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Comment by pmontra | Hacker News Reader

A car sharing service in Milan, Italy, is using small two seater electric cars from China.

Prompted by this article I finally investigated and found them at http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/China-eec-l7e-80-elect... They're quoted with a maximum price of $8000.

They're definitely made for driving inside a city. Not very good suspensions (don't drive too fast on cobble stones) but good torque (easily beats a gas car out of a green light). 120 km of autonomy, which is good enough in the typical European city center, apparently 80 km/h max speed, which again is more than enough there. Very easy to park.

More important matters:

Would I survive a crash? They're very tiny...

How long to recharge?

Operating costs? I'm paying 19 Eurocents per minute, all included.

Do they compete with gas cars? The other two car sharing companies in Milan have gas cars and cost 25 and 29 cents per minute. I prefer the electric one: it's a shakier ride but cheaper and more fun because of the torque.

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I feel like the size = safety is fallacious. Size can equal safety, but its not a guarantee. Sure I would not want to get hit by a 3 ton lifted SUV with ranch style bumpers on it. I would feel that way even if what I were driving was a 3 ton suv with the same bumpers. There was an NHTSA video a few years back of a modern chevy impala hitting a 1959 impala and the much larger 59 getting demolished, while the new one had much more survivable damage. Safety cages, and metallurgy have made cars much safer, even small ones. I drive a mid sized sedan, and feel that I have a pretty reasonable chance of surviving a crash so long as I am not hit by a vehicle that is so tall the bumper goes through my windows and doesn't hit any significant metal surface of my car.

The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_r5UJrxcck

The thing 'size' gets you is crumple zones. A bigger vehicle has a lot more material that can be engineered to deform and absorb the energy of the impact, spreading the deceleration over a longer period of time.

A small car can be designed to prevent intrusion into the passenger compartment, but it can't do anything about the g-forces of the collision (which can seriously ruin your day...).

Yup, it's important to note that with Electric Vehicles you get more crumple zone too, which is partly why Tesla has such a high safety rating.

And more mass (the battery)

The thing 'size' gets you is crumple zones. A bigger vehicle has a lot more material that can be engineered to deform and absorb the energy of the impact

Not the only thing. Recall your high school physics. Crank through the basic motion equations for inelastic equations. The more massive object experiences less change in momentum. All things being equal, passengers of the more massive vehicle are going to experience lower g-forces.

Not to be overly pedantic, but I intentionally said "size" not "mass". As car manufacturers increasingly use aluminum and various composites in place of steel, bigger isn't always heavier.

g-force depends on acceleration (or in this case, deceleration) by definition. Deceleration is change in speed over time for it to occur. The whole purpose of the crumple zones is to maximize that time and thus reducing g-force.

Safety also works both ways in a multi car situation. You're better off hitting a new Golf in your 90s Corolla than another 90s Corolla.

Also, a little talked about statistic is that most vehicle fatalities occur in single car accidents. Turns out, even a big ol' SUV is more forgiving than a telephone pole.

Have you seen the smart car crashes? Those cages can survive head on 60mph crashes to a brick wall. The issue here is that the soft human inside will not. Larger cars incorporate crumple zones, which absorb a ton of the impact, while small cars with extremely strong frames do not. The passenger absorbs all the energy = death.

A slight detour, but this always bugged me when Lois was falling to her death and Superman would catch her an inch off the ground.

Well done, Superman, you just broke your girlfriend into three pieces with your arms.

That's just one of many areas where readers/viewers willingly suspend disbelief.

Superman is supposed to be able to do that; that's one of the benefits of being beyond human is (for him). A literal reality distortion field is actually the best explanation for all of the exceptions to physics that happen around him; Lois passing in to that bubble while being saved is just one more thing on the list.

This issue was covered in great depth when the Smart Car (e.g. Fortwo) got popular in Europe. Smart Cars have a lot of safety features, seat belts, airbags (4x), ABS, stability control, but the question was really about impact distribution.

They put in a tridion protection cell[0] and moved the engine to the back to offer SOME crumple at the front. The Euro NCAP rated it 4/5, IIHS rated it "good" but it later failed the partial frontal collision test ("poor").

A Smart Car likely would do alright in most collisions. Although it somewhat benefits from the large crumple zones of every other vehicle has on the road. If two Smart Cars collided head on, the results might be worse than if a Smart Car collided with any other vehicle type.

That all being said, just because Smart managed it, doesn't mean every small car is equally safe. Without the tridion cell and SOME crumple zone, it would be a much less safe vehicle.

[0] http://auto.howstuffworks.com/smart-car1.htm

If your driving in a city and never break 45mph then overall risks change significantly.

