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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

#201

Post by elindbe3 »

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?

Animal agriculture accounts for 14.5% of global anthropogenic emissions, over half of which comes from cows.

http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/#:~:text=....

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#202

Post by kleiba »

elric wrote: post #199
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.

That's such a red herring. Bigger cars are safer for the people in the bigger car, but way more dangerous for everyone else. Faster cars are more dangerous for everyone. The solution is smaller and slower cars. Not an arms race of whose tank has the best armour.

Geez, what nonsense. Obviously, smaller cars serve only a specific market segment. There will always be a need for bigger vehicles for various reasons - big families, deliveries, etc. I'd say the red herring is your post.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#203

Post by csours »

haspok wrote: post #139
Faaak wrote: post #71

I have a Renault Twizy. It's a tiny 2-seater car (one behind the other). It's so tiny that the battery is only 6kWh and thus you can only go for about 80km before needing a charge (which lasts 2h30). But I love it in fact. In my european city it's the best car to go around because you can park anywhere, it costs nothing to operate, and it's so much fun and quiet. Sadly it didn't take on, but other cars are starting t…

What's the point of "cars" that can't do at least 50mph/80kmh? You can't really use them in the city, because you get stuck in traffic just like everybody else. Here, a bicycle or a scooter / moped is the way to go - or public transport. You can't really use them on city speedways or circular roads, because you are too slow and hold everyone else up. And you can't use the cycle paths either. And motorways - just forg…

You can own more than one mode of transportation. I have a couple of bikes - one is for trails, one is for roads. I have an ICE vehicle, but I would like to have a small cheap city EV in addition to the ICE vehicle.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#204

Post by CyberDildonics »

oblio wrote: post #179
emteycz wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when are semiconductors anywhere near "simple"? An EV can be made in a garage. Look at airplanes - small companies indeed are successful.

Advanced batteries are not simple. Electric engines are somewhat simple. But they're not the main source of complexity.

What do you mean by "advanced batteries"?

Battery cells are a commodity. Lithium iron phosphate cells last through 8 times more cycles.

Battery management boards can be bought off of amazon, aliexpress etc.

You can find plenty of youtube videos of people spot welding 18650 cells together with nickel strips and wiring a BMS to make their own battery pack, then putting it in their own scooter, electric bike etc. You can even buy full battery packs from actual electric cars and hybrids off the internet.

This is not something that is difficult for a single person, let alone a company.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#205

Post by timerol »

xrd wrote: post #184
xrd wrote: post #47

What's the hack to get something like this in the US? I don't want to drive my kids around in it, but I have a short drive on 35 mph roads to my co-working space and I would love to go electric.

Gem has street legal cars that go up to 25 mph "GEM Vehicles are classified as Low Speed Vehicles (LSVs). LSVs are street-legal, four-wheeled electric vehicles with a top speed of 25 mph. Learn more about LSVs here." I wonder if you could "overclock" them and get them to go 35? No one would even notice...

Given the excessive hand-wringing around e-bikes that can go over 28 mph in NYC, someone would definitely notice

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#206

Post by mastre_ »

covidthrow wrote: post #55
mastre_ wrote: post #38

Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy[1]. They even have an "open source philosophy to patents[2]." I believe, based on what I've seen, all this makes Elon happy to see -- it's the world he envisions and, at least in [no small] part, helped spur on. --- [1] https://www.tesla.com/about [2] https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

I won't assert to know Tesla's motivation for open patents—and there is no doubt some goodwill involved—but do consider that it is not absent strategic advantage. First and foremost, it's a form of deterrence. The presumption is that others will utilize Tesla's patents to compete, which in turn guarantees that said competitor can't sue Tesla for infringing on their patents. (Such activity is denied in the open patent…

> I mention all this free of ethical opinion. Just want to clarify that it is almost certainly not just a simple act of goodwill. Despite this, we can all—at least for now—benefit from such generosity.

I agree. It's still refreshing to witness as it's not something you see every day (ever?). Things are impossible to do a certain way until they're not. If everyone shared patents, we could focus on innovation. Yes easy to say, and easy(er) to do in a new field like Tesla's when they started, but again, it's a refreshing respite from the status quo, that is all.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#207

Post by CyberDildonics »

wil421 wrote: post #170
jillesvangurp wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elektrek has been running a series of amusing articles lately where they review some outrageously cheap vehicles for sale on Alibaba. Think mini jeeps, SUVs, pickup trucks, go carts, etc. selling for something like 1500$. Some of these look like a lot of fun. None of those are street legal of course but they are dirt cheap. That's kind of the point. All you need is some cheap batteries and an electric motor. Most of…

Most of those cheap Alibaba vehicles look like what we would call golf carts in the US.

In many communities people don't need more than a golf cart or scooter the vast majority of the time.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#208

Post by specialist »

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…

> I researched the problem extensively...

Just curious: Did your efforts identify the sweet spots, given misc costs. Like the "makes sense" price as carbon costs rise and battery cost per amp fall. Factoring weight, distance, speed, recharge times, etc.

Why I ask: The most interesting part of the Tesla origin story, to me, is the recognition that laptop battery cost per amp trends would make full-sized EV automobile viable. So they jumped in to catch that wave.

Timing is important.

Separately: I'm also curious what the market segmentation line is between bike and scooter. eg Maybe bikes can peel away some of the scooter market. I've observed that biked wheel sizes are getting smaller as well as getting cargo features. So why not?

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#209

Post by timerol »

Judgmentality wrote: post #99
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 frontal collision between two tiny cars going at full speed will likely have severe outcomes for the drivers and passengers Wouldn't the lower mass of the vehicles mean less forceful impact of the crash? Momentum, kinetic energy, impact - everything scales linearly with mass. If that cars weigh half as much they only need to handle half as much impact. > Of course, it might get worse when they get hit by a faster…

In a potentially deadly collision, what matters is the humans inside, not the car. Initial and final velocity are generally fixed, and the process of decelerating the human is what needs to be done safely. This is why cars have "crumple zones", decelerate the car overall more smoothly, and why airbags are used, to decelerate the human more smoothly. (We're talking "my neck didn't break" smooth.)

You can easily imagine a large truck formed as a rigid body that actually crashes worse than a tiny EV with a few feet of crumple in front of the driver. But all else equal, it's generally easier to design a survivable crash when there's more car to work with. Though EVs make it easier, by being able to use the "frunk" as almost purely crash mitigation, instead of also needing rigidity for the engine.

Though the biggest factor by far is relative speed. It's 10x safer for everyone to be going 25 mph instead of 40 mph.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#210

Post by textman »

oblio wrote: post #145
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…

> What I conclude is that EV revolution is going to be way more democratized than we realize. That's what we all hope. What tends to happen instead, is that mass market stuff gets monopoliged/oligopolized quickly, because there's just too much money on the table. It just looks "democratic" during the scramble, before the winners are decided. If anything, since EVs are simple, we're going to see > centralization, not…

Micron?
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