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Comment by toisanji | Hacker News Reader

Why wouldn't something like this be released in America? What would the cost of this car be if it was sold in America including the changes it would need to comply with American standards? If it cost $10k, I would buy a couple of them immediately. Its perfect for city driving.

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Several manufacturers have very cheap cars available in other markets. Renault immediately comes to mind with the model year 2016 Kwid that is sold in emerging markets.

One of the things you may find unpalatable is how they hold up in crash tests. That is, they don't or they don't do it very well. At those price points, safety is truly optional.

Let's compare the Renault Kwid that was tested in March 2016, and a newer Renault Kwid III with a driver-side airbag that was tested a month later.

* Renault Kwid I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3Xiw-xP3HA

* Renault Kwid III: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi1LgUrd5fI

The newer Kwid certainly didn't have _complete structural cabin failure_, but forces experienced and expected injuries still resulted in 0-stars for front occupants. You get what you pay for.

Here's an Indian news story (cheap car safety was a hot button issue in 2016) that included an interim revision of the Kwid (the Kwid II, amongst other current cars failing crash tests) which fared better structurally, but had the driver basically eat the steering wheel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qqbQZBmxyE Renault isn't some scrappy upstart either -- they know how to engineer very safe cars, but they (as does sister company Nissan, as well as Hyundai and VW) sometimes make some pretty sketchy stuff for emerging markets.

China-NCAP is now broadly comparable with Euro-NCAP when it comes to crash safety. So new vehicle models coming to market in China should have similar levels of structural safety to US and European-market models.

There is no comparison with markets like India and Brazil, which have far weaker crash safety standards.

This is because of highly publicized failures in past years, and it similarly being brought to the forefront by the Chinese media earlier this decade.

I suspect by 2020 cars like the Renault Kwid will mostly be a thing of the past in India as well, and poor vehicle safety is also becoming an increasingly contentious issue in Brazil.

> If it cost $10k, I would buy a couple of them immediately.

Totally off topic, but I keep being surprised by how ridiculously rich the average HN'er appears to be. You talk about buying cars like they're Mars bars. :-)

From outside the US it seems crazy, but considering Tesla says 35K is accessible price, 5K is barely nothing. Probably the cost of old used cars.

In the states? $5k would get you a great used car, a 5 year old mid-range sedan with <100k miles

Or you could buy 2-3 20 year old Civics/Camrys, use one as the primary and cannibalise parts from the others to keep it going

Easier said than done! I can't imagine trying to find three of the same old car and expect each one to have the same critical parts that aren't already rusted out/failed. Where I am in the NE, road-salt destroys everything.

To add to that, $5K might work in southern states, but I haven't had much luck finding something relatively new for $5K that didn't have serious rust issues as well.

Eventually you'll figure out that trying to inform a group of mostly (or at least they're the largest minority if they're not the majority) Californians about things like corrosion, winter, potholes, etc is a very lost cause...

Source: BTDT

Well SF is surrounded by salt water, so I would think that must have a corrosive effect when it rolls in on the fog.

> I can't imagine trying to find three of the same old car and expect each one to have the same critical parts that aren't already rusted out/failed

Buy 2004 Camrys? Or spend that $5k on a decent single car instead…

There are decent 2004 cars to be found. My newest car is a 2004, and it's perfectly reliable and comfortable.

Yeah, nothing wrong with those cars. Toyotas are stupid easy to find & find parts for, and have great reliability: hence my specific suggestion for "what ~$1k non-rustbucket cars could I buy?"

You've hit it, buy in the south/southwest where there's no salt used.

I don't buy into the parts car idea, myself. Although any e.g. Honda from the same model year will share a large number of parts with any other Honda, they will still be old and worn out. New parts are readily available for most older cars if you stick with mainstream models that were sold in large numbers.

If you need something significant like a transmission, you can always get one from a salvage company.

yup! I have 3 1987-1991 Saab 900 turbo convertibles. (extremely fun cars to drive, almost no lag) Total spent: $4.2k.

You nailed the problem, the same parts fail on all of them. But I've also gained my money's worth of car knowledge, which is more valuable to me than a banker collecting interest :)

Or you could buy 2-3 20 year old Civics/Camrys, use one as the primary and cannibalise parts from the others to keep it going

That probably works better if you don't put a value on your own time and have the tools and facilities to do heavy repair, I think most people would be better off buying a better car than trying to transfer parts from the donor car(s) to their commute car. Assuming they even have a place to park the donor car.

If you have a six-digit income like most US HNers, it would be foolish not to have a liquidity reserve of $10-$20k. (Even just for car downpayments or unexpected house repairs - let alone for medical or family emergencies.)

$10k is buys about one month's rent, a dozen bagels, one fill up of gasoline and one week of coffee where a lot of HN lives.

In SV monopoly money $10k is dirt. Everywhere else it's a major expense.

I'm exaggerating but you get the point.

It'd be a fairly major expense, but not one large enough to take out credit on. It's not unreasonable to have week or two's pay in cash reserves in case something unexpected happens.

You earn $30k in two weeks? See, this is exactly what I mean :)

It is already $14k, the lower price is with incentives. It is 10” smaller than a Smart car, top speed is 62mph, and it has a 90 mile range. That’s rough sell in America even before you try to make it safe enough to pass a crash test. (It might be, but I’m guessing with all the compromises they cut back on safety too.)

Safety costs money not just due to engineering but the testing and compliance process unique to each car model.

Maybe in China they could effectively modify a city with these and level 4 self driving. It seems like it could be a place where people would want to live.

