Hacker News Reader

Comment by downWidOutaFite | Hacker News Reader

I was in the market for a small electric city car and found out that we're not allowed to have small cars in the US. Europe and Asia have really nice small city cars under 2,000lbs but none of them are available here. I believe the smallest car sold in the US is the Mini Cooper around 3,000lbs. I actually ended up with a souped up street legal golf cart and it's worked out well for my purposes of picking up kids and groceries within a 5 mile radius, though I'm in the Bay Area where the weather is not too extreme most of the year. I'm not sure why this market is neglected.

View on HN

Doesn't really matter in any case.

The bulk of the problem is 5000lb+ vehicles. F150, SUVs like Suburbans, etc. etc. I'm not even sure if people are using these big vehicles to carry their families around, its probably just single-person drivers in most cases.

I'm not even sure how to approach the weight problem. We have plenty of cars in the 3000lb or 4000lb range but more-and-more people are pushing 5000lb+.

A tax during annual registration based on axle weight to the fourth power times the number of miles driven since the last odometer reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

There are some horrible states without annual inspections, but they should be federally punished until they comply. If we could force every state to have a drinking age of 21, using access to highway funding, then there's no reason the same thing couldn't be done for vehicular taxation. It would increase state tax revenue anyway...

The Mitsubishi Mirage is available in the US and comes in at just ~2100lbs, but it really ends up just serving the purpose of showing how huge of a gap there is in the American market. The fact that Mitsubishi can make a 4-door, 40mpg, 2100lbs car that passes US regs on a shoestring sale price shows that other mfgs could but just don't have the incentive to. You have the cancelled Chevy Spark at 2246lbs, the 2-seater Miata at 2,341lbs, and then the next lightest is a Versa with +500lbs on the Mirage.

The Honda Fit, which is very popular, isn't even sold in the US anymore. Curb weight is low 3000s, all of the passenger seats fold down, it parallel parks trivially, and it's fun to drive. It's basically a 90s Civic.

I'm angry about this often, as mine is over fifteen years old. If I had to replace it with a new car, I'd want another Fit. The closest thing on the market is probably a hatchback Civic...and the whole reason for the Fit existing is because international pressure made the Civic too large and heavy for the desirable tax bracket in the Japanese market.

And it's not even small for the Japanese market, because they have the whole kei class, with strong incentives to drive smaller cars. Which is how it should work everywhere: severe tax penalties for larger cars, to promote public safety and fairly pay for the fourth-power law that affects road wear.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com