[HN Gopher] The e-scooter isn't new - London was zooming around ...
___________________________________________________________________
The e-scooter isn't new - London was zooming around on Autopeds a
century ago
Related: https://horizonmicromobility.com/blogs/micromobility-
blog/hi...
Author : zeristor
Score : 134 points
Date : 2025-12-24 08:32 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ianvisits.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ianvisits.co.uk)
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I also like to point out that we had electric powered food
| delivery services in London from 1932.
| bluescrn wrote:
| And the delivery drivers were probably paid more than they are
| now...
| cons0le wrote:
| The food was probably healthier too
| thenthenthen wrote:
| These are ICE and not electric.
| jtbayly wrote:
| No way that's a 15 inch wheel.
| ksymph wrote:
| Wikipedia says 10 inches [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoped
| hylaride wrote:
| > The e-scooters that clutter up pavements may seem like a new
| thing, but a hundred years ago, there were already people zooming
| around London on powered scooters.
|
| The problem is that we've given so much space to automobiles that
| there's no room for anything else (bikes, scooters, etc).
| Pedestrians have been given a sliver only because drivers need to
| walk between parking and their destination. This is true even in
| cities where the majority of people don't even drive!
| sheepscreek wrote:
| Probably cause modern logistics, especially last mile
| logistics, is dependent on trucks/delivery vans/etc. So even
| though folks in a local area might like to walk around, their
| groceries won't make it to the stores and packages won't get to
| their homes without a robust road network.
|
| I think Bacerlona hits a good compromise. The city has the
| concept of a superblock, which is a few city blocks grouped
| into one calm zone. Most car traffic stays on the streets
| around the outside, the perimeter of the superblock. Inside,
| driving is restricted and only at low speeds where allowed, so
| people and bikes get the space. So deliveries and residents can
| still but only slowly.
|
| That's far from the only example - many cities in Asia follow a
| similar model.
| ajb wrote:
| London is edging in that direction with the introduction of
| "low traffic neighbourhoods". Basically this involves
| preventing vehicles using them as a through route, by
| limiting some connections to only emergency vehicles. The
| problem is that it's also annoying for residents as it means
| the allowed entry/exit routes aren't necessarily in the
| direction you need to go. Does Barcelona have a smarter
| method?
| alistairSH wrote:
| Isn't the presumption that residents walk/bike/transit far
| more often than drive?
| hylaride wrote:
| There is still pushback. I live in Toronto and when
| central businesses are canvassed about streetscape
| changes they overwhelmingly are against removing parking,
| access for cars, etc. They assume that 90% of their
| customers drive to them, but it turns out that it is
| closer to 10% for most of them.
| ajb wrote:
| That's unevenly distributed. Lots of people in London do
| walk or use public transport, but you still need many
| delivery drivers, tradespeople, etc and it doesn't make
| sense for them all to live outside the city. And people
| who don't usually drive occasionally need to use a
| vehicle, and then it's more stressful because you aren't
| used to having to know where the vehicular entrances are.
| It's too simplistic to just make provision for the
| majority and assume that it doesn't matter what the
| second order effects are.
| dpark wrote:
| > and then it's more stressful because you aren't used to
| having to know where the vehicular entrances are
|
| "I rarely drive and so I am stressed when I do" is not an
| issue that needs to be solved.
| coryrc wrote:
| So if you make it safe and pleasant for everybody who
| doesn't need a truck as part of their job, then the
| remaining roads are available for the small minority that
| "must" use them.
|
| But maybe rethink whether they "need" to and whether said
| vehicles must live in dense residential neighborhoods.
|
| https://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/window-
| washers-...
|
| https://www.velove.se/
| michaelt wrote:
| In the most central (and expensive) parts of London -
| "Zone 1", where all the famous landmarks are - that is
| indeed a safe assumption.
|
| But go to a less central area, like Hendon and you're
| still very much within London, but every street is lined
| on both sides with parked cars.
| jghn wrote:
| My city has been making efforts to stymie traffic flow to
| encourage less driving. I almost never drive but it's
| still annoying as crap when what used to be a 20 min
| drive is now 40+ because of how slow the first/last mile
| is now.
