New Indian Car: $2,500, 50mpg

[Broomstick]

It would need an air bag and ABS breaks in order to pass UK regulations. The rest, like manual steering and wind-down windows is no different to most older cars on the road today.

ABS brakes are required in the UK? They aren't in the US, at least they weren't when I bought my Echo in 2002.

(Airbags are required in the US)

Anyhow, some of these things - the manual windows, for example - are shared with my current car, and it does bring the price down. However, it looks a little TOO trimmed down. About the only positive here is that yes, it is probably somewhat safer than a motorcycle, particularly safer than a motorcycle with multiple passengers.

With a top speed of only 43 mph it would not be legal to drive this on many US roads, such as the Interstate system where the minimum speed is 45 mph.

I seem to recall reading on this board (repeatedly) that small cars do better in the crash tests done by the manufactures against a brick wall but absolutely suck when they hit another vehicle.

That's because the forces involved when a small car and a large SUV collide head on, or even offset, greatly exceed those generated by a small car hitting a stationary object.

What really bothers me are those wheels. They look freakishly tiny, even by small car standards. Is there such a thing as having too small a wheel?

Yes. My Festiva had ridiculously small wheels, the smallest size ever put on a production car in the US if I recall - I think 11 inches? 12 inches? Anyhow, the wheel bearings would wear out. I think we had to replace them more often than anything else. Someone came up with an after-market modification to put larger wheels on it which greatly reduced the bearing problems and also made it easier to get new tires. The modification did require some adjustment to the speedometer for accurate readings.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The Duchess believes that we in the first world should wean ourselves off the car and our oil addiction. It is quite consistent for her to say that people in the third world should not exacerbate the problem, particularly given their huge numbers.

Also, first world countries have had their cities systematically planned around the assumption of car use, whereas third world countries have not done this. Therefore, the lack of cars is not a mobility issue in the third world, whereas it would literally cause people to starve to death in America. So the first world must gradually eliminate cars. The third world, however, should, as noted, simply never start having them in the first place.

And I'm sort of assuming that if no new cars were being built, everyone would use the existing ones to exhaustion.

[Illuminatus Primus]

...while cars shouldn't be sold at all in the third world.

Pretty damn selfish statement, really - why should accident of location of birth bar people from owning a car? Yes, there are road vehicles that are ridiculous, but having reliable transportation could mean a great deal to, say, a small entrepreneur supporting a family. What about taxi drivers? Doesn't their profession demand some sort of road vehicle? Well, maybe India should stick to rickshaws, right? Why should they get uppity and demand the same technology you enjoy?

Either it's proper for everyone to be able to own a car or for no one to own a car.

As the Her Grace said, it really is a matter of being for their own good.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Given what they ordinarily have in India, I find this isn't as lethal a deathmobile as many would think it in the States or EU. Most traffic won't be on huge highways going at high speed, but in cramped city streets where bumper to bumper is a way of life (okay, SoCal and London are that way too). The lack of A/C would, I expect, make it the first option for those who could afford it. Otherwise, there's little more needed for what it's going to be used for.

It is certainly better than being on a moped or one of those 3-wheeler taxis.

Sadly, even the efficiency won't help if thousands and thousands of these things act like locusts on the world fuel supply. Jevons paradox and all that jazz.

[Broomstick]

As the Her Grace said, it really is a matter of being for their own good.

And a great deal of damage has been done in the past with the justification of "for their own good".

In actual fact, the cities of many industrialized nations pre-date the automobile and either have mass transit currently, or could have it installed.

In the non-industrialized nations, people STILL need to get around. It's just that up until now it's been either on foot or with animal power.

It's still unfair to tell people that, oh, you didn't get a car by 2003, you're fucked, you can never own one, too bad, so sorry. Nor, if the upcoming crisis materializes, is it fair to say oh, you've had cars since 1950, it's OK for you to keep having them even if the fuel has run out and there's no reason you can't take the train. How the fuck did people get around before, say 1920? Busses, trains, horseback, foot...

