Why is the being downvoted? This is basically what it is.
You can put lipstick on it but it’s basically a golf cart. Golf carts and that whole style of vehicle is a valid alternative for cities.
I still prefer bikes but I would use a golf cart based transport network if it was safe and I didn’t have to share the road with gigantic 8000 lb suvs driven by people who keep missing their anger management appointments.
The insta post this submission is based on from
Elektrek.co even asks the question of whether this is just a golf cart or something actually new and exciting.
I would think because of “but not the 99% of US consumers”.
Vehicles such as this one can be used for a significant fraction of trips that currently are done with heavy cars.
Yes, US consumers will have to change, but IMO, and I think I’m far from alone in that, that’s needed to solve the climate crisis, at least in the short term.
They drive on the city road in between other "8000 lb" suvs. Not sure why that matters.
I drive my car a 1,500kg car right next to 30,000kg trucks, was never an issue for me.
I find this fascination with the size of the car and how it supposed to be a hazard quite amusing.
Roads are meant to be shared between different participants. These carts are meant for the city, where everyone's speed limit is 50kph anyway, and they avoid the faster roads. For many, this is all they need.
I think American drivers is the real concern. There is a certain percentage of people in the US who really have their heads really solidly right up their ass about sharing the road with other users.
As someone who regularly bicycles and walks let me tell you just a few of the things I have personally experienced. I’ve been spit on, had drinks thrown from moving vehicles onto me, been yelled by a motorcyclist for him almost hitting me on the shoulder of a road, been fairly regularly threatened with violence for riding my bike (1-2 times a year someone just loses it), been run off the road by a pickup truck while finishing a mountain bike ride (on purpose), had diesel vehicles blow their exhaust at me when passing (common), and actually had a family member get run down two meters off the main road by someone not paying attention and rummaging through grocery bags in their backseat while driving — hit him from behind in the middle of the day. It was incredibly difficult to prosecute that case and the police and district attorney in the area really didn’t want to do anything.
I could go on, but the point is that America is not Amsterdam and that “8000 lb” vehicle thing is really more of a reference to car brain idiots and the system that supports them than Gross Vehicle Weights themselves.
My entire family still commutes by bike for 70-80 percent of our trips but we are committed to change, and we live in an exceptionally bike oriented city in California.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Amsterdam and find it one of the most deeply compelling transportation systems in the world. I would be happy to use one of these vehicles, but I worry that the small army of car brain idiots in the Us would make using a vehicle like this just plain dangerous and untenable.
That means they are competing with electric bikes, especially those 3 wheeled. Naturally there is some benefits in terms of driver comfort, but I suspect the bikes will have a more competitive price.
A good counterweight to the seemingly common view that anything smaller than a tank and cannot do 60mph backwards is emasculating.
There are too many large, heavy, dangerous, expensive 'cars' on the roads everywhere in the world.
I can drive. I do not own a car, and I have set up my life not to need one (nor nee to fill my brain with rubbish about insurance etc), but I would consider one of these. I could even charge it from my roof or off-grid PV.
It kind of depends on the chassis' structure rather than weight. That being said the only thing more weight accomplishes is the impact is worse for anyone that isn't you.
It is better for the car occupants to be in a heavier car. IIRC, US road deaths of people outside the car have doubled over the last ~20Y because of the rise of the SUV and its ilk. European safety rules take into account people outside the car in the notion of 'safety'; I don't think that US safety rules do.
Cars have gotten larger because of changes in recent years to emissions laws: larger cars are permitted to have greater emissions. Naturally, this results in auto manufacturers building larger cars that are easier to make compliant to emissions laws. Force emissions to be lower and the size of vehicles will decrease.
I do find it hilarious that my dad's old F150 truck made back in the 1970s is way smaller than modern trucks.
A friend of mine likes to point out that Formula 1 cars are very light and the drivers aren't emasculated. But somehow this detail doesn't make it to the car designers in Detroit.
As a general rule, one should question their beliefs if their beliefs require some type of derogatory state of mind about some other, disagreeable group.
For instance, what is more likely: people drive large cars en masse because they have fragile egos, or large cars are solving some problem they have, namely they have a lot of stuff to carry around?