|
| When I'm not driving I do enjoy it, so I understand that
| it's a tradeoff and I can't have it both ways. That
| doesn't make me not irritated when behind the wheel
| though.
| bluescrn wrote:
| LTNs and pedestrianised areas are great for criminals on
| illegal high-powered e-bikes. Purpose-built getaway routes.
| tim333 wrote:
| I'm not that convinced pedestrianised areas make it
| easier for them. At least you can spot the thieves if
| bikes are not supposed to be there.
| dpark wrote:
| lol. People will try to paint anything they don't like as
| bad because criminals can also use it.
| bluescrn wrote:
| It's about actively blocking police and other emergency
| vehicles while allowing a new class of problem vehicles,
| illegal e-motorbikes, to pass unimpeded.
|
| As a motorist, the war on cars (and milking of motorists
| for tax revenue) would be less infuriating if we didn't
| have the rising broad-daylight lawlessness of illegal
| e-bikes and scooters doing 30mph+ with no pedaling, no
| tax, and no insurance. Often with corporate branding in
| the form of Deliveroo or Just Eat bags. Sometimes
| balaclava-clad and engaging in dodgier activities.
|
| (Would be in favour of regulating and policing these
| bikes and scooters rather than outright prohibition, but
| the UK government chooses to stick to prohibition and
| very inconsistent policing)
| dpark wrote:
| Sorry, this doesn't make any sense. If the problem were
| that criminals have high powered e-bikes, the obvious
| answer would be to give high powered e-bikes to the
| police.
|
| What you're actually griping about isn't criminals using
| e-bikes as getaway vehicles, but the presence of these
| unsafe e-bikes at all. You're basically saying "how come
| I can't drive my unsafe machine but they can drive
| theirs?" And yeah, I don't want people zipping by at
| 30mph on scooters either, but the problem isn't that the
| cars are gone.
| hylaride wrote:
| > Probably cause modern logistics, especially last mile
| logistics, is dependent on trucks/delivery vans/etc. So even
| though folks in a local area might like to walk around, their
| groceries won't make it to the stores and packages won't get
| to their homes without a robust road network.
|
| Totally. Banning automobiles is _usually_ a bad idea,
| especially for residential zones. Years ago, I remember
| seeing a presentation about redeveloping a bad public housing
| block that was built in the 1960s with no auto-access (the
| assumption being poor people don 't have cars), but it turns
| out that it meant they couldn't even get pizza.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >the assumption being poor people don't have cars
|
| Some number of the people at the time likely noticed the
| lapse and thought to themselves "good, this will make it
| inconvenient for them to get a car that lets them easily
| get far from their designated area on a whim" so they kept
| their mouths shut.
| otterley wrote:
| At least in New York City and outside the U.S., I regularly
| see pizzas being delivered frequently by bicycle, moped,
| and motorcycle. I also see deliveries being done with small
| trucks ( _Kei_ style) and vans that fit in alleyways.
| h2zizzle wrote:
| Smaller trucks. Japan makes due with one-lane alleys. (Not
| one in each direction. One. Deliveries and vehicular traffic
| are so uncommon, and the tightness of the space so
| inconducive to speeding, that it's safe for trucks and cars
| to go down them in whichever direction they need to.)
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Makes do not due. A common error that seems to be
| increasing.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Probably meant "make do", as in, able to manage with
| limited means available.
| jetrink wrote:
| > their groceries won't make it to the stores and packages
| won't get to their homes without a robust road network.
|
| A road network isn't the only solution. In the early 20th
| century, for example, there was a separate narrow-gauge
| tunnel network beneath Chicago dedicated to freight.
| Deliveries were made directly to businesses via subbasements
| or elevator shafts. The network had stations at rail and ship
| terminals for accepting freight arriving from outside the
| city. At its height in 1929, the network had 150 locomotives
| pulling 10 to 15 cars per train.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company
| dpark wrote:
| This is neat but also seems like an insane solution to the
| problem of "I don't like seeing service trucks". How many
| such tunnels and elevators would it take to supply the
| buildings in a typical city's downtown area?
|
| And what else could we do with that investment?
