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.
