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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

#231

Post by baybal2 »

specialist wrote: post #208
baybal2 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I'm also curious what the market segmentation line is between bike and scooter.

If you mean bicycles, than very obvious, you want to drive on the road? In much of the world, you cannot legally, or would not risk doing so anyways.

If you mean motorcycles, than its just well taste + expectations of better dynamic qualities.

Scooter is more of an urban vehicles, where motorcycles has appeal in rural areas for use on dirt roads. There bigger wheels, and higher seating is a plus.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#232

Post by rank0 »

renewiltord wrote: post #223
rank0 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't like bicyclists because they are observably more dangerous. I think cyclists should have their own paths where possible. But honestly, I think the cyclists are the ones being selfish by disrupting traffic, endangering themselves and others so they can feel "green" or workout or whatever.

Honestly, for third parties reading, this is just utter nonsense. Just go pull SWITRS data from CA and look at it yourself. The last time I looked at it, it was easy to get, and the schema was trivial to analyse in a REPL. Car-bike collisions are overwhelmingly car-driver-at-fault (60-40), and bike-only collisions are rare. Car-only people identify so strongly with their cars, it's weird. And for some reason they are…

> Honestly, for third parties reading, this is just utter nonsense. Just go pull SWITRS data from CA and look at it yourself.

I'm glad you brought this up because according to SWITRS cyclists are involved in ~8 percent of injuries while only making up ~1 percent of commuters.

Almost everything I can find online claims that cycling is more dangerous per mile, per hour, and per trip. Additionally, I am willing to bet that most cycling accidents are not reported to the police.

> Here are some anecdotes from the last couple of months:

While were using anecdotes, here mine - I know many more people who have been hurt cycling than driving. This doesn't even adjust for the much greater miles/hours spend driving vs cycling.

Even besides the statistics, you should be able to use common sense to understand that bicycling is more dangerous than multi-ton steel cages equipped with seat belts and airbags.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#233

Post by renewiltord »

rank0 wrote: post #232
renewiltord wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, for third parties reading, this is just utter nonsense. Just go pull SWITRS data from CA and look at it yourself. The last time I looked at it, it was easy to get, and the schema was trivial to analyse in a REPL. Car-bike collisions are overwhelmingly car-driver-at-fault (60-40), and bike-only collisions are rare. Car-only people identify so strongly with their cars, it's weird. And for some reason they are…

> Honestly, for third parties reading, this is just utter nonsense. Just go pull SWITRS data from CA and look at it yourself. I'm glad you brought this up because according to SWITRS cyclists are involved in ~8 percent of injuries while only making up ~1 percent of commuters. Almost everything I can find online claims that cycling is more dangerous per mile, per hour, and per trip. Additionally, I am willing to bet t…

Ah cycling is dangerous. Cyclists are not dangerous. Okay, not going to argue with that.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#234

Post by rank0 »

renewiltord wrote: post #233
rank0 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, for third parties reading, this is just utter nonsense. Just go pull SWITRS data from CA and look at it yourself. I'm glad you brought this up because according to SWITRS cyclists are involved in ~8 percent of injuries while only making up ~1 percent of commuters. Almost everything I can find online claims that cycling is more dangerous per mile, per hour, and per trip. Additionally, I am willing to bet t…

Ah cycling is dangerous. Cyclists are not dangerous. Okay, not going to argue with that.

Yes, I'm just talking about the mode of transportation I see how my original comment is confusing.

I am all for better cycling infrastructure and have no beef with cyclists themselves.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#235

Post by jgilias »

WorldMaker wrote: post #227
jgilias wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People living in cities that have been (re)built to make them convenient like that, such as Copenhagen or Amsterdam, tend to use bicycles to get around a lot. Going from bicycles to small EVs would be a step back on pretty much any metric imaginable.

Which is a digression from most of the main discussions here. Though in lieu of that digression other threads around here also point out the usefulness of pedal-assisted e-bikes and how the same trends leading to small EVs are causing an explosion in e-bikes right now as well.

Sorry, I was not meaning to digress, I think it's very much on-point.

