may be i'm spoiled by US market, yet it looks like a pretty high price for pretty underwhelming specs: "The basic edition costs around USD $16,500 and you’ll pay around $18,250 if you want air conditioning. ... “TITO” is a 2.83 meter long, three-door urban car, with enough space for four people. It has a 4.5 kWh powered electric motor which receives its energy from a lithium battery with an eight kWh capacity. "
It's cheaper than the cheapest electric car available in EU, but with those specs it's barely a car and more of a large scooter with a chassis. For one thing, the safety in a crash must be horrible. EDIT: just checked and the cheapest electric car in the EU, the Dacia Spring, has a 1 star (out of 5) in the NCAP test. Can't imagine what TITO would get.
TITO: Electric Argentine car
121–130 of 159 posts
Re: TITO: Electric Argentine car
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heh then you’re not aboveboard anymore. But I’m sure there’s a thriving market. One of the countries down there even has a name for that type of vehicle - it was on HN last year or so.
You're thinking of "chutos" in Bolivia, probably, but those aren't smuggled into America as a whole, just across the borders between different American countries. Contrary to our friend's ridiculous assertions above, ships are easier to detect than trucks, and a container port is not an easy thing for smugglers to keep hidden. Argentina was founded on smuggling but it doesn't work like that :)
This is one of those things that sounds obvious at first, but the intuitive answer turns out to be false. They (the containers, not the port) are very easy to hide in plain sight. There are simply massive quantities of them and it would grind trade to a halt to be inspected en masse. Therefore in US at least shipping containers are laughable easy for smugglers to "hide."
In US whole shipping container full of illegal immigrant arrive. It's my understanding only a tiny fraction of container are meaningfully searched, and whole containers of imported material can enter the country illegally. Perhaps Argentina has much more sophisticated and honest customs and border protection than US. But also take into account profit on illegal imports can be very high in Argentina due to arbitrage against crippling taxation/duties. Example below.
Re: TITO: Electric Argentine car
#123With the advertised range and top speed it fits more as a small utility vehicle for city street driving only. And, the car is the Tit-o, the truck is the Tit-a, and the SUV version should naturally be called the Tit-e. I'll bet it would be the most popular if the Argentine market is anything like the US market.
I'm fairly sure Tito comes from "autito", the diminutive form of auto (car), and Tita from "camionetita" (camioneta; truck). If I'm right about that then a Tite model is unlikely as it would break the logic.
Re: TITO: Electric Argentine car
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are, but typically wages are paid after working, rather than beforehand. So paying wages monthly rather than, for example, twice a month, amounts to an interest-free loan of two weeks' worth of wages by the employee to their employer, which to me seems unjust. (Thus the Biblical injunction to pay your workers before their sweat has dried.) This interest-free loan is particularly galling when we're experiencing 6…
You make some really good points. In fact, in any system that valued people over companies, you'd expect people to be paid for their services on demand, if not ahead of time.
Re: TITO: Electric Argentine car
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're thinking of "chutos" in Bolivia, probably, but those aren't smuggled into America as a whole, just across the borders between different American countries. Contrary to our friend's ridiculous assertions above, ships are easier to detect than trucks, and a container port is not an easy thing for smugglers to keep hidden. Argentina was founded on smuggling but it doesn't work like that :)
>and a container port is not an easy thing for smugglers to keep hidden. This is one of those things that sounds obvious at first, but the intuitive answer turns out to be false. They (the containers, not the port) are very easy to hide in plain sight. There are simply massive quantities of them and it would grind trade to a halt to be inspected en masse. Therefore in US at least shipping containers are laughable eas…
Argentina definitely does not have customs officials as honest as those in the US, though perhaps they are more sophisticated.
Traveling via container is a thing I've contemplated doing myself, if only I had the budget.
Re: TITO: Electric Argentine car
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
>and a container port is not an easy thing for smugglers to keep hidden. This is one of those things that sounds obvious at first, but the intuitive answer turns out to be false. They (the containers, not the port) are very easy to hide in plain sight. There are simply massive quantities of them and it would grind trade to a halt to be inspected en masse. Therefore in US at least shipping containers are laughable eas…
You can certainly hide a container, but you can't hide a container port , much less a non-submarine ship in the open ocean, which is what your earlier comment suggested. Argentina definitely does not have customs officials as honest as those in the US, though perhaps they are more sophisticated. Traveling via container is a thing I've contemplated doing myself, if only I had the budget.
Re: TITO: Electric Argentine car
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who gets paid before working? I haven't seen that at least here in the states I've worked in the US. Usually you work to the pay period and receive the prorated amount of days you worked. Sometimes you even have to work for two pay periods which can equate to misery if you haven't saved up. lol. Edit: I reread your comment and understand now! Sorry about that.
"Who gets paid before working?" We are often expected to pay companies either ahead of time or on-demand when purchasing goods and services. When we sell our labor, we generally are forced to accept a payment scheme designed by our employer that results in us getting paid much later, with the employer holding our money in the meantime.
Re: TITO: Electric Argentine car
#128I'm guessing this won't sell well in Serbia
Tito was a dictator with all what that means, but he remains popular in large parts of former Yugoslavia. The main exception being the Albanians. Anecdata: I remember a poll where something like 4/5 of the Serbians asked considered life better under Tito than life in 2010: https://balkaninsight.com/2010/12/24/for-simon-poll-serbians...
Which is stroke of luck for him. He started off as brutal stalinist but then had the good sense to lack center and play the big power against each other.
Re: TITO: Electric Argentine car
#129I'm guessing this won't sell well in Serbia
That doesn't change the fact that he was a brutal commie. But a sensible one at least.
Re: TITO: Electric Argentine car
#130As an Argentinean, we can get it for around USD 9.5k, but it lacks many basic features. It can't even go faster than 40 miles per hour / 65 km/h, so it can't really drive on freeways. It doesn't even have a trunk, so not really useful for groceries either (see https://youtu.be/B5_A2F_cDNI?t=139 ) No airbags either, but at those speeds it's probably not as useful (at least that's what they imply in its FAQs). Remember…
Ah, and here I was thinking "not only the Chinese can rip off the design of better-known brands". That explains why the TITO looks like the result of a liaison between a Smart and a Mini. Also, the TITA truck has a "radiator grill" that just screams "BMW"...