Chery QQ Ice Cream goes on sale in China – a modern electric car for $4,600
gadgettendency.com
gadgettendency.com
This website has the same content word for word in English, likely just put through Google Translate: https://www.worldstockmarket.net/a-modern-electric-car-for-4... but properly cites the Russian blog.
I was able to find the original source by reverse-searching the images used. IXBT cites another Russian blog as the source https://newsyou.info/chery-predstavil-neobychnyj-elektromobi... but altered the wording. That blog in turn cites another Russian blog with different wording: https://avtodream.org/vse-novosti/novinki/40708-chery-predst... which cites yet another Russian blog incorrectly and the trail is lost.
Regardless, the OP site isn't the original source and the site itself is barely a year old, consisting entirely of stolen content. That site is also tied to another 4 day old website that consists entirely of stolen content: technewsspace.com - the sites share the same Google Adsense code: CA-pub-8819900454201426
This post is plain spam.
Is there any hope of this meaningless content generation ever going to stop? I would l o v e for stackoverflow to litigate against some of these bodies, purely to stem the flow.
I've developed mod-bots for Reddit that are meant to combat garbage bot accounts and garbage youtube channels but it's an unending onslaught of garbage.
No, Google has few regiments worth of antifraud/antibot specialists, and they are all being consistently defeated.
It's just like drug running is never going to be defeated if demand is worth it, and somebody from a poor country can make a few dollars per hour running a bot farm.
In reality though, I heard that top tier ad fraud consistently makes a few dozen new USD millionaires a year just in that part of IT crowd in Russia which deals in the greyzone in between black, and white hat activity.
The only thing that prevents me from riding an e-scooter to work every day is bad weather, so I would actually love if we aimed even lower for personal city mobility. Make the vehicle weigh around 120 kg or so. Make it go 30 km/h tops, that's still plenty. Make it have a single seat, a roof, windshield, two front wheels, one rear wheel and a 1-2kW wheel hub motor.
A vehicle like that that could use [some of] the bicycle infrastructure we already have and would be significantly cheaper and easier to operate and maintain than a full-size car, while still offering acceptable comfort for <1h commutes.
(I live and work in Prague, Czech Republic, Europe.)
Its old but maybe you can find a cheap used one.
Be aware of safety, helmet is must, many wear motorcycle gear. They are relatively easy to get started and go on very high speed. Look online for safety tips and crash videos to get a sense.
PS. oh, and it's much nicer than biking in hot weather, although I guess same is the case with e-bikes.
I haven’t tried a “one wheel” but I think it may be better due to its “snowboard stance” rather than the ankle clench you have to use to ride a EUC.
As a novelty, sure, I’m glad I tried it, but ultimately I sold it and strongly prefer eBikes and eScooters.
You get in from the front! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUXiQMozHkM
In the Chinese context, riding an e-scooter to work every day is presumably fairly common, though much less common than riding an unpowered bicycle.
Bad weather is dealt with by wearing bike ponchos.
https://europe.autonews.com/blogs/renault-twizy-gets-new-lif...
There are other non-mobility scooter micro cars mentioned and there is animosity towards those and a possible ban outright on their usage of bike paths. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9ly7JjqEb0 )
Have you seen motorbikes?
You can tell me that’s not as safe as a full car, but 80km/h is very much reasonable.
Nobody wants to drive at 30km/h, or else you’d see a lot more golf carts on the road.
I have, I love them and there's a reason I don't ride one.
> 80km/h is very much reasonable
80 km/h is a speed at which people still die in modern full-size cars, and those have actual crumple zones and weigh about twice as much as the QQ.
> Nobody wants to drive at 30km/h
Not in a car, but most e-bikes and e-scooters go around 20-25 km/h and they're the mode of transport I was trying to enhance with my imaginary vehicle. I don't want a small car, because small cars have to share normal road infrastructure with big cars, even hellishly big cars (semis). I want a four-wheeled bicycle with a roof and a weak electric motor. I want it to share as much infrastructure as possible with bicycles (while endangering them as little as possible).
