As 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 that the minimum wage here is around USD 200, so it's quite expensive as well. I'd rather get an ebike/scooter/used car and use it for longer trips.
It's like an enclosed golf kart that could be usefuly for residents of gated communities or small cities (not sure how it would handle in cities with hills like SF though :P)
No one seems to mention that it appears to be a copy of a chinese "Today Sunshine M1", but at 2.5x the cost :(
Knowing Argentina's history with currency control, parallels economies and punitive import duties, it's probably the later where some insiders are pocketing the difference by claiming the car is "made in Argentina" (but is illegally imported from China).
That's not how it works here. You import things legally from China—not only without the punitive import duties applied to finished products but actually at the currency-control-subsidized exchange rate, so you get a 40% discount courtesy of the central bank—assemble them in Argentina, slap an eagle sticker on them that says "Industria Argentina", and sell them domestically while enjoying the punitive-import-duty protection from foreign companies, all 100% legally.
The only tricky part is that if the ruling party decides they don't like you, they'll 100% legally deny you the authorization to buy the dollars you need to import your parts. Then you're sunk: there's no legal way to import your parts, and as an aboveboard business you can't use parts you import illegally. So, better make sure you stay on their good side.
This is a big reason why our GDP is smaller now than it was ten years ago. We were already in a crisis before covid.
Does Argentina have much of a Navy? There is quite a generous coast line. One that I would think would make customs control very tricky unless you have first world tier surveillance of the coasts.
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 :)
>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 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.
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.
this reminds me of the companies that have claimed to be the "manufacturer" of an electric motorcycle but are in fact importing a knocked down kit of electric motorcycle parts from an alibaba vendor in china.
I mean, if they make the frame themselves, I don't see the issue. It's like saying that the the first Buells weren't made by Buell because they had a Harley engine and Ohlins suspension.
Not necessarily for groceries, but otherwise yeah.
There are some things that I need to permanently store in the car, and using backseats for that essentially makes them unusable for their primary purpose (hosting humans). I am not even talking about the bewilderingly very common in the US "I use my car trunk as a small storage unit" scenario. I am talking about storing things like backup tire, first-aid kit, electric tire pump+sealant combo (in case i get a small puncture in my tire, so that I can patch it up and get to the nearest parking lot/service center or home), a charging cable+adapters (in case you drive an EV), a change of clothes, a roll of paper towels, and maybe a change of clothing. Mind you, even with those things in mind, they won't take up a lot of space at all, and trunk is still very usable for groceries and other stuff.
The main issue is that without trunk at all, even a very small subset of bare essential things from that list (first-aid kit and a tire pump) essentially create a problem where they are always occupying the backseat area of the car, which makes it problematic for humans to use.
It depends on how large a family you are shopping for, and if you need to bring little kids with you when you go. A family trip without a trunk means no room at all for groceries.
The distance between the driver door and the passenger door (on the same side of the car) is shorter than the walk from the driver door to the trunk. If I've got just one or two bags of groceries, I'll toss 'em on the backseat. An entire cart-full of groceries is a whole 'nother story...
They meant monthly, though it's not quite that low. According to Reuters[0], the national minimum wage as of this month is 45,540 (around 368 USD), and it will be increased again in August.
Reuters is using the fraudulent official exchange rate, not the real exchange rate, which is currently $216-$220 per US$. So if you take your monthly minimum-wage salary and convert it into dollars you will get about US$200, not US$368. You need government authorization to buy (a small amount of) dollars at the official rate, and there's a government policy to reserve dollars for rich people, so if you're working a minimum-wage job you won't get that authorization.
If you're changing a larger amount of money at the free-market rate you can get as much as US$207 for each $45540.
I live in Argentina and this is correct. The (fake) official exchange rate is used by the government and media to paint a better picture of the terrible situation that we're in, it should not be used nor trusted anywhere to make any calculations on the cost of living, inflation, salaries nor anything else.
