Why ultra-light urban vehicles offer the only viable future for EVs | Hacker News Reader

Why ultra-light urban vehicles offer the only viable future for EVs

maddyness.com

37 pointsMaxLunn184 comments

We have a Volkswagen e-Up, and I'm convinced it's the perfect EV. It's small and light(about 1000kg total), but not so small to be impractical - it fits a full size baby seat and a full size pram, I've done Costco and DIY store runs with it, it carried planks of wood and bags of soil....like any normal car would. Yes the 150 mile range is not going to win any contests, but you know what - I've literally never been close to running out. I can do the school run in the morning, commute to work, go shopping, go see friends, and still only need to charge it every few days at most - and when I do i just plug it in at home and it charges overnight, ready and fully charged by the morning. And it does 5-6 miles per kWh which is insane, it beats even the most optimistic numbers on a Tesla. And full charge costs me £2.5 at home - about the same as two litres of petrol.

Would I do a cross country trip in one of these? Obviously not(although you could, it does support CCS rapid charging), but if I had to....I'd just rent a different car to do that in for few days? Seriously the need for that comes up maybe twice a year for me - so why would I need a massive 2.5 tonne EV with a 100kWh battery , like every other manufacturer seems to be so keen on delivering as their EV solution?

Obviously, before someone replies "well this wouldn't work for me" - yes I know. But I'd wager that for an awful lot of people this exact kind of car would work perfectly fine.

That is still a normal car, although very compact. Plus at 1000kg it is still more heavy than most of the petrol city cars we have in Europe. The article is about smaller cars, that are sometimes not even 'cars' when it comes to regulation. We are speaking of Citroen Ami, Renault Twizzy, Microlino ... EVs around 500kg.

Yeah I'm aware, sorry - I just meant to say that it presents a compelling EV alternative to 2 tonne+ EVs that seem to be the predominant option now, because everyone expects 300 miles of range from their car even if they practically never need it.

(Also yes, petrol city cars are lighter, but not that much lighter - a Citroen C1 clocks in at 815kg for example)

And this LUV is less than half of that at 400kg, or 2.5x lighter than the VW Up!, while costing only about half of the latter. And at 10miles per KwH, it is way more efficient too, as efficient as the Aptera (despite having a vastly larger aerodynamic drag coefficient from the look of it).

Very true - I really don't have anything else to say other than agree.

> That is still a normal car, although very compact

We have a VW Up, but it's the ICE (petrol) version. It's a great car for up to four people. EDIT: (just been out and checked the paperwork, it weighs in at ~900kg)

It's around four years old and we've done around 36k miles. It cost just under $11k new, everything included (although they're now $15k and you'd better be quick, VW are discontinuing them this year). The e-Up has already been discontinued.

It's a fantastic car, it's easy to park, easy to drive, really economical. We looked at the e-Up, but it was significantly more than twice as expensive compared to the petrol version, with a massively reduced range.

I'd love to have had enough "spare money" to have picked the e-Up instead of the ICE version, but spending an additional $25k to get a mostly inferior vehicle just wasn't an option.

Where do we go from here?

>>The e-Up has already been discontinued.

I don't think it has, at least here in UK the dealers were told to stop taking new orders because they have enough to see them until the end of 2023, but Volkswagen has confirmed they will continue making the e-Up at least until the ID.1 arrives and replaces it.

>>but spending an additional $25k to get a mostly inferior vehicle just wasn't an option.

So maybe we just lucked out, but we got ours on a lease deal, £199/month with no upfront cost. The petrol version was marginally cheaper at £149/month or something like that - the difference is easily made up in the savings on petrol and maintenance. Of course it means we will never fully own it, but at that cost it beat pretty much any other option available on the market.

> I don't think it has, at least here in UK the dealers were told to stop taking new orders because they have enough to see them until the end of 2023, but Volkswagen has confirmed they will continue making the e-Up at least until the ID.1 arrives and replaces it

Ah, I've just done more research and you're right, it seems the e-Up has made a comeback, although the list price has jumped to EUR30k/GBP26.5k/USD32.5k. Back when I first saw it the list price was EUR23k

> we got ours on a lease deal, £199/month with no upfront cost. The petrol version was marginally cheaper at £149/month or something like that - the difference is easily made up in the savings on petrol and maintenance

If we'd had that option I'd have chosen the e-Up in a heartbeat! Well done :)

> I'd love to have had enough "spare money" to have picked the e-Up instead of the ICE version, but spending an additional $25k to get a mostly inferior vehicle just wasn't an option.

I didn't think that the difference would be that large. Is it just a function of supply and demand (charging what the market will bear, and not cost+profit)?

Apparently(and this is just hearsay so treat it with a grain of salt) the replacement battery for one of these is about 10k euro, so that alone explains a big chunk of difference in price between the e-Up and its petrol brother. Batteries are just expensive and there's no good way around it.

(on the plus side, the battery capacity of the e-Up has literally DOUBLED few years back, from 18kWh to 36kWh, and yet the price remained the same - so the market is producing cheaper - per kWh - batteries)

> Batteries are just expensive and there's no good way around it

Yup, which means EVs in turn are also just expensive, and there's no way around it. Yet.

It's relatively easy for today's politicians to make policy such as effectively banning the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2035, as the EU has done.

Will that policy actually stick if EV prices don't fall significantly over the next 12 years? Even when the politicians of 2030-something start worrying about getting re-elected?

Wow, has it gone down that much in Europe? My BMW 120d was still 1,400kg.

The emergence of decent car sharing networks makes it even more cost-effective.

Why would I own a 100kWh car, when I only need that range 2x per year, and I could rent that bigger car with my smartphone in 30 secs, for 1/20th of the annual cost?

Why indeed?

Other people, and a lot more of them than you might think, need that range many times a year. People with elderly parents in a town 400 miles away, for instance. People with children, ditto. People who travel for work in their own vehicle.

I very much doubt the 30 seconds. Maybe booking it, but 30 seconds to driving away? Never.

The question was why would they who only need this range twice a year, own a 100kWh vehicle. If you need this range "many times a year" then obviously this comment(and this car) wasn't aimed at you.

> Why would I own a 100kWh car, when I only need that range 2x per year, and I could rent that bigger car with my smartphone in 30 secs, for 1/20th of the annual cost?

I just rented a vehicle today (for next week, flying somewhere and need a car while I am there).

The cost to rent the cheapest car on offer is less than half the cost to rent a stationwagon.

