I can't even get people to stop using those Morley Volume Wah pedals from the 70s. They needed two internal voltages (well, 3) so they used dual half bridge rectifiers with different outputs, and so the different parts of the load each only pull their power off one direction of the AC. Creates huge amounts of hum. People just wave their hands, "oh you can filter that out." Yeah, in theory, but then, why do I spend so much time listening to it coming out of the speaker until somebody bitches?
It isn't usually the old wiring, it is the old crap that people plug in. Most old equipment was well designed and doesn't introduce much hum. Some does.
Yeah, in a private vanity audio room you can just move stuff around. But in a pro audio situation, that is lost money, and the equipment changes all the time as you bring in different musicians. Having directional cables and planning where the noise goes prevents problems when somebody plugs in their precious POS pedal. It is almost always analog effects or old cheapo digital effects and not the preamps or instrument. Modern cheapo digital is no problem, because these days you just use an off-the-shelf switch-mode power supply. And even if they do build in their own power supply, 2 more rectifier diodes is cheaper than doubling the capacitance. Once upon a time though, diodes were expensive and power supplies were noisy. Yeah, everybody tried to blame the house wiring. But no.
On the road, ground loops are serious business because stage wiring is hell.
I know a guy with over $20k in audio cables, most of them are Klotz. He says the same thing, "they don't tangle."
Not a very good angle. I don't have any at home to take a pic.
You can forget about "these days" they've been making these for years. And yes, it is a huge market. BTW, FPGA is great for short runs, but when you're a major audio company selling large numbers of expensive units then ASIC is way cheaper. It isn't close.
And there are multiple companies with proprietary protocols in this space. They all use ASICs because microcontrollers are too slow, general purpose computing isn't responsive enough.
As to why, because incompatibility is brand lock. If it just pretends to be different but actually isn't, then plugging other machines in will work. Well, that is my cynical assumption. Also, in the case of Aviom (the one that is in almost every pro audio studio in the country) they use the ethernet physical protocol, and a proprietary daisy-chained network layer with redundancy. This allows for fairly robust behavior without any network administration required. You just plug the stuff in the same way you would with any other digital audio connection. And it shows up on the mixer in the intuitive place. Also, it stuffs a bunch of flags and crap into the packets. You can buy various controllers to remote manage stuff without learning networking, just how to stab buttons and spin rotary encoders. And there is a special switch that is also like a receiver and provides n digital audio outputs that can be selected from the 64 ethernet channels. So a standard studio setup you have maybe 8 individual monitor devices with ethernet, instrument in, headphones out with EQ, then a 16 port switch, then a 16 output receiver, which plugs into the mixing board. So you've actually got a dozen or so of those ASICs in each setup. And if you want to understand the network topology, just look at the cables. That is the topology.
In the end, why? Because you have one wire from each instrument position to the switch, and then only one wire from the switch to the sound shack. Then it goes back to one wire per track. That is actually a huge gain. If it required a network admin, or some kind of "computer guy," it would not be a gain.
http://www.prosoundweb.com/ima... These things are ubiquitous. Sad but true. I preach standards at these guys all the time, and they laugh at me, "I already spent $10k on the Avioms, too late for that" ("Plus, everybody knows how to use them already")
AC/DC and DC/DC are way over 90% for the whole conversion from input AC voltage to output DC voltage. The actual AC/DC step is 98%+ efficient.
Just converting the AC to DC, the efficiency is higher the higher the voltage, using a simple diode bridge rectifier. You lose about a volt from the diodes. And now you have pulsed DC. If you use a capacitor to smooth that out, there is little loss. But actually there will be a high frequency switch-mode flyback converter that will take the pulsed DC and convert it to the load voltage with low ripple. This will be way over 90% for any fixed application where you know the input and output voltages at design time. If you need input below ~ 85V then efficiency will be lower. Car battery chargers will always have a known load voltage, so the efficiency will be high.