It's an unfair, unjust, morally corrupt attitude to say that those who have cars can be allowed to keep them (even in a vastly different form) and those who don't can NEVER have them. Among other things, it totally stifles the impetus for people in those other countries to come up with a better way to make/use/fuel/utilize cars. If another country comes up with a way to run cars on local renewable resources I don't see the purpose of denying them that means of transportation other than to allow the current privileged categories to keep their privileges at the expense of others.

If the world is so fucked up that 3/4 of the world population must be forbidden from ever owning a car then the other 1/4 shouldn't have cars either.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Okay, but then you have to feel bad and try every hour of every day to right the extremely unfair economic disparity between you as an American and the rest of the world population. You can't just bring it up with regard to this.

What is this 'right to a car?' If gasoline is going to become an unsustainable good soon, why would we want for other countries to develop in ways such that they'd be more dependent on it?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

And I fully intend to eliminate all cars from the roads in the United States as well, Broomstick, given the chance. I just want to make the descent a controlled one, as I do for the entire world. That means stopping growth, first, which means eliminating production in the third world, while focusing production in the first world on extremely small 55+ mpg cars, or even higher, and at the same time banning almost all existing cars from the roads, to stretch out the supply of gasoline for as long as possible.

[Aaron]

I don't know about everyone else but I fully intend to keep using my car after everything goes to shit. I'm buying two oxen and harnessing them to the front, worked in Bosnia should work for me.

[Broomstick]

Okay, but then you have to feel bad and try every hour of every day to right the extremely unfair economic disparity between you as an American and the rest of the world population. You can't just bring it up with regard to this.

What "disparity"?

Currently I am unemployed. There are LOTS of people in India with a higher income than I have right now. Granted there are a LOT MORE living in even more dire straits than I am, but it's a lot more complicated than American=Rich Beyond Avarice and India/China/Indonesia/Wherever=Dirt Poor

If gasoline is going to become an unsustainable good soon, why would we want for other countries to develop in ways such that they'd be more dependent on it?

Why do you assume gasoline is the ONLY means to fuel a vehicle?

IT ISN'T

For many years it was the most expedient/cost efficient/easiest, but you're too stuck in the mindset that transportation=gasoline. In the early 20th Century there were cars running on electricity, steam, and various types of oil, not all of them petroleum derieved. Yes, petrol eventually pushed the alternatives out of the market but if people from 1880-1920 could come up with alternatives why the fuck can't we?

Also - NOWHERE did I state that ANYONE had some sort of inherent "right" to a car, only that it was unfair to deny the privilege of car ownership based on the crap-shoot of the economy of the place where you were born. As I said, if 3/4 of the people are never allowed to own a car I can't see where you can justify the remaining 1/4 to own one as a sort of hereditary privelege or accident of fate.

I suppose ya'll also TOTALLY blew past my "come up with a better way to make/use/fuel/utilize cars. If another country comes up with a way to run cars on local renewable resources" statement? For all you know, cow dung could turn out to be the fuel of rural India's future. Not practical other places, which might use something else - hydro generated electrical or solar power or geo thermal converted to electrical or ethanol distilled from agricultural and other organic waste or something else. It probably won't be as efficient as petroleum, but when the petroleum runs out that will be a moot point, won't it?

Part of the reason we got into this fix in the first place was overwhelming dependence on just one energy source. If we had a diversity of energy sources it would be far less likely that a shortage of one would have a completely devastating effect on the world economy.

Of course, no one wants to touch the Ultimate Solution to Shortages and Pollution - the root of the problem, as I see it, is just too damn many people. Problem is (one of them) that death on the scale required to truly reverse and fix the situation is intolerable and, if from anything other than natural disaster, completely immoral and evil.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Of course, no one wants to touch the Ultimate Solution to Shortages and Pollution - the root of the problem, as I see it, is just too damn many people. Problem is (one of them) that death on the scale required to truly reverse and fix the situation is intolerable and, if from anything other than natural disaster, completely immoral and evil.