A 3 day rental (after I shopped around at 5 different providers at the airport) with limited mileage is about the same as the monthly repayment of that same vehicle, and the insurance excess is not borne by the rental company if I get into an accident or the car is stolen.

It most definitely is not 1/20th the annual cost of the vehicle[1], if you need to go away for the weekend.

[1] The cost is much greater if you want to travel a large distance, because unlimited miles almost doubles the cost.

I live and work in the same town. I have a 5 minute drive. Our town has basically everything we need. I'd drive the shit out of a car like this. It wouldn't matter if it has range. We'll probably have 2 cars until the kids are out of the house, so even if one of them is electric that's better than nothing.

A 5 minute drive is a 10 minute e-bike commute.

in my case (also commuting within the city) a 14minute no traffic car drive is a 8minute (cycle expressways) ebike commute, it can also be the other way around :) heck, even with no traffic i'm often faster by bike nearly everywhere in the city

Yes, it usually turns into 2x by car in a high traffic scenario here as well. My commute is 7 minutes by car or 15 minutes by bike (the regular type, not an e-bike). It includes a hill with about 100 meters of climbing but then you get to go downhill during the return trip. One of my colleagues doesn't own a car, has a longer commute and does it entirely by bicycle for most of the year.

> A 5 minute drive is a 10 minute e-bike commute.

But 5 minutes in the dry is not the same as 10 minutes in the rain.

The get lots of rain in the Nederlands and somehow they seem to manage just fine. Mudguards fix 60% of the rain issue, the rest is done by a raincoat.

You do get wet, raincoat or not. The solution is to simply accept that getting from A to B involves interacting with whatever the weather has to throw at you, realising that this won't do you any harm and just getting on with life. Once you're there life becomes so much easier. Get some deodorant [1] if you think you'll smell at the end of your trip. Yes, you might end up a bit sweaty but as long as you're reasonably clean that won't be a problem.

Source: personal experience (I'm Dutch although I live in rural Sweden now)

[1] make it yourself: half baking soda, half potato starch, add liquefied coconut fat and mix, use enough fat to get the consistency of peanut butter. Either dump it in a used deodorant stick (of the screw-up type, first screw it down of course) or just in a glass jar. It'll solidify into a semi-hard mass which can be easily scraped off for use, it is far more effective than the stuff sold in stores and works for a few days.

> The get lots of rain in the Nederlands and somehow they seem to manage just fine. Mudguards fix 60% of the rain issue, the rest is done by a raincoat.

I didn't say it isn't doable, I was pointing out wrong the poster who claimed that 5m in the car is the same as 10m on a bike.

Because even if you are okay with 10m in the rain, it is most certainly NOT equivalent to 5m in the dry.

Even with the rain the amount of days in the Netherlands that the weather is unbearable is extremely low.

Climate is much more extreme in large parts of the USA. Going from extremely cold with snow and windchill, all the way up to extremely warm & dry, or warm and humid, which means you need to take a shower after 2 minutes outside.

1000 kg is still too heavy. Think of body frame for Smart Fourtwo vehicle but with 4 seats and made from bonded aluminium. Add plastic panels and you get a lighter vehicle.

I hope sizes of cars will be more regulated or heavily taxed. Driving a huge tanks into the city center with lots of pedestrians should be avoided. And the cars growing wider and longer also means the space allocated for them (already too much!) is getting too small. Like many cars can no longer fit the street side parking where I live, and thus use half a meter of the bicycle lane..

Spoken like someone without a family. You have no idea how small cars are for even a short trip with a family of 4.

Spoken like an American :)

The rest of the world can fit 4 people, a dog and their stuff in a normal sedan or station wagon.

Americans need a TRUCK to get groceries.

>The rest of the world can fit 4 people, a dog and their stuff in a normal sedan or station wagon.

The demographics who are doing most of the complaining about the proliferation of big vehicles generally wouldn't be caught dead doing this (let alone doing it regularly) because it's not acceptable for people of their means if you catch my drift.

They also tend to complain and complain and complain about people buying trucks and SUVs they "don't need" and then the nanosecond they see someone doing "truck stuff" with a station wagon or crossover they're hand wringing about safety and margin for error.

Basically this is a social norms problem and the groups complaining about it are the ones who created the mess.

I am trying really hard to figure out what demographic you're talking about. Can you elaborate?

This thread has plenty of parents (myself included) saying that small cars are fine for raising a family. I see people towing with wagons (rare, now, sadly) and wring no hands. What's not acceptable for someone of my means? I am genuinely confused.

Public transport usually uses very large vehicles called buses which can fit many times more than four people

In a city. How about anyone living in the countyside? Do those people not exist? Where my parents live, there is are 3 buses per day. None around school time. How does a child get to school? Or should these families just move to the city?

Do families get to go anywhere for more than a few hours? How do you bring all their stuff along like clothes, toothbrush, etc. Every child needs a minimum of 1l of water all the time, and some snacks in case they get hungry. And toys. And change of clothes in case they spill the 1l of water on themselves in the winter.

What happens when both parents have 20kg+ bags and one of your children decides to run away, say into traffic?

Judging by the replies to my original comment, not many people on HN have children or have any idea what it involves.

Do families get to go anywhere for more than a few hours?

While I instinctively agree with you, I have lots of friends with children who seem to do perfectly fine with just electric cargo bikes and public transport. And these are people with good jobs that could afford a big SUV if they really wanted one. So while you or I don't seem to get it, a lot of other people seem have worked it out no problem.

The article is about urban cars. Not countryside.

If your child runs in to traffic that's the exact moment you want the cars on the road to be small, light, and have short and low hoods so the drivers will see your child and stop before hitting them!

If your child decides to behave like a deer it won't matter if the cars are transparent, they're getting hit.

Even the new Chevy trucks that everyone loves to hate don't have a child blind spot that's larger than their stopping distance at any double digit speed.

That's why we should remove cars from where people want to be.

I know urban planning trends vaguely go in circles but it seems a couple decades early to be extolling the virtues of raised highways...

Family of 4 here with a Honda Jazz (aka Honda Fit in the US). Doing fine. Grew up in the states as a family of four and for most of my youth we had a Honda Accord - the early 90's ones that were smaller than a Civic is now IIRC.

Family of four, with a stroller?

Do you go on multi-day trips, where you need clothes are gear for everyone?

Do you have smaller children's car seats will take up 80% of the back seats?

Yes, including until recently an extended rear-facing Axkid Move* (that did, admittedly, make leg room for the front passenger less than ideal, though my wife is short). And we use Babyzen yoyos*, though we're getting past the pram stage of life.