That's because the article uses the "oficial" usd exchange rate (~130 argentine pesos per dollar) that don't includes taxes. With taxes its ~200 per dollar. So, the minimun wage Is ~220
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% inflation per month, so your wages are worth 3% less when you get them.
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.
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.
Companies that force "net payment terms" on their vendors are also an interesting setup. Some of them force crazy terms like "Net 90"...90 days after an invoice that can only be submitted once a month. So they are taking labor and paying out sometimes 120 days later.
Employees in good bargaining positions frequently receive signing bonuses, so they do get paid before working. Those aren't the people taking minimum-wage jobs.
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.
The price quoted on https://movilidad.coradir.com.ar/tito/ is $2 120 250 or US$16 500, and indeed at the AR$220 dólar blue the peso price works out to about US$9600 today. I wonder why this price discrepancy wasn't mentioned in the "Argentinareports" article? Maybe they're just reprinting a company press release, complete with obviously photoshopped photos of the truck?
As for groceries, usually if those aren't local I carry them home on the bus or in an Uber, so a passenger seat to stack them on would be a nice upgrade.
> No one seems to mention that it appears to be a copy of a chinese "Today Sunshine M1"
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"...
It has a second seat. No reason you need two people to go shopping.
I'm just glad someone, somewhere is considering a sane vehicle rather than this ridiculous size/speed arms race. The many, many costs of doing 80-120km/h are nowhere near worth halving the travel time (at best).
In Argentine Spanish "verga" means "dick" (commonly in the metaphorical meaning "useless" or "annoying"), and "-tario" is a suffix meaning "recipient of" (an action), like English "-ee"—for example when leasing a house, the lessor is the "locator" and the lessee is the "locatario". This gives the amusing reading "recipient of dicking" to "Vergatario". So I don't think the Venezuelan cellphone would sell well here under that name.
The TITO is virtually identical to products from the Chinese white label EV manufacturer "Today Sunshine"[1]. I bet this is a made in China, assembled in Argentina type deal at best.
I found the car for less than 6 thousand USD in Alibaba.
Someone else on this thread claims that Argentina is selling it for 9.5 thousand USD.
The title claims it's a 100% Argentine car.
And yet the article states the following:
>In 2018 Coradir’s CEO and his team decided to develop a battery bank platform, motor train and all the associated electronics so that any national car manufacturer could develop its own version of TITO, but the project fell flat.
>“Then, we realized we already had a complete car and asked ourselves, ‘what if we make it available to the public?’ At that moment the 100% electric TITO was born,”
What "bias"? I'm not Argentinian, I couldn't care less if they made it or not.
There's clear differences even in the photos you provided. Obviously the front grill, but the lights are also a different shape, with the TITO more angular. The door frame is different, it looks like the TITO has a larger piece of chrome on the part you open. I'm sure there's other differences there if I were to look at different angles of the TITO.
Maybe Sunshine took TITO's design, maybe they're both based on some reference design made by some other company. They both clearly are supposed to be a squished MINI Cooper. Regardless of what happened, "my eyes" are not proof of it.
So, I ask again, what proof do you have that it is the case that TITO took Sunshine's design and/or is just a rebadged car?
"Design and bodywork: The design was taken from an existing Chinese product. The vehicle parts would be imported from China and the assembly would be done in San Luis. For later, they promise to produce the body parts in kevlar and aluminum material, with the support of a Munro (Buenos Aires) autopartist"
If Coradir did "develop a battery bank platform, motor train and all the associated electronics" then why are they reselling a Chinese design? Are the Chinese manufacturers using the Coradir-developed battery bank platform, motor train, and electronics?
Has anyone actually verified it's the same car? They only mildly resemble eachother IMO.
That said, Coradir's site seems to be a lot of rebranded gadgets so it wouldn't surprise me, but I haven't seen any actual proof of this, just speculation based on cars looking similar.
Seems pretty darn clear after watching one of the Youtube TITO videos. Same steering wheel, same design on the air vents with different inserts, same entertainment cutouts, etc..
Neat to see. I think the future of these cars will be alot like ARM chips.
