• LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    Velomobiles weight 35kg (77 pounds) and offer very good protection compared to normal bicycles. Theoretically you could design single seat cars not much heavier. Of course for higher speeds you’d want more protection and a little bit wider.

    I imagine the ideal self driving car or robo-taxi to be two seats that face each other, so when you get one alone you have plenty of space to stretch your feet or put your groceries. It could be totally luxurious, simple to call and use and fast too. And the embodied energy would be very small and the “mpg” would be insane.

    It’s just sad how badly we are tackling climate change by just letting the free market run wild.

    • lad@programming.dev
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      9 months ago

      I wouldn’t say that it’s a free market when there are so many mega corporations and their lobbies in government, but I agree with the rest

      • hglman@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        There is no “free market”. It’s only an ideology, one that is actively being used to justify creating the conditions of megacorps and legal bribes.

      • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        Yeah. For example everyone thinks patents are great because they reward the little inventor for having the great idea. But they become commodities that can be acquired with capital and create hindrances to the free market. Effectively they protect large capital investments to prevent disruptions to change the market too quickly. Anything new takes 20 years at least to be fully utilized.

        With climate change that basically means every single improvement to turn our thousands of industrial process towards sustainability or circular economy is being min-maxed for profit.