I drive a relatively small car for the US, and it's about the minimum I would consider safe at 70MPH. But, if you are spending 98% of your time in the city then simply renting a larger car becomes very viable. You can rent a mid size SUV at ~600$ per week and for a longer vacation you can upsize for minimal cost. Further, if your flying somewhere your car becomes meaningless anyway.

PS: Remember a tiny electric could end up saving you 250+$ / month.

FYI, the IIHS small overlap frontal test, which I personally consider as the "hardest" test today, is done at 40mph. By that saying, a crash in the city can be worse than the test result.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_Institute_for_Highwa...

You can have a partial overlap at 40MPH or 70MPH, the second is much more difficult to survive.

In theory you're right, but in theory nobody would attempt to crash at all. We have our car sharing services as well and just recently had a fatal accident where one customer was doing everything right according to road safety rules. But the truck driver didn't.

What I remember from driving class was that the risk factors change depending on urban, suburban, rural. In urban areas car vs pedestrian accidents are common. Accidents involving cars as you said are typically low speed accidents.

In Rural areas the opposite is true. High speed car vs car and car vs tree accidents are most common.

Though bigger doesn't equal safer. I remember someone else pointing out that large vehicles don't increase safety overall, they decrease it. If you consider two large trucks hitting each other is typically worse than two smaller passenger vehicles doing the same. It's only large truck vs small car that is slightly safer. Less than one might think because large vehicles tend to roll over more often.

Fifth Gear (UK) crash tested a smart car 10 or so years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnI-LiKCtuE

The IIHS published a study[0] a little more than a year ago which found that the Smart Car wasn't actually that bad in terms of driver deaths per million registered vehicle years (2011 and equivalent earlier models, 2009-12).

In its class (which only had 3 cars), the Mini was safer than the Smart but the Hyundai Accent was much much worse.

But there were lots of bigger cars that were at the same rating or worse:

* Buick Lacrosse 2WD

* Cadillac DTS

* Cadillac Escalade 4WD

* Chevrolet Camaro

* Chevrolet Silverado 1500 Ext 4WD

* Chevrolet Silverado 1500 Crew 4WD

* Chevrolet Suburban 1500 2WD

* Ford Expedition 2WD

* Ford F-150 Super 4WD 39

* Mercury Grand Marquis

* Toyota Avalon

* Toyota Tundra Crew Max 2WD

[0] http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Driver_DeathRates_sr5001_e...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLfK35O91gE a honda fit versus a honda accord of the same year. It's pretty clear which one would take less damage.

I understand your point that modern vehicles are relatively safe, but after seeing the result of a semi truck taking out a pickup truck on the Interstate yesterday I am seriously considering my choice to drive a compact vehicle. I assume larger vehicles have larger/longer crumple zones compared to compact vehicles and that higher vehicles have less chance of going under other vehicles? Of course it's zero sum if everyone drives larger vehicles but I can't force the local authorities to invest in better public transportation so I don't even need to drive to work.

If you want to minimize the effects of the impact with a semi then the only real option is another semi; a 1 ton car or a 3 ton car makes no difference being hit by a 40 ton truck, but the 1 ton car consumes much less fuel/energy.

It was hit from the side I think? The height of the pickup definitely made a difference because most of the cabin was sitting up on the median rather than squished into the barrier like the rest of the truck. Your point about the weight is a good one in most circumstances though!

Not to be a Debbie Downer - but about 5 years ago my two good friends were driving in a medium sized car in Brooklyn, when an Expedition crossed the double yellow going about 60 miles an hour and literally ran over the entire drivers side half of the car, flattening it.

The driver sadly died while the passenger went unscathed.

The next day, my Dad sold my sister's tiny, low-riding Saturn and got her a higher-riding CRV. I don't blame him, and now riding in low-sitting cars frightens me a tiny bit on the highways.

I agree your point. larger cars have great advantage in a crash due to crumple zones. And even though some compact cars has great crash test result, it doesn't mean they're safe enough to survive a highway crash since most if not all crash tests are done under 50mph.

BTW, just a reminder that pickup trucks are body-on-frame structure which is design for more towing capacity. Unibody structure on most modern cars and SUV's are safer in general. If you check this list http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/TSP-List you'll see pickup is worse than even compact cars in crash test.

This seems like relevant data. Particularly the "Driver deaths per million registered passenger vehicles" broken down by size in larger categories of car, pickup, SUV. Though I think they mix the data a bit w.r.t the contribution of mass vs volume.

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit...