One company, probably foxconn, will build reference designs and individual companies will license those designs and tweak them, mostly on the interior and have foxconn either manufacture the entire thing or build the chassis/battery pack and let another company build the body/interior.
That way you can skip the Rnd Process and just require a factory to build/assemble these in the country they are required. Assembling a car isn't easy but its far easier than designing them from scratch and its something that many countries and companies already have plenty of experience with.
This is the present, not the future. A very high percentage of the parts of the Chevy Bolt were manufactured by LG Chem as part of an LG Chem reference design. (which worked out great)
Hyundai owns Genesis/Ioniq and part of Kia so it's not exactly the same.
I think the parent commenter was talking more about a company specializing in the EV platforms like Hyundai-Kia's EGMP or VW's MEB on which other companies would build cars.
There is no future of these cars. Making electric cars is very much a "trying to make a faster horse" situation. In the future people will use electric vehicles in formats we haven't invented yet and can't even imagine.
I'm sure society collectively will eventually figure out the correct form-factor and legislation for electric vehicles. I don't know what we'll eventually settle on, but I'm sure it won't look like hydrocarbon-powered cars with electric engines.
(German legislation actually doesn't make much sense because electric scooters are in fact less safe than EUCs; scooters don't require skill to ride, but they fail more often and in more spectacular ways.)
Please give me more options like this in North America. I'd love something like this as the urban run-around to do quick errands that can't be done on foot or via transit. Something under $20K with enough range for a day of driving around. Even better, make it a shared vehicle and I'll just pay a membership to grab one from a lot around the corner for a few hours.
US laws prevent this car from being sold to the masses. The vehicle lacks airbags, anti-lock brakes, and electronic stability control. I also doubt it would pass crash tests.
You might be able sell it as a motorcycle, but then passengers would be required to wear helmets and the driver would need a motorcycle endorsement on their license. Another option would be to sell it as an ATV, but states tend to restrict ATV usage on public roads.
It would meet a need in the US if restricted to low-speed roads, eg for older drivers. Maybe young drivers and low-income people too. At low speed you just don't need a lot of the fancy stuff.
The Arcimoto is technically a motorcycle (most states classify anything <4 wheels as a motorcycle) but there are exceptions in the majority of states that do not require a motorcycle endorsement nor a helmet for these types of vehicles.
Wasn’t the Nissan Leaf initially something like that ? I knew a bunch of friends who were buying 2-3 years old used Leafs for about 9k and using it for urban driving or daily commute .
The Nissan Leaf is the most underrated car in the world. It's perfectly suitable for a vast majority of the trips Americans make by car and it's ridiculously economical (especially if purchased used).
I don't think there are any rational reasons why it's not the most popular car in America.
>The Nissan Leaf is the most underrated car in the world. It's perfectly suitable for a vast majority of the trips Americans make by car and it's ridiculously economical (especially if purchased used).
>I don't think there are any rational reasons why it's not the most popular car in America.
It's still a subcompact. For the hordes and hordes of people who need a tad more utility out of a vehicle it just doesn't work without a level of compromise that is solidly into "yeah, F that" territory when you're paying new car money.
Furthermore, it's only economical to buy used because it's not super popular even on the used market. If it was they wouldn't be so cheap.
And I say this as someone who would own one yesterday if it could out "utility vehicle" a 1990s Taurus wagon. The execution is great but the concept that was executed is ill suited to what most people want in a car.
All subcompact hatches in the US market suffer from this.
A lot of families have two cars and it becomes pretty difficult to explain why one isn't electric when the Leaf is an option and the second car will certainly be bigger.
"If it was they wouldn't be so cheap."
If demand surged, Nissan would make more (barring any specific supply chain constraints). Mass producing cars at competitive prices is Nissan's core competency.
"ill suited to what most people want in a car."
This is the actual problem in my eyes. Americans especially have a lot of frivolous ideas about what a car is supposed to be.
The amount of people who /think/ they need more utility than a subcompact outnumber and the amount who actually do quite severely.