As a personal anecdote: after the first kid, I had to ditch my tiny car for something that would accommodate all the stuff that comes with a kid. Now that we have a second on the way, I realize the small SUV we got is too small.
Whether or not large cars are a modern, mostly unnecessary, luxury is a separate question from the assertion made by OP, which is that large car usage is primarily driven by feelings of personal insecurity.
My point is that you can never hope to solve a problem if you don’t even understand the fundamental circumstances that caused the problem to arise. Of course, not every person can know every thing, but it’s a good signal that you might be operating under false pretenses if your argument requires people to act in some derogatory way.
Most of the words that I used such as large and dangerous are borne out by published official stats. And nothing so dramatically changed about the geometry or demographics of (say) the US or UK as to require massive rapid inflation in car volumne and mass.
I have a whole separate gripe about people expecting more and more public land for free (a single parking space is worth ~£50k around me and should be rented out for ~£3k/year at market rates), and over two stories could accommodate one person. My house is being bulldozed soon in part because there was no other way to get people to allow increased residential density and stop using three parking spaces per household on average. In an place where my familiy doesn't even need one.
Car advertising seems to be entirely about ego and fantasy, the little that I see. And SUVs etc are far more profitable for them, this again is unemotionally clear. The fact that they are prepared to kill more pedestrians, damage the planet, and be complicit in the theft of public space, all for a quick buck, is the reason for my bile.
People want big cars, for ego, for convenience, for perceived safety.
The US, for decades now, has laws on the books which make it more cost effective for manufacturers to make big, heavy cars. Look up the light truck exemption.
If everyone drives a huge car, you begin to feel less safe in a normal sized car. This means that even people who wouldn't normally drive a truck or SUV begin gravitating towards them because they don't want to turn into pink paste when a 19 year old phone addicted driver in a Ram 3500 slams into them going 60mph on a residential road.
Gemcar's GEM e2 looks very similar to this. And as well as a e4 an e6 (for 4 or 6 passengers) they do EL XD is a work utility version that can carry 1415 lbs or tow 1250.
I had a 1998 Toyota Tacoma with a full length truck bed. I swore I’d drive it until the wheels fell off.
Sometime close to 250,000 miles, the u bolts rusted through on the front wheels. One fell off in a drive thru. Got it fixed and the other one checked. They said it was okay, but the other wheel fell off three weeks later. It had a few other problems - AC was leaky, interior plastic was disintegrating, so I sold it for like $1,000 about five years ago and I’ve regretted not just fixing it up and keeping it ever since. I can’t find a similar size/function truck for less than $8-10k. And new “small” trucks aren’t big enough to haul a sheet of plywood. Neither are some big ones.
My electric scooter goes faster than that and longer range. But I can see it be handy for short distance stuff. The range is a bit of a joke considering they can probably beef that up more. Going to see the reviews how they stack up or how well they play.
I'm sorry, but it's a press release about potential expansion plans, the website is full of typos and they haven't started production yet... I'm skeptical.
If anyone's curious about the legal aspect - it's basically a golf cart with a solar panel on top and that's more or less how it would be classified in the US, not as a car but as a NEV like the GEM EVs that are already common across the US for meter maids/security/etc. If you want one badly you can just buy a GEM NEV and slap a solar panel on the roof.
The problem with these to me is the cost, this thing claims to cost 9300 euros+21% BTW = 11.2k euros = 11.8k usd for the first 100 built when and if they make them. $12k is about double $6k, sorry, and for $12k you can buy an actual car that has A/C and real heat and goes more than 28mph. If you're using one of these in NYC, for example, it's pretty crappy in the winter and summer (the entire 3 kWh battery will be eaten up by one hour of heating or two of cooling in that small metal greenhouse) and of course the trips where it would be most useful for (between Manhattan and Brooklyn/Queens) it is legally and practically prohibited from.
