I have been increasingly frustrated with the direction of Silicon Valley these days.
In the early days of self driving cars, there wasn't an overt attempt to harvest all of your information ALA facebook. Somewhere along the way governments got involved and said - if you are driving on our roads - YOU WILL GIVE US YOUR DATA. They are also at the center of electrifying EVERYTHING. Planes, military tanks. EVERYTHING.
So, like good Eichemans, Silicon Valley found a way to oblige and here we are now.
By the time Mr S. got home yesterday I was super pissed because when I started out the day I was pretty excited to see this car. Even though I don't believe in electric. It just popped up where I was going to be at. And all of a sudden it was all over the Internet.
The day before I told him - that company knows how to sell cars. They make a car. Drive it around Silicon Valley. And that's how you sell cars.
Then when I got there I realized I would have to sit through two hours of these people telling me that everybody was going to share cars. Which makes me so mad inside. I have seen ZERO evidence that Uber of Lyft reduced the amount of cars on the roads. ZERO. People in general don't like to be in spaces with a lot of other people. We already have a system for that. It's called BART. It's a disgusting transit system. It's also recently now a not safe transit system.
There are reasons why people don't adopt more mass transit.
These people who say things, also tell me that no one will own these shared cars. And I've yet to get an opportunity to ask who will own the cars. But I already know. And so do you really.
And the most frustrating part of all is they use all these false narratives that are so hard to untangle. Anyway I finally got pissed and started walking the parking lot to find this car. I still had two hours to go, and I just can't take these things sometimes.
When Mr S. got home least night I unloaded all of this on him and he basically says - they made you sit through a car times share.
I just look at him.
He continues..... they were going to capture you for many hours, and tell you about how people were going to share things. That sounds like a timeshare.
me - muthereffer. I think they did just make me sit through a timeshare pitch!
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You think I'm joking about your eventual move to the Research Triangle area, but ...
ReplyDeleteI know you'll eventually give in so you can let your inner racing redneck out to play. :-)
Semi-seriously though, the problem with the Bay Area mentality is that not only do Bay Area tech elite people believe that they're indispensable for any solution involving tech, but also they believe they can press that solution down on everyone because the people in the area will happily drink that Flavor-Aid.
I have zero interest in buying a "timeshare" vehicle, even if I could "timeshare" a McLaren P1 GTR.
I have zero interest in timesharing out an "expensive toy" because I'm more interested in selling it now.
I have zero interest in buying a fleet of semi-crap vehicles just so I can become a Cheap Crap Car Rentier.
I have private garages with my own vehicles that I drive 100% and never lend out, garages that lock and tend to stay locked.
So who do these Bay Area "virtue seeking scumbags" want to sell to?
Thuh Guv-Mint? Bay Area tech elite tard companies?
Because if they're not careful, they'll land themselves the same status as the infamous London Black Cab, but not in a good way: these models will be known as crap cars that people rent out for brief periods so they can crap all over them with stuff they leave behind.
Think of this electric car you saw being touted as a "timeshare" vehicle as a motorist's version of a construction site portable toilet, and you've got what it really winds up being.
I have yet to see one of these car-sharing schemes where the cars weren't randomly full of other people's left behind garbage and lost items.
Not even virtue-seeking Zipcar was free of this stuff, but at least you can get a clean rental most of the time from their parent company, AVIS.
So what's the plan then? Are they going to lobby for more strenuous vehicle inspections (again like the UK) so they can take reasonably working vehicles off the road before they're completely worn out, all so they can force people who can't afford new replacements into "timesharing" car "ownership" arbitrage agreements?
Because that to me is the real reason why they want all of this invasive data collection: they want to know everyone's "ouch points" so they can press down more rentier arbitrage by force.
The Bay Area doesn't actually figure into much of what I'm doing, BTW.
I just hang around here mostly for the amusement and the occasional cars. :-)
My real problem with the Bay Area: very little real innovation is actually making its way into products I care about buying, and a lot of what I'm seeing is not-so-cleverly-disguised attempts at rent acquisition.
Too much of what's going on is product iteration, and not very interesting product iteration at that. You've seen this yourself at recent tech shows.
"Oh, but electric cars, that's so quotidian dude ... how 'bout we try a 'timesharing' angle so we sound HIP AND EDGY ..."
So there's your dumbass Bay Area formula: take whatever someone else has done and ADD A VERY FEW MORE THINGS to it, and there's your new hot product.
Did you ever find this Wunderkind Wagon in the parking lot?
Yeah, that's how I got the pictures. To be clear though, they weren't actually timesharing this car. The experience just seemed like it.
ReplyDeleteBut these new "car subscriptions" are basically timesharing cars.
So you mock read me? LOL I'd give you more cars, but seriously - Tesla is effing up the exotic car market. And it's making me crazy.
Cars are way to expensive for a lot of people these days. 7-10 year loans, government mandated "safety" features, CAFE mpg requirements causing cutting edge/expensive technology to meet a diminishing return on pollution control, etc.,etc. People just cannot afford these vehicles, hence the move to ride share cars. I know that when my 2014 F150 craps out, I am moving to a mid 90's truck - basic EFI, two airbags and about $50k cheaper. BunnyGoat
ReplyDeleteYeah. I agree. And they are really the worst asset class by far. The car isn't worth anything in 7-10 years. But people still seem to like them.
ReplyDelete