Subcompact with tow ball so you can rent a small hanger for the few times you need more space for, say, a washing machine or fridge is so much better than an F-something size truck.
Oh come on. It's not a "need" thing. It's a "societal expectations" thing.
I don't "need" more utility than a small station wagon but the nanosecond I cram three kids into the back or slap some plywood on the roof 99.999% of the people telling me I don't "need" a modern crossover are going to be hand wringing hard enough to start a fire. God forbid I put a half dozen square of shingles or bags of concrete back there at which point I become a menace to society. I do it anyway because the kind of people who tend to care are not the kind of people who's opinions I tend to care about. But that doesn't scale.
>lithium battery with an eight kWh capacity. It can drive up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) with one single charge, and it takes between six to eight hours to fully charge
It depends on how far is your urban run-around. 62 miles seems reasonable, but not at $16,500 to $18,250 price point.
Please give us more of these in europe as well. We are choked by vws, bmws and mercedeses. Hopefully small electric cars will become the norm in urban centres.
I got a Volkswagen e-UP recently, and it's incredible for what it is - 160 miles of electric range, small, very nimble, large enough for 4 people and some stuff in the back - it's perfect. I have a much larger much more comfortable SUV too, but the e-UP is my car of choice recently. It costs £1.50 for a full charge too - less than a litre of petrol.
Somehow the e-up wasn't on my radar until your comment now. Thanks for sharing your experience. I mostly ask uber drivers about their experience with full evs as they push them to their limits, and most drove nissan leaf or renault zoe. At least those i met, and were _very_ happy with them. I was told that even cars with >200km once the batteries are replaced they drive like new. Pretty impressive.
But i think even those are still too large for cities. In my view we need to clean the air _and_ free up space, hence something smaller would be more suitable. Imagine how much less traffic there would be on the m25 or london if they were limited to micro cars.
We should build a dyson sphere and get humanity to a Type II Kardeshev scale. Instead, the future looks like eating crickets, climate alarmicism, living in mobile pods and feeling good about driving 2 seater eco-cars. Sad.
So whats the plan? Keep doing what we are doing? I am not the hippie type, but we simply cant continue this way. I strongly disagree with people that say we need less creature comforts in order to improve our ways of managing the environment. I think we should aim for even more mobility, even more living space, even more food, but with much more care about our environment. Whats the worse that can happen? We get to breathe cleaner air for “nothing”?
I sometimes pause and think about how we are able to harness the power of our star, or control atoms, to fuel our cars and power our homes instead of burning crap and inhaling smoke. I think we are getting somewhere.
Yea, I think there is a general malaise in certain laptop class / elite class people. First of all, Fossil fuels are the most incredible thing mankind has ever invented. It lead to population increase and saved millions of lives, possibly hundrends of millions of lives. It has enabled everything from agriculture, mining to industrialization and medicine. If there is one thing that has had a profound positive impact on humans, that is Fossil Fuels. But ask anyone that they'll want to murder you for saying what I just said even though I haven't said a peep about carbon emissions.
The malaise from people/media is separating Non-renewability of FF + negative aspect of carbon emissions from the benefits of FF. So the first thing is to remove the militant climate alarmicism and focus on solutions.
Third, push back on people that want depopulation, regression of life, reduction of standards, "equity" based resource usage, etc under the name of ESG, Climate Change, etc.
The entire thing is a philosophical and political headwind. We could solve climate change completely and utterly if we invest in technology and build like a gazillion nuclear power plants.
It makes me wonder if the malaise is not rooted in facts, but the elite/laptop class that wants to crush lower class into depopulation for their own benefits (their kids would have a less competition for resources for survival).
>First of all, Fossil fuels are the most incredible thing mankind has ever invented.
Humanity didn't invent fossil fuels, they were already there when we discovered them and we haven't figured out how to make them ourselves in the quantity we need. This type of lazy thinking, where you pretending the work of someone else is entirely your effort when you literally can't replicate it and are even proud that you can't replicate it is honestly quite bizarre.
Humans only invented biofuels which would cause mass starvation because they displace food crops.