| randunel wrote:
| I wonder how many people such an automated freight system
| would kill per year, compared to cars in the same cities.
| Once we have some numbers, you would probably reconsider
| the use of "insane" there.
| dpark wrote:
| The context here is not cars but delivery trucks.
|
| The tunnels in question also did not transport
| pedestrians and were essentially focused on coal delivery
| and ash removal.
| randunel wrote:
| Sure, let's restrict statistics to any automobile used to
| transport merchandise. What do you think, ready to
| imagine such a comparison?
| dpark wrote:
| Sure. In 2022, 672 pedestrians were killed by large
| trucks. How many of those do you believe happened in say
| New York City? And how many of those do you think you
| could eliminate with this hypothetical tunnel system? And
| how much will this hypothetical tunnel system cost?
|
| New York has about 300 pedestrian deaths total from all
| vehicles every year. So my guesstimate is that if you
| eliminated all of the trucks from New York City, you
| might save 50 lives a year, max. I would also guesstimate
| that it would probably cost well north of $50 billion to
| create this tunnel system to connect all of the major
| buildings in New York City. So we're looking at about $1
| billion per life saved. I bet you could save more than
| one life per billion if you put that money somewhere more
| useful.
|
| > What do you think, ready to imagine such a comparison?
|
| What are you intending to accomplish with your snarky and
| condescending tone?
| m4rtink wrote:
| I would argue the ammount of space in cities wasted on
| cars and their infrastructure is totally insane.
| dpark wrote:
| And again, the conversation here is about delivery
| trucks, not cars.
|
| Eliminating cars doesn't eliminate the need for
| infrastructure for moving goods.
| hogrug wrote:
| > Eliminating cars doesn't eliminate the need for
| infrastructure for moving goods.
|
| Burying other last mile utilities that waste less land
| was not insane when real estate was a fraction as
| valuable as now and engineering technology was worse.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| they are no longer needed though with last mile delivery
| robots being introduced that can use the same elevator
| and stairs as humans
| dpark wrote:
| Have we already forgotten that a self-driving uber ran
| over a pedestrian a few years ago or that Tesla's
| autopilot has caused multiple crashes?
|
| I'm not optimistic that a bunch of robots sharing stairs
| with pedestrians is going to work out great.
| oblio wrote:
| Which robots?
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| Check out the recent moves on Atlas.
|
| https://youtu.be/I44_zbEwz_w?si=sFS5XUhNtwEz_ebH
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Also perhaps worth mentioning in Chicago is Lower Wacker
| Drive.
|
| It's a split-level street, more-or-less with local traffic
| on the surface and with through traffic at the subterranean
| level. It's a quick way to get through the area.
|
| And beneath parts of that that is an road I've heard
| referred to as Lower Lower Wacker. This is almost entirely
| the realm of delivery and service vehicles (except for a
| time in fairly recent years when _those darned kids_ were
| using it for drag racing at night).
|
| It's all crazy-expensive to build anything like underground
| local delivery rail and underground roadways.
|
| (But the stuff at the surface is crazy-expensive, too, and
| often can't be expanded horizontally without demolition of
| the very buildings that it seeks to benefit.
|
| But expanding down? Sometimes, yeah -- that can happen.)
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| I live in Vancouver, and we have plenty of both roads and
| bike lanes. Its not hard to fit a bike lane that's usually
| 1/4th the width of a lane onto a road or allow bikes to share
| with cars on smaller roads. We have trucks and vans and lots
| of deliveries too. The reason most cities are oriented around
| cars is because we designed them that way and it's difficult
| to change - there's no logistical constraint, its just
| politics and cost.
| clickety_clack wrote:
| I lived in Vancouver for many years, and it's an outlier in
| terms of ease of bike lane installation. The city is quite
| new, and as it grew in the 50s and 60s the roads were
| designed for a future with more cars than there are now in
| the city. That means that there's super wide boulevards and
| streets everywhere. Cities that were designed for horses
| and carts barely have room for cars as it is, so there's
| almost no room for anything else next to them.
| oblio wrote:
| Last mile delivery can be done with large cargo ebikes
| capable of carrying up to 250-500kg.