OTOH converting the 6V AC output of a bicycle bottle generator to AC, the efficiency drops to about 80% because of the fixed voltage drop of the diodes. And if you pedal slowly and that generator only puts out 4V, you're down under 75%, depending on the diodes.
Keep in mind that the "directional" cables are grounded at only one end, and you can't guarantee that digital and analog will have separate ground paths. They won't be separate, actually. So the noise from the digital system really does leak into the analog side. Most of that can be filtered out, but it isn't always easy to filter it just enough but not too much, in varying conditions that are only partially under control of the sound team.
For home use, perfect filtering should be easy, and problems are limited to start with. But in pro audio this shit matters. It is not a pure digital system.
I'm not sure about other systems, but most modern linux burners can set the flag. You can also flag them as audio masters, which is really useful for when you want to stick them into pro audio equipment.
IME if you set the flags right you can even get them to play in drives that attempt not to play any kind of CD-R.:)
If you just snootily turn your nose up, though, you could fail to realize that there was a difference, just not the obvious one that you thought and that sounded wrong. If you keep trying until you find a plausible difference, then you're ready to understand that when the CD-Rs are tested, there are some number of units that almost pass the test, but have a higher likelihood of data loss. These can be sold as audio CDs, because audio data is more tolerant of data errors than computer software, or even other media types.
It is important to know the difference, because if you see the "audio CD" on sale for cheaper than the "data" CD, it might not actually be a good buy. Unless your use case is digital audio, then it might be worth the increased risk of a bad bit or two.
Actually, in pro audio ethernet is used with proprietary protocols, handled by black box ASIC chips with special switches. I deal with this crap in the studio. Where I am they use it mostly for the personal mixers providing monitor outputs, but some places use it for inputs too.
Also, warning for those about to embarrass themselves making fun of "directional" cables, that means it is grounded at one end, and you put all the grounded ends in to the same device to avoid ground loops. If you don't know what it is, it must be brain-numbingly stupid... right? Ignorance is bliss.
We use normal cables, sure. But we do buy expensive ones with nice plug shielding, because musicians may or may not even be sober at work. Expensive cables isn't just for fancy looks, that build quality can make a real difference. Plus, it might be a lot easier to get the bean counters to agree to buy premium cables, than to get them to agree to replace equipment. They might tell you, "use the spares until they fail" in which case you'll regret not having spent their money on the "over"-priced ones.
Same with instrument cables. No, a brand new expensive guitar cable does not sound better than a cheap one. But after 300 shows, the cheap one craps out during a show or session, and the expensive "hifi" one didn't because it has premium long life rubber and better plug strength. So it does actually sound better once you factor in the way it sounds when equipment fails and you can't even hear the instrument. Most of that benefit is in the middle price range, of course. A $1000 guitar cord probably has metal mesh "shielding" that substantially increases cable strength, but the $300 one already has plastic mesh that will provide more than enough abrasion protection.
Also... some commenters don't know this, apparently, but a "placebo effect" is a real effect. It doesn't mean it is a scam, it means the people were successfully tricked into getting healthier faster, or in this case, to have more fun. If you "trick" them into thinking the artist is more artsy, they might enjoy it more too. Pretty snooty to claim they're not really enjoying the subjective aspect of their choices as much as they claim to... especially if you're also claiming that due to the placebo effect they really are enjoying it more!
It isn't ludicrous at all, for the exact reasons you explain at the start. It is simply guaranteed to fail. But asking and being told no, that is part of the process.
Most cities in high density urban neighborhoods already provide charging stations at metered parking spots, and the parking time limit is only business hours. Also most urban municipality-owned parking garages have charging stations.
Those urban libraaals are already building this stuff and living in the future. Even in small cities.
Most of driving is to get out of town, often up in the mountains way off the beaten path... I can't imagine needing more than 250 miles range. A fast charge just means I'd need a 30 minute meal break every 250 miles. For people who aren't professional drivers, that's a good idea anyways. But it is very unlikely I would go that far and not fly.
