So What Is The Problem?”
The problem is that it will move teenagers out of bicycles, scooters, and public transport, thus making roads busier. That’s not where we should want to go if we want to make city centers more livable.
- rebound: faster bandwidth = people will consume more bytes = need more energy
- stack: 5G will be deployed on top of 4g which is deployed on top of 3g which is deployed on top of 2g which is still operational in many places.
It goes the same for transportation. If an electric car replaces a ICE car it's a net positive (or maybe not, you'd have to study the whole cycle from lithium mining to end of life disposal). If an electric car replaces a pedestrian or a bicycle it's a net negative no matter how you look at it.
It also depends on the electric mix, but an electric car will almost always be a net positive over its lifetime, due to its much better power-to-wheels efficiency (70-80% instead of 20-40% for ICE). That's 2 to 4 times energy saved! (depending on model)
But overall efficiency needs to take into account the weight too. A Tesla Model X is 2.5t. If your car is 2 times the weight of your old car, say good bye to your efficiency gains.
That's where a Citroën AMI has potential, IMO. A really light-weight, really efficient electric car that does the job. Hope they start advertising it like that.
I for one hope it doesn't take off, just for this sole reason, even though I liked the quirkiness of the design.
For example, what % of kids who are currently driven to school in gargantuan SUVs could drive themselves in an Ami? I would certainly rather they cycled, but i'll take fewer SUVs on the roads as a second best.
As a cyclist, I'd also be happier contending with an Ami than a Range Rover, and with a bit of luck the Amis will also slow the Range Rovers down.
It's feasible to cycle on any urban road where SUVs abound, provided that they have an urban speed limit.
And by the way, it's not comfortable for pedestrians to contend with bicycles. At least cyclists driving on roads have to navigate drivers who had to go through training to have the privilege of being there, and risk suffering consequences if they do not abide by rules.
These kids are not zipping around in bicycles or scooters. They are either being driven around by their parents or Uber/taxi drivers in their 2-ton 6-seaters or being zipped around in taxis.
These modes of transportation are not a panacea but nothing is, and mindlessly parroting "use bicycles!" does absolutely nothing to address the problem. I'm pretty sure people already know that bicycles exist for a couple of centuries now but somehow they choose not to use them in spite of the colossal cost of purchasing and maintaining a motorized vehicle.
These vehicles pollute less, have a smaller footprint, are safer, are hard to steal, and are affordable. More importantly, they are real, exist today, don't require retrofitting the current system nor do they require legislation changes. Sounds like an improvement.
but the ami is a underpowered for american cities, from the article:
> "It has a top speed of 45km/h, it can do 75km on a full charge..."
if it could go up to 45mph and 75mi per charge, you could replace a lot of urban cars with the ami, but as it is, it's unfortunately more directly competitive with (electric) bikes and scooters rather than errand and commuter cars. 90% of trips can be replaced by cars like the ami, particularly in cities.
Citation please
Does something like this exist anywhere except the US?
incidentally, i think we could quadruple density in LA (with mixed-use and other techniques) without any loss of "neighborhood character" (unless of course, one's definition of that excludes diversity of race and income). the weather here is perfect for multimodal transportation year-round. that kind of density means more construction projects could (better) afford to put parking underground so that we could convert street parking to dedicated bike/scooter lanes without loss of parking convenience. and smaller utility cars like the ami means that we could put more of them in that parking area, while needing fewer of them because of the higher walkability of the neighborhood afforded by the higher density of commerce/employment as well.
Seems like a nicer problem to wrestle with than
"We have a bunch of young people injured or dead on bicycles or as pedestrians each year"
Like, there's not even any contest as to which of those problems i'd rather face.
If i was to uncharitably re-frame your argument, it's simply pulling up the ladder to avoid future generations having an option to take up a new form of mobility.
However anecdotally I have two friends whose teenager children had accidents with cars like that and zero who had accidents with bicycles.
Anecdotally my score is 1-1 (with a "real" car.)
That is because of too many cars on the streets. We cannot solve that by adding more cars to the streets, electric or not.
But I could see such vehicle popular with boomers living in the country side. That would provide some freedom to move around in a fairly safe (from elements, your own balance) and provide enough cargo for groceries.