Posted on 05/16/2024 9:16:46 AM PDT by Red Badger
Pintos were deathmobiles.
I saw an accident with an SUV recently. The back panel peeled off like a banana.
My truck would barely bounce backing over that.
Wow.
His problem is getting someone to buy in so he can get to volume production. Right now it’s a $200k novelty, but it could be a sub $30k production city car with 100mile plus range. It’s fast, small, handles great, and should be relatively safe. I would drive one around town, and maybe take solo trips up to about an hour away if it was affordable.
With a black cover on it and no A/C it has to be a roaster on wheels.
Tell me you didn’t look at the Aptera site without telling me that. The video you posted is one wheel in front and two in the rear, an inherently unstable platform. The Aptera is the exact opposite, two wheels in front and one in the rear which is an inherently stable platform.
Of course I looked at the site - that’s why I made the crack about driving backwards. It was joke (and a chance to scope out an entertaining video). Lighten up - nobody cares what kind of golf cart you’re fond of.
lol...such a great show.
“1976 1 ton Chevy 4 speed dually would think it had hit a gust of wind.”
These are for high density cities like New York City. Your 76 would struggle to make turns in NYC, it would cost you 4.50 a gal to fill it after waiting 45 minutes in line at one of the few pumps on the island. It would cost you $75 to park it no in and out. Every time you wanted to use it and put it back in parking lot is $75 or more. Sure bring that beater of a truck to a mega city where these are destined for it would be about as useful as tits on a boar in the City there most people travel alone and at $200 fine camera enforced 25mph city wide speed limit. They just mail the speeding tickets with no limit on the number per day. Oh and if you bring th at beast to midtown Manhattan it’s also $25 or higher congestion charge each time you enter ,plus $12 at the tunnels inbound or the GW bridge or the Narrows no toll pass it’s $24 on the bridges. You get the point they say right in the beginning these are designed for dense urban gridlock traffic where they will never meet a speeding dully. The key here is two of these fit side by side in a standard lane and four fit in the footprint shadow of a SUV. They also can nose in park to the curb quadrupling parking spots on the curb. These are quads they compete with two and three wheelers not cars. They offer protection from the elements and marginally better crash protection vs a tuk tuk but way better than a motorcycle,or a ebike or pedal bike. That’s that they should be compared too. Pedal bikes are everywhere in NYC, same for Ebikes. L.A.,San Francisco,Las Vegas, Austin, any college town, New Orleans all have dense cores full of people on two wheelers. No one said these were for flyover country and frankly urbanites don’t care one bit about flyover country.
I split my time between my land and one of my more urban properties or airbnb/vrbo/short term rental condos in the urban cores of what megacity I happen to be in that month. Give me a quad with A.C. And heat over a ebike,escooter, or motorcycle any day of the week in winter NYC or summer New Orleans or Vegas. Make them peer to peer by the hour or by the minute rentals like Bird scooters , or Uber Ebikes and scooters. Drop it off at a curb and walk away check in and out with the app. Austin, New Orleans and Vegas all gave 25mph urban core speed limits same for D.C. And Philly.
Where do you put the clubs? and the scorecard?
The urban answer to the sport of cow tipping.
Why would you assume there is no A.C.? In the EU quads often do have climate controls they are a special vehicle class with a easy to get licence for younger people. Unlike here you cannot drive a full sized sedan until you pass the road exam and make the age limits which can be as high as 21. You need a class C operator’s lice
nce to drive anything larger than a Ford Ranger / maverick truck a F150 class would be commercial licence only in the EU thats why you don’t see pick ups everywhere that and taxes are by gross vehicle weight. Then per the individual horsepower monthly on your insurance as a tariff used to be by liter displacement but now with turbos it’s by the horsepower.
This drives people to smaller vehicles and for the 18 and unders quads and 125cc motobikes are all you can drive.
They are targeting a 12kw motor and 100miles range that means a ten kWh pack. A single person AC unit with a COP of 4 not all that high would need a 750/1000wh per hour or so for 7500btu of cooling think window A.C.unit plenty enough for a small space around the driver. Cut the range in half worse case for a 5 hour usage in stoped grid lock.