We are only a handful of years away from $6k EVs with 250 miles range. The future is coming. And those cars will be the dinosaurs of the self-driving age because they'll never lose the ability to home fuel.
What they need is to set it up like a carnival ride; a car elevator takes it up and puts it into a slot in a vertical machine. This is great for high traffic areas like tourist traps, where land space is expensive. Then you're out of the car, waiting in a boring lobby with a loud television, next to the convenience store/gift shop with soothing thematic music.
This is why (if it wasn't for the TSA) flying is so much more convenient.
That's why we turned the lottery over to the State, and turned it into a Stupid Tax to support education.
My State did that with alcohol distribution, too. Organized crime can't penetrate the distribution layer that way. Too many bar codes and computerized inventory systems.
We threatened the cinemas with a law requiring them to allow customers to bring their own bottled water, and the companies all decided to agree to allow it without the law. But they just don't earn enough of the movie pie to be more important than soccer moms, so we can have water again.
Looking at current installs and technology, I think that fast charging will be most of the mobile charging, and slow charging is what you do at night to top it up and preserve battery life.
Fast charging is not inherently expensive, and patents don't last forever. Price differentiation will shrink in the future for charger tech.
Yep. There is a gas station by the freeway where I can buy gas for 10 cents cheaper than anywhere else. I went there two times. Both times it was such a hassle, I don't even stop there when I'm going that way. I shop at the 2nd cheapest place, which thankfully has "traditional" service.
I don't blame them for wanting me to go into their store. But that said, I'm not going back.
It may turn out that shared cars are better-maintained than average, and get repainted regularly (and cheaply, done in-house by the company)
Also, truck rentals are a thing. And, the company knows who the last user was; if they left it unclean, they'll get a $300 fee and either not do it again, or get banned.
The funny part is that this is already a thing. Having a dinner date is one of the prime reasons these car-less young men are renting a car a couple times a week. A lunch date, they bicycle together.
I live near downtown, and lots of these cars get parked on my street. Probably 15% of the people I see waving a credit card at the windshield are carrying flowers! And over 50% looked "dressed up." (eg, nice clothes of a style more mainstream than the person's hair)
New cars lose a lot of value driving off the lot. That hasn't changed. Odd you think it has and that they keep value now.
The economy already recovered. Odd you didn't know that, since you include comments about the economy. You don't care enough to follow the subject, but you cite it?
If the newer car has side-impact airbags, it will have a much higher safety rating. If not, then it won't have a higher rating than a 5, 10, or often 15 yo car, which are new enough to have modern crumple zones and front airbags. You can't lean on the average crash ratings, you have to actually compare real cars at real price points. You'll find that "regular-priced" cars had a big safety jump ~1995, and then it depends on the specific model after that. A 10 yo Prius is going to have better crash safety than many larger cars, for example.
I drive a 16 yo minivan with ~125,000 miles and it is basically "like new" from a practical perspective. It did once have a plugged fuel injector, a dead battery, and a small hose leak. The hoses were ready for scheduled replacement anyway, and the battery was 6 years old. The injector cost $65 to replace, and I was still able to drive it slowly. New cars can get plugged injectors, too. It was plugged the next day after driving 250 freeway miles with 30 city miles and frequent stops in the middle of that, on a hot day. That happens at any age.
It may sound old to some people, but it has electronic throttle control; all I have to do is floor the pedal and I'll accelerate right on the power curve automatically, no wasted revving. Works great with a $12 bluetooth ODB-II reader, too; I can view all the engine info from a smart phone. Any replacement part can be easily obtained from chain parts stores. Any repair or diagnostic will have a youtube walk-through. Not that it breaks down.
The anti-slip does both anti-lock and also anti-slide on ice, with the same processors. It is front wheel drive, but I can drive over a solid sheet of ice and slam on the brakes and stop in a few feet. If there is 8" of powdery snow that slowly forms an ice layer and eventually turns to slush over 2 weeks, I can drive during every stage of that, with regular tires, and never slide around; even freeway on/offramps are fine on ice-covered with powder. I slide a tiny bit, but control is maintained during any slide, so I'll slide a couple inches and correct. All because of a tiny microcontroller in each brake.