Sometimes I bring a Brompton folding bicycle and a Thule Coaster trailer along with the kids when we want to go for a ride.

https://axkid.com/uk/product/axkid-move/ https://www.babyzen.com/

Families don't need 2.5 tonne SUVs or 4 seat trucks. They don't need Volvo XC90s or Escalades. Sorry. They just don't.

You can only just fit 2 child seats into a smaller car. For anyone with 3 children, anything without 2 rows of back seats is basically an unusable car for the whole family.

And the reason everyone is going on about "car size inflation" and how it was fine in smaller cars 20 years ago is the same reason - you didn't have to use child seats. Now because of safety you literally can't have a family larger than 2 children with a smaller car.

Moving the goal post. Your previous comment was about how I don't have a family (for some reason) and you discussed explicitly "a family of 4". Now you're changing the number.

For what it's worth, I've had three kids in a Prius ages 2-6 (the oldest was tall enough to use a booster in the middle) and there are narrower full car seats. One fancy option is https://www.multimac.com/range, which even includes 4-across options.

Were they too small 10 years ago? I went to a car show and compared our current “mid sized” SUV to its replacement. It grew 7 inches longer and several inches wider and taller. It’s bigger and smaller cousins did the same. So “mid sized” is now “full”, and “full” is now “extra large”.

Manufactures are also dropping their smallest cars, so effectively all cars are getting continually bigger and as a consumer it’s gradual you don’t realize it until the car doesn’t fit into the garage any more.

> Manufactures are also dropping their smallest cars, so effectively all cars are getting continually bigger and as a consumer it’s gradual you don’t realize it until the car doesn’t fit into the garage any more.

Surely this can't be correct?

There are more city car models (compact cars) available right now than 10 years ago. You might argue that their sales are lacklustre, but if a consumer wanted one, they are spoilt for choice.

I think the thing is, people who need a car need something slightly larger than a subcompact (2x baby seats + 1x pram don't normally fit in these tiny cars), while people who don't have kids don't need a car anyway - cheaper and easier to use the public transport.

You're aware that people had families before oversized SUVs were a thing...?

We used to go on long trips with a family of 5 in normal sized cars regularly. Of course I would never do that today. Like many families we don't have a car and rent as needed. Long trips with kids are just infinitely much better by train.

> We used to go on long trips with a family of 5 in normal sized cars regularly. Of course I would never do that today.

Of course you won't - the baby seats that are safe enough to pass regulations are too large to fit 2 of them into the back seat of that old normal sized car.

Long family trips in smaller cars were done without baby seats or booster seats.

What??? You're saying you can't fit two car seats in the back of a "normal" car? I have two of them in a Honda Jazz (aka Fit) at this very moment. A car classed as a "subcompact". Until recently, one of them was a bulky Axkid (though it has since been outgrown).

Not sure where you live, but here car seats or boosters are mandatory for children under 8. This is a relatively recent change. Car seats have grown more in size than the cars.

Used to be that putting unbelted kids in the back of a vehicle was fine. I grew up using such vehicles. The regulatory environment and equipment have changed significantly over the years. Can't really compare today with the past as trying to live that way will get you seriously fined if not arrested.

Here, too. Three kids in the back would be tight (edit* not possible), but it's completely absurd to claim that you can't fit boosters/car seats into compact cars. We have on occasion done just that in a small rental, or even in a friends three door tiny compact car. Talking about this style:

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/9020706

Though the ones we have are a bit more bulky.

Most cars are made for 4-5 people.

> You have no idea how small cars are for even a short trip with a family of 4.

You think that they grew up in family of 2?

My family regularly packed in five or six into a sedan, back when laws were more lax.

Why is my situation relevant?

But for the record, when biking to work today I biked for some time behind a father on a cargo bike with two kids seated in the trunk. We zoomed past the traffic on the main road, that of course was at a stand still. :)

I love the Japanese Kei-car concept[0]. The government mandates maximum external dimensions and engine capacity for cars and maufacturers adapt.

On the other hand they are taxed less and thus a lot cheaper than "normal" cars.

And when the car size is exactly known, cities can be designed to match. Every parking space is the correct size and streets are just wide enough, but not more.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_car

> Like many cars can no longer fit the street side parking where I live, and thus use half a meter of the bicycle lane..

What do you mean by "many"? I was under the (maybe wrong) impression that small cars are more popular in Europe than large cars.

And, assuming parallel parking bays, it would take a really large car to half a meter wider than a compact car.

I welcome corrections to the above statements :-)

Large cars are becoming more popular in Europe too. A visit to the Netherlands reveals a surprising amount of Dodge Rams in use in the city.

The sizes of new cars purchased has increased. Here is a graph from how it is in Norway: https://mobile.twitter.com/eivindhammers/status/149189107476...

My "half a meter" was of course a hyperbole. But I also think the wider and more expensive cars make people vary of parking too close to the curb, hence they have some margin on all sides.

> I hope sizes of cars will be more regulated or heavily taxed.

This is a good path forward IMO. I generally believe "pure consumption" - owned but almost never used assets like extra rooms in houses or seats in cars - should be taxed. That's not even a socialist/authoritarian idea; justification can be found even on the free-market side where "unproductive use" or "stranded resources" might be the more common terms. Some of the proceeds could even be earmarked to provide transportation to those such as the disabled or elderly who can't "just bike" (many people's only idea in this space unfortunately) or take public transportation easily. Is it perfect? Nope. Does it help move us forward to a more sustainable future? Still yes.

I think electric stand up scooters have a strong future. They are extremely convenient in that they can easily be taken inside offices, in elevators, on public transport, etc which is something you couldn't easily do with bikes. They really boost the usefulness of public transport because you can now quickly get to the nearest stop even if its 1-2km away.

Unfortunately they are illegal by default in much of the world but this seems to be changing.

They are banned on public transport in the UK as well, so that's another wrinkle in this plan. :D

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/london/e-scooters-banned-from-the...

No so great in climates that have 4 actual seasons.

> Unfortunately they are illegal by default in much of the world

You are way off base here, considering that there must be at least 1000 times more electric scooters than electric cars sold in much of the world.

They are, strictly speaking, illegal in the UK, except for limited pilot schemes. And yes, widely used. They are too beefy to count as a bicycle (like, no pedals etc) but don't meet more stringent criteria for a motorbike (like indicators, side mirrors etc).

I'm less sure, but think they are also illegal in the EU, on the same premise.

Illegal in most of Australia but the laws are being reviewed in most states. We have had rental scooters as a “trial” since 2019 which has been very successful, but owning one yourself is still an illegal unregistered vehicle.

