Isetta
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
I wish cars could be more like the Isetta and less like tanks. With driver aids such as ABS and the like we could have electric cars like the Isetta with safe roads. However the horse has left the gate on that and we are doomed to a future of vehicles built like tanks.
> Der Ellenator ist der erste PKW, der mit 16 Jahren gefahren
> werden darf, da er trotz 4 Räder als „Dreirädriges Fahrzeug“
> Fahrzeugklasse L5e eingestuft ist.
> The Ellenator is the first car that may be driven at the age
> of 16, because it is classed as a "three-wheeled vehicle" in
> vehicle class L5e despite having four wheels.
Then there's the fact that they offer pretty much no crash protection and they can be legally operated starting at the age of 15. They are definitely dangerous.
There was an incident where an older Mercedes-Benz minivan [1] crashed into a quadricycle [2] in 2017. The 34-year-old man driving the minivan was drunk and suicidal and attempted to kill himself by crashing himself to an oncoming car. The result was that the two 17-year-olds in the quadricycle died immediately and the man got minor injuries.
[1] https://is.mediadelivery.fi/img/1920/a659907378c54818bbc915e...
[2] https://is.mediadelivery.fi/img/1920/2965ca321c7a47758ca5a81...
https://jalopnik.com/theres-actually-a-decent-reason-why-ger...
But that relies on passengers wearing seatbelts. This may be one of the reasons it requires changes for the US.
I would guess it would be road legal in the USA, at least in some states, if it were an oldtimer.
To solve what problem?
And how does it even solve the space issue? You're not going to be making narrower lanes to fit more of these side by side.
You would make narrower lanes if most cars looked like this. Not to talk about all the parking space you would save now already.
This isn't even a matter of "going on a fishing trip twice a year". A bubble car is not enough of a car to go to IKEA or even an electronics retailer.
I can rent a larger car for two weeks every month for that amount money.
Compare that to a Citroen C1 (still a 4 seater car that can go > 160km/h on the autobahn) 370 EUR: https://www.adac.de/infotestrat/autodatenbank/autokosten/det...
That’s a monthly difference of 230 EUR. That’s enough to rent the Golf for a full week every month. (I only did a cursory check at a single company, no discount etc: 233EUR/week)
Prices in the US may differ, but I doubt that the total economics play out substantially different, because that would imply that the market for rental cars would have serious potential for lowering prices.
Now think about the potential price difference if you could buy a vehicle that doesn’t need to go faster than 80km/h and was optimized for urban traffic.
And for what purpose? So that I don't have the burden of owning a non-miniature car? I cannot fathom what the point in this exercise is. It's not like the miniature car has some immense superior qualities to it. By contrary, it seems to have an awful a lot of negatives.
Why don’t you go to ikea, shop and drop it off with the folks offering transportation? They’ll take 40 or so and deliver a full minivan load for that. Or take a cab? There’s also car sharing options that offer minivans in many places for as low as 5EUR/hour.
In particular the Fiat 500 was a historically important car. It gave families of very modest means mobility. The modern Fiat 500 is nothing of the sort. It is a design icon built for the somewhat affluent. It isn't small. It isn't cheap. It isn't simple.
A friend of mine has a mechanical workshop. His shop is where all the weird cars get fixed. Alfa Romeos, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, old Fiat 500s and 600s. There's even a DeLorean that is there from time to time. It is hard to overstate just how small the original Fiat 500 is. Or even old Bertone-designed Alfa Romeos from the early 1970s.
Don't get me wrong, I like the modern Fiat 500 enough to own one. In fact, I own an electrical Fiat 500 that was imported from California (since, at the time, the electric Fiat 500 was sold only in California and Oregon). It is a really half assed car - built to allow FCA to sell cars at all in these states. Small battery, no supercharger, and the traction control is so useless that when I drive it (without my disapproving wife onboard) it spins the inner wheel madly through corners. The TC on/off switch only controls the light inside the switch itself. I can't imagine it is actually connected to anything but the battery.