I'd love cruise control that can match speeds when behind somebody without cruise control, but that is luxury stuff. There is not much at all that a new car could offer that my used car doesn't already do and isn't available after-market. If my car was 5 years older, I'd have a giant laundry-list of desired features, most of them related to the computers and interfaces.
If you think people are tired of insurance payments, try getting it on the ballot to lower the insurance requirements. It will fail, and then you can re-evaluate how people feel about car insurance.;)
Hint: if you think car ownership is a major financial hit, you're really really poor, or bought a car that is expensive to maintain. If that is the biggest waste of money you have, you don't have much money, or are very efficient with it.
My counter-advice to young people: Never buy a new car unless you have enough money to consider it a "toy." Don't buy the cheapest used car, either, it will cost you more. Buy a mid-priced used car built after 1996 or so if you think you need one. When driverless cars with manufacturer-paid insurance show up, that will be the time to consider a new car as a long-term investment.
While I don't agree with Mr Coward's conclusion, that is a pretty severe straw man. Not everybody buys a car that way, and there is no reason to assume that a person who values ownership must have bought a car on credit.
You can buy a cheaper new car for 2 months of income at the median income level. Even a tiny bit of savings is enough to buy a used car for cash.
If you can't afford to pay cash for a quality used car, you can't afford the down-payment for a home loan either. There was a zero-down window during the bubble, but that is long gone.
If you go by the 30-year price curve instead of the 10-year, then there is little fear of things crashing down. It smooths out the ~15 year cycles. If the paper appreciation is higher than the expected 30-year, just use the 30-year curve number in your head and then if things "crash" you can just say, "it only came down to the price I expected it to land at. I wasn't ready to sell during the bubble."
When I lived in Portland we shopped at Whole Foods for fish, and a few other items. They have the best labeling anywhere. Yes, it was more expensive.
And no, the specialty cheese shop will be much, much cheaper. And more likely, across town, in regular priced real estate instead of the convenient and expensive location that Whole Foods purchased. I do eat a lot of cheese, I know this one! lol
There isn't anything at WF that is cheaper than other stores that carry like items. However, it has a lot of items in one place that otherwise would be at different specialty stores. That said, most shoppers will find everything they buy at WF at Trader Joes for 20%+ less money, and often higher quality. But there is no fresh fish.
On the west coast, there are a variety of stores that offer these types of higher-quality items without the extra premium that WF charges. Yes, better products are more expensive, but that doesn't mean any high price is just the item cost. In places without a strong health-food culture, WF might be the only game in town for things like organic fair trade cocoa in a glass jar; on the west coast you can actually find that almost anywhere. WF will have all the trendy (mass-produced) European brands, though; regular health-food stores will have more small American brands, and maybe not any mass-produced imports. The same brand is always higher priced at WF than at a family health-food store or regional chain.
It doesn't have to be very high density. It just has to be dense enough that young people can do daily travel by bicycle or public transit. Any community with a decent bus line is ripe for car-sharing, because there will be lots of working class people who are physically strong who don't want to own cars because of the expense. It is a huge convenience for these people to be able to rent a car at reasonable hourly rates once in awhile. And no, it isn't a nice clean sedan and a fixed schedule; fixed schedules are served by public transit in that scenario. A person so used to buying luxury would just own a car.;) It is non-fixed schedules that benefit.
And no, it isn't for people on-call who might be quickly summoned, either. If that person uses a car-share, they're probably bicycling to work already and the car is for recreation on off days, or distant infrequent errands.
Honestly, based on your comment I doubt anybody in your whole neighborhood is going to use this service.;)
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I can't even get people to stop using those Morley Volume Wah pedals from the 70s. They needed two internal voltages (well, 3) so they used dual half bridge rectifiers with different outputs, and so the different parts of the load each only pull their power off one direction of the AC. Creates huge amounts of hum. People just wave their hands, "oh you can filter that out." Yeah, in theory, but then, why do I spend so much time listening to it coming out of the speaker until somebody bitches?