They are actually less powerful than e-bikes. E-bikes being allowed up to 25km/h while the rental ones are limited to 15km/h

They’re not illegal in Queensland (although there are quite ridiculously extreme and nonsensical penalties - for example the fine for using a mobile phone while riding a 15 kg scooter is exactly the same (over $1000!) as for somebody doing that while driving a multi-tonne vehicle that could flatten multiple pedestrians and kill multiple passengers at once in an accident)… Not that they shouldn’t have fines, it’s just the consequences to others for accidents in cars and trucks are hugely different and the fine should reflect that.

Anyway, luckily I don’t care to do that , and the rule I do tend to break (going over 12 km/h on a pedestrian footpath) is almost unenforceable (I only do it if it’s completely clear, I slow right down if there are people within a few tens of meters ahead). You can go 25 km/h on bikeways and roads, but you aren’t allowed to ride on 60 km/h or up roads.

Even with the crazy laws, it’s still a great way to get around and far better to have some silly rules than it being completely banned!

Yes, much of the world doesn't really have any relevant rules, but there are quite a lot of rich countries in which an electric scooter is not allowed on the road because it doesn't fit into any of the allowed categories or conform to the strict rules that govern vehicles, but is not allowed on footpaths either because it is a vehicle (it has wheels).

Ironically, the first time I saw an electric scooter in use, which was a very long time ago, it was in a Swiss railway station, and I think the user had just alighted from a train. (Switzerland has a reputation, perhaps unjustly, for strict rules.)

Here in the UK they're legal to rent but not to buy.

They’re legal to buy and own and use on private land, and on public roads as long as you make sure they’re up to the regulations for powered road vehicles, which cheap ones usually aren’t, and you have a drivers license for them.

They’re only not legal to use on pavement and cycle paths as if they were bicycles.

This page is very readable:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/powered-transport...

I'm pretty sure this minority of countries is very much irrelevant vis-a-vis the future of manufacturing electric vehicles.

They're illegal in Toronto, too [0], but they're still prevalent due to the utter lack of enforcement.

[0] https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-tra...

Stand up scooters don't carry cargo or children and rain or snow instantly remove them from the equation.

Electric cabin scooters with removable batteries cover way more what cars offer today in an urban environment. Something like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabin_motorcycle or that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_rickshaw

No form of transport covers literally all cases, it doesn’t make it useless. For the majority of office commuters, not having to pay for parking and being able to reach public transport which would otherwise be too far is a huge plus.

> No form of transport covers literally all cases

Funny cause that is exactly what people buy cars for. Which is what we need a good replacement for. E-Scooters are fine but not what will get rid of heavy cars.

Well a car does not work for my use case where I have no place available to park it and need to take trips of mostly around 2km where there is also no parking. There is currently no transport method faster than an ebike/scooter for the trips I take.

> Unfortunately they are illegal by default in much of the world but this seems to be changing.

Well, they are awfully dangerous - with such a tiny wheel radius, even a small pebble can flip the rider over the handlebars, while bicycles wheels are large enough to not flip even on some kerbs.

Given an option between a bicycle and a stand-up scooter, it's a no-brainer to choose the bicycle.

maybe we just need escooters with large wheels in the front?

I see a comment I’m not going to engage with, but I have two kids and I had them happily in a Honda Fit and a VW GTI (3 door) when they were little.

I came here to say this is a great idea, I literally took a loss and sold my Volvo XC40 Recharge and went back to an old BMW i3 because the larger vehicles honestly don’t make actual sense (the article clarifies this more than I’m going to bother with here) to me.

We need to stop propelling tanks and start driving vehicles sized to fit the need.

A Honda Fit weighs over 1000 kg. It's in a much larger size class than the vehicles in OP.

Yes, a Fit is fine with two polite and compliant children. Try three and a dog, and behavioral issues.

Or two kids who have friends

Very few households have six family members. Far less than 1%, maybe even less than 0.1%.

I thought of Aptera when I saw the title. They are planning to start production this year. There's also the potential for daily solar charging as many people park outside. This is kind of the important part because charging infrastructure isn't that good and with more EV's there will be waiting times.

Still, charging 20-40 miles a day in the sun should be good enough for many commutes. And many people work from home a few days a week so the charge time in the sun will be even greater.

Why even bother with some concepts when these are produced en masse in China and sold for 3-4000 USD with weight 500-600kg?

https://gaiasolar.en.made-in-china.com/product/cXDJSvIyZLUY/...

I have a big car, and an electric cargo bike, and frankly, the latter covers a lot of my use cases. It weighs a lot for a bike, around 30-40kg, but carries one adult and two children plus some bags.

I can imagine adding 50-100kg to it, making it 4 wheels, fully enclosed lightweight roof, max speed of 20-30 kph and fully electric, and covering a lot of bike use cases, plus weatherproofing. It's not like a lightweight car, it's like an extremely beefy bike.

The thing that would be missing is road infrastructure and laws. The bike works because it can go everywhere, and things I need are within cycling distance. I wouldn't happily "ride" the beefed-up version on a public road with cars though.

there are some great concepts (hopper mobility for example) but the infrastructure has to be planned accordingly, even in the us, there are some nice liveable "golf cart" communities. We also use our ebikes for everything in at least a 10km radius, in every weather... the car is only used for long distance trips :)

It's kind of sad how naive, idealistic young people put their energy into this sort of stuff without first figuring out how to get people to want smaller, lighter, plainer things.

It's kind of step 3 of an Underpants Gnomes-like business plan, and the missing step 2 is the hard one.

Cue quote about "if you want ships built, teach people to long for the immensity of the open ocean".

Surely in a DENSE urban environment for short range trips there are not much needs for a big vehicle BUT there is a DEEP fallacy in such design: IF we are actually electrifying anything THAN we need a fully electric logistic.

IF we can made it, no matter how, in a sustainable way, than we have no issues in making big and even bigger EVs. If we can't smaller EVs does not solve ANYTHING.

If for instance we will need electrified roads to have a sustainable fully electric supply chain such roads works for semi as well as private cars. If we can build enough batteries apt to serve semi, than we have no issues building them also for cars.

That's is.

Those who to their best to justify the UN New Urban Agenda, sold ad https://youtu.be/p-9X8Z2kJt8 but in reality https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/19/why-greeces-ex... do not serve their reader nor humanity.

