In China, an electric car lifestyle
cbsnews.com
cbsnews.com
Electric transportation is just so, so good.
Sure, the Unu is under-powered by comparison with its gas-guzzling ancestors, but this is regulatory not technical (Unu's are soft-limited to 45km/h here in Europe, alas) but electric is really the wave of the future. I get home and back again on my Unu with just as much comfort as I did with the Vespa - only I'm completely silent, and not woofing fumes at every stop. Plus, its incredibly cheap to charge the batteries.
I think, once a few more people experience life on electric wheels, there is going to be a turning point where the archaic gas-guzzlers rapidly get replaced with green alternatives. We already see this here in middle-Europe (Vienna) - electric vehicles are becoming more and more common, and in a very eco-/green- centric market such as Vienna, not a week goes by without seeing more and more of these vehicles on the road.
If anyone is on the fence about it, consider switching. It may not quite have the revs and torque of the gas-guzzlers, but the benefits - clean and efficient travel - are worth the effort by far.
I'll ride my Unu another year or two, and then upgrade to something with a bit more speed, maybe a Čezeta if I can get one in a year or two. Electric is just so much fun, even at the lower-grade Unu level .. and even though it was cheaper to go from gas-Vespa to Unu, I still get a bump on the lifestyle credentials. My friends and family are envious of the electric aspect, even though the thing is nowhere near as performant as the old Vespa GTS was. (Yes, I know Vespa have an electric variant now too - I'm gonna upgrade to Čezeta though .. nicer style!)
It's a humble car in pretty much every regard, but the torque is just incredible. It wizzes and leaves any petrol/ sport car behind at the red light.
Not that's of any uses but it's always fun.
I'm checing a Torrot Muvi now, which is around 3K€...
Your neighbours love you now.
Its definitely the case that the torque and power aren't there - yet - but its also true that you can feel the machine wants to do more when the soft-limits kick in.
For some reason I don't understand, they're allowed to use most bike paths. That means they overtake the bicycles (and I don't like being overtaken with little clearance by larger, heavier vehicles) and leave a trail of fumes all along the cycle path. They're naturally going to be first in line at the traffic lights, spewing more fumes for the cyclists behind them.
On my commute, I'll change my route if there's a moped ahead.
(Cars are bad too, but they're not in my face, and seem to have much better emissions controls.)
Literally: https://www.airparif.asso.fr/actualite/detail/id/255
People buy Nius here and there, and have them confiscated regularly every few months. Niu is not ok for me, not as comfy as maxi scooters, nor fast as 150cc.
If I will commit to buying a proper electric moped, I would like not to have it being seized every few months.
Adding to the confusion, mopeds from neighbouring municipalities, may or may not be let into some areas of "peripheral districts" depending on legal technicalities. You may have your moped impounded in Baoan centre, but can drive safely in Baoan if you have moped numberplate from a neighbouring rural locality, and do not stick into "centre."
In practice, police impounds a moped first, and thinks later
Looked into the Unu for my father, but as he is nearing retirement, the old petrol scooter will probably be good for another two or three years.
I for myself would love something like a 125ccm scooter with electric engine. Do you know if there is something like that on the market?
Somehow like the Jetsons, where everything was modern but with a view on how people at that time thought "modern" would look like.
One could argue about the price, but around 15k Euro isn't too expensive after all.
It's a lot of fun, I ride it more than my cbr, but it does blur the lines of bike and motorcycle which can be tricky.
These only appear to be available in Germany, it seems: https://unumotors.com/en/product.
I wonder what the U.S. equivalent is.
For city driving it seems absolutely perfect in terms of performance, convenience, and most importantly: price.
Looks really slick as well. I'm loving the different color options. Too bad you can only pick one stock ;P
Motorcycle wise, if you want to see the limitations its all very evident on this stage. Cars can pack on the weight and hide it well but the same cannot be said for motorcycles. I don't know of any brand using a liquid cooled battery pack which means longevity of current offerings is questionable.
EV cars are more than capable of holding their own against petrol cars but upfront cost, charging opportunities, and range in cold weather, are still issues for many buyers. EV motorcycles and scooters are still fair weather affairs with inherent limitations of air cooled pack.
A person working a low wage job, working 12 or 16 hour days burned-out may pop into a fast food restaurant for a quick burger. An executive with time to spare and money to burn may have time to cook their own meal with high quality ingredients.
It's the same for electric vehicles. You save on costs since it is cheaper to "fuel" it but the initial cost and the lack of charging stations is a problem right now. If you have the money and the resources it's great but right now not everyone has that ability.