|
| Trucks or delivery vans should only be allowed on roads
| farther apart than 1-2km, with some exceptions (supermarkets,
| regular markets, etc).
|
| We have all the technical tools needed, this is about
| political will.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _This is true even in cities where the majority of people don
| 't even drive!_
|
| I dunno... in New York City there are an awful lot of bike
| lanes now:
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7355559,-73.9921499,13z/data...
|
| There's still room for a lot more, but _plenty_ of space has
| been _taken away_ from automobiles precisely for bikes,
| scooters, etc. It 's trending in the right direction.
| Especially now that bike lanes are increasingly being designed
| with parking _between_ the bike land and vehicle lanes.
| coryrc wrote:
| Per capita that's table scraps.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I don't even know what that means.
|
| Residential streets with little traffic don't even need
| bike lines. But many of the busiest avenues have them.
|
| NYC could always do better, but there's nothing "table
| scraps" here? It's massively improved my cycling
| experience. And it gets better every year.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| _The Netherlands stares uncomfortably in the background._
| reactordev wrote:
| But this has been true every hundred years or so as technology
| changes and those that are building infrastructure know nothing
| else.
|
| 2000s : Damn these cars clogging up the road!
|
| 1900s : Damn these buggies clogging up the road!
|
| 1800s : Damn these carriages clogging up the road!
|
| 1700s : Damn these horses clogging up the road!
|
| 1600s : Damn these " " " " "
|
| 100BC : Damn these romans clogging up the road!
| Zambyte wrote:
| You really think the idea of anything like bumper to bumper
| traffic existed more than a hundred years ago? Everything
| before 2000s (though surely car traffic existed in the 1900s)
| seems like a dramatization.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| The number of horses in London was causing problems at the
| end of the 19th century - they don't scale well when you
| need to provide stables, food and of course leave piles of
| dung everywhere.
| jmclnx wrote:
| 100 years ago was 1925 :)
|
| I would think in some places there was bumper to bumper for
| short distances. I would expect in parts of NYC it existed.
| I think it was in the 1920s when traffic lights started to
| appear.
|
| But 110 years ago, I agree with you on this.
| reactordev wrote:
| How pedestrian.
|
| Cities like NYC, London, Paris, LA, Chicago, Denver,
| Seattle all had traffic problems with cars in 1925.
|
| In 1825 it was carriages and horse and buggy leaving horse
| manure all over the cobblestone or pavers.
|
| In 1725 it was horses and heavy hooves turning the dirt
| road into mud and clay muck.
|
| In 1625 it was much the same.
|
| We had a large population centralized in cities long before
| the Industrial Revolution.
|
| My point is there's always some person complaining about
| the _X_ on the road (as if their presence on the road isn't
| somehow the opposite).
|
| https://www.history101.nyc/5th-avenue-street-scene-1925
| echelon wrote:
| Despite city dwellers hating on cars and wanting complete
| streets, cars are poised to win even bigger when self driving
| becomes widespread.
|
| Our roads and highways will metamorphose into logistics
| corridors and optimal public transit systems.
|
| Everything will be delivered same hour. The cost of this will
| drop and entire new business models will be built on top of the
| "direct to you" model.
|
| Self-driving cars will replace public transit. They connect
| every destination on demand. Short hops, cross-country long-
| haul. Waymo alikes will become cheaper than the city bus.
|
| Van life will accelerate. People will live in their automated
| vans and SUVs. They'll become luxury and status items for
| knowledge workers who are constantly conveying themselves coast
| to coast, from cozy fire pits by the sea to hidden mountain
| getaways. Life in America will become one of constant travel,
| because we can take our life with us without lifting a finger.
| People will have large home bases in the affordable suburbs -
| possibly one on each coast. They'll wine and dine in the city,
| then be off to hike the next day.
|
| Life will turn into adventure and it'll be accessible to almost
| everyone. Rich, poor. Young, old. Busy, retired.
|
| Nobody will lift a finger for any of this.
|
| We're going to want more roads.
|
| Bikes don't stand a chance. They're inequitable. Old people,
| pregnant people, sick people, and children are all left out.
