# Five Times Faster *by [@bwasti](https://x.com/bwasti)* --- The world just invented a car that is five times faster than any previous car. Every driver in the world has the ability to trade in their old car to get one of these new cars. What happens? ### Small, Distant Towns Immediately, small towns benefit. People are eating better, seeing friends more, listening to fewer echo-chamber podcasts. What used to be a monthly haul for shelf-stable ultra-processed food is now a weekly trip to a fresh grocer. Coordinating plans can now happen on the day instead of months in advanced. Commutes to work are no longer eating into the sunlight hours, and play-time with kids is no longer a weekend activity. Life is just better. ### Large Towns, Small Cities For larger towns and small cities, there's more exploring and an economic upswing. That new restaurant in the neighboring city? Let's check it out. There's no more need for well-trodden treks outside of town. People are always relatively close to home, so it's not risky to try something new and just bail if they don't like it. Visiting landmarks and other towns for vacation with the family is not a money-pit anymore, since people can just drive. The annoyances of flying are reserved for very distant travel. As a result, airports clear up and security wait-times get shorter. But, there's still traffic. Commutes aren't much better during rush hour. ### Large Cities At first, not much changes. Not many people have cars and those that do are still just waiting at red lights most of the time. The commute to downtown is still 45 minutes or so. Ubers aren't cheaper. If anything they're more expensive because people think they're faster than the train, despite that not being the case. The city planners, however, see all the rapid improvements smaller towns are experiencing, and encourage all their citizens to start driving these fast cars. Citizens that otherwise wouldn't have even driven are now encouraged to drive. The planners don't realize, of course, that the bottleneck to improvement is not the drivers but the city itself. The cars on the street are able to get from red light to red light much faster, but they're trapped within stagnant city setup. Small gridded local roads, one-way streets, lights and stop-signs, and huge buildings rendering GPS unreliable. Some people living in the city understand the true benefits of these new cars: they don't need to live in the city, but they can still earn city wages. Commutes by car are still dominated by in-city traffic, but living much further away does not move the needle. These people, embracing the faster cars for what they are, move as far away from the city infrastructure as possible - giving them the opportunity to live in much nicer areas with much more space. Some then give up city living entirely. A few cities embrace the changes, rapidly enabling their infrastructure for fast cars with huge overhauls and a recognition that former intuitions may no longer be relevant. Most don't. ### Cars Suck At the end of the day, cars still suck. They kill the planet and they kill people. Few that use them really even know how they work. But damn are they useful.