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The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

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Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#121

Post by usrusr »

brainless wrote: post #15
brainless wrote: post #11

This is something I realized recently. I am in India and the number of small manufacturers who are making electric people movers is very high. These are not high speed vehicles, they are below 40 KM/h speed as I see them, but the big shift is that hundreds of small companies around India are producing and maintaining small electric vehicles, mostly locally. The drivers charge them at home at night or during longer lu…

The critical part that is playing its role as I understand is that DC motors and batteries are plenty available from decent manufacturers. Very soon, as I see articles around the web, there will be much better quality motors and batteries available across the country from brands say Yamaha or LG. Making the shell of a vehicle is not hard. ICEs have a ridiculously higher parts count compared to EVs. And not all EVs ha…

Another big difference to ICE is that all quality differences of electrics are highly relevant to their users (range, range, range and the amount of charging hassle required to fulfill your usage pattern), whereas ICE can already be good enough for a user that doesn't want/need/can go fast at an extremely low level of sophistication. Any quality metrics beyond "the engine reliably starts and goes tuk tuk until I arrive where I need to be" are mostly about externalities (noise, stink, other forms of emission) not directly relevant to the user. Cheap BEV manufacturers will see a wildly different incentive structure towards better tech than their ICE brethren (or former selves)

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#122

Post by [deleted] »

Daho0n wrote: post #94
ricardobayes wrote: post #91

How about we start regulating ship engines? There are currently no regulations involving large ships' emissions. But they are extremely dirty, emitting tons of unfiltered sulfur in per voyage. They use different fuel, with much 3.5% sulfur content while road cars' fuel is 0.001%. This all goes in the air. I find it unacceptable that we consumers bend over backwards changing our habits, but the largest emissors don't…

Shipping only count for something like 2% of human caused release of CO2 and the pollution isn't local (cars inside a city is worse for humans). I agree something should be done ASAP but it isn't a low hanging fruit (hard to regulate worldwide shipping) so I doubt it will happen anytime soon.

[deleted]

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#123

Post by africanboy »

This is kinda expected, in many parts of the World mobility is going towards smaller vehicles, with limited range and load capacity, to be used in crowded cities (or small rural villages, for example here in Italy).

In Rome for example the Smart EV is already quite popular and thanks to the favourable weather in recent times a lot of electric scooter rental companies have emerged (see https://www.ecooltra.com/)

Also electric kick scooters are gaining popularity.

One of the main drive to adoption is the fact that restricted traffic zones for ICE vehicles are increasingly larger, especially in city centres, but EVs can circulate freely and are often exempted from on-street parking fees.

Tesla are not the solution to the mobility issues these vehicles already solve.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#124

Post by jgilias »

eloisant wrote: post #115
jgilias wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only viable place for something like Ami is car sharing in my opinion. The thing is, car manufacturers have been doing this since long before Tesla. They make something that screams 'look, I'm a weird thing that resembles a car, because I'm electric'. And the general population just wouldn't buy them. And then Tesla came along and showed that you can actually make a car that is electric and that people would want…

In Europe the Smart for 2 managed to fill a nice niche despite being as expensive as a regular, 5 people car. The AMI is much cheaper and can be driven by teenagers at 14, so I suspect it can really find its place between the regular car and the electric bike for city. Typically this can be the 2nd car for a family, instead of having the family car + Twingo, you can get this one which is cheaper, easier to park and c…

I'm not American, so can't speak for them.

Pretty much all kids in my relatively small town have scooters. The girls have Vespas or some Vespa lookalikes, whereas the guys do wheelies on theirs. Some seem to like a Mad-Max style where they get an old scooter, and strip it almost naked, some have nifty ones that look very sports-bike like. Bigger kids have 125cc motorbikes. Some look like dirt-bikes, some look like sports-bikes. You could say that Ami would resist the elements better. But it doesn't seem like the kids mind rain much, or that Ami was particularly well suited for winter months.

If I was 15, you'd see me dead in one of them Amis. I'd take a 'naked' scooter I can do wheelies on any day.

This seems to be a general problem with these small EVs, people always believe there's someone else that will surely buy them. As long as it's not them.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#125

Post by africanboy »

kleiba wrote: post #96

A problem with such tiny cars is that they cannot absorb enough kinetic energy in a crash. Although they cannot go very fast compared to traditional cars, a frontal collision between two tiny cars going at full speed will likely have severe outcomes for the drivers and passengers. Of course, it might get worse when they get hit by a faster driving traditional car.

> Of course, it might get worse when they get hit by a faster driving traditional car

as a counter example, in Rome a lot of people drive scooters to escape traffic jams, these vehicles offer improved safety over a two wheeler.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#126

Post by marshmallow_12 »

baybal2 wrote: post #120
marshmallow_12 wrote: post #114

i think the way forward is electric scooters. Some like the xiaomi are cheap, have really decent figures and are actually very useful for getting you places in town. But they are not road legal. For some inane reason the answer to pollution in cities has been banned and those who dare ignore the ban endanger their licence. So we are left with bloated, overpriced, electric cars which benefit the fewest possible number…

It's very hard to make an electric scooter competitive with 150cc which is a mode of transport for probably a billion people. 150cc will be better, and cheaper no matter what you try. I researched the problem extensively when I worked in a number of companies working in the electric scooter space. Cheapest 150cc scooters sell for $500 — that's the price of a battery pack to make a scooter with comparable range to 150…

if you can get 150cc for 500 then i'm living in the wrong country. In london they are ideal.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#127

Post by gambiting »

Arainach wrote: post #113
Daho0n wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shipping only count for something like 2% of human caused release of CO2 and the pollution isn't local (cars inside a city is worse for humans). I agree something should be done ASAP but it isn't a low hanging fruit (hard to regulate worldwide shipping) so I doubt it will happen anytime soon.

Since when is 2% of global human CO2 emissions "only"? What single concentrated source has anywhere near such an impact?

Concrete alone is responsible for 8% of global CO2 emissions: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/25/concrete-the-...

Also the problem with the cargo ships isn't the CO2 - considering the amount of work they are doing they are the most efficient transport method we have. It's all about the sulfur emissions which are horrendous.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#128

Post by WalterBright »

kleiba wrote: post #96

A problem with such tiny cars is that they cannot absorb enough kinetic energy in a crash. Although they cannot go very fast compared to traditional cars, a frontal collision between two tiny cars going at full speed will likely have severe outcomes for the drivers and passengers. Of course, it might get worse when they get hit by a faster driving traditional car.

> A problem with such tiny cars is that they cannot absorb enough kinetic energy in a crash.

It's not about absorbing kinetic energy. It's about spreading out the deceleration to the human over a longer period of time. The total energy imparted to the human will be the same (the integral of force over time), and even the same as if you used the brake to stop the car.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#129

Post by aero-glide2 »

Arainach wrote: post #113
Daho0n wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shipping only count for something like 2% of human caused release of CO2 and the pollution isn't local (cars inside a city is worse for humans). I agree something should be done ASAP but it isn't a low hanging fruit (hard to regulate worldwide shipping) so I doubt it will happen anytime soon.

Since when is 2% of global human CO2 emissions "only"? What single concentrated source has anywhere near such an impact?

Fashion industry is responsible for 10% (Aviation is 2.8%)
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