It isn't usually the old wiring, it is the old crap that people plug in. Most old equipment was well designed and doesn't introduce much hum. Some does.
Yeah, in a private vanity audio room you can just move stuff around. But in a pro audio situation, that is lost money, and the equipment changes all the time as you bring in different musicians. Having directional cables and planning where the noise goes prevents problems when somebody plugs in their precious POS pedal. It is almost always analog effects or old cheapo digital effects and not the preamps or instrument. Modern cheapo digital is no problem, because these days you just use an off-the-shelf switch-mode power supply. And even if they do build in their own power supply, 2 more rectifier diodes is cheaper than doubling the capacitance. Once upon a time though, diodes were expensive and power supplies were noisy. Yeah, everybody tried to blame the house wiring. But no.
On the road, ground loops are serious business because stage wiring is hell.
I know a guy with over $20k in audio cables, most of them are Klotz. He says the same thing, "they don't tangle."
Just walk into the studio and pop the fucking box open and look at it if you want to see if it is an ASIC.
http://yamahacommercialaudiosy...
Not a very good angle. I don't have any at home to take a pic.
You can forget about "these days" they've been making these for years. And yes, it is a huge market. BTW, FPGA is great for short runs, but when you're a major audio company selling large numbers of expensive units then ASIC is way cheaper. It isn't close.
And there are multiple companies with proprietary protocols in this space. They all use ASICs because microcontrollers are too slow, general purpose computing isn't responsive enough.
As to why, because incompatibility is brand lock. If it just pretends to be different but actually isn't, then plugging other machines in will work. Well, that is my cynical assumption. Also, in the case of Aviom (the one that is in almost every pro audio studio in the country) they use the ethernet physical protocol, and a proprietary daisy-chained network layer with redundancy. This allows for fairly robust behavior without any network administration required. You just plug the stuff in the same way you would with any other digital audio connection. And it shows up on the mixer in the intuitive place. Also, it stuffs a bunch of flags and crap into the packets. You can buy various controllers to remote manage stuff without learning networking, just how to stab buttons and spin rotary encoders. And there is a special switch that is also like a receiver and provides n digital audio outputs that can be selected from the 64 ethernet channels. So a standard studio setup you have maybe 8 individual monitor devices with ethernet, instrument in, headphones out with EQ, then a 16 port switch, then a 16 output receiver, which plugs into the mixing board. So you've actually got a dozen or so of those ASICs in each setup. And if you want to understand the network topology, just look at the cables. That is the topology.
In the end, why? Because you have one wire from each instrument position to the switch, and then only one wire from the switch to the sound shack. Then it goes back to one wire per track. That is actually a huge gain. If it required a network admin, or some kind of "computer guy," it would not be a gain.
http://www.prosoundweb.com/ima...
These things are ubiquitous. Sad but true. I preach standards at these guys all the time, and they laugh at me, "I already spent $10k on the Avioms, too late for that" ("Plus, everybody knows how to use them already")
The thing is, audio isn't a digital circuit. It is a mixed circuit. The digital noise absolutely can and does leak into the analog signals.
AC/DC and DC/DC are way over 90% for the whole conversion from input AC voltage to output DC voltage. The actual AC/DC step is 98%+ efficient.
Just converting the AC to DC, the efficiency is higher the higher the voltage, using a simple diode bridge rectifier. You lose about a volt from the diodes. And now you have pulsed DC. If you use a capacitor to smooth that out, there is little loss. But actually there will be a high frequency switch-mode flyback converter that will take the pulsed DC and convert it to the load voltage with low ripple. This will be way over 90% for any fixed application where you know the input and output voltages at design time. If you need input below ~ 85V then efficiency will be lower. Car battery chargers will always have a known load voltage, so the efficiency will be high.
