Why There Will Be Far Fewer Cars, But Many More Miles Driven

Available today at advantageous prices

– By Jeff McMahon  Full text and graphics from Forbes at https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/01/23/why-there-will-be-far-fewer-cars-but-many-more-miles-driven/#70dfd9f4618c

 . . . . You don’t have to be Milton Friedman to figure out that car ownership is economically foolish.

• “I want you, on purpose, to spend $33,000 on an asset, okay?
• And I want you, on purpose, the minute you buy it, to lose 11.5 percent.
• And on purpose to make that asset sit idle 95 percent of the time,”

. . . . said Gary Silberg, the Americas head of the automotive division of the financial services firm KPMG. “You don’t have to have a PhD in economics to figure out that it’s maybe not a great idea to buy a car.

“The average price of a car in America is $33,000, the average loss is 11.5 percent, and the average idle time is over 95 percent.”

But Americans love their cars, right?

“Okay, so why do people buy cars?” Silberg asked

Carfree Times now indefinitely parked: (But the future lies ahead)

Founding editor, Joel Crawford, announces final issue of Carfree Times  

I have decided to suspend my online creative efforts indefinitely. This will probably be the last Carfree Times. I don’t plan to shoot stills or video except incidentally, and there will probably be few or no new videos.

In a sense, what I’m doing is giving up virtual presence in favor of actual presence. I am looking at screens far too much. I enjoy face-to-face interaction, particularly with an audience. I am available for these kinds of events within railing distance of Amsterdam.

We are going to have carfree cities, one way or another, I’m pretty sure. Money, ecology, and happiness all optimize at one and the same point: carfree cities. There is no cheaper way to build decent cities. No other urban form has smaller environmental impacts. Urban quality of life is always improved by removing cars.

SECRET WEAPON?

Here is the Future of Car Sharing — and Carmakers should be Terrified (PS. They are!)

Looking for a share car in Moscow this morning? A sample of the 28k cars waiting for your call

Moscow’s sharing boom shows how quickly consumers can abandon the traditional car.

By Ilya Khrennikov. February 8, 2019

This from Bloomberg rings many bells and is just too good to be passed up for our students and readers.  Right up the middle of World Streets long time position on the steady global shift from ownership to use in the cities/car nexus , it is thus passed on here with thanks to the author and the publisher. The complete article with photos, graphics, a short video and references is available from Bloomberg at https://bloom.bg/2UPplxmz .   Let’s have a look.

xCars (And are we losing our flair?)

From the xCar archives – https://www.facebook.com/groups/worldcarshare/ (218 members)

USA. Inventor John W. Pitts, pathological inventor, notable primarily for his attempts at building a flying car and actually get it off the ground, the “Sky Car”. Source: The Old Motor, http://theoldmotor.com

The “Sky Car” was powered a four-cylinder engine. It did get off the ground by roughly eight inches or so and the “flight” ended. It was obviously staged for the camera and unwisely located right next to a tree.

Hundreds of Cars, No Garage: Recipe for a low carbon future – Australian perspectives on sustainable transportation

We are trying to get a better look at how sustainable transportation is coming along in Australia, as an example of one of the several handfuls of heavily motorized countries which have for decades concentrated on building (and in the process unknowingly locking themselves into) what is basically an all-car infrastructure. This is the second in what we intend to be a series of articles on this topic. Published with the permission of the author, a professor in the media department of a leading Australian university, it takes an outside-looking-in perspective of our topic.