DING! DING! We have a winner. Not even Greenpeace talks about that. You can just imagine if anyone other than the Chicom government came out with "The world's going to shit unless you people stop breeding like fucking rabbits". There'd be riots in the streets.

There will be anyway, because one way or another, motoring is ending. I don't care whether you fill your car up with dino-juice containing 100% pure 100 million year old sunshine, or the stuff from the farms that should be making your dinner today. Too many people, too much industry, too little resources.

Life ain't fair. It sure sucks to be these Chinese and Indian people who can finally afford to have a car and decent house and family who aren't living in rags. There are people who have experienced empty petrol stations in China who have only owned a car for a year. We didn't see that until the '70s, and then only briefly.

Too bad. I hear the best way to defeat climate change is to pump more and more gases into the air via the wonder of our amazing infinitely growing economies.

[Adrian Laguna]

Also, first world countries have had their cities systematically planned around the assumption of car use, whereas third world countries have not done this. Therefore, the lack of cars is not a mobility issue in the third world, whereas it would literally cause people to starve to death in America.

That would be "third world countries have done this less". You obviously haven't done much traveling around major third world metropolitan areas, because they are highly dependent on motor vehicles. Their saving grace is the general lack of suburbs, an abomination that exists in widespread form only within the USA.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Why is world population limitation and control so fucking taboo anyway? Its common fucking sense. Is it because of religion? Some absurd concept of personal liberty?

[Broomstick]

There will be anyway, because one way or another, motoring is ending. I don't care whether you fill your car up with dino-juice containing 100% pure 100 million year old sunshine, or the stuff from the farms that should be making your dinner today.

I'm not arguing with the reduction of "motoring" - I am arguing that it should be done in a equitable or justifiable manner. It should not be people in Europe and North America can continue at a level 30% or 15% of their prior motoring and everyone else gets 0.

In a perfect world in the proposed crisis situation, you would have to JUSTIFY owning/operating a motor vehicle. And social status/accident of birth should NOT be the criteria.

For example, motor vehicles are damn useful to law enforcement and for medical transportation. So useful, in fact, that conversion to non-petrol fuel and continued use would be logical. Certain tradesmen might be able to justify the use of small road-vehicles. The average office worker - even executive level or CEO - not so much. They can take the damn train. Actually, in places like Manhattan and the Chicago Loop they never stopped taking the train. Allowing motorscooters or Tata Nano style cars for short commutes to a rail station could be justified, though not so practical on freeways and in winter conditions. Perhaps allow people to rent vehicles, but at a steep cost for the service. Some places like Alaska, however, are heavily dependent on aircraft, they don't have roads. But these aren't big jets - they're small scale, like what I fly. The Europeans already have an aircraft worthy engine both powerful and light enough to run small "bush" aircraft that could run on bio-diesel. Brazil has a fleet of alcohol-fueled agricultural aircraft. In the early 20th Century someone actually developed and flew a steam powered airplane. Zepplins might become a solution for shipping provided lifting gas can be economically obtained (which might be hydrogen, not helium, which does present safety and public relation issues). I don't know how difficult conversion of ocean shipping back to wind power would be, but since that's how it was done exclusively up until the 19th Century it certainly CAN be done.

What it comes down to is what is appropriate for the region in question - an area like Alaska might wind up with dogsleds and airplanes but no cars or trucks. In the US Midwest trains might once again dominate all other transportation, with either bikes/scooters or highly efficient busses for connecting train stations.

It would be a very different world, indeed.

