince me a little harder that up is down.
You’ve just proven their point. Isolationists ban cars.
The Amish isolate themselves from others for religious reasons. Most people don’t want to do that.
But they remain connected with each other.
Debatable
It’s a cult is detached from society and it often ostracizes their own.
If your community is based on literally limiting everyone’s freedom of movement and communication by banning technology it’s pretty toxic.
People who choose to live in rural areas are always going to be more wasteful and require subsidization from urban people’s taxes. Putting them all in golf carts was never going to solve that.
Are you doing a bit? If not, what do you mean by “are always going to be more wasteful”?
Urban taxes pay for suburban and rural services all across the continent. Suburbanite and rural residents cost more to support than they pay in taxes.
Do you believe that communities that are supported by tax dollars are inherently more wasteful than communities that aren’t? There is a reason US farmers get so much tax money from the government. Do you know what that reason is?
I’m not even talking about the vast farm subsidies from lobbying and regulatory capture. We don’t even need to consider that for the point to remain.
Your point is moot and your username is fitting.
And we will all be fed from the rolling fields of Manhattan.
So what you are saying is, I should subsidize the lifestyle of people who are living under conditions with greater externalities because they want to make money farming. Hey. How about they fucking pay for it themselves? They make more money per capita, they enjoy greater privilege, all I am saying is that they can pay their fair share. It’s not like they are doing it out of altruism.
There is a small city in Georgia, USA that does this. Tom Scott video on it
I knew a guy that grew up there, he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed and was kinda shocked that all the other folks we worked with (most of us from other parts of Georgia than Peachtree City) didn’t have golf carts growing up. Actually seems like a cool idea, although it only works if you can afford a golfcart
Tbf, the current system only works if you can afford a car which is typically more expensive than a golf cart
True, but all these people also have both, often multiple of both, it’s a pretty well off part of metro Atlanta
Needs AC & Heat & Doors/Windows. Weather is a thing that people need to deal with. Not everywhere is 70 and sunny every day.
Yeah I find many of these not car cars have a very narrow used case, making them impracticable to scale.
Doors and windows sure. But, if all your trips are 15 mins or less, you probably don’t need heat or AC. A golf cart goes about 25 km/h, so in 15 mins you could get about 6 km. That should be enough to get you to your destination. If not, it should be enough to get you to the nearest mass transit station.
And while we’re dreaming everyone should have a pony
Never change fuckcars, never change.
Every post on this forum is an S-tier masterclass in trolling, and I love it.
Already exists, Citroen Ami. It’s a neat little idea. If you live in buildings, dozen apartments might have 3 vehicles always ready to go. Your key is your phone, as is your dashboard and the rest of the instrumentation. With range of 50 to 70km, it’s good enough to run around the city for the day and get it charged over night. It’s an interesting concept which people are not going to swallow because they need 6T coal rollers.
My state allows towns to decide if they’ll allow golf carts to drive on roads. It’s great for small towns with lots of older people.
Sounds similar to a mobility scooter, but more practical for carrying much heavier loads.
I’d prefer a cargobike personally, but most of the ones I like are too heavy to move when you’re not riding it, let alone with a 1/4 ton load. Those also can’t fit into most apartments, you’ve got to leave them outside or in bicycle storage…
This kart/NEV thing kind of seems like a good compromise, with quadricycle vans possibly being an alternative option if you aren’t carrying people
I agree that a bike is generally preferable, but an NEV seems a good compromise for people who need to move multiple people at once or more cargo than a cargo bike can carry. Max one of these per household + bike for everyone + walkable, transit-oriented development seems like a suitable compromise that would be a significant improvement over the status quo.
Ew.
Just based on the picture, do you expect this to be used anywhere that gets a decent chance of snow in the winter?
People still walk in those places too.
Give it some vinyl doors and you’ll be fine in winter time.
This used to be my point against winter bicycles, but when I think about it, these kinds of individual transports shouldn’t be used for long distances anyway, and you’ll still need good winter clothing for walking to the destination after parking anyway.
I just decided to improve my winter gear, and that means I can walk, or bike, or use one of these electric golf carts, or whatever I choose.
Exactly. I’m in Canada, and I often ride my electric scooter to work in the winter, and many ride bikes in the winter here, too. The windshield on a glorified golf cart plus proper winter clothing is all you really need, although maybe detachable side flaps to keep out the wind might help, too.
And I wear full coat in a car anyways for the exact reason you mention: I still need to walk between car and final destination.
I’m the opposite. I’ll only be outside for a few minutes, so why bother with warm clothing. I’d rather dress for my destination and not have to deal with extra stuff. More saying I have to bring that too?
