The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

GDB2222

PasturesNew wrote: »

How are you not charged for time?
If you got the car and drove for 5 minutes to a friend's house, then got in their car and went out for the day, leaving it parked in their drive for 8 hours, before driving 5 minutes home = £3.

There are no Uber et al round this way I'm aware of. But, as the owner of a car, I've never checked what's what.

You have to leave it on the road, and other people can hire it. So, the system only works if it can reach a critical size, where there are enough cars and users around. The cars have to have reasonable usage, and the users have to be reasonably sure they can find a car nearby.

I’m sorry to hear that DriveNow are shutting down. My son was picking one up and driving home from work in the evening, then taking public transportation to work in the morning. The result is that there are often a couple of DriveNows in the road outside our house.

PasturesNew

GDB2222 wrote: »

You have to leave it on the road, and other people can hire it.

And that's where those not in the centre will not have the confidence to use one, for fear of not being able to locate a return ride

Could they spot it if you drove it into your friend's locked garage .... ?

GDB2222

PasturesNew wrote: »

And that's where those not in the centre will not have the confidence to use one, for fear of not being able to locate a return ride

Could they spot it if you drove it into your friend's locked garage .... ?

I agree that you have spotted the problem, ie not being able to find one when you want it.

Locking the car away is unfair to other users. It will show up on the app as being available to use, so other people will go round to where it is but be unable to get access. I guess you’d get banned if you did that.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

PasturesNew wrote: »

I've just gone 175 miles return. If I'd used the train I'd have had to get a taxi to take my stuff to storage, then get dropped off at the station; I'd have not been able to bring back the additional items (2 bowls and a pile of dad's magazines from 1962 we appear to be holding onto); I'd have then needed another taxi 'home' and then a taxi to go to the storage.

The train would take 7 hours each way, car = 3.25. The train is two changes too. Looking at train tickets, it'd have cost £90-140 by train, car fuel was about £40.

It simply couldn't be done.

GDB2222 wrote: »

Our car is definitely costing us at least £1200 a year in standing costs.

We haven’t used our car since last Sunday, anyway.

Interesting dilemma.

Since semi-retiring from the corporate world in favour of our own small businesses I do a lot less mileage these days.

But of course as I live in Scotland it's mostly long to very long trips through deserted parts of the country in bad weather with very poor/inconvenient/expensive public transport.

When I left the job I bought a cheap-ish 10 year old car outright, a large German estate, but older and higher miles It's now given up the ghost after 2 years and 25k miles and a fair bit of money spent keeping it going. I reckon it cost me about 3K a year excluding fuel.

So I went car shopping over Xmas and bought another car, this time an almost new, large German diesel estate.

If we follow our preferred model of ownership that we've done repeatedly in the past we'll own it 10-12 years and it'll average about 2.5K a year in depreciation and maintenance then fuel and insurance on top of that.

The costs between buying/running old cars and the same for almost new ones that you keep a long time seem to work out pretty similar in my experience.

But we'll have the luxury and comfort and better economy of an almost new car, and the peace of mind that it'll need almost nothing done and be very reliable for at least the next 5-7 years.

I did briefly consider electric this time, but the range is nowhere near what I need, as I still do 300 - 500 mile days in parts of the country with little to no charging equipment at the moment on a fairly regular basis.

Also considered petrol, but the performance/economy ratio is still too imbalanced.

So diesel it is, even with the nagging worry that various government tweaks to taxation may make it less favourable in the future.

PasturesNew

Today I did 2 miles to storage, took my time looking around and deciding what to bring here.... then stopped and chatted over instant coffee with the gatekeeper man. Home after 2 hours.

Fuel 50p.

Taxi there, waiting, back, no coffee/chat, probably closer to £8-10.

Additionally, in a car, if it's chucking it down, I can optionally leave stuff in the car until the rain stops... in a taxi you have to lug it out in the rain whether you like it or not

I've often got stuff left in the car for a variety of reasons: don't need it/unimportant (e.g. tins, jars, loo rolls); bit heavy, this is enough for now; keep in the car as it might be handy there and I can always pop out if I need one (e.g. case of 24 cans of fizzy pop). If I go shopping and the weather's !!!!!! when I get home I'll just bring in frozen/chilled goods and a max of 2 bags.

ivyleaf

We've got a big box of "on special offer" washing powder we've been ferrying around in the car boot for ages as there's not room for it indoors

PasturesNew

ivyleaf wrote: »

We've got a big box of "on special offer" washing powder we've been ferrying around in the car boot for ages as there's not room for it indoors

When I moved house I had one of those, with very little in it. I decanted the powder into a couple of plastic milk bottles - that worked really well for storing and pouring.

Before I'd scraped some out using a retained individual cheesecake pot into a plastic bag, that I then twisted and threw onto the top of washing to take to the launderette. Milk bottles would've made that easier to grab/pour.

Might be a tip for people going on holidays for 1-2 weeks....

silvercar

We are staying at a friend's place over NYE and may not have internet, so Happy New Year to all NPs!

PasturesNew

silvercar wrote: »

We are staying at a friend's place over NYE and may not have internet, so Happy New Year to all NPs!

Happy NY. You'll have to do some of that 'bonking' people used to do before the telly was invented.

michaels

PasturesNew wrote: »

Happy NY. You'll have to do some of that 'bonking' people used to do before the telly was invented.

Nope, still did bonking even after TV was invented, however once there was the internet.....