It is a lot of fun, but it isn't in the spirit of the original.
What is needed is for car manufacturers and society to rediscover the purpose of small, light cars. Mobility without the resource drain. The joys of simplicity. You don't need power steering, electrical windows, electrical seats, a thousand dashboard controls.
We also don't want all this closed crap in our cars. In the golden age of cheap mobility, cars were more open ended (because they were simple). There were more aftermarket additions and mods. You could get parts for all common cars everywhere. It was uncomplicated. You could get your car repaired.
My ideal car for the future is little more than a carbon fiber tub with the minimum of bits attached to make it a car. A standardised, cheaply manufactured carbon monocoque around which you can have a cottage industry of bits for customization and extension. A car built to be worked on that is light, strong, cheap, and takes advantage of modern materials, tools and insights.
I would rather have a modern take on the original Fiat 500 brief. An affordable, super light car that can seat two adults side by side and two kids, has 4 wheels, few parts with excellent aftermarket access. Keep in mind that the 500 was a strictly _functional_ car in its time. Its design expression was very, very minimal. It was built for utility.
The original Fiat 500 was ~500kg. A car with an electrical motor would of course have added weight for batteries, but with the use of more modern materials than steel for the load bearing structures you should be able to hit the 750kg mark. It should be possible to make it even lighter than that.
As for design, I'd rather go for something that is "toned down and contemporary". Something that doesn't make too much of a statement so it can age well. In terms of design the Mynobe is kitsch.
I have some sympathy for this, but not for the accident death toll associated with vehicles that lack crumple zones, collapsible steering columns, head restraints, seat belts, and other stuff we take for granted ... all of which contributes weight and complexity.
It might be possible to revive this purpose if improvements in anti-collision software/hardware makes it cheap and light enough to fit to small vehicles: avoiding an accident is always preferable to having to survive one. But we're not there yet.
If you look at the "supermini" class cars in NCAP, there are several 5 star cars. Sure they are heavy (~1000-1300kg), but they also represent great potential for improvement if one were to re-think this category.
Right now the technologies that make sports cars and race cars lighter and stronger are expensive. Because composites are hard to manufacture cheaply. What if we were to invest in lowering the cost of cars made from composites? By improving process, by developing new design strategies and by focus on volume?
(As for "impossible": a decade ago, most current Tesla owners wouldn't have dreamt of there being a desirable electrical car. Much less one they themselves would own)
Unfortunately the size/speed arms race in cars has left streets extremely dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists, and anyone who isn’t driving something weighing 1500+ kg.
Perhaps if vehicle manufacturers/vendors were made partially liable for anyone injured in collisions involving their vehicles it would provide some pressure in the right direction.
(and why did you think a rightsized car would forego seatbelts and had restraints?)
That said, city streets that only had dense electric vehicles that don't go past 20 mph (maybe a mix of things like this and buses/streetcars) would be delightful.
Cars don't weigh substantially more than they did 20 years ago. Specific models do tend to gain weight over time, but that's not relevant if comparing the cars themselves. A 2000 Honda Civic is an entirely different car than a 2020 Honda Civic. The 20 year old Civic is more similar to the Fit. The 2020 Fit weighs as much as the 2000 Civic, despite being larger, roomier, quieter, and safer. It's not that cars have gained weight in the last 20 years, simply that massive vehicles boasting extravagantly obvious externalized safety problems are grossly irresponsible and popular.
What hasn't changed is a regulatory neglect of vehicle safety to non-participants. When a lifted Dodge Ram decapitates everyone in a Honda Fit, the statistical penalty is scored against the Fit. We don't measure safety like this in other regulatory domains. NHTSA used to provide crash injury and fatality data separated by occupants and non-occupants. I haven't seen that detail provided since 2008, but I'd be happy to be corrected if I'm wrong: https://cdan.dot.gov/query
The site hasn't been active in years, but if you've got $240k burning a hole in your pocket and need a quirky kit car, can't hurt to see if anyone's home.