It seems like if you are in an accident, an SUV as a class is indeed safer (but not necessarily the largest SUV interestingly enough). But the other thing that this data doesn't seem to say is if one class of vehicle has a higher accident rate than another. Without that it's difficult to say for sure if one is safer driving around one type of vehicle or another.

"Would I survive a crash? They're very tiny..."

Isn't the real test how likely you are to be injured/killed per mile driven? Larger vehicles like SUVs might be safer if you are in an accident but that could be offset if they are more likely to actually be in an accident.

Its pretty much assumed the rate of accident is proportional to the driving miles. Does that comment mean, because of the limited range, electric vehicles have smaller exposure to accident risk? I guess a bicycle would do even better then.

What I meant was that discussions of vehicle safety always seem to start with assuming you are in an accident - what if some kinds of vehicles are more or less likely to be in accidents (all other things being equal).

NB I have no idea what the answer is and I've driven everything from large(ish) SUVs to the old style minis.

Small electrical vehicles like that are going to be used mostly in slow moving urban environments and your chances of being killed are massively affected by impact speed so probably quite low.

Yet traditionally most accidents occur quite close to home. So they will be in many more accidents? Its the severity-probability product S(a)*P(a) that yields the 'suffering coefficient'

Removing long distance trails makes your trip mix biased toward short trips, but doesn't increase the rate of short trips.

It is true that the more people who cycle, the lower the number of transport related deaths and injuries.

Only some of these effects, e.g. less deaths from air pollution, apply to EVs though.

No, the real test is how survivable the vehicle is in a collision. Probability of suffering an accident is a separate discussion.

If your family is T-boned in an intersection by a drunk driver who ran a red light, are you going to say, "Well, at least the odds of that happening were very small, since she rarely drives!"

No, you're going to be dealing with serious injuries or possibly deaths and you're going to be saying, "I wish they'd been in a larger vehicle that was more survivable."

I'd prefer that they would have been not hit at all, which a more maneuverable vehicle with a shorter stopping distance might help with.

Also, the probability I'm interested in is not the survivability in an accident, it is the total survivability over my lifetime, discounted by some percentage for cost etcetera. In your argumentation, everybody should drive around in tanks on the off chance that somebody else might get drunk. In reality, nobody does that and tradeoffs are made. Have you ever tried driving in an old European city in an average (American) SUV? You literally would not fit in most parking spaces, let alone fit in some of the smaller streets.

I recently drove a European mini-van through Paris and it was a very tight squeeze... some streets were too narrow, and in one case a moped was parked 6" beyond the designated zone, which made the street impassible for me.

It was quite a fun experience, but in the future I'll rent a smaller vehicle.

Larger vehicles have larger crumple zones and more steel all around. Are you saying larger vehicles are no safer than smaller ones? This runs counter to decades of conventional wisdom based on thousands of crash tests. See Edmunds, Consumer Reports, and other reputable organizations for corroboration of this.

Here's some numbers that establish that larger vehicles are generally safer:

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/driver-death-rates

Compare the death rates of small, tiny, and midsize sedans (2011 data is the latest).

Then look at large SUVs. Huge difference. "All vehicles" = 28. Most of the large SUVs are single digits, most of the smaller cars are well above 28.

Curiously, Ford Expedition 2WD is above average and is an exception. I would love to understand why because it's a huge vehicle. The Ford Expedition 4WD is way at the other end, 5 deaths. Perhaps it has something to do with how people drive, or some flaw in how it handles.

Most trucks are pretty safe, but the Ford F-150 4WD has above average death rates, and is the most popular single model of pickup truck. I wonder if this is because lots of people buy this truck who don't really know how to drive a truck.

Anyway, some interesting data to explore there. Although as I pointed out, there are some outliers, in general the data lines up with the contention that larger vehicles are safer.

I still think there is a need to normalize for the amount each vehicle is driven - so that it is deaths/injuries per mile driven not per time period.

>Most trucks are pretty safe, but the Ford F-150 4WD has above average death rates, and is the most popular single model of pickup truck. I wonder if this is because lots of people buy this truck who don't really know how to drive a truck.

No, it's probably because it's a truck with a body-on-frame chassis instead of a unibody chassis like any modern vehicle, and was designed for towing and load-hauling rather than crash protection. If you want crash protection, you need to buy a vehicle with a modern chassis that was expressly designed for it. Same goes for the Expedition. And yes, handling could be a factor too: these vehicles have horrible handling and can't avoid accidents the way a good-handling vehicle can, and will frequently roll over.

I don't believe any American car will roll over in normal driving. They will skid. Unless a tire catches on a curb or something. So in normal highway driving rollover is very unlikely.

