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Comment by aaronbrethorst | Hacker News Reader

I don't want some ridiculous 3 ton electric truck that needs a 131 kWh battery.

I want an adorable, tiny EV Mitsubishi Delica for $13,000 new. https://www.mitsubishi-motors.com/en/newsrelease/2023/detail...

Or this adorable, tiny EV SUV for about the same price: https://www.thedrive.com/news/gms-tiny-electric-pickup-is-an...

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I would by a car like the ID.3 tomorrow, but they won't sell it in the US.

The US market is so weird. Mostly dominated by very expensive, very large vehicles. Yet, it seems like the kind of consumer who might want a EV is also the kind of consumer who would want a smaller vehicle, which would be far more practical. I guess the Bolt (in limbo, with a new design maybe coming?) and Nissan Leaf are pretty much it right now.

I think automakers just assume "US consumers want big, expensive cars" and copy/pasted that over to their EV offerings, while the big untapped EV market is probably for more practical people who would gladly drive a smaller, more efficient, cheaper vehicle.

"3 ton electric truck"

Elon stated that Cybertruck will weigh about 7000 lbs. That's 3.5 tons.

That's the same mass as an F-350 DRW (dual rear wheel) loaded with options.

Seriously heavy. I'm not anti heavy vehicles or anything; I have a 3/4 ton truck myself (~5200 lbs.) I just think it's eye opening just how heavy these EVs are.

A Rivian R1S is 8,500 lbs. These electric SUV's are insanely heavy. Like heavy enough a standard passenger vehicle driver's license shouldnt apply. A 8,500lbs suv with sports car acceleration. We're gonna see the pedestrian vehicle death record go up every year.

I thought the biggest driver in The USA for truck v pedestrian deaths is the hood height issue and not really weight. There just isn't enough difference there to matter while hood heights approaching 6 feet are becoming standard in new trucks.

Height wouldn’t be bad if they gave it more angles than a gas stove. Consider a prius, the car is literally just a bulbous doorstop. That is so much better for pedestrian safety because they just roll up and off. NHTSA is clearly corrupt for allowing those beastly trucks and suvs on our roads. No engineer would have signed off on those.

For (~100kg) pedestrian, I am sure the difference in lethality from being hit by a 1000kg vehicle vs a 3000kg vehicle is insubstantial. Where the weight would matter is for vehicle-vehicle collisions.

The vast majority of pedestrians survive getting hit by a car, not all incidents happen at highway speeds. A difference between a mass of 1 and 3 tons would absolutely make a difference in lethality.

Dubious claim. A vehicle might as well be a wall with infinite mass vs a pedestrian. Deformation, breaking and being passed out of the way are what counts.

8000 pedestrians killed vs 104,000 emergency visits for non fatal crash related injuries:

https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/pedestrian_safety/i...

Weight is directly called out as a factor:

> SUVs can cause more harm to a person on foot when a crash occurs because of their greater body weight and larger profile

I think its more that you are liable to roll off a car vs get exploded from an suv.

I think they were probably referring to the handling of such a ridiculously heavy car.

I read somewhere that todays vehicles and the trend towards heavier vehicles is damaging older parking houses and roads.

Yes. Some of the environmental benefits of EVs will be offset by the increased road maintenance they'll require.

Of course, the same could be said about unnecessarily enormous ICE vehicles people drive nowadays too.

Vehicle weight really ought to be taxed.

An interesting thing I've read re: passenger car weights is that even though there are continuous gains in weight reduction (for eg by using composites), the overall weight has stayed the same/gone up for decades due to more safety devices/crash zones etc. It appears to be the hardware equivalent of Wirth's/Bill's law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law).

I absolutely loved my 2019 Chevy Bolt, but the wife did not. It's a great commuter but didn't feel 'cushy'. If they can deliver comfort in a small EV they'll be onto something.

My wife and I are leasing a 2022 Kia Niro EV that I’m generally very happy with. When we return it, I’ll probably go looking for something slightly longer, but generally it does everything we want and need.