OTOH converting the 6V AC output of a bicycle bottle generator to AC, the efficiency drops to about 80% because of the fixed voltage drop of the diodes. And if you pedal slowly and that generator only puts out 4V, you're down under 75%, depending on the diodes.
Keep in mind that the "directional" cables are grounded at only one end, and you can't guarantee that digital and analog will have separate ground paths. They won't be separate, actually. So the noise from the digital system really does leak into the analog side. Most of that can be filtered out, but it isn't always easy to filter it just enough but not too much, in varying conditions that are only partially under control of the sound team.
For home use, perfect filtering should be easy, and problems are limited to start with. But in pro audio this shit matters. It is not a pure digital system.
I'm not sure about other systems, but most modern linux burners can set the flag. You can also flag them as audio masters, which is really useful for when you want to stick them into pro audio equipment.
IME if you set the flags right you can even get them to play in drives that attempt not to play any kind of CD-R. :)
If you just snootily turn your nose up, though, you could fail to realize that there was a difference, just not the obvious one that you thought and that sounded wrong. If you keep trying until you find a plausible difference, then you're ready to understand that when the CD-Rs are tested, there are some number of units that almost pass the test, but have a higher likelihood of data loss. These can be sold as audio CDs, because audio data is more tolerant of data errors than computer software, or even other media types.
It is important to know the difference, because if you see the "audio CD" on sale for cheaper than the "data" CD, it might not actually be a good buy. Unless your use case is digital audio, then it might be worth the increased risk of a bad bit or two.
If you wonder if ground loops might be a bogus concern, you've never worked in pro audio. ;)
Ask anybody working on the stage before or after a concert. They can set you straight on this one.
Actually, in pro audio ethernet is used with proprietary protocols, handled by black box ASIC chips with special switches. I deal with this crap in the studio. Where I am they use it mostly for the personal mixers providing monitor outputs, but some places use it for inputs too.
Also, warning for those about to embarrass themselves making fun of "directional" cables, that means it is grounded at one end, and you put all the grounded ends in to the same device to avoid ground loops. If you don't know what it is, it must be brain-numbingly stupid... right? Ignorance is bliss.
We use normal cables, sure. But we do buy expensive ones with nice plug shielding, because musicians may or may not even be sober at work. Expensive cables isn't just for fancy looks, that build quality can make a real difference. Plus, it might be a lot easier to get the bean counters to agree to buy premium cables, than to get them to agree to replace equipment. They might tell you, "use the spares until they fail" in which case you'll regret not having spent their money on the "over"-priced ones.
Same with instrument cables. No, a brand new expensive guitar cable does not sound better than a cheap one. But after 300 shows, the cheap one craps out during a show or session, and the expensive "hifi" one didn't because it has premium long life rubber and better plug strength. So it does actually sound better once you factor in the way it sounds when equipment fails and you can't even hear the instrument. Most of that benefit is in the middle price range, of course. A $1000 guitar cord probably has metal mesh "shielding" that substantially increases cable strength, but the $300 one already has plastic mesh that will provide more than enough abrasion protection.
Also... some commenters don't know this, apparently, but a "placebo effect" is a real effect. It doesn't mean it is a scam, it means the people were successfully tricked into getting healthier faster, or in this case, to have more fun. If you "trick" them into thinking the artist is more artsy, they might enjoy it more too. Pretty snooty to claim they're not really enjoying the subjective aspect of their choices as much as they claim to... especially if you're also claiming that due to the placebo effect they really are enjoying it more!
It isn't ludicrous at all, for the exact reasons you explain at the start. It is simply guaranteed to fail. But asking and being told no, that is part of the process.
I personally hope that people keep asking.
Most cities in high density urban neighborhoods already provide charging stations at metered parking spots, and the parking time limit is only business hours. Also most urban municipality-owned parking garages have charging stations.
Those urban libraaals are already building this stuff and living in the future. Even in small cities.