| They suck in the rain and the snow. You can't move anything of
| size or scale.
|
| Automated self driving cars will win.
| agenticfish wrote:
| > Bikes don't stand a chance. They're inequitable. Old
| people, pregnant people, sick people, and children are all
| left out. They suck in the rain and the snow. You can't move
| anything of size or scale.
|
| I would invite you to come and have a look in the
| Netherlands. It's very common for octogenarians to cycle. My
| wife cycled up to the day of the birth of our daughter.
| Children have more independence because they can cycle to
| football practice on their own. Bike lanes are great for
| mobility scooters. It rains here, a lot! And it snows. I
| picked up our Christmas tree with our cargo bike. When I need
| to transport anything larger I will book a carshare, which
| are dotted around our neighbourhood.
|
| And the result? People are happy and healthy.
| echelon wrote:
| European weather is still mild relative to the US. It will
| be so long as the Gulf Stream doesn't shut down.
|
| Americans are fatter and less healthy.
|
| Americans are busy and work longer and harder. ("Work hard,
| play hard.")
|
| Americans buy more stuff. Big stuff. Lots of stuff.
| Frequently. (This is actually a superpower of our consumer
| economy.)
|
| We have invested hundreds of trillions of dollars in our
| infrastructure. We might be able to put in a bike land here
| or there in a majorly dense city or two, but we're not
| changing all of this.
|
| And more than anything else, America is fucking huge.
|
| I know you Europeans love your model, but it doesn't apply
| to us. The proponents in the US trying to make it happen
| misunderstand the fundamental differences.
|
| Just five years ago I would have said you were selling a
| monorail fantasy or sight to the blind to us. And an
| unfortunate few in the US were lapping it up as something
| we could actually do.
|
| Now that self driving is finally arriving, what I'm saying
| is that our future is even brighter than most countries. We
| have the road infra to really make this magic.
|
| I can wake up one day, make my coffee, hop into my car with
| my wife, and through no effort of my own, wind up at a
| mountain resort. No security checkpoints. No hassle
| packing. No screaming babies. We can listen to music, read,
| cuddle. It's our own space taking us wherever we want at
| complete and total leisure, affordably, comfortably,
| privately. We can even detour for food or whatever.
|
| It's going to be pure magic. As big a revolution as the
| internet was.
| coryrc wrote:
| > I know you Europeans love your model, but it doesn't
| apply to us.
|
| lol. You're what we call "carbrained".
|
| Explain how the climate of the coastal West coast is
| unsuitable for year-round bicycling. Much of it is nicer
| than the Netherlands and has several times the
| population.
| LEDThereBeLight wrote:
| It's not about the climate. Cities are just too big.
| echelon wrote:
| You do realize most of the US doesn't live on the West
| coast, right?
|
| Your sampling is skewed.
|
| It's been freezing cold here and any destination within
| our major city you want to reach is 30+ minutes away by
| bike.
|
| The "carbrained" insult is so stupid, btw. Once
| autonomous vehicles are commonplace you'll either come
| around or be complaining about it nonstop. Car usage is
| going to 2-10x.
| digital-cygnet wrote:
| I don't think this is a crazy take, but it is missing two big
| factors that self driving maximalists often ignore.
|
| First is the cost of driving. A reasonable rule of thumb is
| $0.50/mile all in (i.e. including depreciation, repairs, gas,
| etc) -- you can get down to half that pretty easily and maybe
| a little lower, but especially if you're spending tons of
| time in this car you're probably going to want a nice comfy
| one, which will cost more and depreciate faster. So, these
| trips you're imagining everyone taking constantly are not
| going to be accessible to most people. Cars are already the
| second biggest expense in most Americans' budgets, one which
| scales with mileage, and which self driving would only
| increase (have to pay for the lidar, on-device compute,
| whatever remote service handled edge cases, etc).