Seeing cars like this makes me wish someone would try it again but with a different fleet.
Traditional rental car services seem to have figured out how to make it work, why can't pay-by-the-minute places do the same? Something like demand-based pricing seems like it would work well for this.
Are Smart cars always that crappy, or were the models used for Car2go particularly inferior? I'm not sure what the transmission was, but it wasn't a normal automatic - you could feel it go into neutral (losing power) and then engage at a higher gear.
It was crap.
(Not kidding, that's what Porsche uses, also F1 cars etc, last time I looked)
The mother-in-law also had one. Hers drove like crap, much like you're describing. It's annoying to ride with her no matter what she drives. We'd do the reset procedure on hers and it would behave a bit better for a couple weeks.
I suspect the computer would have a helluva time guessing what to do next if there's a different driver every day.
I had the same problem when I was considering using Zipcar to visit Santa Cruz from San Francisco. I had no problem paying Zipcar's rate for the time it would take to travel. But Zipcar charges you for the time between when you take the car out of its designated parking spot and when you return it to the same designated parking spot, which completely defeats the purpose.
Though I can see how it would be less so if you only need to go from point a to b and not back to a.
When cars become mostly about tech, tech will do what it always does - get cheaper and better. The total cost per trip will drop through the floor. People will buy more cars and urban sprawl will go crazy.
If I could send out my car without a driver to run errands for me, I would do it all the time. Lots of stores already have curbside delivery set up so it would be easy to adapt that for driverless cars.
There are other effects as well. For example, if accident rates plummet, car insurance will get cheap and that industry will implode.
As for people buying more cars, so many people already have cars that I don't imagine that having a huge effect.
So overall I disagree with your conclusions.
Fleet prices for electric cars today are already significantly cheaper. In the future, probably more so.
Instead of one car per adult, it'll be one car per person once the kids get to primary school age in suburban families.
There are a lot of elderly and disabled people would own cars if they were self-driving and a bit cheaper than they are now. Many people currently using public transport might switch, too. That group might use shared cars, but the others are unlikely to.
The effect might be bigger than one would think.
Edit: the effect on traffic volume and congestion will be bigger. Freed from the burden of driving, commuters will be able to live further away from their jobs. Empty cars will be a significant fraction of vehicles on the road.
I was actually thinking that it would reduce car ownership. If I could commute and then send the car to home so that my wife could commute to her workplace, I definitely would! It would require syncing on who uses the car when, but at a more granular level compared to now ("I'm taking the car today" vs "I'm taking the car between 8-9am").
I'd be more worried about what happens when all cars are controlled by 2 massive tech companies.
If anything, the kinds of personalization you will be able to do with something like the car in the article are pretty big. I could see people buying them like they buy their phones. Pay $200 / month and get a new car every two years.
> Why would you personally own a car
For me, it's because shared cars are usually nasty inside. Plus, the pandemic has me thinking about the safety of shared spaces. My car is an extension of my home and I feel safe in it.
> what happens when all cars are controlled by 2 massive tech companies
Why would the car companies even sell cars for shared use? Setting up a company like Uber has never been easier and it's getting more easy all the time. Why wouldn't the car companies create their own car share services?
https://www.geekwire.com/2017/car2go-dropping-smart-cars-sea...
Car2Go (Mercedes) merged with DriveNow (BMW) and are now called ShareNow. VW also runs a service called WeShare. Its somewhat successfull in Germany. I regularly use them in Berlin.
ShareNow also only uses VWs electric cara. Mostly last gen VW Golf-e but recently also some ID.3 cars.
I once drove a car2go from downtown to my apartment near the university. This was after they started using Benz instead of Smart cars. I parked it outside and went and took a nap, had dinner, etc. About 6 hours later I left the apartment and noticed the car was still out front…running. I had put it in park and forgotten to turn it off. Customer service gave me a bit of a deal on the cost I’d racked up. I still laugh about it.
https://jalopnik.com/the-changli-at-one-how-the-cheapest-new...