Most of driving is to get out of town, often up in the mountains way off the beaten path... I can't imagine needing more than 250 miles range. A fast charge just means I'd need a 30 minute meal break every 250 miles. For people who aren't professional drivers, that's a good idea anyways. But it is very unlikely I would go that far and not fly.
We are only a handful of years away from $6k EVs with 250 miles range. The future is coming. And those cars will be the dinosaurs of the self-driving age because they'll never lose the ability to home fuel.
What they need is to set it up like a carnival ride; a car elevator takes it up and puts it into a slot in a vertical machine. This is great for high traffic areas like tourist traps, where land space is expensive. Then you're out of the car, waiting in a boring lobby with a loud television, next to the convenience store/gift shop with soothing thematic music.
This is why (if it wasn't for the TSA) flying is so much more convenient.
That's why we turned the lottery over to the State, and turned it into a Stupid Tax to support education.
My State did that with alcohol distribution, too. Organized crime can't penetrate the distribution layer that way. Too many bar codes and computerized inventory systems.
We threatened the cinemas with a law requiring them to allow customers to bring their own bottled water, and the companies all decided to agree to allow it without the law. But they just don't earn enough of the movie pie to be more important than soccer moms, so we can have water again.
No thanks. I'll watch at home.
Looking at current installs and technology, I think that fast charging will be most of the mobile charging, and slow charging is what you do at night to top it up and preserve battery life.
Fast charging is not inherently expensive, and patents don't last forever. Price differentiation will shrink in the future for charger tech.
Yep. There is a gas station by the freeway where I can buy gas for 10 cents cheaper than anywhere else. I went there two times. Both times it was such a hassle, I don't even stop there when I'm going that way. I shop at the 2nd cheapest place, which thankfully has "traditional" service.
I don't blame them for wanting me to go into their store. But that said, I'm not going back.
It may turn out that shared cars are better-maintained than average, and get repainted regularly (and cheaply, done in-house by the company)
Also, truck rentals are a thing. And, the company knows who the last user was; if they left it unclean, they'll get a $300 fee and either not do it again, or get banned.
The funny part is that this is already a thing. Having a dinner date is one of the prime reasons these car-less young men are renting a car a couple times a week. A lunch date, they bicycle together.
I live near downtown, and lots of these cars get parked on my street. Probably 15% of the people I see waving a credit card at the windshield are carrying flowers! And over 50% looked "dressed up." (eg, nice clothes of a style more mainstream than the person's hair)
New cars lose a lot of value driving off the lot. That hasn't changed. Odd you think it has and that they keep value now.
The economy already recovered. Odd you didn't know that, since you include comments about the economy. You don't care enough to follow the subject, but you cite it?
If the newer car has side-impact airbags, it will have a much higher safety rating. If not, then it won't have a higher rating than a 5, 10, or often 15 yo car, which are new enough to have modern crumple zones and front airbags. You can't lean on the average crash ratings, you have to actually compare real cars at real price points. You'll find that "regular-priced" cars had a big safety jump ~1995, and then it depends on the specific model after that. A 10 yo Prius is going to have better crash safety than many larger cars, for example.
I drive a 16 yo minivan with ~125,000 miles and it is basically "like new" from a practical perspective. It did once have a plugged fuel injector, a dead battery, and a small hose leak. The hoses were ready for scheduled replacement anyway, and the battery was 6 years old. The injector cost $65 to replace, and I was still able to drive it slowly. New cars can get plugged injectors, too. It was plugged the next day after driving 250 freeway miles with 30 city miles and frequent stops in the middle of that, on a hot day. That happens at any age.
It may sound old to some people, but it has electronic throttle control; all I have to do is floor the pedal and I'll accelerate right on the power curve automatically, no wasted revving. Works great with a $12 bluetooth ODB-II reader, too; I can view all the engine info from a smart phone. Any replacement part can be easily obtained from chain parts stores. Any repair or diagnostic will have a youtube walk-through. Not that it breaks down.