|
| The second thing your predictions miss is geometry. Despite
| the decades of predictions about self-driving cars being able
| to run safely at much higher speeds and with much tighter
| tolerances than human-run cars, the tyranny of geometry and
| stopping distances (which actually won't change much even
| with millisecond reaction times) means that throughput of car
| lanes is unlikely to change much (though we could all imagine
| top-down infrastructural changes helping this a lot, eg
| coordinated self driving cars and smart roads, those seem
| unlikely to land anytime soon given American political
| inclinations). Imagine how spaced-out people are on the
| highway -- in each lane, 1.6 people (average car occupancy)
| every football field (300 feet -- safe stopping distance at
| 70mph). If you're trying to go anywhere more densely packed
| than that -- e.g., a city, a restaurant, a ball game --
| you're going to start to run into capacity constraints. Mass
| transit, walking, and cycling all can manage an order of
| magnitude higher throughput.
|
| So while I think your prediction -- that self driving cars
| will increase demand for road space -- is right, the valence
| that takes for me is much more negative. The wealthy will be
| able to take up way more space on the road (e.g., one car
| each dropping off each kid at each extra curricular
| activity), condemning the poor to even worse traffic
| (especially the poor who cannot afford a self driving
| vehicle, who will not even be able to play candy crush while
| they're waiting in this traffic). People will continue to
| suburbanize and atomize, demanding their governments pay for
| bigger and bigger roads and suburbs, despoiling more of the
| areas you'd like to hike in, with debt that will keep rolling
| over to the next generation. Bikes and peds will continue to
| be marginalized as the norm for how far apart people live
| will continue to grow, making it even more impossible and
| dangerous to get anywhere without a car. I hope I'm wrong but
| this is how mass motorization played out the first time, in
| the post-war period, and if anything our society is less
| prepared now to oppose the inequitable, race-to-the-bottom,
| socialize-your-externalities results of that phase of
| development.
| tim333 wrote:
| In central London the cars are restricted quite a bit. In
| places like Soho and Oxford St they are more cluttered with
| pedestrians than cars.
| Sam6late wrote:
| The same case was in Italy, and calendars of Vespa were awesome
| back in the 70s ''Piaggio (maker of Vespa) had had its
| Pontedera (Italy) factory (where they used to make bomber
| planes) bombed during the conflict. Italy had it's aircraft
| industry restricted to a great extent as part of the ceasefire
| agreement with the allies. Enrico Piaggio, son of the founder
| of the company Rinaldo Piaggio, decided to leave the
| aeronautical field behind and address the people's need for an
| economic mode of transport. The idea was to make a scooter
| utilitarian and appealing enough to the masses. Till that time,
| scooters were mainly used by the military for quick on-ground
| transportation (you might have seen this in some Call of Duty
| games). So, two Piaggio engineers, Renzo Spolti and Vittorio
| Casini, took to their whiteboard and designed the first-ever
| Vespa, or maybe not quite. Mr. Piaggio was disappointed with
| the initial scooter. The scooter was named Paperino, and
| looking at the photo, you can understand Mr. Piaggios
| disappointment.' https://www.vespalicious.com/gallery/
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| I'm sure they went away because it's a fad or the
| costs/benefits don't balance, not because there is no space for
| them. This is evident by the fact that we have scooters in
| abundance now!
| hexbin010 wrote:
| For real. Loads of places in the UK are in desperate need of
| wider paths. Some probably haven't changed for 100 years except
| for making them narrower with stupid full height advertising
| screens (a travesty and civic vandalism by the councils)
| k4rli wrote:
| Problem isn't the cars. Stop buying uselessly oversized SUVs,
| and trucks in case of muricans.
|
| A Fiat 500/Panda is perfectly fine in cities.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I'd like to see the calculation of the reduction you get in
| roadway throughput by making the vehicles larger.
|
| If people stay further away from tractor trailers, they'll
| stay further away from SUVs too.
|
| Even in an urban environment, if you stop X feet of distance
| from the back of the vehicle in front, if that vehicle is
| longer...
|
| Anyways, street parking should be paid by the square foot *
| 1.25 to account for getting in/out/around parked vehicles.
| AmbroseBierce wrote:
| Start charging taxes based on the number of square feet a car
| occupies and the problem will solve itself.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| > _" (street background expanded)"_
|
| As in... expanded using generative AI? (The perspective on the
| lamps is really off unless they're different size lamps)
| funwares wrote:
| Yes, using AI as per the filename "backgroundexpandedusingai"
| [0], it seems to be an expanded version of this pic from
| Wikipedia [1] (but blurrier).
|
| [0] https://8400e186.delivery.rocketcdn.me/articles/wp-
| content/u...