The QQ looks a lot nicer, like an actual car.
(ETA: I've also loved following the Changli chronicles on Jalopnik, and people don't believe me when I say that the car industry needs to be keeping an eye on Chinese EV companies because they are doing really interesting things in the low end of the cost spectrum that could catch other manufacturers by surprise.)
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/4-wheel-electric-tric...
If it weren't for the lack of airbags or any real safety features, I would totally buy one!
Given that situation, it makes sense that families would want larger (safer) vehicles.
Most of America doesn't live in a 2-person highrise apartment.
The safety problem isn't and never has been commercial vehicles, it has been that America has let the definition of commercial vehicle erode to the point that many Americans believe that exorbitantly sized commercial vehicles make decent residential vehicles.
This will protect them from the large, dangerous vehicles out there.
It starts to look like an arms race quite quickly.
The idea that most Americans live in some sort of farm is actually wrong. Over 80% of Americans live somewhere urban. And yes, trucks, deliveries, etc should not be allowed to drive in urban areas except at night and in the early morning: for traffic and safety.
This should be regulated in Manhattan as well as Des Moines, and even in cities like Houston where the interstate is used for local trips. Driving a truck? Take the detour that skips Houston entirely during the day.
The drivers who make me nervous tend to be in SUVs or lifted pickups/crossovers, followed by sports cars. IME people who pick a big car to feel safe tend to be poor drivers. I went from liking Volvos to ride in to being scared of them when I got a motorcycle.
Counter-anecdote: that's exactly the reason given by a lot of people I know who like SUVs, especially. Maybe alongside "it can carry lots of stuff", but sometimes all on its own.
"hurr durr muh safety" is one of the easiest ways to shut down discussion these days.
"Big=safe" may not be smart reason to get a big car, but it's absolutely a common ("popular") one in the US today. Just looking at how cars are advertised, there's basically two main marketing pushes "just look how safe it keeps your family" and "just look at the hobbies it could let you do that you probably won't actually do but think you will", and yes that second one is a pretty equally common reason people buy them, but both messages get about equal air time in the US and seem common in reasons people buy them.
I realize I'm very dismissive of people buying them for "hobbies/interests", but over-buying capacity based on "perceived need that doesn't actually exist" is a trap that also makes the roads less safe and should be regulated.
Am I hauling crap from Home Depot every day? No. But two or three times a month I need to move a bunch of stuff, be it lumber, mulch, or doors. So I have a vehicle that can do that, because not having that capability would cost more per month in rental or delivery fees than having that capability costs me.
Obviously everyone's needs are different and everyone thinks their own needs are special, so there's not an easy immediate fix and it would need to be a culture change.
This kind of thinking (all expenditures to account for tail-risk demand scenarios is an evil source of inefficiency that must be eliminated) is making society perilously fragile.
Buying optionality is a great idea and people don’t do it enough.
NYC, Chicago, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Salt Lake City, Denver, Detroit, etc. have some terrible Winter weather for example. You can't safely, effectively navigate Winter weather in NYC in a vehicle like the Chery QQ Ice Cream. At best it'd be good ~2/3 of the year.
Driving on snow/iced doesn't require power, it requires good tires and an understanding of how to drive on snow and ice.
I do wonder if the engine in it could get up Seattle hills though, my family's old Geo Metro had problems, so something with a fraction of the power could prove problematic.
[citation needed]
Power is not the limiting factor in icy road conditions, traction is. While a heavier car is easier to get moving due to increased normal force, it's equally harder to stop. The actual difference makers are snow tires so you have more traction, and electronic stability control/antilock brakes so you never lose traction.
Having said that, good snow tires are magic.
All seasons can't and _wont_ cut it in some areas, and having tires that only work 3/4s of the year for traction is dicey at best.
Source: I drive a Miata in winter up in Saskatchewan
You can argue that the average car should either be a 2wd Tacoma or a Miata.