Electrification of anything is needed for industrial reasons, witch are essentially a deep reduction in raw material usage, a deep reduction in industrial processes. A mechanical watch demand much more raw material and labor per single watch than a modern battery based one, oh sure industrial system to produce batteries and chips is more expensive BUT we need them anyway AND single produced object is far less expensive, demand far less raw material and can be produced in a very little amount of time. IF such evolution will not work, perhaps because we do not have enough lithium even to make it in the first place producing glorified golf carts https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3vny5/glorified-electric-go... do not solve nor mitigate the issue. Is just a political move to push poor people in cities while the wealthy leave them.

I'm very sympathetic to the idea of lighter vehicles. There's all sorts of pros to them. But realistically unless we're willing to expend the political capital required to leave everyone who ever gave someone a dirty look over a used car seat or authored breathless hand wringing comments about safety sharing the same hole in the ground it's not happening, at least not in North America. Not only has "the market" chosen big vehicles, but the regulators have picked the same side and are incentivizing big in everything but name. That's not the kind of thing you undo in less than decades and in decades we'll have better batteries so it won't matter.

Electric trucking will come online in the EU in the next decade. Long haul trucking is a major contributor to EU energy demand, and will see serious EV attention over the coming years, both in terms of EV trucks, as well as charging infrastructure

Cute concept car. If your only user need for a car is “I need to commute 5-30 minutes a day in normal urban traffic” then it will tick the box. I’m genuinely curious how many people in the world are in that category.

Most people I've met who own EVs are in that category.

I'd say the extreme vast majority of urban dwellers

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Maybe suburban, but Germany from what I've seen is still pretty car-centric.

Oh for sure, but most of them don't need a 5 seats 2+ tonnes car that can do 700km on a single charge because most of them do <20km per day and travel alone

I'm guessing Germany, like most countries, is pretty bimodal when it comes to the driving distribution. The people I know in downtown Berlin or Hamburg average around 0 km a day. The people I know in small rural towns way off in the eastern parts of Germany easily drive 100+ km many days a week.

My initial impression of Berlin was similar. If I lived there, no shot I'd drive, but it still seems somewhat car-centric with various historical grand boulevards and so on. Maybe the west side is worse or my opinion os coloured a bit by Amsterdam dominating.

For such short distanec it's better to use public transport without wasting money on single purpose car which can't be used as family car to travel anywhere.

I won't argue against that, the problem is that most of them already use a car, a smaller EV would definitely be much better than a big ICE vehicle or a big EV

> I won't argue against that, the problem is that most of them already use a car, a smaller EV would definitely be much better than a big ICE vehicle or a big EV

Sure, they already have a car, but most people won't replace their car with something that doesn't already fit the use-cases their current car fits.

IOW, I don't think this is a replacement for current cars, it's a replacement for electric scooters, ebikes, motorcycles, current subcompact (citroen ami, for example) and public transport use.

A lot of people know their cities will never provide proper public transport tho. It's currently only possible in the USA if we become an authoritarian country because there is no public will for it.

Many families have two cars. Maybe one car is smaller and the other car is for long road trips.

Most people? At least looking at the statistics for Norway, almost exactly 63% of daily trips with a car in 2020 was below 10 kms.

I'd argue one doesn't need a car at all for this, though..

In that case it seems Norway has A) extremely lazy people and/or B) very bad public transport, if you need car to travel less than 10km.

Or very bad weather.

One would think if EV can operate in bad weather, there is no reason why public transport should not handle it for such short distance as well.

Do you think the numbers are better for the US for instance, where it often is impossible to walk between two different stores?

I wouldn't ascribe it to laziness. While I really want to remove many cars because all the negative effects they have on society (pollution, noise, dangers, area use etc), it's a structural problem. It's too easy too drive compared to the alternatives for many people.

For me, I bike to work every day, no matter the season.

Norway is in Europe so I judge it by European public transport standards. Honestly 10km is easily doable even on electric bike, that's really extremely short distance (unless when snowy/wet/mountanious).

> It's too easy too drive compared to the alternatives for many people.

Which is just more words for "laziness".

It ticks a lot of different boxes, because it's not a car. If we banned cars from cities and instead used LUVs, we could have more of them in the roads moving faster, because there's less risk and more space. More trips could happen faster for more use cases.

Imagine multiple levels of roads that don't have to support as much weight. Parking structures that can handle 20x the number of vehicles. Public rentals like scooters so you don't have to park one at home but one is always nearby. The convenience of going shopping in a personal bubble and utility to haul back tons of stuff.

It will take anther 50-100 years to end the domination of cars, but they will end, because LUVs will just be so much cheaper and more convenient, once we tailor cities to them rather than to cars the way they are now.

Also, shouldn't those people just take a bicycle instead?

When it's 105 outside and 70% humdity bicycles are not fun, especially if there is no office shower.

You know if you stop requiring everyone to travel 50km by monster truck to do anything, then you don't have to spend an hour driving past parking lots and highway interchanges to do anything, right?

> If your only user need for a car is “I need to commute 5-30 minutes a day in normal urban traffic” then it will tick the box. I’m genuinely curious how many people in the world are in that category.

Very many - every motorcycle commuter falls in that category, after all.

Aptera! Sub 2,000 pounds of carbon fiber, super aerodynamic efficiency.

Citroen Ami is better. It has flames on the side:

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/weird/ha-check-out-citroens...

And it strikes fear into the hearts of criminals everywhere:

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/citroen-ami-now-po...

In most walkable cities in Europe I also think things like this: https://hopper-mobility.com/ and cargobikes are a viable alternative (I mean even in the US there are some "golf cart" communities and these communities look quite walkable/liveable) and have a bright future.

Since my wife and I own ebikes we go everywhere in a 10km radius by bike (in every weather, the bike expressways have snow plowing priority)

Just bought an electric motorbike, which can do 100km/h for 100km's on a single charge.

I'm never going back to ICE. The change in life quality is so distinct, there's just no going back.

Now whenever I ride ICE, it feels positively neanderthal.

Looking forward to the new types of vehicles that might come from this .. my motorbike, meanwhile, is viability, now.

Haha what a cute title and argument, "the only". Now let me tell you why it's bullshit. If you think about it really well, "the only" group that needs a car as a necessity and not luxury are parents. Everyone else can pretty much take care of themselves using public or for-hire transport. But parents... they have kids. And especially the little ones, you never know when you need to move. And when you need, you need to do it like right now. And try fitting two or more car seats in these ultra-light vehicles. And then putting the screaming wiggling kid in it. And then a stroller and some bags to go. Good luck.