My point all along is that miniature EVs are a solution in need of a problem. I used to live in Oslo for some time, and the ratio between Buddy cars (Norwegian made miniature EVs) and normal-sized EVs was really small. And Buddy manufacturers went out of business. Because it goes something like this:

1. If you live downtown, you walk places, ride a bicycle, or take public transportation.

2. If you live further away, you need something that can be used as an actual car on Ring 3 around Oslo.

Miniature EVs are not a good fit for either of those groups.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#236

Post by WorldMaker »

jgilias wrote: post #235
WorldMaker wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a digression from most of the main discussions here. Though in lieu of that digression other threads around here also point out the usefulness of pedal-assisted e-bikes and how the same trends leading to small EVs are causing an explosion in e-bikes right now as well.

Sorry, I was not meaning to digress, I think it's very much on-point. My point all along is that miniature EVs are a solution in need of a problem. I used to live in Oslo for some time, and the ratio between Buddy cars (Norwegian made miniature EVs) and normal-sized EVs was really small. And Buddy manufacturers went out of business. Because it goes something like this: 1. If you live downtown, you walk places, ride a…

Small cars make more sense in other cities. It's a digression because the thread above is more on why they couldn't work in cities where they would be beneficial overall, especially as a transition tool while (re)bootstrapping public transport. While I can mostly only speak to the American experience, obviously China is seeing some niches today, and parts of Europe that aren't quite as well adapted to biking and public transport may see them as well.

I can mostly only speak to the American suburban diaspora, and small EV cars could be an incredibly useful transition tool where scales are far too big for comfortable biking (much less walking), little to no public transportation exists, but small enough with some speed limit changes to common streets may be perfect for small EVs in theory. Which is why most of the other conversation above (and in related threads) is about the challenges in using it as a transition tech in America: that family size averages might be too big to be comfortable in small EV cars, that Americans have grown accustomed to cars being the only generally available means of transport whatsoever between destinations, that Americans heavily rely on primary vehicles for long tail secondary functions (hauling, cargo, long distance trips), and that the American "dream" is entangled with this notion that one's primary car should be able to serve every part of that long tail of rare/unusual secondary functions, and that every American is indeed trapped in the tragedy of commons that vehicles "must" get larger and deadlier to feel "safer" and "more in control".

It would be wonderful if America were able to rebuild cities to be more like Amsterdam/Copenhagen/Oslo magically overnight so that biking and public transportation would serve most uses. It's just unlikely to happen magically, much less overnight, and small cars could be a convenient transition tool to bootstrap something better. (But probably won't be given current American sociopolitics.)

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#237

Post by zdragnar »

ansible wrote: post #189
zdragnar wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that 3 wheel cars have a bad stigma attached to them dating back to the Reliant Robin- at least the single-wheel-in-front variety. Since most of these cars have low top speeds, they also face a usefulness problem. Parking is too expensive in dense cities for super cheap cars to have a large market, and they are too slow to be useful in suburbs or the countryside.

> ... Reliant Robin- at least the single-wheel-in-front variety. To be clear, this is because the single-wheel in front vehicles will roll over if turned sharply or at too high a speed. The single-wheel in back designs are much more dynamically stable.

True. There is a picture of a wheel in front version in the article, which is what made me think of it.

I do have an irrational desire to take a Polaris Slingshot for a drive, though.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#238

Post by ulfw »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #173
jgilias wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sp…

> If I was 15, you'd see me dead in one of them Amis. Yes, at least the Smart looks ok. But that Citroen thing is totally ugly: it reminds me of the car that the billionaire was using in one scene in Silicon Valley when leaving the restaurant, where it's actually only half a car. But Silicon Valley is satire. It's weird that a country like France so well known for its luxury brands and "savoir faire" can come up with…

The Ami costs 6,000EUR to buy, a Porsche Taycan or Tesla S depending on spec easily 100,000EUR. Why you even compare those? They're not even in the same world.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#239

Post by rapjr9 »

Where can you buy these in the USA? ATV stores seem to be all ICE. Golf carts are way overpriced and often not enclosed and have little cargo space. The only way I can see to get a small electric utility vehicle that costs under $3000 for packages and yard work is to order one shipped from China on Alibaba and similar web sites. There are $15,000 UTV's in the USA, but that is a ridiculous price.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#240

Post by Hypx »

desktopninja wrote: post #222

Given: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-08/klm-makes... https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/porsche-says-synthetic-fuel-... And advancements in hydrogen fuel cells, wondering now if EV's are just a fad.

Internal combustion could be with us for a long time.
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