The 90s Buick Estate (a behemoth of a wagon) was 9 inches shorter than the Kia Telluride (one of the smaller 3-row vehicles in the US) and seated 8 (though it would be 7 today because front-row bench seats appear to be disallowed except in pickups).
The Estate's contemporary Ford Taurus Wagon could also seat 7 (though two adults in the 3rd row is not comfortable, it worked for short drives in a pinch) was almost 20 inches!! shorter than a Suburban/Escalade.
The number of soccer moms driving Escalades and other oversized SUVs in their high heels would heal your misconceptions about large car ownership in the US.
Now and again I spot an old style pickup (when they were a similar height to a sedan) and they're conspicuous by how petite they look relative to the current offerings (while still having abundant bed space).
I buy things specifically so I don’t have to compete with other people during times of scarcity, such as the last 18 months that just happened.
Renting sucks if you do anything regularly or like to put work into improving anything (like your car or house).
I don’t want to live a life of peonage where I don’t own anything and am at the mercy of other people’s resource allocation decisions whenever I want to do anything.
> Maybe rent a big vehicle when you need it and use a regular size on when you don't. I'm tired of being menaced by extremely clean and pristine pickups
This sounds like you feel persecuted by truck drivers.
I’m not sure the observation about bed space is really true, except maybe insofar as modern safety regulations require more empty crumple space in the front of the car.
Also, to preempt a repeat, last time there was a thread on HN about saving pedestrians by banning pickup trucks, I ran the numbers and a very optimistic estimate for number of pedestrian lives saved by replacing every single pickup with a commuter car was like 200 people per year.
This is a worry factor for people with kids, walking a dog etc., because while the pickup driver may well notice people of adult height, anything below shoulder level is effectively invisible in close-up situations. Most unpleasant close encounters don't come from a speeding vehicle but going in a straight line, but drivers turning right on red or at a stop sign and focused on traffic coming to their left, while ignoring the existence of people trying to cross the street to their right (and sometimes to their left too, because they're gazing into the middle distance and literally overlooking people nearby even though the pedestrians have the right of way).
200 pedestrian lives a year seems like a lot to me, even 100 seems like an excess loss. If you factor in cyclists (though many cyclists are their own worst enemies) I think the number might swell.
Not if you do a population-normalized utilitarian comparison. 200 people is vanishingly small. There are a million other things to focus on first.
"We must either refute this argument and show that it’s not the possession of justice and self-control that makes happy people happy and the possession of badness that makes miserable people miserable, or else, if this is true, we must consider what the consequences are. These consequences are all those previous things, Callicles, the ones about which you asked me whether I was speaking in earnest when I said that a man should be his own accuser, or his son’s or his friend’s, if he’s done anything unjust, and should use oratory for that purpose. ... I deny, Callicles, that being knocked on the jaw unjustly is the most shameful thing, or that having my body or my purse cut is, and I affirm that to knock or cut me or my possessions unjustly is both more shameful and worse, and at the same time that to rob or enslave me or to break into my house or, to sum up, to commit any unjust act at all against me and my possessions is both worse and more shameful for the one who does these unjust acts than it is for me, the one who suffers them."
Now everybody with three or more kids is practically required to buy a van or SUV because you can almost never fit three car seats in the backseat of an EPA approved sedan.
So families buy larger vehicles, which have the problem described above, and the EPA doesn't even succeed at regulating the market
To elaborate, current CAFE standards have a gap where station wagons used to be, that basically makes it impossible to make a modern station wagon. By declaring SUVs as light trucks, they aren't impacted by the same rules as a station wagon would be.
tl;dr light weight high volume cars are literally not legal to make[0] and [1] unless tiny little baby engines are put in which would put these cars down market.
I'm hoping moving to EVs resolve this entire issue.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...)
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...)
(VW Group has an EV station wagon Porsche now [a variant of the Taycan EV], and that's probably wildly out of most family's budgets, but if VW Group is playing with that on the MEB at the luxury end, hopefully that means they are already considering how to play with that on the low end as well.)