Its me taken 2.5 hours to drive from LaGuardia Airport to SOHO Manhattan a distance of 11 miles for an avg speed of 5mph in not rush hour Manhattan traffic this was at 2pm mid day. In dense cores the distnaces are going to be short under 5 miles a lot under 2 miles. Having a simple follow the car in front of you camera based AI cruise control plus braking system would be worth it’s weight in gold. Creep.Creep.Creep under AI vision based control is already a thing and getting cheaper by the day.
Curb and light pole based chargers are coming no loose cords the cords are in the vehicle and retract or spiral up like a coiled garden hose when done in the boot. L2 11.2kw would put a full charge in 50min into a 10kWh pack. While L2 22or could do it in half hour. Having curb plugs and light post plugs everywhere they do this in China btw means in a uber like rental you pull up to the curb any curb exit the app and plug it in charging for the next person a 45 second task. There would be a fee for not plugging it in to encourage that behavior just like there is a fee for a bad drop off of a Bird or Uber scooter the app makes you.take a picture of the drop.off point and bills you if you don’t take the pic or it’s in a street or illegal parking spot ect.
Just like Bird rentals app will show you where available e-vehicles are ,and what each state of charge is so you know how far the range is left. You already told it your.destination so the AI logic points you to the closest e-vehicle with the range needed. Bird and uber both already do this.
The EU like China is also going the L2 curb, light post, meter post charge point with the CCS standard. They have triple phase 400V everywhere with a modern grid not the 1800s 120/240 split phase garbage the USA has. So their L2 is up too 34kw not the 11 or 22kw that 240v limits. A ten kWh pack is 20 min at EU L2 rates. Having a timeshare rental out of service for 20 min every ten hours is not a deal breaker especially if these are mass produced like Escooters and parked in quad groups at.reserved spots every other block in the cores. Then you only need curb chargers at those reserved spots and it’s no more than a block or two away from a user destination. The app could always offer for a fee the curb side drop at any curb no plug in so drop and walk right into the building.
I have seen you post stuff about urban vehicles and know you are in Vietnam. Great country and great people. I’m debating expat life in South East Asia. You of all people will appreciate how going from a two or three wheel to a quad is a huge step up especially with climate control. The flyover bro bros simply cannot fathom that most of the rest of the planets population lives in dense urban cores. Even here in the USA 75% living in a urban MSA by census tracks with drives under 6 miles and 96% under 30 miles PER DAY. I wish you blessings in Vietnam and maybe I’ll join the expat FR group there soon.
Smaller vehicles are the splat marks on the road they are are unsafe to be on the road.
Not often seen by others they are in blind spots they don’t see other cars when attempting to merge around in traffic and have very little protection for the driver no plus side to them period.
They are calling it “Yugo2”
Because the original Yugo was such a great seller.
Another flyover type who has never driven in Manhattan or Central London or any Asian megacity. Motorcycles, ebikes , escooters are the dominant personal vehicle in those urban cores especially Asia sure there are cabs and ubers. The only large vehicles in those cores are delivery vehicles and they are taxed out the nose in London, Asian cities and now NYC just to enter. There is a 25 mph or less speed limit in every one of those megacities. NYC, London both have speed camera’s that just mail tickets for going over 25mph so no splat the average speed of Manhattan traffic is 5 mph or less. Been there done that. Compared to a bicycle, or other two wheeler these pprovide shelter from the elements and A.C. Or heat. What part of these mini cars are not for highways , or arterial streets is so hard to understand. Urban cores with under 30 mph speed limits is perfect for two, three and quad cycles four to a lane, nose in parking 3 or 4 to a single meter spot. You are safer in a quad than on foot or a bicycle against an uber car or a can that’s the comparison not to a sedan or suv neither would be in an urban core for the average person. It’s $75 each time you park a car in Manhattan, $12 to cross the bridge in or $24 without etoll. And $25+ to enter the lower Manhattan core each time you enter. London has less parking than NYC and higher congestion fees. Forget cars in the high density cities only the truly wealthy drive then from valet to valet parking. Asian cities just don’t allow outside cars in your plate shows your allowed area’s.
Where do you put the groceries and how is it in snow?
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