Just get the AWD trim with a winter tire package. Keep chains handy too
Only goes as fast as a bicycle, so isn’t a viable suburban commuter vehicle, meaning you’ll probably only take it to the nearest transit station
So it’s less practical than a bicycle and still encourages a sedentary lifestyle.
Only goes as fast as a bicycle, so isn’t likely to kill people
Still more likely than a bicycle, without the advantages of a bicycle
Excellent visibility, so less likely to run over children
But not perfect, which a bicycle has
Much smaller and lighter, so building parking garages for park-and-rides would be a lot cheaper and less objectionable than with our current style of cars
Bicycles are so small that you can take them into your apartment, completely nullifying the need for infrastructural storage accommodation near your home.
Electric
You will have to explain this, as it is not an inherent pro of a vehicle to have electrical propulsion.
Smaller batteries than jumbo EVs
Electric bicycle has even smaller battery, still!
Compatible with dense, transit-oriented city development
Less so than a bicycle
Could be installed with mandatory speed limiters
So could regular cars
=======================
You’ve built a solution that compromises on all the advantages of either and doesn’t excel in any.
Some people have never had to balance two massive bags of chicken feed and a propane tank on a rusty bicycle with a bent wheel and it shows.
Some people also don’t have physical disabilities or family members with them, and it really shows. Bikes are great, and we absolutely should be encouraging bike use, but the automobile is, frankly, a necessity for millions of people. We shouldn’t be getting rid of wheelchairs, either. I swear, sometimes I feel like the fuck cars community is basically anprim. Yes, fuck cars, yes fuck car culture, but jimminy crickets they’re not evil. Our use of us them.
Cars have a place and the name of this community is stupid, but in large cities using cars is quite problematic obviously. For disabled people there are already motorised wheelchairs, for cargo it seems like there are better choices than this still.
I’m disabled. A motorized wheelchair is fine for walmart or Disney World, because those places are built for them. But they are also very expensive, and can actually be more of a hindrance when facilities and infrastructure are lacking. The world is generally not accessible.
I get that but surely this massive golf cart looking thing offers a lot less accessibility than s mororized chair still?
I am not trying to minimize the struggles of being disabled, even with sophisticated technology of course it is something that affects almost every aspect of your life in some way.
.
It’s not excuse, but thanks for being dismissive of disabilities that might be different to your own. I’m not pawning you off as anything, and I do think we need massive reform and restructuring. But motorized wheelchairs are not a viable solution to someone who needs to get to a doctor’s office 20 miles away, nor are busses a solution to someone who has severe difficulty being outside of their home for hours on end. Should most of us be driving? No. Should no one be using cars? Also no.
I don’t respect your argument because it assumes I’m trying to get rid of cars. I’m not, I’m trying to get rid of unnecessary car ownership / usage.
Did you know that taxis exist? Did you know that in many danish municipalities, it’s completely normal for the municipality to own and operate several minibusses to ferry people who otherwise can’t get around? Now you do. Now you can stop pretending that disabled people are a crutch to learn your devils-advocacy, or whatever that is, on.
I’m not pretending anything. You’re entire attitude is hostile and I’m done talking to you.
you can attach a trailer/carrier to a bike for that reason if you need to
“Hop in the bakfiets, grandma, let the good doctor check out your arthritis. We can’t take the car because an internet stranger says so.”
I’ve got arthritis and loooove bicycle rickshaw rides.
You will have to explain this, as it is not an inherent pro of a vehicle to have electrical propulsion.
It is when the vehicle is small & light like this.
Heat engines get more efficient with increasing size. Piston count can be increased (improving balance), or piston displacement can be increased (reducing friction, heat loss & gas leakage per unit volume)
Batteries on the other hand get better with decreasing scale, the net distance from source to sink is decreased so it needs less wire. The total number of elements is reduced so risk of fire is as well. The battery is more replaceable, so aging is less of a concern.
Range compounds the effect. Typically smaller vehicles have smaller ranges, and that’s good for electric where the engine is much lighter than the fuel, but bad for ICE, where the engine is a massive brick of iron and the fuel can just be a couple jerry cans slung on the back
In cars, the trade-off is a hotly contested race, but you don’t see many diesel skateboards or battery-powered containerships.
The clear benefit to this over bikes is that it doesn’t require balance. Balance is a common issue in the disabled.
And the ability to move a family
That’s true, but but front loading cargo bikes can do a pretty good job at that if the ratio of passengers to drivers doesn’t get too big.
