Private car ownership is on the road to becoming a rarity

[marmar]

(MarketWatch) Henry Ford was a smart guy, but he never did the math when he decided to put every American household on wheels.

A century after the Model T, the world has a problem with cars. The U.S. and China will consume about 40 million light vehicles in 2015, according to IHS. Globally, we’re on track to hit 100 million vehicles in 2020.

That’s not a lot of cars. That’s an ocean of cars, an inundation, wave after wave breaking on the shores of the industrialized world. And yet policy makers and common folk alike have been powerless against the siren song of the automobile. Even in the most car-blighted burg in the world, the toxic parking lot they call Beijing, the appetite for the automobile—as status item, as luxury, as totem of personal mastery in a fragile postcolonial mind-set—is driving millions more into its smoggy embrace, despite limits on ownership and the government’s rising alarm.

The absurdity of our century-old, ad hoc approach to mobility is captured in one statistic: The utilization rate of automobiles in the U.S. is about 5%. For the remaining 95% of the time (23 hours), our cars just sit there, a slow, awful cash burn, like condos at the beach. .................(more)

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/get-ready-to-share-not-just-the-road-but-the-car-2015-12-14?dist=lcountdown

[Throd]

1. Most items sit idle for the majority of time.

[Bonx]

6. My house is empty all day. Not quite ready to institute hot-racking.

[tech3149]

2. Considering I spent my adult life watching the driving skill deteriorate

I'm more than happy to spend much less time on the road. If only I had an alternative to getting behind the wheel to buy groceries.

[ileus]

3. Thanks anyway but I'll keep mine.

It's nice to go out to the garage whenever I want and go where ever I want, on my schedule.

[mythology]

4. The problem is that most people need their cars at the same time

It's all well and good to share a car if people have alternate schedules, but I can't share a car with my neighbor if we both need it st 8:30 and 5.

[Blue_Tires]

5. I'll believe it when I see it...

Neil has a history of talking out of his ass, anyway...

And unless he's giving up his fuckin' cars, he's full of shit...

[MisterP]

7. in the US a lot of this is ironically exurb-driven: a McMansion that falls apart

after 15 years because it's built to be an "investment" rather than housing and is full of fiddly joists and is 45 minutes' drive from anything can't really be passed on, it can only be razed and rebuilt

it's far less attractive than something 15 minutes' drive from the shops and "only" 1-2,000 sqft (hard to believe that 1,952 used to be considered palatial for a three-kid family); the pre-1980 suburbs are a different creature from what came after even if it got the ball rolling--and of course that's beaten out by a townhouse with a 96% Walkscore

https://www.walkscore.com/

[Dawson Leery]

9. +1

[LeftyMom]

8. Nope. Not interested.

1. Driving is FUN.

2. I don't want to drive some interchangeably boring fleet car. That would make driving not-fun.

3. I don't want anybody else driving my car either, because my car is awesome and people are idiots.

4. Nobody's washing clothes in my washing machine 90% of the time, but I'd sooner poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick than use a laundromat.

5. I have no interest in shifting from something I own to something I rent. This almost always results in less control (see awesome car versus beige Camry fleet car of soul death) and no reduced costs.

[Waldorf]

10. I need by car. Getting to work, grocery store, doctor appointment, etc.

And couldn't this pretty much apply to a lot of stuff people own? Bet I use my drill press and table saw maybe once a month.

[whatthehey]

11. I'm fine with the idea of fleet self-driving cars

but I'm not fine with the idea of adding at least two hours each way to my commute by waiting for an unreliable inconvenient mass transit with seats half the size of those in Ryanair coach class filled with people of questionable hygiene habits carrying backpacks the size of steamer trunks. The only places such options can work are in sardine-dense megalopolis downtowns where I do not work, cannot afford to live, cannot walk well enough to access amenities and cannot fit my dogs. When will hipsters learn we are not all unencumbered triathletes who live in multimillion dollar tiny apartments steps from the nearest underground station?

[Liberal_in_LA]

12. Not in los angeles

[Act_of_Reparation]

13. Pointles puff piece.

Thousands like it are published every day, all them making absurd predictions that never come true. I don't know who Dan Neil is, but it sounds like he's never had to commute to work before.