The other problem, of course, is solar panels on a car in a city. I have actually done this (!) and even if you are conscientious about not parking under trees etc you often get days with very little production because of other obstructions - high buildings, other things parked or moved nearby, street signs shading your panels... you often only have peak output for a few hours tops and a few simple things can totally ruin those peak hours. I estimate that this thing has 300W of panel on it - Realistically with that 300Wp and VERY conscientious parking you would average maybe 560 Wh/day in NYC in August with a peak of maybe 1.5 kWh. Keep in mind this eliminates about 3/4 of parking spaces so there goes a lot of the advantages of this thing. That 560Wh/day is about 8km per day at their ~15 km/kWh rate. That's peak sun months. In the winter you will have to use on-street EV charging for this thing which will get kind of annoying with a small battery and the high draw of the heater.
It's a shame, because I think there's a lot of people who would be willing to look past the safety, the comfort or other parts of this if it was practical for the kind of short trips people would use it for, but it seems to be _just_ barely suboptimal. For the price you can buy a much more comfortable used car that just works, goes where you need it, heats and cools you, and if you're truly using it so little will cost very little in gas. I could see it working in a year-round mild climate with good sun but that doesn't describe a ton of US cities.
Eventually, though, the cost of all of this will fall, batteries and solar will improve, and we'll get there... but today? I don't quite see these things taking off. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.
33 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 77.6 ms ] threadYou can put lipstick on it but it’s basically a golf cart. Golf carts and that whole style of vehicle is a valid alternative for cities.
I still prefer bikes but I would use a golf cart based transport network if it was safe and I didn’t have to share the road with gigantic 8000 lb suvs driven by people who keep missing their anger management appointments.
The insta post this submission is based on from Elektrek.co even asks the question of whether this is just a golf cart or something actually new and exciting.
I would think because of “but not the 99% of US consumers”.
Vehicles such as this one can be used for a significant fraction of trips that currently are done with heavy cars.
Yes, US consumers will have to change, but IMO, and I think I’m far from alone in that, that’s needed to solve the climate crisis, at least in the short term.
Good point about the 99 percent.
They drive on the city road in between other "8000 lb" suvs. Not sure why that matters. I drive my car a 1,500kg car right next to 30,000kg trucks, was never an issue for me.
I find this fascination with the size of the car and how it supposed to be a hazard quite amusing.
Roads are meant to be shared between different participants. These carts are meant for the city, where everyone's speed limit is 50kph anyway, and they avoid the faster roads. For many, this is all they need.
As someone who regularly bicycles and walks let me tell you just a few of the things I have personally experienced. I’ve been spit on, had drinks thrown from moving vehicles onto me, been yelled by a motorcyclist for him almost hitting me on the shoulder of a road, been fairly regularly threatened with violence for riding my bike (1-2 times a year someone just loses it), been run off the road by a pickup truck while finishing a mountain bike ride (on purpose), had diesel vehicles blow their exhaust at me when passing (common), and actually had a family member get run down two meters off the main road by someone not paying attention and rummaging through grocery bags in their backseat while driving — hit him from behind in the middle of the day. It was incredibly difficult to prosecute that case and the police and district attorney in the area really didn’t want to do anything.
I could go on, but the point is that America is not Amsterdam and that “8000 lb” vehicle thing is really more of a reference to car brain idiots and the system that supports them than Gross Vehicle Weights themselves.
My entire family still commutes by bike for 70-80 percent of our trips but we are committed to change, and we live in an exceptionally bike oriented city in California.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Amsterdam and find it one of the most deeply compelling transportation systems in the world. I would be happy to use one of these vehicles, but I worry that the small army of car brain idiots in the Us would make using a vehicle like this just plain dangerous and untenable.
All the best.
There are too many large, heavy, dangerous, expensive 'cars' on the roads everywhere in the world.
I can drive. I do not own a car, and I have set up my life not to need one (nor nee to fill my brain with rubbish about insurance etc), but I would consider one of these. I could even charge it from my roof or off-grid PV.
I do find it hilarious that my dad's old F150 truck made back in the 1970s is way smaller than modern trucks.
For instance, what is more likely: people drive large cars en masse because they have fragile egos, or large cars are solving some problem they have, namely they have a lot of stuff to carry around?
As a personal anecdote: after the first kid, I had to ditch my tiny car for something that would accommodate all the stuff that comes with a kid. Now that we have a second on the way, I realize the small SUV we got is too small.