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priscilla_Norman#/media/File:L...
| ksymph wrote:
| Looks like the whole thing was run through AI, details on her
| face and scooter changed too.
| myself248 wrote:
| And an oil drop on the street below the engine has
| disappeared.
| xgulfie wrote:
| I hate this. Why not show us the actual photo. Infuriating
| agumonkey wrote:
| I wonder how we'll deal with the inability to tell what's
| true or not in the coming years. Even without full
| deepfakes.. just a gradual hypothetical restoration turning
| subtle hallucination in many many places.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Technically they do, just split into chunks interleaved with
| AI generated background. Original: https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/Priscilla_Norman#/media/File:L...
| bondarchuk wrote:
| > _just split into chunks interleaved with AI_
|
| That would be relatively benign, the other possibility is
| that the whole thing was encoded and then decoded through
| some neural representation.
| alexwasserman wrote:
| My father was gifted a pair of these for his 50th birthday, would
| have been 1989, in London.
|
| Little ICE scooters. They were a lot of fun and not very safe. We
| had drunk guests damaging themselves in the street.
|
| They became toys for my brothers and I, who had plenty of
| accidents but learnt to ride them reasonably.
|
| The engines didn't idle particularly well and had no gears. You
| had to pull start, hop on and go quickly while reving just enough
| to idle without it moving. It took practice. You could push start
| too with some practice, especially once warm.
|
| Lots of fun, but mileage wouldn't have been great for serious use
| and refilling a pain at a regular petrol station. Might have been
| 2-stroke, I can't remember. Tiny engine, closer to a strimmer
| than lawnmower.
|
| Huge fun though for just bombing around on as a tween and young
| teen.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Must have been two stroke, 4 stroke motors are too large and
| heavy for an application like that.
| Epa095 wrote:
| According to Wikipedia
|
| > The engine was an air-cooled, 4-stroke, 155 cc engine over
| the front wheel
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoped
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Guess I was wrong, that's a shocking engineering choice,
| that engine looks massive and heavy. A four stroke engine
| is about twice the weight and size for the same power
| output, but much more fuel efficient.
| vessenes wrote:
| Boy I had a liminal moment looking at these photos and videos -
| this all could easily have been a fun AI media project. In fact,
| I think the first photo used outpainting ("street background
| expanded" reads the subtitle).
|
| I'm enjoying my last year or so of visual media trust, as
| ephemeral as that is in reality.
| tw04 wrote:
| Did someone actually think scooters were new? We had them growing
| up, I thought it was common knowledge the only thing novel about
| e-bikes and e-scooters were the lithium ion batteries and
| electric motors giving adequate runtime and performance.
|
| You could drive a moped on city streets before you turned 16
| which got a lot of teenagers in my hometown to work and sports in
| the summer when their parents couldn't.
|
| But they were slow, noisy, and smelly compared to a modern ebike.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I've seen the original of the main photo before which is the
| only reason I know that two-stroke ICE engine powered standup
| scooters like that existed.
|
| So, yes. Things do get invented so it's not surprising. Luggage
| with wheels is a pretty recent invention considering when
| luggage and wheels were invented.
| sejje wrote:
| When I was a kid my cousin had an old moped from, I think, the
| early 70s.
|
| We rode the hell out of it all over our weird, empty, pre-
| planned city.
|
| If I remember it got just over 100mpg. The grown ups didn't
| even mind buying us gas.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| When I was a kid in the 80s scooters weren't a thing in my
| country, I never saw one, but they did appear in the comics I
| read (from the 50s-60s). I remember asking my parents about
| them, and they telling me that they were toys from their time
| but no longer existed.
|
| Now of course they're very common, my son has one.
| cons0le wrote:
| God every website is such garbage these days. 1 second timer,
| full page pop up. Geolocation logging to sell to advertisers...
| I'm just not gonna read the article. It's a shame cause it looks
| interesting
| baxtr wrote:
| I googled Autoped and found this site about the topic. Much
| cleaner.