I don't think these cars are very safe even in, or actually especially in, China. It is just that China tolerates a lot more auto accident related deaths than the USA does.
From a US perspective it would be truly insane to drive one of these on a Chinese highway but you go there and see little three wheeled trucks hauling a dining table zipping alongside 18-wheelers. Truly a different standard.
This car looks like it's about halfway between those and a smart car so the safety features are going to be pretty critical if it's sharing the road with full size cars full time.
China's traffic is generally slow and always feels dangerous, moving much more like water compared to Australia and the US where it's fast and feels safe all the time until it's suddenly fatal. Due to the nature of traffic the safety profile requirements there don't quite match those in the west.
I suspect the 0-30 (!) would be in the 13 second range and hitting 60 would take like two minutes and few miles of straight, flat road with no headwind.
Chery QQ: 20 kW / 700 kg = 29 W/kg
Chevrolet Bolt: 150 kW / 1600 kg = 94 W/kg
Stats from here: https://ev-database.org/car/1320/Tesla-Model-3-Standard-Rang...
Particularly given the fairly smooth ramp from Walmart special ($100-200) through to entry level "good" bike at a sporting goods store ($300-600) to an actually-good specialty bike store bike and ultimately pro-am ($800-$2000+). And across all these tiers, there's typically a robust second-hand market in most places, though at the higher levels you'll find it via local riding club forums and so on rather than FB Marketplace.
It's an industry that could use some disruption. Maybe it's too old-school a business though, and the margins are too low for today's entrepreneurs.
The batteries are sold at a massive markup.
I also find standing up for my 15 minute commute far more comfortable that the hard saddles that seem to be in fashion on bikes these days.
This is not a decent car. You are comparing an e-bike that is likely going to be bought by someone rich with a car that is likely going to be bought by someone poor. Also, China has plenty of e-bikes that are really cheap (and finding a decent one for $4k is really hard, it will probably cost $8k over there).
Anyone here have success purchasing one of these Chinese electric cars and importing it into the US?
Early China low-cost EV's were simple brushed DC motors. In today's world, brush less ought to be cheaper and better. All the fancy features like traction control, regen, burst acceleration, etc become entirely software features, so cost nothing if enough units are sold.
Next was QQ the software, I think inspired by the name ICQ, developed by WeChat's developer, Tencent. Prior to smart phones and wechat - QQ was the dominating platform
I'm pretty sure that should be Taro as in the Asian/Pacific vegetable, not Tarot as in the occult fortune telling.
Taro isn't actually purple, but it's often confused with purple yam/ube:
This mechanical horse may not be so different than a classic horse...
Musk professes to have a mission of weaning it off its addiction to fossil fuels, but at Tesla's luxury car prices for what are luxury products, it's not going to make much of a dent, at least not very quickly. The availability of a no-frills EV with reasonable (i.e. next to zero recurring) maintenance costs would almost certainly contribute more to humanity than all the work so far that's gone into SpaceX and Tesla combined.
Later, after the pandemic started, I watched the movie 1922 (although I don't really recommend). Having been through the previous ordeal, the simplicity of the family's unassuming farm truck was not unnoticed. For all the money I spent on Lyft, I would have much more happily dropped it on a car similar to the one from the movie, even if it meant open-air cooling (no AC) and a top speed of 35mph.
The prices though...
We already have them. A "Costco Car" built to meet all minimum US safety standards is how you get stuff like the 2021 Chevy Spark (retail out-the-door price of about $14,000 brand new - https://www.chevrolet.com/cars/spark . It's cheap enough that a working fresh graduate could buy one brand new, off-the-lot. (approx $240/month or so on a 60 month loan)
Most people don't like "Costco Cars". Stuff like the Chevy Spark, or Mitsubishi Mirage, or the Nissan Versa -- they generally aren't as comfortable in seats or interior trim or interior features, they aren't as fun to drive, they tend to be louder and lighter which can make them feel unsafe (even though they aren't), they aren't very big or roomy, they generally won't impress anybody, etc.
But you can buy a "Costco Car" from any Chevy dealership anywhere in the US today, if you really want one.