When you were a kid, how big was your parents' cars?
My point is that you can never hope to solve a problem if you don’t even understand the fundamental circumstances that caused the problem to arise. Of course, not every person can know every thing, but it’s a good signal that you might be operating under false pretenses if your argument requires people to act in some derogatory way.
I have a whole separate gripe about people expecting more and more public land for free (a single parking space is worth ~£50k around me and should be rented out for ~£3k/year at market rates), and over two stories could accommodate one person. My house is being bulldozed soon in part because there was no other way to get people to allow increased residential density and stop using three parking spaces per household on average. In an place where my familiy doesn't even need one.
Car advertising seems to be entirely about ego and fantasy, the little that I see. And SUVs etc are far more profitable for them, this again is unemotionally clear. The fact that they are prepared to kill more pedestrians, damage the planet, and be complicit in the theft of public space, all for a quick buck, is the reason for my bile.
People want big cars, for ego, for convenience, for perceived safety.
The US, for decades now, has laws on the books which make it more cost effective for manufacturers to make big, heavy cars. Look up the light truck exemption.
If everyone drives a huge car, you begin to feel less safe in a normal sized car. This means that even people who wouldn't normally drive a truck or SUV begin gravitating towards them because they don't want to turn into pink paste when a 19 year old phone addicted driver in a Ram 3500 slams into them going 60mph on a residential road.
Sometime close to 250,000 miles, the u bolts rusted through on the front wheels. One fell off in a drive thru. Got it fixed and the other one checked. They said it was okay, but the other wheel fell off three weeks later. It had a few other problems - AC was leaky, interior plastic was disintegrating, so I sold it for like $1,000 about five years ago and I’ve regretted not just fixing it up and keeping it ever since. I can’t find a similar size/function truck for less than $8-10k. And new “small” trucks aren’t big enough to haul a sheet of plywood. Neither are some big ones.
You could lease an EV Ranger from Ford back then. Some of them still exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Ranger_EV
If anyone's curious about the legal aspect - it's basically a golf cart with a solar panel on top and that's more or less how it would be classified in the US, not as a car but as a NEV like the GEM EVs that are already common across the US for meter maids/security/etc. If you want one badly you can just buy a GEM NEV and slap a solar panel on the roof.
The problem with these to me is the cost, this thing claims to cost 9300 euros+21% BTW = 11.2k euros = 11.8k usd for the first 100 built when and if they make them. $12k is about double $6k, sorry, and for $12k you can buy an actual car that has A/C and real heat and goes more than 28mph. If you're using one of these in NYC, for example, it's pretty crappy in the winter and summer (the entire 3 kWh battery will be eaten up by one hour of heating or two of cooling in that small metal greenhouse) and of course the trips where it would be most useful for (between Manhattan and Brooklyn/Queens) it is legally and practically prohibited from.
The other problem, of course, is solar panels on a car in a city. I have actually done this (!) and even if you are conscientious about not parking under trees etc you often get days with very little production because of other obstructions - high buildings, other things parked or moved nearby, street signs shading your panels... you often only have peak output for a few hours tops and a few simple things can totally ruin those peak hours. I estimate that this thing has 300W of panel on it - Realistically with that 300Wp and VERY conscientious parking you would average maybe 560 Wh/day in NYC in August with a peak of maybe 1.5 kWh. Keep in mind this eliminates about 3/4 of parking spaces so there goes a lot of the advantages of this thing. That 560Wh/day is about 8km per day at their ~15 km/kWh rate. That's peak sun months. In the winter you will have to use on-street EV charging for this thing which will get kind of annoying with a small battery and the high draw of the heater.
It's a shame, because I think there's a lot of people who would be willing to look past the safety, the comfort or other parts of this if it was practical for the kind of short trips people would use it for, but it seems to be _just_ barely suboptimal. For the price you can buy a much more comfortable used car that just works, goes where you need it, heats and cools you, and if you're truly using it so little will cost very little in gas. I could see it working in a year-round mild climate with good sun but that doesn't describe a ton of US cities.
Eventually, though, the cost of all of this will fall, batteries and solar will improve, and we'll get there... but today? I don't quite see these things taking off. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.