Or, yaknow, everyone just has their own bike.
This looks incredibly American. As far as small vehicles go this is still roughly the size of a small car, granted it probably weighs less(d safer), but storing it still requires a fair amount of dedicated parking. An E-bike or even better a pushbike seems like a more reasonable choice then.
tfw Americans realize that smaller cars were better all along
The Miniature Microcars of Amsterdam (NJB on YouTube)
Full self driving (and therefore shared) becomes trivial.
What about safety in crashes e.g. off a bridge?
The lower mass, speed, and center of gravity of these vehicles would mean even the lowest cost guard rails would be more than sufficient to stop anyone going off a bridge.
Is driving a car off a bridge really a typical crash? Christ the concern trolling here is really scraping the barrel
It’s not, yet often enough (unfortunately one happened in our neighborhood last season), though I think the factors cited by Nouveau_Burnswick are enough to stop the most common ones unless under severe influence
My mom lives 100km away from the city, there are no busses or trains going there. How long should I need to travel to go visit my mom for the day? In a car it takes between an hour and an hour 20. At an average bicycle speed (for a fit cyclist) it would take me 4-5 hours to get to her, I can then have a cup of coffee, turn around and start heading back so I don’t get home too late.
This is a problem with the transit authority then, no? Advocate for better transit options where u r then.
Listen, for the last 16 years we have had non stop scheduled blackouts. Going from maybe 2-4 hours a day to now up to 12 hours a day. They can’t even buy the right trains for the tracks we have… If you’d like to change it, good luck to you, the politicians don’t care, they’re just there to enrich themselves.
Not everyone lives in a perfect utopia.
Not everyone lives in a perfect utopia.
No one does
I’m sorry to hear that u’r living in such a place. This community is attempting to bring awareness to such places (which are the majority of human settlements unfortunately). We can change this, no? We can (and I would say we ought to) make the world a better place for ourselves and our kids, no?
My mom lives there, I left 3 years ago because the economy is in shambles and crime is out of control. Can I change it? No. Can any of the people I know change it? No. It’s like farting against thunder in that place, it’s been a downward trend since the end of Mandela’s presidency and the majority want the ANC to be in control, and the ANC keeps everyone uneducated enough to be able to use simple propaganda, gifts and lies to keep getting voted in term after term. I watched my country fall apart and be robbed blind by the corrupt government, I saw as more and more of her people lived in squalor and I was helpless to do anything about it. It hurt me enough that I had to leave, there was nothing I could do. Now I don’t have a car.
The point of my original comment is that cars are great for travelling long distances to places where there is no public transport, limiting them to bicycle speed negates all of that and will hinder people’s lives to an insane degree. Like for instance I would then probably need to take vacation to visit my mom for it to be worth the 10 hours of travel. And that’s not even going into the fact that you have to travel on one of the most dangerous highways in SA, if you break down or stop, it is guaranteed that you will be robbed or killed, if there’s heavy traffic, it’s guaranteed that some will be robbed in the traffic jam. Going down that highway at night at 25km/h is asking to get murdered or raped.
While a carless utopia and “just change it” are great ideas and all. Reality is far from that easy.
I’m so sorry for what you had to go through. I live in a shithole like this as well (thankfully m moving soon). I’m sorry you had to leave the place you grew up in. I’m sorry that you have to see your country fall apart right in front of your eyes. Trust me, I know the feeling. I know how much it hurts.
While a carless utopia and “just change it” are great ideas and all. Reality is far from that easy.
Absolutely correct! Far from easy, but not impossible. The people in this community (like not fuckcars specifically, but progressives in general) are trying to do this.
Also, they are not telling you specifically to give up your car. In fact, many of them use cars themselves. They are attempting to influence policy such that we can have transit centric infrastructure. Noone here would tell you to bike 10 hours to visit your mum.
I’m sorry you’re going through it too. I visited last year, it was the first time in 3 years and I miss it so much, but know there’s no future there for me. I hope where ever you are going will be good for you. It’s hard leaving home.
I now live in a place where I can get pretty much everywhere with a train, subway or bus, but I do still miss the freedom of having a car sometimes, especially when it comes to getting stuff from the hardware store, lol.
You use a train like the rest of the civilised world. Should take 30 minutes or something like , you can spend the time you saved helping end car dependency
there are no trains going there though.
Some countries don’t have trains, unfortunately.
You need to read and not skim read…
![[image] People would probably hate cars a lot less if they were limited in size and speed to a golf cart](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/fcb4382e-b548-472d-95d1-b9ed667805da.jpeg){kind=link}