|
| https://horizonmicromobility.com/blogs/micromobility-blog/hi...
| cons0le wrote:
| Thanks for this. Now I can send the pic to my local PEV group
| moffkalast wrote:
| Oh but don't you want to login with google? Please accept these
| cookies we need for good reasons we promise. Do you want to
| chat with our customer bot? Your needs are important to us.
| Also view this video you need to see right now, with sound on!
| sejje wrote:
| You rejected all our cookies with the toggles?
|
| Great, now accidentally click the big green button that says
| "allow all" and overrides the toggles you just spent time
| selecting!
|
| And now the popup will disappear forever. Goodbye.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't complain about tangential annoyances--e.g.
| article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button
| breakage. They're too common to be interesting._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| tgv wrote:
| First off, the price: PS36 was much more than "PS1,600 in today's
| money". A railway clerk made PS2 12 0 in a week in 1917, (less
| than PS10/month if I did the shillings and all that properly),
| which makes the scooter price the equivalent of 3.5 months, which
| is PS7,000 at the lowest end of today's London North Eastern
| Railway salary range. The fact that the picture has Lady
| something in it, suggests it was more of an upper-class thingy.
|
| Second, the scooter may not be new, the cluttering certainly is.
| Look at that empty street!
| soared wrote:
| Agreed - though street is AI generated from a close up image
| but it's unknowns better it was actually empty or not :(
| gambiting wrote:
| >>A railway clerk made PS2 12 0 in a week
|
| Made how much? I have no idea how to parse this
| RobotToaster wrote:
| PS2 12 shillings and 0 pence.
|
| A shilling was 1/20th of a pound. 12 pence were in a shilling
| (so 240 pence in PS1)
| gambiting wrote:
| Alright, thanks for explaining - but is that a standard way
| of writing this? Why not write PS2 12s 0p?
| zeristor wrote:
| I guess tripping on LSD
|
| L being pound, libre
|
| S being shilling
|
| D being pennies, I'm guess denari because someone went to
| grammar school
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Another way to look at it. At that time a PS1 coin was a gold
| sovereign, one of which is worth PS800 today. Which makes it
| PS28,800.
| albumen wrote:
| I'm sorry but this article's headline/thesis is atrocious. The
| headline strongly implies there were e-scooters back then; there
| weren't. Second, London's pavements weren't cluttered with
| autopeds; or if they were, there's no evidence offered. Third,
| why expand the image with AI? The original is fine.
|
| I do appreciate the dive back into history, but ianvisits.co.uk
| (which I usually like) can do much better.
| observationist wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoped
|
| It's interesting that the engines are roughly the same as the 4
| stroke china girl engines you can get for bikes and scooters
| today, a 155cc and 191cc model.
|
| I wonder if it was a weight/size to power tradeoff, or convention
| that stuck - was there a targeted engineering reason behind the
| similarity in size, or have enough things stayed similar in the
| world of standard parts and sizes that we still have roughly the
| same engine sizes?
|
| Neat article.
| torgoguys wrote:
| Does anyone remember the 1980s PBS show Newtons Apple? A segment
| on that show was called "Newtons Lemons" and would show an old
| newsreel from I'm guessing from the 1940s or 1950s. Each one
| would feature some sort of "futuristic" gadget, and invariably it
| would be something that never panned out and I had never heard of
| as a kid. I distinctly remember one of these featuring basically
| a scooter with a small gas motor and the narrator talking about
| great it would be for commuting to work when we can all own
| these. By my recollection, it looked very much like escooters of
| today, just gas.
|
| When escooters became a thing, I looked for this newsreel for a
| while and never found it. Anyone else remember this?
| riffic wrote:
| Much like the motion picture industry, there are hardly any
| original ideas anymore.
| cornonthecobra wrote:
| Anyone read that thinking they're claiming the Autoped was an
| e-scooter? It used a petrol engine.
|
| It had a novel idea of pushing/pulling the handbars to engage the
| clutch/apply the brake.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoped
| DeepYogurt wrote:
| We need to bring the term Autoped back. Beats the snot out of
| escooter
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