Aside from transportation, there would also be changes in architecture with decisions driven by local climate rather than fashion trends - you can't escape the fact that a Chicago winter is cold enough to be lethal without some sort of heating system, and the more expensive fuel becomes the more you need insulation. A place like Las Vegas is habitable by its current population only because there is a means to bring water in from elsewhere. Food choices will be impacted - the more it costs to transport food the more pressure there is to by local and in-season foods.

But, regardless, it will NOT be some sort of quasi-communist state where reason and logic dictates all. The rich have ALWAYS paid through the nose to obtain delicacies for the dinner table or for better transportation, and that will continue. And is it so wrong, if properly implemented? If your profession can not justify ownership of an automobile allow the purchase of the privilege for an exorbitant cost, said money going directly to fund public transportation or the like. The rich will get their toy (but only the very, very rich, equivalent to people who own private Lear jets or B-707's today) and that toy will subsidize the general good. Allow the wealthy to buy imported food - but tax that import heavily and use the money to promote local agriculture so the not-so-rich are able to get good food, too, even if not so socially exclusive.

Alas - people are greedy, there are still too many, and paradise will not happen on Earth.

I expect at some point there will be a Big Crash and a lot of people will die. That, however, will most likely NOT be fair - in some cases people's lives will be only moderately affected while in other places entire populations may be wiped out.

[brianeyci]

Why is world population limitation and control so fucking taboo anyway? Its common fucking sense. Is it because of religion? Some absurd concept of personal liberty?

No. It's because it's what the majority of the adult world lives for: you work to make a better life for your children. I thought Mike already explained it the last time you brought up population control somewhere. Having a child is a form of immortality. Good luck killing that.

If you want people to swallow population control, you better invent another reason for people to live besides making a better life for their children. I'm for population control, but telling people not to have children is like telling people not to have sex to stop AIDS. It won't happen, unless you replace it with something just as good.

I can think of very few things that will replace it; ironically, a religion popping up which tells its followers not to have children, or a technocracy which promises immortality by colonizing the stars. Maybe the Internet can be a form of immortality, I don't know, storing stories for future generations to browse... maybe have a virtual child or even mind uploading.

[Darth Servo]

Thing is, population control isn't about having zero children. Its about having one to three as opposed to ten like the fundies do.

[Darth Wong]

Why do you assume gasoline is the ONLY means to fuel a vehicle?

IT ISN'T

For many years it was the most expedient/cost efficient/easiest, but you're too stuck in the mindset that transportation=gasoline. In the early 20th Century there were cars running on electricity, steam, and various types of oil, not all of them petroleum derieved. Yes, petrol eventually pushed the alternatives out of the market but if people from 1880-1920 could come up with alternatives why the fuck can't we?

Petrol pushed the alternatives out of the market because it yields a lot of energy for very little cost. Alternatives will cost much more, which is going to be a real problem in third-world countries that don't exactly have huge amounts of money to spare and would be well-advised not to restructure their societies around the North American model that will inevitably become prohibitively expensive to maintain once oil prices shoot up.

[brianeyci]

Thing is, population control isn't about having zero children. Its about having one to three as opposed to ten like the fundies do.

More children means more of you lives on. Given one child isn't working in a totalitarian state, China, I don't see how two children or one child could work in a liberal democracy. People will find ways to evade it and even worse, the upper class could bribe and weasel and lawyer their way out of it, propagating their leeching while the poor are without the only means to advance themselves.

No, if you want real population control and not just an impossible to enforce law, you have to address the fact that most people feel having a child is a way of keeping yourself living forever, regardless of if the rule is two children or one child or zero children. It's entirely possible that for real population control, the rule might be zero children for many people and you'd have to earn the privilege of having one.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Thing is, population control isn't about having zero children. Its about having one to three as opposed to ten like the fundies do.

More children means more of you lives on. Given one child isn't working in a totalitarian state, China, I don't see how two children or one child could work in a liberal democracy. People will find ways to evade it and even worse, the upper class could bribe and weasel and lawyer their way out of it, propagating their leeching while the poor are without the only means to advance themselves.

