# "I drove my car to work" **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 21, 2011, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-drove-my-car-to-work/597053 "2011-09-21T12:45:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2011, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-drove-my-car-to-work/597053/21 "2011-09-21T23:15:17Z")
Respectfully to the OP - Bovine Excrement! My car is 20 years old. I have shirts that are 20 years old. Anyone who honestly thinks that cars, roads, driving, owning, or work, are going anywhere in only 20 years is frankly delusional in the extreme. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2011, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-drove-my-car-to-work/597053/22 "2011-09-21T23:41:05Z")
I agree with many others that 20 years is _wildly_ optimistic for this. The Prius first came out in the US in 2000. It was the first mass-produced commercial hybrid vehicle. It’s now 11 years later, and total hybrid sales in the US are less than 10% of cars. And that’s just new cars. The average car lasts around nine years, so the percentage of hybrids on the road is probably about 5%. The adoption rate of new technology in cars is _slow_. I’d be impressed if a major carmaker comes out with a self-driving car in the next ten years. If, 10 years after that, 10% of new cars are self-driving, that’d be a major accomplishment. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2011, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-drove-my-car-to-work/597053/23 "2011-09-21T23:50:33Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > I would add two more things – it’s a well-constructed sentence, and it has proper spelling. But lacks proper punctuation. Now, back to the things in the spoiler box. Those seem like the type of things that we’ll look at in 20 years and say 'yeah, we were way off about that". I mean, (just looking at the 4th one) how many people can really work from home. Probably not enough to take any significant amount of vehicles off the road. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-drove-my-car-to-work/597053/24 "2011-09-22T00:42:03Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > I mean, (just looking at the 4th one) how many people can really work from home. Probably not enough to take any significant amount of vehicles off the road. Well, yeah: it seems to assume that all work is purely a matter of pushing electrons around. ---
**Author:** ![freckafree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/freckafree/32/3050_2.png) [@freckafree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/freckafree)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-drove-my-car-to-work/597053/25 "2011-09-22T01:48:49Z")
> [@Dogzilla](#): > > I don’t understand this “80% of cars are not driving on roads.” Well, then, where are they driving? Are you suggesting that “Where we’re going… we don’t need roads”? Is this person suggesting, rather, that 80% of people have cars, but do not drive them? > > This quote makes no sense to me. I heard the Freakonomics guy on Marketplace tonight express this as “80% of car passenger capacity goes unused” – e.g., I have a car that will hold five people, but I am the only one in it the vast majority of the time it is driven. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2011, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-drove-my-car-to-work/597053/26 "2011-09-23T22:26:33Z")
**Sailboat** : “Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flour…” Damn. The decay in our precious language goes backwards in time, too! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-drove-my-car-to-work/597053.md?page=1)