Chevy's Bolt, their current closest to an entry model EV, still starts at $36,500.
Yes it has: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Spark_EV
> Chevy's Bolt, their current closest to an entry model EV, still starts at $36,500.
It starts at $31,000.
You may be technically correct about the previous poster's claims, but that says nothing to the fact that we simply don't have a low cost, low expectation electric vehicle in the USA.
Americans don't buy cheap new cars, and it's not because they don't exist. Manufactures would love to get Americans buying cheap new cars, but Americans stubbornly refuse to. They claim to want cheap new cars, but they take one look at an actually cheap car and decide that a 10 year old <nice car> is a better buy.
What do we need a car for? To transport heavy objects or people over distance longer than a bicycle or a human in a reasonable amount of time in a manner more flexible than a bus or a train.
The key with all of this is spending the time to maintain them mechanically and physically. I have always done that which is why I am still driving a 20 and 17 year old cars (along with a newer Chevy Volt). Most people think they look close to being like new.
Sure it takes some time to wash them myself, add protective sealants/polishes to the outside, protectant in the inside, leather preservers to the seats, keep up on the repairs etc., but the reduced insurance costs and overall running costs make it an easy thing to do.
In the US most people do not take care of their cars, mechanically and physically they often start to look really bad after about 10-15 years (even in the milder southern and western climates) and people just junk them and buy new. In some other countries people take care of them and you see the net result of people with cars over 20 years old in good condition still being driven.
My car (at 200,000+ miles at the time of the accident) was exactly such a case of "take care of it, and all will be well", which is why I was able to avoid dealing with the nightmare that is the auto industry today. (It's also why I still think of that one as "my car," while the others I own today do not.) Again, being well-aware of the worth of a car that is well taken care of by experiencing it firsthand and having spent some time looking for something that would allow me to replicate the previous 10+ years of car ownership, you're not really teaching me anything. Because at the end of the day, it comes down to the affordances offered to you by the market, and the market deals in junk.
How many miles do you drive each year? What kind of car did you expect to get, and how many miles+years would you expect it to operate at to be considered "well built".
For the reason above, the question is not "What kind of car did you expect?" It's "What kind of car do you expect to get?" And the answer is, "Considering the opportunity we have had to make technological progress, I would expect that I should be able to find a car today that is at least as good as that one. I should definitely not expect to be disappointed to find that as a general rule what's available is so much worse."
Maybe the OP bought it with 190k on the clock, but surely the answer is going to be close to 200k/10?
Bargain priced domestic-market cars in China have a reputation for needing major repairs within the first couple years of ownership.
We had vehicles like this in the US in the 70s -- it is possible to build vehicles very cheaply with the use of cheap materials. But today, even the cheapest cars in the US make extensive use of anticorrosive coatings, ultra-high-strength steel, and have extensive active and passive safety systems.
I'd love to live in a world where it's safe to be on the road driving a scooter, moped, smartcar, etc., without worrying if Karen in her Humvee is going to flatten me because she literally can't see the street within 20ft of her bumper.
And there are plenty of electric cars in the same rough segment as the Model 3 — but not many much cheaper. Which should probably tell you something about how easy/feasible it is. Tesla nor anyone else has a magic wand here.
People buy expensive cars because they want expensive stuff and don't know any better. As long as these people exist the cheap vehicle market will be fulfilled by used vehicles. It would be hard to make a new vehicle compete with a slightly used one at the same price because newer vehicles are subject to higher taxes and emissions standards.
That said we certainly need cheap electric vehicles which means we need enough new EVs so that the used EV market grows. The Cherry QQ only has a range of ~120 miles and top speed of 60mph. I just looked and I can get a used 2015 Nissan Leaf S for $12K which is a much better value overall.
Funny enough I found a used, road-legal electric 'golf-cart' car for sale for 8K: https://boulder.craigslist.org/cto/d/boulder-citecar/7373397...