I just want a small, cheap second car for running errands around the neighborhood. TBH, if I ever break down on this, I’ll probably just buy a 12 year old Leaf that gets 70 miles of range for $6,000, or whatever. I just really want an electric version of the adorable, tiny Japanese trucks I see in my Seattle neighborhood.

Preemptive edit: yes I’ve thought many times about buying an e-bike. Love the idea, but I value my health too much to entrust it to Seattle drivers. Every person I know who regularly bikes in Seattle has some horror story about being hit by a car.

Until our municipal government values biking as a first class alternative to driving, I will not put myself in danger.

Yeah I used to bike commute years ago but gave that up because I don't want to die young.

I think I had a Kia for a day when the Bolt was in for the battery recall and it wasn't bad. I still think the Bolt nailed the one-pedal driving though and I preferred it over the Kia. Thanks for reminding me, I almost forgot I'd driven that car. It was a lot more comfortable and finished than the Bolt, although not as nimble from what I remember.

You're less likely to die young as a regular bike rider, and more likely to be killed due to some driver's inattentiveness or impatience. Not the same thing, even if you'd be dead either way.

My 2023 Chevy Bolt EUV (no idea about the sedan) is very comfortable. I think they upgraded the seats on this model year after people complained.

Those are nice, but I think it's a shame new EV production has to coincide with an exterior 'facelift' to match the moment. Why do most new EVs over the last 10 years need to look like EVs? At least Tesla and a few other brands are slooowly dialing that down finally.

The eGolf and eUp looked almost exactly the same as their petrol counterparts. It caused a lot of confusion; many people think the ID.Whatever cars are VW’s first electric cars. For better or for worse, “weird-looking” seems to work as marketing for electric cars.

Volkswagen e-Up and its sisters(Skoda Citigo and Seat Mii) exist? It's a cheap car with Volkswagen build quality, 36kWh battery that easily gives you 150 miles range, no touch screen nonsense, fits a baby seat no problem, Costco shopping, it just works day in and day out. It's literally my favourite car I ever owned, and I used to have a Mercedes-AMG at one point. It's just so usable and costs nothing to run(charging at home it's literally less than a pound for 60 miles, I think my old petrol car would use a pound worth of petrol just to start up).

I just googled the e-Up. Doesn't exist in the US, and it's also being discontinued.

There seem to be a lot of models with really short lifetimes. I've been looking to buy a used EV to get past the depreciation cliff, and the number of ones for sale that have been discontinued - not a model number increment, just vanished from the range entirely - is remarkable. It's like smartphones.

I mean the e-Up has been in production since 2013, it enjoyed 10 years of market presence in pretty much unchanged form(other than the battery bump in 2020). And it's only being discontinued because VW is replacing it with an ID.2

I still don't think we'll see any of these small affordable ones in the US. The only one close I'm aware of is Nissan's Leaf and it is being discontinued last I heard.

I'd like to try one out for my next car but I can't afford a luxury car.

I’d assume that VW will get around to launching the ID.2 in the US at some point. The US is a smaller electric car market than Europe and is less enthusiastic about small cars, so it makes sense that they prioritise Europe, but there’s presumably some market for it in the US.

Hyundai Kona Electric is comparable?

I know that when placed next an F-150 the Kona looks almost like a toy, but in Europe it's a proper family car. And I can confirm it's much larger than an e-Up(and also twice as expensive).

There was also the Bolt...which is also being discontinued. Yeah, it's pretty dumb.

Oh I want the ridiculous 3 ton truck but I also don’t want to pay 80-100k for it.

>adorable, tiny

Or maybe, just maybe, realize your consumer preferences are not universal and are in fact the minority view

Good thing more than one kind of car is sold here in this bastion of freedom that is the United States of America.

I was looking at the first one (Suzuki version) living in Tokyo but decided it was too cramped for even a small family and the crash ratings are not as good as a full size car. In particular the luggage space is lacking.

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