Going car free?

[Quintessence]

Hey all,

I was wondering if any of you have experience living a car-free lifestyle. It's something I've been seriously considering for many reasons, environmental ones first and foremost. If you live in an area where having a car is not required for your survival, I feel there is an ethical imperative to avoid owning one. Additionally, owning a car is just a pain, especially financially. I don't want to deal with it.

Or of I do want to deal with it, I want the kind of vehicle we should all be bloody driving in the 21st century. Enough with these gigantic, ancestor-burning monstrosities! I just need something to move me. What I want is something like this or this - a simple, modest vehicle with a little bit of cargo room that runs full electric and has a decent range. You'd think that these things would be more readily available by now at a reasonable consumer price point. A big part of me wants to refuse to purchase a car unless I can get a full electric or what I actually want - which is the above. Unless people put their foot down and demand change, it isn't going to happen.

Thoughts and advice about a car-free lifestyle or finding that tree-hugger dream vehicle?

 

[GoodbyeDave]

In Britain we have plenty of electric vehicles and London has charging points:
Electric cars - UK available Electric cars | £5,000 uk electric car grant | New & used electric cars
https://www.london.gov.uk/priorities/transport/green-transport/electric-vehicles-for-london

Personally, I've never used a car. Obviously as a Londoner I've got great public transport, but I managed in the years when I lived in a towns of only 200,000 inhabitants.

 

[Alceste]

I've lived car free in a number of big cities. It's actually quite nice. You avoid the expense of a car and associated hassles like parking, get more exercise and see more of the city than you otherwise would. If you can do it, you won't regret it. At the moment, I depend on my car for work, but look forward to the day I can get an electric car on the cheap.

 

[Vinayaka]

but look forward to the day I can get an electric car on the cheap.

Us too, if there was an inexpensive model. I've considered a scooter, but the weather is often a problem here. We'd keep the car (Yaris) though for road trips and use the tiny electric for city. Here we still burn coal to make electricity so it's not actually green.

 

[Quagmire]

I'll be 55 next month and I've never owned a car in my life.

I've never even had a driver's license for anything other than motorcycles.

 

[methylatedghosts]

I don't have a car at right now, in fact I've never owned one. Course, I do have my licence, but I don't really need one where I live. I walk most places, and if my destination is a bit further out, busses and trains are regular and reliable.

 

[Revoltingest]

I haven't owned a car in many years.
(But I have 3 trucks, 2 motorcycles, a few bikes, a canoe, & many pairs of shoes. I usually walk to work.)

 

[Drolefille]

Our public transport sucks and car-free isn't an option for me. Add in that I travel on weekends to my LARP events and I need a vehicle.

 

[Alceste]

Us too, if there was an inexpensive model. I've considered a scooter, but the weather is often a problem here. We'd keep the car (Yaris) though for road trips and use the tiny electric for city. Here we still burn coal to make electricity so it's not actually green.

We're in a hydro province, so although it's not environmentally ideal, it's better than burning petroleum.

 

[Runewolf1973]

I have a tree-hugger vehicle...literally. Note the spruce bough that got stuck in my roof rack...

I then decided to install some limb risers to prevent that in the future...

This is my daily driver and it's a gas guzzling, oil burning beast, but considering it's an '09 and it only has 50,000km on the odometer, that means I really don't drive it a whole lot. It is a fun vehicle that gets me to work and also gets me and my family around. This jeep takes me wherever I wish to go on or offroad. I have no need to buy a quad, or a snowmobile, or a dirt bike, or any other fuel-burning "toy" in order to have a little fun offroad. There is also this thing we in the jeep community call Tread Lightly. It is basically a set of rules established for offroaders to ensure the protection of the environment while at the same time enjoying their hobby.


BTW. I think everyone should own a Jeep. Just think how much oil and resources we would save if we didn't have use it on paving roads? Haha!

 

[work in progress]

Hey all,

I was wondering if any of you have experience living a car-free lifestyle. It's something I've been seriously considering for many reasons, environmental ones first and foremost. If you live in an area where having a car is not required for your survival, I feel there is an ethical imperative to avoid owning one. Additionally, owning a car is just a pain, especially financially. I don't want to deal with it.

Or of I do want to deal with it, I want the kind of vehicle we should all be bloody driving in the 21st century. Enough with these gigantic, ancestor-burning monstrosities! I just need something to move me. What I want is something like this or this - a simple, modest vehicle with a little bit of cargo room that runs full electric and has a decent range. You'd think that these things would be more readily available by now at a reasonable consumer price point. A big part of me wants to refuse to purchase a car unless I can get a full electric or what I actually want - which is the above. Unless people put their foot down and demand change, it isn't going to happen.