Not true: trucks and SUVs absolutely will roll over. They even have warnings when there's high winds about it, because they can be blown over.

And just try doing a panic turn (to avoid something) in a tall SUV and see what happens.

You can't just ignore the laws of physics. Center-of-gravity is an important thing.

I see from Consumer Reports that tipping does sometimes happen. And not just from 'tripping'.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/02/rollover-101/inde...

Or you'll be wishing that the drunk driver was in a smaller vehicle.

Or you'll be the one running over a child (possibly your own) and you'll be wishing that your car was smaller or had better visibility as you reversed.

Making up unpleasant stories is fine, but at some point actual numbers and statistics are required, and everyone getting larger and larger cars in some kind of arms race seems to have obvious downsides.

I suspect rearview camera/sensors are far better protection against bulldozing than small cars. No car is small enough to show a toddler under your tires.

Off subject, but I'm surprised better rear view cameras/sensors are not being manufactured right now. I'm not talking about just a camera though.

Could anyone imagine a a smart camera, with a display. The camera/computer would assist the driver in seeing better at night. Would calculate the odds of a police cruiser behind you. Would warn of potential danger, like an animal on the side of the road. Would warn you if you are being followed. Would be so well designed, you still used your rear view, but kicked in at the needed times? Would map out likely spots police hide? Could even be tied into physiological body sensors? "Today is not a good day to drive? Watch out for ice. Watch you temper?"

The camera/sensors would have to be easily installed, like a stereo?

I would buy one if programmed right, and the cost was justifiable.

Then again there's someting beautiful about a simple chrome rear view mirror. A driver knowing they need to drive with all senses fully engaged, with no assistance other than experience, and good coordination.

Most luxury auto manufacturers actually do include image analysis and threat detection in their infrared forward-facing cameras these days.

But it also has the upside of allowing American automakers to sell a lot of high-profit SUVs!

Once, I was driving about 65mph on a state highway and a car pulled out of a farm road right in front of me. I had one or two seconds to react and swerve around them. They were probably going 10mph when I passed them.

I was driving a Toyota Camry. If I'd been driving a large truck, I probably couldn't have avoided the crash.

When I buy a car, I want to know both how likely it is that I can avoid a crash (manueverability, stopping distance, ABS, etc) and how likely it is that I can survive one if it happens. Both are relevant.

Consumer Reports' 2016 Automotive Edition had a lot of discussion about car safety. Most of it was centered on technology that helps to prevent accidents or make them less severe. Eg, if your car detects that you're about to hit something (Forward Collision Warning) and has Automatic Emergency Braking, you might not hit it, or hit it at 30mph instead of 60mph.

That could save your life. To say that the weight of your car is a safety factor but stopping distance isn't is just silly.

Absolutely, also if you get hit from the side there is a lot more to it than just the weight of the car.

I'd sooner be in the light car with a chassis that doesn't get crushed into the cabin than a heavy car which does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_r5UJrxcck I know which one Id like to be in..

> To say that the weight of your car is a safety factor but stopping distance isn't is just silly

Size is not the same things a weight. Crumple zones are what size buys you in modern vehicle design, and you don't have to have a heavy car to have nice big cushy crumple zones.

This discussion started about size, not weight.

How would your reflexes have helped in my scenario, when you are T-boned (i.e., hit from the side) by a speeding motorist running a light?

Maybe you have extraordinary reflexes and could have accelerated out of the way, or slammed on the brakes, but the average driver? I think not. I'd like to have some serious steel and crumple zone between me and that motorist under those circumstances, and the tiny little electric buggy is probably not going to have the same amount of protection as a large SUV.

So 'drive an 18 wheeler' is the solution?

>Would I survive a crash? They're very tiny...

Depends on the engineering I suppose. The Smartcar which is just as tiny has a very high score in test crashes. Of course its twice the price of the car you quote and owned by Mercedes and gets all of Mercedes safety know-how. Until that Chinese car gets proper accident testing, I guess we won't know, but I think its safe to assume China's cheaper/faster/copy culture doesn't lead to safer products.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6NhuIS1RAE

>Would I survive a crash? They're very tiny...

IIRC The smart car beats the Hummer in crash test ratings....

Yes but this car is not a Smart, so they may not enjoy the same accident survivability rates, specially given the price point, I'd want to see sanctioned crash test results before accepting they are equivalent to Smarts when it comes to occupant protection in collisions.

I'm skeptical that, in a head on collision between the two, the smart car is a safer place to be.

What's the range, how does the charging situation and swapping cars between people works in such rental business ?

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