The narrow minded innovative hipsters who try to "disrupt" are cute, I remember being like that in my 20s. I'm almost 40 now, with small kids and let me tell you. I have no energy to even care about anything. I need a big car to fit all the family and our junk. I need to move from point A to B with the least disruption possible. Preferably with the kids asleep in the car seats. I really really don't care about anything else. And sure as hell I won't trade my sanity for hopping public transportation and extending my trip by a few hours to appease some eco friendly conscious 20-something hipsters who have all the time in the world to do their meaningless self-serving I-want-to-feel-good-about-myself-and-the-world bullshit. Especially when my kids are sick with fever screaming bloody murder.

So no, living in the city or in the suburbs, parents wont trade their SUV and Vans any time soon. But be my guest, you singles do it. Ultra-lights are not "the only" viable future. I rode a bike and subway all my teens and 20s. And you should too, so the parents can ride their tanks and not end up in mental hospitals. And our species can continue.

>And try fitting two or more car seats in these ultra-light vehicles

If you don't mind rustling some upper middle class jimmies you can run older car seats. They're much more compact.

Car seats intentionally use designed obsolescence. The plastics get weaker over time and won't meet their ratings. You aren't suppose to use old ones at all.

> "the only" group that needs a car as a necessity and not luxury are parents.

I'm as pro-public-transit, pro-cycling as they come. But yes, there are plenty of reasons cars are needed:

- Parents (like you said)

- People without the ability to walk long distances (older/sick people, etc)

- Anyone who needs to go to Ikea / Costco / whatever and buy something big

- Delivery vehicles (not everything is suitable for cargo bike delivery)

- People who live outside urban areas

etc

And that's all fine. In a dense city, I think there is plenty of middle ground where everyone is happy and most people get along great most of the time without driving.

I agree that articles like this claiming absolutes are silly.

I feel like the use-case identified for ultra-light cars in this article is the worst argument for cars of any size. There are lots of cases where a small urban electric vehicle could be all you need, but a lot of those cases are also (or better!) covered by public transit or biking or something similar. In cases where you actually need a car, you're probably better off with a slightly larger vehicle. For a lot of the downsides of cars, like traffic, parking, etc, making cars smaller doesn't solve the problems nearly as well as getting them off the road entirely.

To put it another way, ultra tiny EVs you use for every trip seem like a much worse future than a future where you have a larger EV you don't have to use as often because there are good alternatives to driving that cover a lot of your needs.

This is phrased rather argumentatively, but the points are good ones. I also believe that these micro-cars merely fill a small niche in the transport ecosystem. They are far from "the only".

Tradies. Various professionals and technicians that need to carry around equipment. Sales people. Families. People with large dogs. People who visit the outdoors frequently, e.g. for skiing. Those are just some groups who would not use a microcar.

I feel like a car seat wouldn't matter that much when an ultralight vehicle and an SUV are in a collision anyway, so you could probably just skip it.

That's a good argument! Could even argue the police fines for doing this are the costs of running the family ;)

How does this argument translate to London or Tokyo, I wonder?

Maybe not ultra-light but parents do not need SUVs.

Are you a parent of 2 or more kids saying this? If so, I applaud you. Otherwise, you have no clue.

What can a SUV do that a van, station wagon or sedan simply cannot?

Hide a lot of kids in the blind spots, mostly.

> Maybe not ultra-light but parents do not need SUVs.

True; I don't have an SUV, but my Volvo stationwagon is both longer and wider than most SUVs.

It's hard to argue that people don't need stationwagons.

While I agree with you that I don't see a role for these ultra-lights, the rest of your argument makes absolutely no sense. I have never once had a problem fitting two kids and all our 'junk' into a perfectly normal sized sedan. Hell my sedan has more trunk space than some SUVs I've seen. Yes, lots of people need normal cars, and some people with lots of kids need vans. Basically no one "needs" an SUV.

Many people love to make rules for other people. Those who through no initiative of their own can afford to walk/bike everywhere they need to, or wait for public transportation because their schedules are flexible, won't be affected by rules making car ownership and use more onerous. They see only the broad or long-term or in-theory effects and not the impact on real living people right now. It's the exact same phenomenon as - possibly even a reaction to - older people who just happen to have lived in an era of stable jobs and cheap houses criticizing young people for not behaving "professionally" or saving enough. See also: non-drinkers happy to ban drinking, non-smokers happy to ban smoking, traditionalists happy to legislate others' sexual or reproductive lives. It all comes down to lack of empathy.

Here's the thing: good (to the extent that the concept has any meaning at all) lies in decisions requiring effort. Being born into a particular circumstance confers no virtue. Other people are born into different circumstances, facing different choices, and those should be respected. Someone born into a US suburb is in a different situation than someone born into a European or Japanese city. Millions of people who control politics in thousands of towns aren't suddenly going to act against their own economic self interest (as home owners) to turn modern suburbs into something better. That's going to take a lot of work, most of it incremental and having to do with incentives or power structures rather than specific issues.

Getting to a less car-centric culture would be absolutely fantastic, but people who dismiss the means of getting there with a hand-wave, or propose paths that are convenient for them but burdensome to others, aren't really engaged in problem solving. It's just idle musing at best, more often an old-fashioned display of group affiliation or (unearned/imaginary) dominance. The irony is that such anti-cooperative behavior is exactly what got us where we are now.

I'm a bit disappointing I didn't read this reply before replying to your other reply in earnest. Honestly, this comment reads as more as a personal projection about the kinds of people who want to have more transportation options, than anything actually constructive.

It's hilarious to actually _blame_ the anti-car stance as the thing that got us in to this situation in the first place. Like it wasn't a fight won in heartfelt debates, rather a systemic lobbying by the auto industry to fundamentally rebuild the post war US into one where automobiles are absolutely necessary for most people.

I've left a bunch of actionable advice in the other thread hopefully you'll read up on it, overall this kind of intellectual dead-ending is dreadfully sad to see on HN

Nowhere did I blame anti-car people for the current situation. That's a total strawman, and - as you say - sad to see on HN. But not surprising. I'm also well aware of strongtowns and missingmiddle and so on, and often draw my arguments from them. If you look back in my history, as you already seem to have done but only to cherry-pick and escalate, you should be able to see that.

I do want more transportation options. I grew up in a city where there were more (overseas) and have traveled to many more. But I also see a continuing role for cars, and better for them to be EV than ICE. And I'm sick to death of people who sit around and kibitz, as if we can quantum-leap from one state to another - whether it exists elsewhere or not - instead of doing the work to get there through the incremental paths still available to us. That's the real intellectual dead end. Intellect should be employed for understanding and planning and problem solving, not merely wishing problems away and throwing fallacies at anyone who disagrees with that approach.