Thoughts and advice about a car-free lifestyle or finding that tree-hugger dream vehicle?

Moving back to the city from a remote suburb 12 years ago, removed the necessity of having two cars at home. Now that my wife is no longer able to drive, and we live two blocks away from two city bus routes, the one car left, is a waste of money that can better be spent on other things. Whenever I actually need a car (maybe once or twice a month), it's far cheaper and far less headaches to just rent a car for the day. Everything else I can cover on foot, by bike, or take the bus if necessary.

It all depends where you live. If we move back to the country after I retire, I would probably have to get another car...but for now, it's totally unnecessary, and a lot healthier...not to mention - far less environmental impact to go carless.

As a society, getting sucked in to Car Culture has been the biggest environmental mistake of the 20th Century, and hopefully, the glut of highways, millions of cars, rising fuel costs, and rising vehicle costs, are enough to push back against the power of the Highway Lobby, and start bringing the auto age to an end.

If the human race is going to survive the coming decades, it's going to require ending continuous economic growth and constantly rising energy and resource demands. And, as long as we are devoting so much industrial output to car production, and energy to fuel them....and building more concrete highways for them to run on, the automobile will be one more obsession leading to environmental disaster!

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

This is a question I have pondered a number of times.
In my young student days I always rode a lambretta scooter, It was just right around London and was manageable for the few trips home to the farm in Wales.
Then for about ten years I used public transport. But a young growing family needs the use of a car so I fell in line and got one.
To day I am some what ancient, and a car is more a comfort and convenience than a necessity. In fact it would save me money to use a taxi instead, even though I live in a small country town.
The costs in owning a car, like Insurance, road tax, MOT and servicing. Means my cost per mile is exceptionally high, when I only use it for some 2000+ miles a year. I drive a Toyota Camry so the miles per gallon are not that good compared to more recent offerings, but as I do so few miles that fuel costs are minimal anyway.

On balance, I am hardly creating an environmental issue by burning the little fuel that I do, and I can afford the convenience. So I will probably continue to drive for as long as it is safe for me to do so.

 

[illykitty]

I'd love to have an electric car too, but it's not entirely eco here, considering how electricity is produced in the UK. I wonder if it is still better? Another problem though is to find charging points. We don't live in London (and if we did we'd use the Underground anyway!) I only know of one place that has a charging area in the city nearby.

Anyway, I don't drive, I don't have a licence! My husband has a small car (Vauxhall Corsa) and we use it mainly for weekly shopping and sometimes going to places... It doesn't need refilling too often. Could be better but for the immediate time we can't really afford to get something else. We'll have to soon though, it's not going to last much longer.

It annoys me that we aren't pushing eco tech more and that so much already exists but isn't being used to the fullest potential. Considering the crisis we will have to face... It's insane. And we call ourself intelligent animals...

 

[Penumbra]

Hey all,

I was wondering if any of you have experience living a car-free lifestyle. It's something I've been seriously considering for many reasons, environmental ones first and foremost. If you live in an area where having a car is not required for your survival, I feel there is an ethical imperative to avoid owning one. Additionally, owning a car is just a pain, especially financially. I don't want to deal with it.

Or of I do want to deal with it, I want the kind of vehicle we should all be bloody driving in the 21st century. Enough with these gigantic, ancestor-burning monstrosities! I just need something to move me. What I want is something like this or this - a simple, modest vehicle with a little bit of cargo room that runs full electric and has a decent range. You'd think that these things would be more readily available by now at a reasonable consumer price point. A big part of me wants to refuse to purchase a car unless I can get a full electric or what I actually want - which is the above. Unless people put their foot down and demand change, it isn't going to happen.

Thoughts and advice about a car-free lifestyle or finding that tree-hugger dream vehicle?

In cities it's common. If I lived in a city, I would be car free. In the suburbs, I require a car, unless I want to be mostly home-bound or stuck within a short bike range.

I'd like to start riding my bike to work, rather than my compact car. But it would be terrible in winter and summer, so probably fall and spring only. The road that I'd have to go along is extremely dangerous, but there are some forest trails I might be able to get through. But I'd worry about ticks, then. We have a huge tick problem here.

As it currently is, I put about 7,000-8,000 miles on my car each year, which is rather low. I could probably only reduce that by about 1,500 if I bike to work half of the year. I can't get an electric car because my apartment complex doesn't have any infrastructure for plugging cars in.

