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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

#171

Post by yonaguska »

cptaj wrote: post #147
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…

In Venezuela we've had a crippling gasoline shortage since last year (Don't vote for communist dictators). Within months we saw EVs appear everywhere. Tiny Fiat EVs imported for the rich who could buy a new car on a whim, sure, but also thousands of scooters and Ebikes popped up everywhere. Really small, 40km/h tops, cheap from china; exactly what you say happened in a few months.

> Don't vote for communist dictators

The first time you vote for a communist dictator, is the last time your vote will count.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#172

Post by marshmallow_12 »

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…

>Look at what is happening with electronic circuits production. There are what, 4 state of the art producers? TSMC, Samsung, Intel, I'm probably forgetting someone.

what of it? We don't have hundreds of airplane makers. Are circuits less efficient/compact then we need them to be? are they overpriced? if not, why should we need more than a handful of manufacturers to do the job?

Make cars less necessary, do away with half of the legacy brands, (which are anyway owned by the same company) problem solved.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#173

Post by TacticalCoder »

jgilias wrote: post #124
eloisant wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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 such an ugly car.

I'm not 15 and yet there's no way I'll ever use something as fugly as an Ami.

A Tesla Model S or a Porsche Taycan looks good though (and also looks like something that as a higher probability to save your life in case of a frontal crash).

But then... As the (french) saying goes: to everyone's bad tastes. My bad tastes are Model S and Taycan, pick yours!

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#174

Post by bambax »

Tiny cars... or electric bikes? Two years ago I electrified a normal MTB with a Bafang motor and the total cost was under €1000; many changes of brakes and tires later, it now has 7200 km and is almost as good as new (the battery is not in great shape though and may need to be replaced soon).

This has completely changed my life. I used to ride around in a big motorbike but now use it very rarely if ever.

An electric bike is simpler, infinitely quieter, and almost as fast in congested cities such as Paris.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#175

Post by jgilias »

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…

I have a conspiracy theory that the established car manufacturers wouldn't make normal looking EVs as they couldn't justify spending so much on R&D that would yield something that would cannibalize sales of their other models. So they'd try hard to come up with a new niche for EVs. So it literally took an outsider to come in and start eating their lunch to hit them out of the cozy equilibrium they found themselves in.

Looks like Citroen didn't get the memo though.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#176

Post by natchy »

Gys wrote: post #132
rorykoehler wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think I ever drove above 40kmh in an Indian city if I wasn’t off the expressway or whatever they are called in India. It’s the perfect solution for everyday life. Hopefully they become pervasive and help reduce air pollution dramatically.

I lived on a tropical island for a while where the roads were so bad, narrow and busy that speeds above 40 km/h almost never happened (there was a one km stretch on the opposite side where I could reach 50-60 if lucky). Turned out that the low speed combined with short drives (it was a smallish island) was bad for the engine: the oil never really mixed well and had to be replaced much more often than expected for suc…

> low speed combined with short drives (it was a smallish island) was bad for the engine

Low speed or low RPM?

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#177

Post by sgt »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #75
brainless wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a software engineer and I am not crazy enough to build a minimal ICE vehicle. But after spending decent teenage and college years in battery and small motors, I am actually confident enough to build a 3 people mover, slow and all, but it will go. There really is an order of magnitude difference in the complexity. The typical ICE already has electric batteries and motors. But the EV does not have the ICE parts. N…

Yet every yokel with a garage, builds an ICE car for fun. Not even college educated. Some disconnect here?

Very few yokels with a garage "builds" an ICE. Many yokels modify, maintain, make the vehicle tasteless, yes.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#178

Post by KozmoNau7 »

xrd wrote: post #49
brij0102 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric assist bikes could serve you well if the distance works out

I've got a cargo electric bike. My route has a few 35 mph roads that wind through rolling hills and no bike lanes. I've tried biking it, but the cars are aggressive. I really want a car for this commute.

There are definite cultural problems to blame for this. A significant number of drivers get angry or offended at any non-car vehicle on "their" roads, because they see them as a threat or an impediment them.

There are probably many reasons for this that are not directly related to cars or traffic, but rather to general worldviews, politics, prejudices, aspiration and many others, including seeing bicycles in particular as toys and for recreation by Tour de France-inspired cyclists.

However, I think one of the biggest factors is the insistence on "vehicular cycling"[1], which is the foundation for forcing bicycles to follow traffic laws in place for motorized traffic, instead of having bicycle-specific laws that take into account the properties and limitations of human-powered transport.[2][3]

Forcing cyclists to "take the lane" and perform left turns as if they were cars (and having to cross multiple lanes of traffic) is ridiculous, because of the speed and weight disparity. It's extremely dangerous to the cyclists and aggravating to motorists, because of the huge speed differentials and because a collision will almost always result in severe injuries for the cyclist.

Even the most basic changes, such as making hook turns[4] the mandated method for left-turning cyclists, would make a gigantic improvement in safety and traffic flow. After that comes the bike lanes and paths, plus tweaks to intersections to avoid right turn accidents and reduce the number of times different types of traffic have to cross paths.

The cultural issues of entitlement and refusal to share common infrastructure are a separate issue, but I believe at least some of that tension could be reduced with a few sensible tweaks to traffic laws and road planning.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicular_cycling [2] http://shifter.info/vehicular-cycling-is-dead-just-dont-bury... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H75jnRW23X8 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_turn

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#179

Post by oblio »

emteycz wrote: post #169
oblio wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

Re: The road to electric is filled with tiny cars

#180

Post by kiliantics »

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.

As you sort of suggest, the real problem is the gigantic cars filling the roads these days. Why do we allow this? You can't even see out of them properly:

https://media.tegna-media.com/assets/WTHR/images/9092b67f-2b...

This escalation of destructive potential in vehicles, sold to us as increased "safety", is absurd and horrifying.

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