This is a deeply strange way to complain about a group of people you don't like.

The "need" for an SUV is a band-aid fix for American suburbs. The build environment really necessitates it, especially in sprawling suburbs. But again, people raise families without owning a car perfectly fine in modern European cities.

Cool observation. Also a common one. Now: how do we transition from the American model to the European one, in the face of perverse financial incentives and how government at all levels works? The detours we've already taken make that quite difficult. Pointing to a destination is not quite the same as providing a workable route to get there, let alone actually helping push the cart. It's really just kibitzing, which has always been a way to claim credit for right answers and quietly walk away from wrong ones. Risk free. A constructive approach would be to consider what role can be filled by EVs of various types, not just dump on them for not being perfect.

Sure, as you mentioned lobbying and money in politics is probably the biggest hurdle as it basically maligns most projects for social good with profits for the biggest lobbyists. Local governments have a lot of power in this regard, they're able to set parking minimums and potentially zoning for denser residential areas.

Regional support would be needed for a more comprehensive public transit options, railways, bus routes etc. Also at the regional / state level we would stop subsiding suburban communities. States often foot the initial bill for roads / water / sewage and suburbs are usually not able to self-fund for repairs needed in 10/20/30 years respectively, so they rely on denser areas taxes (mostly commercial tax) to make up for it. [1]

The financial incentives are there, denser urban areas already provide much of the tax income needed to make public services feasible and make up for the sprawl around a city that it's residents can't pay for. [2]

To your point about "detours" we've taken, sure it will be a multi-decade project but places like Amsterdam / London have a pretty good roadmap for regulating car-centric infrastructure. EVs really only exist to extend the life of an industry that's already extracted billions in profit by lobbying that car based transit was the only way to go. ICE vehicles are a massive liability in the face of an energy crisis, and the US heavily subsidies gasoline prices. In other countries this is already priced in, and that incentivizes alternative forms of transit and better designed cities.

[1] - https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/28/the-growth-pon... [2] - https://urbexsolutions.com/city-revenue-geographies-categori...

> EVs really only exist to extend the life of an industry

That's just silly, since EVs don't burn those fuels. They exist to prolong the life of a road and housing infrastructure, which has both positive and negative aspects to it but is in any case unavoidable during what is sure to be a long transition. Again, bashing them for not being the perfect quantum leap to an ideal state is not productive. Small improvements are still improvements.

The ever increasing size of trucks is a regulatory hack. Fuel efficiency is mandated as a function of the weight and it is just cheaper to make them bigger and less efficient than to keep them a reasonable size and efficient enough to be sold in the US.

Until this gets fixed, we are making things worse not better.

Is it a function of total weight or maximum cargo weight? I ask because the latter seems reasonable.

Thinking about it, the former also seems reasonable given making something burn more fuel than necessary is probably not anyone's first choice, so if they're doing that it's possibly because there's no practical solution to the regulations. Solving the engineering problems required to do this will be the real issue, not writing different regulations.

So in good news it looks like recent changes are fixing this! https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engin...

https://toddofmischief.blogspot.com/2022/05/why-are-trucks-g... is a reference to the old problem.

Basically "heavy duty" trucks were unregulated but "medium duty" is.

> Solving the engineering problems required to do this will be the real issue, not writing different regulations.

Why would they bother until somebody incentives them to do that? That requires new regulations.

> Why would they bother until somebody incentives them to do that? That requires new regulations.

Well, people have been trying to make electric semis for years now because they will be better. Regulations are the last-ditch and worst incentive.

But even when they are useful, they don't do anything. That's what I get a bee in my bonnet about. They shouldn't be credited with improvements. The improvements come from people with money risking it in R&D, and R&D folk being smart enough to invent a good solution, and manufacturing and supply chain and ops folks being skilled and dedicated enough to scale and roll out the solution. Writing some regulations is orders of magnitude easier than any of those.

Necessary != Sufficient. Agreed.

Without regulation, we don't have any way of handling emissions externalities other than public shame, and that is a really inconsistent to try way to save a world.

For some things. In this case we have fuel price as the main reason things are already as good as they are.

Faster charging with a shorter range seems to be a viable alternative. No one would care if their car could go 200 miles if you could recharge it in a minute and there were chargers everywhere. Engineers should be focused on making their cars lighter and more thermally efficient.

Not to mention if someone is just using their 400 mile EV battery to go 3 miles to the store, they have to drag the rest of that battery around the entire way.

Potentially stupid question: Why all these modern mini cars have to have these super tiny wheels?

What I loved most about my old Fiat Panda was that while it was small, it could easily go up over any pavement and with its 4wd drive it could handle even potholes and dirt roads with no danger.

Better aerodynamics and lower rolling resistance which leads to a higher range for the vehicle.

Bigger wheels are generally a stupid idea from a performance standpoint. Smaller tires have better ride quality, cause less pothole damage, and are cheaper than larger ones. Big tires just look cool.

It's not about looking cool, it's about not all of us leaving in the same part of the world. Living in the center of Belgrade, Serbia like I do means I have to deal with many potholes, obstacles and generally badly maintained roads, parking spots located on sidewalks that are just unaccessible with low-riding small-tires cars - but you still need a compact car because of lot of traffic and little parking space. And beside I'm not talking of some crazy huge humvee style tires, I just need normal 15" wheels on a car.

Larger diameter tires won't necessarily help with potholes or badly maintained roads. All things else being similar, a tire that has bigger sidewalls will absorb the impact of driving over a pothole better than one with a smaller profile. So find a small tire with big sidewalls and you should be better off.

Insufficient clearance above a pothole absolutely will destroy one of these things. It depends on infrastructure as well.

> Larger diameter tires won't necessarily help with potholes or badly maintained roads.

It necessarily does. Why are you even arguing this point? There's plenty of references that bigger wheels handle the same size obstruction (which includes potholes) much better.

Tires are more complicated than a single variable. A large diameter tire with a small sidewall does not necessarily perform better than a smaller diameter tire with a large sidewall. The problem with the word "big" is where the tire is big matters and that seems to have been lost in translation.

> Big tires just look cool.

Incorrect. They have advantages other than "looking cool"; shorter braking distance, more resilience to potholes, ruts and pebbles on the road, much better ride quality on imperfect roads, etc.

For all it's features the Luvly name is disingenuous https://www.luvly.se/. one of the ugliest cars I've seen. No wonder the posted article has no picture.