I frankly would not take that bet. There are many catastrophic (costing more than the purchase price) repairs that can come up between 100k and 200k. If its survived that long it probably has more left in it, but a lot depends on how its been driven and maintained.
Except China doesn't have used cars. All cars have to be scrapped after 8 years, and can be pulled from the road much earlier by any arbitrarily imposed new safety, or emissions regulation.
Some cities plainly prohibit second hand cars, or just plainly "ugly cars" and I am not lying there. https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/article/3125013/che...
Also, Chinese really despise buying anything used.
As a person who hates cars and think they are ludicrously expensive, I agree. My next car will be an e-bike if I can get away with it, because that's probably the closest thing there is to a $5000 reliable car.
2nd generation Toyota Prius
Say you own a $36,500 car for 10 years. I'd call that a bit more pricey than normal, but also a bit longer than normal. You can buy cheaper but the lower quality won't last as long so let's just use these numbers for now. When you work it out, owning such a car will cost $10 per day just to have the privilege of letting it sit in your drive way. Tack on insurance price per day ($4.50 per day by some quote I looked up) and effective maintenance costs ($? per day) and you've already spent over $15 each day before even leaving your garage. Even in your costco card example, say you treat it well and made a $5000 car last for 3 years. That's still about $4.50 per day just for the privilege of having it plus the insurance (maybe a bit cheaper for the cheap car?). The "costco car" option is still more expensive per day than taking the metro, and that's before you even left your driveway!
Cars are a racket!
We as a society pay a lot to support a car infrastructure. From crappy land usage for parking lots, which necessitates increased property taxes on everyone else, to land that could be used for housing/businesses instead being used for roads.
Add on top of that the number of injuries, and how much time we have to spend in cars because we live in a society designed around cars, personal vehicles are a huge dead weight cost.
I'm not saying everyone needs to give up their cars, but families having more cars than people is insane.
With a large part of the world having had lockdowns, I’ve been surprised at the readiness to go back to normal where cars are concerned.
As someone currently locked down, the silence is amazing. I hear the odd power tool, or pet, lots of bird song and maybe some noisey human. I hear push bikes coming down the hill, long before they pass me.
The typical city noise of cars, engines, tyres, horns etc is so very very obnoxious, quite apart from the points raised above.
There was an interesting thread here on HN recently on a link between road noise and dementia.
However, much better than low cost cars would be robo-taxis, as the utilization rate on cars for people is low that this dramatically changes the economics. Musk and others realize this, which is why they are pursuing it so vigorously.
Its much better for the poor and for the environment to have a fleet of $30k cars @ 70% utilization than a bunch of $10k cars at 5% utilization.
Even better to have a functioning bus and cycle network!
The car market naturally bifurcated itself such that wealthier individuals buy new cars, that they trade in on a frequent timeline, and are sold used to lower income buyers.
The reason I believe this is because there have been tons of great, small, cheap cars sold in the US, and they have never succeeded. The quintessential example would be the Honda Fit or Scion xB. Both were very cheap cars, with a relatively large, usable interior, and rock solid reliability. None of these cars lasted in the USA for more than two generations. And the second gen xB is basically a totally different car from the first gen.
For better or worse, the majority of low cost car buyers believe in, "Why buy a new <cheap car> when you could get a five year old <nice car> for the same price?" I honestly thinks that the majority of buyers have been brainwashed to think that used cars are always a better deal, because it's not uncommon for lightly used cars to cost more after two years than they did new. That really only makes sense if used car shoppers aren't even bothering to price new cars.
Another point of reference: the best selling vehicles in the USA are all full sized pickup trucks. In their financial statements, Ford reports the number of F150s sold for >$50k.
The 2nd gen xB had none of the charm of the first generation, and then it wasn't updated for ages, then it vanished.
Then Kia came along with the Soul and basically proved the market for a box car was still there, it just had to be a good value.
IMHO Kia has gone down the same road with the Soul that Toyota did with the xB, the new souls are larger and more expensive, and they don't have as much personality.
The Camry isn't #1 because people are trying to look cool.