No, if you want real population control and not just an impossible to enforce law, you have to address the fact that most people feel having a child is a way of keeping yourself living forever, regardless of if the rule is two children or one child or zero children. It's entirely possible that for real population control, the rule might be zero children for many people and you'd have to earn the privilege of having one.

Of course, enforcements a bitch, and negative population growth will destroy any economy.
1-2 child per person is feasible as it reduces the population over time, and lets parents have a child. The difference between 0 and a number is infinite, and frankly, western countries don't have much of a population problem, they're not the ones that need it most and the average is Europe hovers around the 1.4-2.9 mark anyway.
The problem for that particular part of the solution is quickly growing nations Like Africa, India,Bangladesh (OR population groups therein, such as the Bedouin here with 3 wives and 16+ kids in a family or the fundies all over the world) followed by nation with slower growth but massive populations (China, Bangladesh, etc').

[Broomstick]

Why do you assume gasoline is the ONLY means to fuel a vehicle?

IT ISN'T

For many years it was the most expedient/cost efficient/easiest, but you're too stuck in the mindset that transportation=gasoline. In the early 20th Century there were cars running on electricity, steam, and various types of oil, not all of them petroleum derieved. Yes, petrol eventually pushed the alternatives out of the market but if people from 1880-1920 could come up with alternatives why the fuck can't we?

Petrol pushed the alternatives out of the market because it yields a lot of energy for very little cost. Alternatives will cost much more, which is going to be a real problem in third-world countries that don't exactly have huge amounts of money to spare and would be well-advised not to restructure their societies around the North American model that will inevitably become prohibitively expensive to maintain once oil prices shoot up.

I suspect North America will be doing some restructuring, too.

The point is, I see people (not unnecessarily in this specific thread, a more general meme) talking like the horseless carriage will entirely disappear once the gasoline is gone or gets hideously expensive. It won't. The alternatives aren't as efficient, no, but they ARE more efficient than "no gas at all". Ditto for international shipping and air travel. Those modes of transportation are just too damn useful for some things for them not to continue if there is some way to continue them.

It's just that traveling people and shipping things will get a hell of a lot more expensive. Cheap travel and shipping is an anomaly of the 20th Century.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'm not saying that the car will disappear entirely, unless the situation gets bad enough that we have a Committee of Public Safety giving directives, which is entirely possible. I am saying that it will disappear for all practical purposes in its form in the car culture, i.e., the personal ownership of automobiles by individuals. I would, for instance, find it quite conceivably that there might be on average, say, an electric car jointly owned by a co-operative of around 12 adults, give or take, for them to share for staggered, non-regular trips for which the public transportation infrastructure is insufficient. And I certainly think that there will always be enough oil for the police to keep driving Crown Vics until hell freezes over. But we're talking about the effect on the average person's personal life here, or at least I was, and in that specific case, for all practical purposes, the car is doomed.

[Broomstick]

I disagree, I think personal ownership of cars by individuals will be POSSIBLE but often not PRACTICAL. Actually a much better means to regulate the usage than draconian "committees" imposing decisions on people.

I do NOT think your "co-op" ownership idea will ever come to pass. Joint ownership of a car by a family, yes, but not by a group of unrelated adults. In cities such as Chicago or New York where car ownership can be prohibitively expensive for most people the solution is not co-op ownership but taxis and the occasional renting of a car. With such renting you only pay for as much car as you use, so to speak - you completely eliminate such aggravations as where to store it when not in use, scheduling maintenance and repairs, and so forth. You also do not have to carry car insurance as your own policy but can simply buy coverage for the time during which you rent the car. This is actually potentially more efficient than the co-op plan, as the same car could be used by hundreds of individuals over the course of a year, reducing the amount of resources locked up in individual cars, the cost of producing cars that would sit idle much of the time, and reducing the amount of space required for storage.