Tell me how exactly do you intend to build a dsyon sphere without investing enough to cover the entire earth in solar panels? Covering the entire sun is a far bigger engineering challenge, by a factor of 1000. I swear there are way too many people who lament that our civilization should be 1000 times better but they don't even want to take even the baby steps towards that goal.
Fossil fuel dependence basically means humans are too dumb to generate their own energy. There is no dead plant matter buried in the sun, you're going to have to pull that energy out yourself.
I think it is sad that people want to hold back the entirety of humanity just so they can have a slightly better life for themselves and nobody else.
You're not alone. I thought we'd be there by now. But at this point in the USA the tipping point seems to be having short distance autonomous mode such that you can order a car and it will deliver itself to your door.
That said, it's also telling the fed gov has made little to no effort to promote such an idea. Thanks Big Oil?
Nah. It sounds like personal transportation without the overhead of ownership, maintenance, time wasted waiting for the bus, etc.
If there's an underutilized resource in the First World, it's automobiles. They probably spend on average 22 or 23 hours of 24 hours doing nothing. Just sitting there. Uber-izing your own driving could change that, without exploiting under-paid drivers.
I think it would be more accurate to say that it's public transport with fewer steps. Because you skip the walk to the bus stop, the many stops that the bus makes on the way to your destination, potential transfers to other buses, and the walk from the bus stop where you exit the bus to your destination.
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.
This would never be highway certified in the US - which means it would basically be classed as a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle, so it would compete against golf carts here.
I'm not saying that is the correct approach to classifying vehicles, just what I would expect to happen if it were brought to the US.
As far as the price, if Argentina has tariff protections for automotive production, that could explain the price.
This would never be highway certified in the US - which means it would basically be classed as a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle, so it would compete against golf carts here.
I wish there was a NEV-plus standard that had a 40 or 45mph top speed, that could get me to work, part of my commute is on roads with a 45mph limit, and a NEV can't drive there. I don't mind avoiding freeways and sticking to smaller roads, but I'd still have to drive on 45mph roads.
I drive a small EV now and while it can go 80mph without any trouble, it's much more than I need in a commute vehicle.
Yes.., but the name doesn't come from au-tito or the little truck name "camione-tita"
I think that, with u$20k you can buy a tito, a Liliana fan, 6 square meters of sheets and a pole to sail when the engine is overused and you still have money to roast a barbecue for you and friend. And maybe roast that piece of ugly engineering too..
The Arcimoto FUV (https://www.arcimoto.com/fuv) starts at $18,000, can actually manage highway speeds (unlike the TITO), and has a roll cage built to match US passenger car standards.
Even Albanians. I know many Kosovar Albanians, and they all praise him. Heck, even Albanians I know think highly of him.
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.
People are scratching their heads wondering how China will make its way into the automotive industry. A lot of people are too afraid to buy cars from them.
Well one way appears to be rebadging no name vehicles to support pseudo philanthropic efforts.
To anyone this reads as “finally automotive independence for the developing world”, think again.
To emerging markets like latam, a "pluggable hybrid" that can make 80/100 km with battery power , that could be recharged with a common household and and with a pricePoint not too far of a similar ICE makes more sense than a completely electric car (at least until batteries get really affordable)
With 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.
Does anybody else think the second image with the colors is clearly photoshopped? There's glare on the windshields even though they're in the shade, and all the cars are in perfect focus even though they span a decent depth.
IMO a slim “car” that can seat two people (F14 style) that’s a bit wider than a motorcycle (but can lane split easily) and hold a bit of cargo would be awesome.
It can go max 40mph and be awesome for city dwellers and delivery drivers.
Remember that the minimum wage here is around USD 200, so it's quite expensive as well. I'd rather get an ebike/scooter/used car and use it for longer trips.
It's like an enclosed golf kart that could be usefuly for residents of gated communities or small cities (not sure how it would handle in cities with hills like SF though :P)
No one seems to mention that it appears to be a copy of a chinese "Today Sunshine M1", but at 2.5x the cost :(