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Comment by blendo | Hacker News Reader

We seem to define “cars” as vehicles that can:

1: Carry a 1,000 lb payload (4 people plus luggage) 2: At a highway speed of 75-80 mph 3: For a non-stop duration of at least 2 hours 4: With enough armor and safety features to probably keep you alive during a crash at 50-60 mph.

In that sense, a Honda Civic, a Tesla Model 3, and a 4 door pickup truck are all quite similar.

I think it’s a shame there’s no market for a 45 mph, 400 lb payload vehicle. They’d probably only need a curb weight of 1000-1200 lbs, and if electric, only a cheaper 15-20 kWh battery.

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Unrelated, but speaking of holes in the market ... I really wish there was a "not quite fridge" for storing things like medicines and butter at "room temperature" in hot climates without relying on heavy A/C use. This seems like the kind of thing that should exist on a small scale somewhere, but if it does it has been SEO'ed away (SEP'ed?).

Maybe look into a wine cooler/fridge. Adjustable units top out around 65f.

There are variable temperature beer can cooler style devices, but they use Peltier element and suffer from both thinner insulation and worse COP(coefficient of performance).

This is why Mediterranean countries use olive oil instead of butter. Adapting to their environment.

I think Dometic and Engel sell portable freezers that will do what you want. They run off 12-24VDC or 120/230VAC. My larger one runs off a 100ahr battery for 4 days. You can set the temp from 20C to -4C.

They are pricey though $500-900. You can get off brand ones that are cheaper.

There are small fridges that use something like a peltier cooler for makeup or medicine. However, they seem to silently fail after a year of use. There’s probably a good brand out there, but all I could find were shitty Amazon no-names.

Traditionally cellars and caves were used for this.

What you are looking for is the Japanese KEI class of vehicle.

The reason they are not street legal in the US is due to crash survivability. Even if their top speed is 45, they share the road with vehicles that are heavier or faster than them and it is not socially tenable to create a vehicle class that is very similar to an existing one but limit it's access to certain roadways.

In order to get survivability up to where we want it, you have to increase vehicle weight. Once you do that, you have to increase the engine in order to handle the weight i.e. acceptable acceleration

Or maybe make a 3-wheel variant so it's technically a motorcycle.

Would you feel safe driving around in a 1200lb vehicle when most others cars on the road are 4000lb+. I love the idea of smaller vehicles, but big fear is safety of a smaller vehicle vs the monstrosities on the road today.

some people drive motorcycles. what's with this obsession with safety ?

Motorcyclists get killed by motorists kind of a lot. Once we've conquered the basic hurdles of cornering and not going too fast, cars are our biggest threat. And we're already on the relatively risk-tolerant side of things.

Judging by the way motorcyclists in the bay area drive, "obsession with safety" is about the last thing I'd accuse them of. They're some of the worst offenders for weaving and doing dangerous stuff in crowded traffic conditions.

yes and when people on motorcycles get into accidents at 50 or 60 mph the results are often horrific.

...that's kind of the point you're replying too. they're afraid of being annihilated by much larger vehicles.

I can see both sides but am biased towards your point - if it's called an "e-bike" it'll be viewed differently than a "motorcycle"

There’s the LSV classification up to 25 mph

https://electrek.co/2023/03/22/wink-motors-test-drive-electr...

Yes. I’ve also driven a rented Renault Twizy in San Francisco 15 years ago.

I found 25 mph to be dangerously slow when other vehicles are moving 30-40mph, like on Oak, Fell, upper Market, etc.

Not to mention its punishingly harsh ride.

The USA has a market for golf carts, but they are road legal only in a few retirement communities. Japan has Kei cars, but they are phasing them out.

The USA has Neighborhood Electric Vehicles, which are legal in a lot more places than "a few retirement communities", e.g., in California they ("Low Speed Vehicles", in California law, NEV is a federal category) are generally permitted on public roads with a speed limit of 35mph or lower.

They are increasingly being allowed in other areas. I recently saw an article about a community in FL where kids could drive them before getting a license, and the neighborhood where I grew up in Sacramento has a bunch of them as well (but only adult drivers).

Well a Tern GSD has a max carry weight of 379 lbs and a max speed of 20 mph. Only needs a 0.5 kWh battery too. Has infinite range, depending on your fitness.

Can confirm, have ~7k miles on mine. There’s life before it, and life after it. It’s remarkable.

45mph? Are you kidding me? So they can jam up all freeways?

I don't know why you're being downvoted. Hell, the freeways in the Bay Area are already clogged up by morons like the ones going 55 mph in the express lane (which baffles me, as you have to pay, a lot during rush hour, to use the lane) while people try to pass them on the right. I'm amazed when I get to go the posted speed limit on the 101 between the peninsula and the city.

Is this common? I've never seen anyone going 55 in the express lane in the 15 years I've been here. What freeway is this on? I feel like people get tailgated for going the limit in the fast lane, so 10 under would really stand out.

I see it (and worse) every day on the southbound 101 between the airport/Millbrae and 3rd ave exits, and on the northbound side between the 92 bridge onramp all the way up to the airport. They do get tailgated. They just don't care.

There are a lot of people who drive every day, yet go on the freeway less than once per month.

In which country?

The US?

I didn't even drive until I was 27. I'm in my 40s now, and have friends my age who still don't drive.

While the car reigns supreme in most of the US, there are still parts where it's possible to get away without one.

The US, if you are in literally any part other than right next to a freeway that you have to use to get to work because it's too far.

Literally all of them.

Do you really think that nobody works where they live? Who do you think works at all of the local shops in your town? Everybody drives in from a different city to staff your town while everyone who lives there drives out to staff another city?

I live in one of the top metro areas in the US. My commute to work is 15 minutes at 25-45MPH through residential areas.

You just don't take it on the freeway, you use regular streets. I assume that's the point of having a 45 moh max, so you can go the speed limit on the vast majority of urban streets you would be traverse.

realistically, a 1000 lb vehicle that only goes 45 mph vehicle should _never_ be on the freeway in the first place. someone watching Netflix while half asleep in their cybertruck will murder them.

maybe this light-weight category isn't allowed on freeways? I think that would be a perfectly reasonable compromise.

I mean if freeways adjust to have minimum speeds of e.g 55mph instead of the current 45 (and even that's only in some states), it would solve this by constraining such a car to cities and backroads.

In my state it's illegal to drive any vehicle on a highway where it can't exceed the speed limit by 5 mph.

I assume there's some exception (probably involving the orange slow vehicle warning triangles) for things like tractors.

You can’t really get anywhere in most of America if you stick to the backroads.

80% of the US lives in urban areas, in urban areas you can practically by definition.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/urban-ru...

Urban areas in the US by definition means not just the downtown but all the surrounding suburbs and rural buffers. You definitely need the freeway to get downtown in most cases.

I could totally do this in Seattle. Heck, most of the time my routing software avoids the freeway anyways, in favor of 25-40 mph roads. It’s a sore point though: we just have a couple of north south freeways and one east west one. Well, it’s better than nearby Vancouver BC at least.

Dude, you absolutely don't. There are plenty of places in the US where you can take public transit, walk, and bike to get everywhere that you need to.

Just because you live in a miserable, car-bound, suburban hellscape doesn't mean that everyone else has to.

What? I think I might be defining back roads differently than you are.

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