The anti-slip does both anti-lock and also anti-slide on ice, with the same processors. It is front wheel drive, but I can drive over a solid sheet of ice and slam on the brakes and stop in a few feet. If there is 8" of powdery snow that slowly forms an ice layer and eventually turns to slush over 2 weeks, I can drive during every stage of that, with regular tires, and never slide around; even freeway on/offramps are fine on ice-covered with powder. I slide a tiny bit, but control is maintained during any slide, so I'll slide a couple inches and correct. All because of a tiny microcontroller in each brake.
I'd love cruise control that can match speeds when behind somebody without cruise control, but that is luxury stuff. There is not much at all that a new car could offer that my used car doesn't already do and isn't available after-market. If my car was 5 years older, I'd have a giant laundry-list of desired features, most of them related to the computers and interfaces.
If you think people are tired of insurance payments, try getting it on the ballot to lower the insurance requirements. It will fail, and then you can re-evaluate how people feel about car insurance. ;)
Hint: if you think car ownership is a major financial hit, you're really really poor, or bought a car that is expensive to maintain. If that is the biggest waste of money you have, you don't have much money, or are very efficient with it.
My counter-advice to young people: Never buy a new car unless you have enough money to consider it a "toy." Don't buy the cheapest used car, either, it will cost you more. Buy a mid-priced used car built after 1996 or so if you think you need one. When driverless cars with manufacturer-paid insurance show up, that will be the time to consider a new car as a long-term investment.
While I don't agree with Mr Coward's conclusion, that is a pretty severe straw man. Not everybody buys a car that way, and there is no reason to assume that a person who values ownership must have bought a car on credit.
You can buy a cheaper new car for 2 months of income at the median income level. Even a tiny bit of savings is enough to buy a used car for cash.
If you can't afford to pay cash for a quality used car, you can't afford the down-payment for a home loan either. There was a zero-down window during the bubble, but that is long gone.
If you go by the 30-year price curve instead of the 10-year, then there is little fear of things crashing down. It smooths out the ~15 year cycles. If the paper appreciation is higher than the expected 30-year, just use the 30-year curve number in your head and then if things "crash" you can just say, "it only came down to the price I expected it to land at. I wasn't ready to sell during the bubble."
When I lived in Portland we shopped at Whole Foods for fish, and a few other items. They have the best labeling anywhere. Yes, it was more expensive.
And no, the specialty cheese shop will be much, much cheaper. And more likely, across town, in regular priced real estate instead of the convenient and expensive location that Whole Foods purchased. I do eat a lot of cheese, I know this one! lol
There isn't anything at WF that is cheaper than other stores that carry like items. However, it has a lot of items in one place that otherwise would be at different specialty stores. That said, most shoppers will find everything they buy at WF at Trader Joes for 20%+ less money, and often higher quality. But there is no fresh fish.
On the west coast, there are a variety of stores that offer these types of higher-quality items without the extra premium that WF charges. Yes, better products are more expensive, but that doesn't mean any high price is just the item cost. In places without a strong health-food culture, WF might be the only game in town for things like organic fair trade cocoa in a glass jar; on the west coast you can actually find that almost anywhere. WF will have all the trendy (mass-produced) European brands, though; regular health-food stores will have more small American brands, and maybe not any mass-produced imports. The same brand is always higher priced at WF than at a family health-food store or regional chain.
It doesn't have to be very high density. It just has to be dense enough that young people can do daily travel by bicycle or public transit. Any community with a decent bus line is ripe for car-sharing, because there will be lots of working class people who are physically strong who don't want to own cars because of the expense. It is a huge convenience for these people to be able to rent a car at reasonable hourly rates once in awhile. And no, it isn't a nice clean sedan and a fixed schedule; fixed schedules are served by public transit in that scenario. A person so used to buying luxury would just own a car. ;) It is non-fixed schedules that benefit.
And no, it isn't for people on-call who might be quickly summoned, either. If that person uses a car-share, they're probably bicycling to work already and the car is for recreation on off days, or distant infrequent errands.
Honestly, based on your comment I doubt anybody in your whole neighborhood is going to use this service. ;)