That, and building new often at least temporarily alleviates traffic, which people like. Repairing existing roads does not improve traffic and temporarily makes it much worse. The highway near where I live has been being “improved” for the entire time I’ve lived here. Six years of orange cones, K-rails, and traffic…

You already see that to some extent, with pre-emission diesels carrying a premium.

Yeah, I’m lucky in that I rent a house that has a dryer outlet in the garage. But I can’t guarantee my next house will, so I don’t plan to make the jump to a BEV just yet.

I don’t see how these are going to be any quieter than helicopters. If anything I would expect them to be more annoying because the noise will be higher pitched. Already a lot of the noise from a modern helicopter comes from the tail rotor.

And the average age of a car is 12 years, so we’re looking at nearly 2050 before you can expect even half the fleet to be EVs.

I think all the current development efforts are toward supersonic bizjets, so the wealthiest 0.01% can zip around while the rest of us get boomed.

My understanding is wealthy people rarely travel on their yachts anyway, because being at sea on a ship that size is not very pleasant. They have the crew sail them to where they want to go, then fly there and use the yacht at anchor as a floating apartment.
There are even special semi-submersible carrier ships that…

And SF real estate is only limited because of extremely restrictive zoning. There’s no shortage of land, it’s just that a lot of the land that’s there is not allowed to be used to its potential. We’re talking about spending a lot of money to convert a cruise ship into rather shitty apartments in order to save maybe a…

“Engine? Oh, you didn’t ask about that before. It was never installed. Well, we’re going to cast off the tow lines now, good luck guys!”

Sure, but once you add enough space to these rooms for cooking and living in full time, you’ll be lucky to have half that many. And your calculations are excluding things like slip fees and maintenance. Any ship that’s in salt water is constantly trying to rust to bits and sink; you have to almost constantly paint and…

The amount it costs just to keep a ship parked at the dock afloat is immense. But maybe we can convince some crypto bros it’s a good start for their seasteading operation.

Oh man, I just watched a YouTube video about the infamous “poop cruise” that had an engine fire. Sounded like hell. If the plumbing breaks at a hotel at least I can leave and check in somewhere else.

Kitting it out would probably cost more than building an actual, for-real apartment block. One you wouldn’t have to constantly pour money into to keep it from sinking.

Not everyone can afford to drop money on a lawyer, though.

One time I was doing that after parking a car at the return and an employee got irate because he thought I was taking his picture.

That *is* an odd one. I thought ours was weird for being in HCF (hundreds of cubic feet, equal to 748 gallons.)

The personal submarine submersible thing is when I knew it was really getting out of hand. Back in the ‘90s I saw a US Submarines brochure that started with the copy, “a turbine-powered helicopter is no longer the ultimate accoutrement for a megayacht” and I was like, “this is all gonna have to be burned down, isn’t…

You go to the panic room while your crew defends you. You know, the crew you hired under a flag of convenience that lets you ignore US labor laws.

The ForTwo was pretty awful to actually drive, and way overpriced for what it was.

That would be a big improvement over the smelly gasoline golf carts they use now.