I can certainly see it eventually that vehicles will be all be electric. But for now it's too expensive for working poor or even middle class, at least in my region. So for now it's fast food.
A schoolteacher living in North Bend isn't going to moped 30 miles down a freeway to get to her workplace in Seattle.
As opposed to a 40 minute drive. It's truly a wonder that poor Americans aren't falling over head-over-heels to get on the non-automobile commute bandwagon. The bandwagon that either requires tripling their commute time, or living somewhere they can't afford.
In next week's discussion of the subject, we will look at the trade-offs of suggesting that the peasantry, when they lack bread, should turn to eating cake.
But many European countries have wind farms, and decent solar. Europe is way greener, energy-wise, than the US - still has a long way to go, sure, but for sure electric vehicles stand a much better change of a green-source advantage in most of Europe over pretty much anywhere at all in the US.
There’s some really cool easyEDA projects being designed that will let anyone build a power wall for their home. The biggest cost factor is always the batteries.
https://www.orbtronic.com/content/Datasheet-specs-Sanyo-Pana...
I have seen unsubstantiated claims that Tesla now has the cost for the Model 3 battery pack below $100 per kWh. The details of which they're obviously not going to give out for competitive reasons, though some rough estimates might find their way into quarterly and yearly SEC reports, earnings phone calls with investors, etc.
The interesting thing for me about electric cars is that a lot of the "car" part is sort of a solved problem. A Tesla Model 3 or a Bolt or equivalent are a totally acceptable small to mid size car. The manufacturers of these don't need to do a lot of further development of the car to make it a good product. What they need, and are counting on, is global economies of scale to bring down the cost of building the battery pack of the car, so that they can incorporate those lower costs (and greater mAh stored per cell) advancements into their product, and then sell it to the consumer.
I have no doubt that in ten years from now 21700 format cells will be significantly less costly in $ per kWh stored, and will have a greater Wh per kilogram and Wh per cubic cm/volume ratio.
Though... manufacturing of big prismatic cells never took off anywhere except for China.
nissan leaf batteries are prismatic flat type. not sure who actually makes them.
note these are really not the best cells for general use, they're the best for UAV applications where Wh/kg is really important. These have a rather limited cycle life compared to lower capacity batteries in the 3000mAh range, which are rated at 5A to 8A discharge, that will not suffer as much amp-hour-capacity degradation after 400-500 cycles.
This, in turn, is partly caused by the imbalance between man and woman in China strongly in favor of man (so woman can be more choosy - times has changed and it seems a baby girl is no longer a burden).
Plus, the market is huge and probably Chinese government will make sure that Tesla or whatever foreign Nio's competitor will be in a much weaker position.
Social network restricted only to Nio's owner strangely resembles Facebook in the early days - a social network for students from top universities - being able to join was also a marker of "high social status".
The deemed "big problem" these days in China is that millennials are "not buying more than 1 house."
And even bigger "tragedy" is said to be that richer millenials prefer to rent fancy apartments over buying...
That used to be a very, very, big thing in the past, but then the phenomenon reversed almost overnight. I'd say that happened in 2017-2018.
That "status marketing" is actually being counted as something very cheap these days. People begin to ridicule ones who buy huge chauffeured cars with small engines, and so on. That's something more for more inept middle aged people - the demographic niche that has been squeezed dry by everybody over the course of last 10 years.
As far as homes go, it's more like homeownership is culturally considered a prerequisite to marriage. Maybe the closest equivalent in the west would be having a job, you wouldn't want your daughter to get married to a guy without a job or the means to get one, because working is part of growing up.
Many well-to-do parents buy second properties to gift their children for when they are ready to get married.
/shrug
When he was challenged on that once, he allowed the guy to have a "test drive," for which he had him sign a few pages long NDA, but everybody can hear the fibreglass squeaking.
For the few, "fake it until you make it" actually works.
Some people with Nios around say that it is "not as bad as they originally expected it."
Though, how he markets Nio is cheap...
People should expect more from somebody who wants to have that "serious man" image.
Yes, they barely made it after burning through 150m cash and years of "almost happened" launches, trying to manufacture it themselves or third tier garbage OEMs, all thanks to that shocking naivety of their CEO (a yet another Steve Jobs wannabe type)
It only happened when they got enough money to show to JAC for a joint venture making ES6 and ES8. Before that, they had no chances really
P.S. NIO and Niu are different companies fyi
The Wikipedia article isn't bad:
So maybe you don’t own the assets before the liabilities, but stock is very literally giving you ownership in the company.