You haven't seen the Citoroen Ami then. Complete with suicide driver door. The passenger door is a regular car door. I have no idea why they chose this design, probably to be avantgarde or maybe to deflect incoming cyclists into the middle of the road.

I have often felt that Tesla cars were vastly over powered in terms of engine power, battery capacity and acceleration.An engine power large enough to reach 65 Mph in 9 seconds is enough to allow a far smaller/cheaper engine. People vary = offer several engine options as gas cars do. Batteries = main cost. Why not offer 3 sizes of battery. 120/240/360 miles. This would yield a range of 'skates' = 9 On top of this could be 5-6 bodies. Sports car/SUV/Pickup/panel van/small car/larger car. A number of electric car makers offer powered skates. So someone could get a small local 120 mile lower power pickup truck etc etc. As batteries advanced the mile increments could ramp up.

China is full of small ecars.

Skoda Enyaq offers different battery sizes in Europe. But the smaller batteries have abysmal charging rate for some reason.

Smaller batteries means more charge/discharge cycles, which means faster degradation, which will be a bigger downside when the car is old when you start out with a small battery. There might be an argument that cars should sell with a large battery when the car is new, and if you don't need such a big battery you can by a second hand car with some degradation.

I would've picked a smaller battery for our Ioniq 5 if we could. But I must admit it gives peace of mind to know that there's plenty of range for anything we want to do, and that it's likely that we can keep the car as long as we want without worrying about battery degradation being a problem. One of the first things we did with it was a road trip in Denmark, and we didn't have to stop to charge once (only overnight charging). On one leg of the trip we were down to 7% when we arrived, so we had just barely enough.

Btw, I love the concept in the article. But with 2 kids a small car isn't viable for us unless we have a good car sharing or rental service in the neighborhood. But even if we did, most likely availability would be extremely limited and expensive during school vacation. Before we had kids I tended to take the bus/train to work, and I've started taking the bike more. E-bikes is great for getting to work in the summer.

The "problem" with electric engines is that power is just a byproduct of an efficient engine.

For an ICE to go from 10 second 0-100 to 4 seconds is a huge engineering achievement with thousands of moving parts machined to sub-millimeter tolerances.

For EVs it's just a matter of putting in more power in it. Some Japanese (and Korean?) brands have intentionally nerfed their EVs acceleration so that people moving from ICEs don't get flustered.

The Hyundai Kona EV for example is a complete beast from 0-40km/h, it'll win every single sub 100k€ car off the line in traffic lights. It's not a sports car, it just has electric engines with enough instant torque. I heard of an anecdote about an older woman with her knitting buddies accidentally smoking a BMW when the traffic lights turned green. She just floored it and the car went. Of course the BWM went past them with huge amounts of noise and excessive speed a few seconds later.

Teslas were deliberately made overpowered to get market traction. They had to be better than ICE cars at something, and the easiest thing was acceleration.

Now that EVs are not dismissed out of hand by nearly everybody, but instead seen as legitimate possibilities, there is room to make more ... sedate ... vehicles.

I disagree completely. Reaching 65mph in 30 seconds is "enough for anybody", but when you make a car, you have to make something that people want to buy, not something that is "enough". There are cheaper low performance electric cars out there. Before Tesla, battery cars had the image of being low performing city cars that humorless greenies drove around San Francisco.

Telsa IMO was very smart to come out right off the bat with extremely high performance and decent range cars at a (low end) "luxury" position, and worked hard on their charging side. It really gave the brand huge cred and wiped out a lot of "BEV" doubts, and differentiated themselves from other electric cars. And it's far easier to start selling cheaper cars from that position than it is to start selling expensive cars with a brand known to be cheap.

I just don't get it. I get the idea of a smaller, less luxurious vehicle for urban usage - but it makes absolutely no sense to only give this thing a range of 100km given how inconvenient charging is. Where are all these little cars going to charge in urban environments? Most cities don't have underground parking, or space for huge amounts of vehicles sat in one place charging them all day.

We'd be far better off subsidising driving and making rentals (at street level) more convenient so I can just walk out the house, find the nearest car and not be ripped off for renting it more than an hour.

Charging or swapping a 6kWh battery is hardly prohibitive, and the overwhelming majority of people need <50km/day.

It's also so efficient you could just slap a solar panel on the roof for >20km/day.

Stop kneejerking and let people live.

I guess you're talking about the US, but charging points are already ubiquitous in London. They're available on street bays, workplaces, service stations and supermarkets. I recently parked next to several in a MacDonald's carpark in the city.

Have a look: https://www.zap-map.com/live/?intcmp=52717

I do agree that rentals also make a lot of sense for many people. But we also do this in London at decent prices, e.g. ZipCar is £3.80 per hour or £38 per day.

So unrealistic.. Kids? Groceries? Carrying anything?

Tesla’s are nearly impossible if you have a family, let alone an ultra light

Bullshit. No one will buy them. Unless we will be in a bad, dystopian energy crisis, which we will not. Cars will become even bigger and even heavier when they are cheaper to run. It will be back to the 1950s again (hopefully with better safety features than then).

how did we go from calling somethingnlike a fiat 500 a small car to 'an ultra light urban vehicle'

400kg should just be the normal weight

My off the cuff answer would be: safety.

Last I checked being around a 500kg vehicle doing 40km/h was a lot safer than being around a 2000kg vehicle doing 90.

I don't know why adding an obfuscatory variable would help clarify anything.

Larger vehicles need to travel faster to get past all the infrastructure needed for large vehicles to move fast. Then congestion and traffic control erases any benefit that moving fast through medoum density might incur and you wind up moving under 40 on average anyway.

Smaller slower EVs with roundabouts are faster on average.

Sorry, I don't follow.

Not 'only', 'one of'.

ugliest car i have ever seen. people wont buy it. simple.

But if that car is 80% cheaper than the alternative, has a lower tax and can drive toll-free in city centers, do the looks still matter?

At a 1/3 of the price of a leaf? I think they will.

While I would happily drive one of these around European cities, I absolutely would not in the USA because it's basically a coffin if you get hit by a regular size pickup. I've been rear ended 3 times in 10 years, since I moved from a small city to Austin, TX, and 2 of those incidents people didn't have insurance. I still love city life, though.

Have you seen an Escalade?

You've never seen a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_Multipla ???

People can gat used to anything. Look at SUVs. Those looks like they were not even designed at all. Just took normal car and stretch it in one dimension. Totally disproportional. If people got used to something as ugly as SUVs then this is nothing.

> ugliest car i have ever seen. people wont buy it. simple.

It's completely subjective; I like driving very small cars, and the look of this car appeals to me.

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