[brianeyci]

Of course, enforcements a bitch, and negative population growth will destroy any economy.

1-2 child per person is feasible as it reduces the population over time, and lets parents have a child. The difference between 0 and a number is infinite, and frankly, western countries don't have much of a population problem, they're not the ones that need it most and the average is Europe hovers around the 1.4-2.9 mark anyway.

Yes, you could argue that Western nations have reached a plateau. The problem with this plateau is it is based on exploitation of people in China, India, etc. So, if the goal is to bring every person on Earth up to an acceptable standard of living (and let's face it, this is the true goal we can argue about what that standard of living is somewhere else) then the constant c for ecological conditions in the logistic model Pn+1=cPn(1-Pn) must change for 0<=Pn<=1 where Pn is a fraction of the maximal population. Ecological conditions in the first world being determined by conditions in the third world, or in other words the number of slaves each first world citizen has. People don't like to think of it this way, but it's truly how the world works; right now children are ripping apart your old monitors and breaking apart old ships in toxic smoke. If you want to rein in third world population growth, it's entirely possible the plateau for first world nations needs to go down. And that means population decrease.

The destruction of the economy is more linked to an aging population rather than an increasing population. The solution, unliked, is to deny older people as many benefits as younger, working class people. Unfortunately, given the way Western political systems and human nature works, the young cannot simply deny the old benefits or the old will overturn the government. Economies don't always need an ever increasing population -- they need a young population. The stopgap solution has been to have older people working well into retirement, but the real solution is to have as little children as possible domestically while increasing immigration. World population still goes down, but is just redistributed.

The problem for that particular part of the solution is quickly growing nations Like Africa, India,Bangladesh (OR population groups therein, such as the Bedouin here with 3 wives and 16+ kids in a family or the fundies all over the world) followed by nation with slower growth but massive populations (China, Bangladesh, etc').

The problem is not just a fundamentalist problem. If it was, the solution would be frankly simple; the people living in growing nations would simply die. Do you think North America and Europe gives a shit about Africa? Or China, or Bangladesh? The solution would simply to let many of them die, and you and I need not be worried in the long run about our own personal survival then because our governments will not put their survival as important as our own, or even as important as maintaining our own standard of living.

But it's not as simple as that. The goal of less population is to give every person who does live a higher standard of living. That's the whole point of population control. Some retards seem to think that population control means that less mouths need to be fed so they can maintain their own inflated standard of living. That is simply retarded, and is why most people have a knee-jerk reaction to population control: it's often the calling card of racists, anti-immigration people, or even anarchists.

[Redleader34]

Broomstick, its already started in my hometown. Some company called ZipCar owns a decent ammount of cars, and offers sa service to share them, for a price. My family hasn't owned a car since our 1990 Toyota Camery broke down 3~4 years ago. They provide the car and insurance, we just need the drivers licenses. Don' say that the collective ownership hasn't happened yet, its even in Chiago, if their website is to be belived. I can see things like that becoming more and more common, as costs of gas slowly become prohibitive, but people still need cars. I'm lucky that New York has enough mass transit to get around now.

[Broomstick]

OK, this company called "ZipCar" owns the car and you essentially "rent" it from them... that, to my mind, is more of a private rental system than 12 random neighbors getting together as a co-op to buy a car and privately maintain it.

It's also comparable to fractional airplane ownership, but you only buy rights to use the machine, you don't maintain it yourself.

[Dartzap]

I believe there is a scheme that recently started, aimed at older folks, where by you sold your car to a company, who does all the maintenance on the car, and pays for all the MOTs and repairs, whilst you just contribute to the fuel cost, which in this case is incredible minuscule because you only use it very rarely, it also then lends the cars to other people in your area as well.

I cant remember what the exact method was to how the fuel you paid for was used was used by you. I'll just have to and try to remember what it was called. I have heard of several streets joining up at the same time. So it is in a way of form of community sharing thingybob, eh?