Also the reason you don't see more tiny electric cars is especially because you're in the US. The US is far more spread out than Europe and other places. So we have less use of trains, and more use of cars, by a lot. Highway travel is very common, including with kids and stuff in the back, so cars need to be larger, with better high-speed crash ratings, and able to comfortably reach 65-75mph without straining the engine if they're going to be inter-city types of cars. In the US it's a very niche market for these tiny types of cars because they'd be targeting someone that does need a car (so outside of a city most likely), but that doesn't plan on doing any highway travel at all (those cars you linked to have top speeds of 28mph and 30mph) or hauling kids around, and that doesn't want a moped or motorcycle. That doesn't leave very many Americans left.

Overall the US just has not been a very good market for tiny cars so far, for this reason.

 

[HexBomb]

It all depends on where you live. For me, since I can't drive, it is not so much of a choice, and it can lead to major problems. For example, there are few sidewalks where I live, and no drivers pay attention to pedestrians. (I've even gotten hit by a cop!) It also makes finding a job doubly difficult, since you have to be able to walk or make your way there regularly, despite things like rain, or as we've dealt with recently, huge amounts of snow and ice, and even more recently, flooding.

It is absolutely doable, but it can be one giant pain in the backside, and as with many things...location, location, location.

 

[work in progress]

It all depends on where you live. For me, since I can't drive, it is not so much of a choice, and it can lead to major problems. For example, there are few sidewalks where I live, and no drivers pay attention to pedestrians. (I've even gotten hit by a cop!) It also makes finding a job doubly difficult, since you have to be able to walk or make your way there regularly, despite things like rain, or as we've dealt with recently, huge amounts of snow and ice, and even more recently, flooding.

It is absolutely doable, but it can be one giant pain in the backside, and as with many things...location, location, location.

First, I wish you all the best with your job search.
It is definitely a more difficult time for young people today to find decent jobs-that pay living wages than it was when I finished school almost 40 years ago. And applying for work and going to interviews is a greater challenge if you don't drive.

Re: the greater picture, a combination of economic slowdown, cities already clogged with traffic, and rising costs of car ownership, are slowly chipping away at automobile ownership...which I see as a positive trend and a net benefit for personal health, environment, and a means to re-establish liveable cities that became lost when city planning started focusing on cars instead of people.

 

[LuisDantas]

I got my driver's license at 18. Only got a car when I was 25. Went without a car from 2006 to 2012 as well.

However, both Brazilian car prices and Brazilian public transportation are... less than really tolerable. I can't very well claim that it was a matter of ecological concerns either time, although there are a lot of downsides to owning a car, the ecological ones among them.

The main challenge IMO is in fact developing a social understanding that respect and self-image should not be attached to owning a vehicle.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

I got my driver's license at 18. Only got a car when I was 25. Went without a car from 2006 to 2012 as well.

However, both Brazilian car prices and Brazilian public transportation are... less than really tolerable. I can't very well claim that it was a matter of ecological concerns either time, although there are a lot of downsides to owning a car, the ecological ones among them.

The main challenge IMO is in fact developing a social understanding that respect and self-image should not be attached to owning a vehicle.

I had never considered the image question, as it has never occurred to me that there was one. When I lived in London a car was an encumbrance not an asset. It was far better to take a taxi or use the underground, and hire a self drive when longer journeys came up.

It is true some people go for the big better and blingiest they can find. however many people never feel the need to own a car at all. And this includes the very rich, who might prefer to use hire services.

However I do know people who regularly buy new cars on hire purchase and struggle to make the repayments or to keep up with the running costs. Few such people need brand new cars, it is not cost effective. The difference is image.

 

[LuisDantas]

I had never considered the image question, as it has never occurred to me that there was one.

Brazilians buy cars mostly out of status considerations.

That is the only halfway rational explanation for what a car costs here. It is also easily verifiable in everyday situations.

Even a new "popular", entry-level car is worth about 28 months or 6000 hours of work by a minimum wage worker. And yet it takes considerable face for anyone of any social class to actually say that they do not desire to have a car of their own.

 

[Revoltingest]

I got my driver's license at 18. Only got a car when I was 25. Went without a car from 2006 to 2012 as well.

However, both Brazilian car prices and Brazilian public transportation are... less than really tolerable. I can't very well claim that it was a matter of ecological concerns either time, although there are a lot of downsides to owning a car, the ecological ones among them.

The main challenge IMO is in fact developing a social understanding that respect and self-image should not be attached to owning a vehicle.

Clearly, I am more advanced than my fellow humans.
There is no status to be had in the vehicles I own.
Dents, rust, age, blandness & dirt afflict'm all.
I was done buying new vehicles many years ago.