I have a feeling china will be the first to adopt self driving cars for mainly for environmental and congestion concerns; they are also authoritarian enough to actually do it. So ya, this could very well happen in 10 years or so.

Hmmm something about a tiny automotive vehicle with a top speed of 62 mph and maybe a 80ft braking distance makes me feel more comfortable with getting into one.

Certainly a higher error tolerance and lower risk of fatality as compared to a 5000 lb Tesla that goes to 0-60 in 2.4 seconds and takes a football field and a half to slow down.

Maybe they should just make all self-driving cars weigh 1500 lbs and top out at 45 mph. Not a big deal when they run into each other, like bumper cars.

I don't know what the bumper cars were like where you grew up, but a crash at 45mph, or even 20mph, is not quite the same thing and considerably less enjoyable. :-)

I get rear ended about twice a year in LA traffic by 4500 lb SUVs going 40-50 mph. I've learned to adjust the headrest on my seat properly so my head only jerks back an inch or two and I don't get whiplash anymore.

I think collisions below 40 mph are quite survivable if they're not two-way head on/overlap and the cars are below a certain weight and designed to bounce against each other.

They just need to make every autonomous car on the road 1500-2000lb and install rubber bumpers. The neural net will figure it out itself after a few million real world collisions and daily commutes will gradually become less jarring and eventful.

Have you seen the crash tests on these cars? I wouldn't trust them not to permanently injure you in a collision at 20 mph.

A football field and a half? A Tesla's stopping distance, like most decent modern cars, is a bit over 100ft from 60MPH.

Braking distance in a Tesla is shorter in practice than what they're claiming here. Sports cars, even the luxury sports-lite that Tesla ends up in, are easier to stop than the average car.

The US has EV incentives as well.

Most Americans have to drive 90 miles just to go to the grocery store and back[0]. That's why there'd be no market here. Our cities were laid out with abundant gas forever in mind.

[0] Slight exaggeration.

Safety standards, or lack thereof. Which raises the question; is it OK to manufacture and sell a vehicle that you know doesn't meet critical safety standards that you would expect in the vehicle you drive, just because the country you're selling in doesn't care?

Mostly yes? Safety systems aren't a binary thing. One of my vehicles is a 20 year old car that I'd be pretty sure doesn't have all the safety systems required in a new car being sold today. That doesn't mean it's unsafe.

But you're not mass producing that car and selling it to people knowing full well that statistically, a portion of your customers will be involved an a traffic incident that the vehicle is not capeable of withstanding, because you cheated out on the safety features.

This depends on what the alternative is. For people who can't afford an American sticker price for a car, the choice is between a less safe (but cheaper) car and the near-suicidal experience of riding a motorbike.

Selling "unsafe" cars may actually save lives.

hmmmm, good point. But if i was a car designer, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable compromising on safety features that I know are possible.

You can get a used Leaf for $5-10k very easily, and it'll still have several years left on the warranty.

Can you point to somewhere that you can buy a used Leaf for close to $7,500 with several years of warranty left?

I suspect OP was factoring in tax incentives - for example, in Colorado the EV tax credit can be taken the first time vehicles are registered in the state, so there's a cottage market in importing lightly used Leafs from other states which easily come in around the 10k mark to the buyer.

You can get decent Nissan Leafs with under 40k miles for less than $10k cash in California right now on sites like Carfax and AutoTrader -- no tax incentives are required to get them down to that price. The depreciation is that bad. If you bought one and took it to Colorado, you'd save even more money.

They depreciate really fast. I'm not sure about still having years on the warranty, but fairly young EVs can be had for far less than the new price.

https://www.carfax.com/Used-Nissan-Leaf_w536

Really??? Wow, I thought about one when Nissan first hit the market with them but the price for a limited range car? No thanks but if they are that cheap I would grab one for a commuter! Are these certified nissan resales? Or just on the open market?

You can get used Nissan Leafs in the Bay Area with 30-40k miles on them for under $9k, from private party sellers.

Japanese cars don't depreciate as much as other cars, in general, but the Nissan Leaf has terrible resale value. So do some of the other all-electric cars, like the Fiat 500e. I suspect the prospective buyers are worried about the battery going bad or losing capacity over time. That would be very expensive to fix without a warranty.

The quote from a dealer here is 45k Norwegian kroner (~$5k) for a new battery. Not out of line with major repair on an older petrol vehicle.

A 5K repair on petrol vehicles is huge. Like engine replacement level bad. The average petrol vehicle never needs a repair that expense (or the car ends up junked when it does).

A shot gear in gearbox can easily be 5K in repairs. And whether you going to junk a vehicle depends a lot on its market value.

Third party sales have to compete with insane incentives for new cars. If a new Leaf can be had for $12K after incentives, why would I pay more for a used one?

I don't know if they're certified, but also not sure if that even matters for EVs (which have a few dozen parts that might need maintenance, as opposed to hundreds in a gas engine). These would also have years and miles left on the warranty.

The primary maintenance cost for the EV is the battery, and battery warranties are pretty generous to decrease people's anxiety about them.

If you happen to live in the right locations you can can get new Leafs for about $10K after taking advantage of federal, state and utility incentives.

https://www.sdge.com/clean-energy/electric-vehicles/10000-me...

https://cleantechnica.com/2016/12/15/get-new-nissan-leaf-low...

A company local to me has raised $20M and sold thousnds of preorders on the promise of a $12,000 electric:

https://www.arcimoto.com

Not yet shipping, of course...

First guess is regulations. A chinese car might not be so safe, or durable.

This car would probably never pass safety standards in the US.

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