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Tiny electric car looks like a washing machine and costs just $6,600
- buboard 7y agoBattery cars were never meant to be expensive
- lefty2 7y agoDoesn't look like a washing machine to me.
- Retric 7y agoThat lease pricing seems off, 5 years x 22$ per month = 1320$ which is likely less than the depreciation. Include say a 2,000$ down payment and sure that works except then the monthly fee is just deceptive.
- martin_bech 7y agoThe lease price is actually with about a 2000 euro downpayment, so your math works out.
- masklinn 7y agoApparently the options are: * Buy up-front for 6000€ (really 6900 - 900€ eco bonus) * Long-term lease for 2600€ upfront + 20€/mo over 48 months * Car sharing for 10€/mo + 26c/mn The difference between lease and buy are really weird, I wonder what the catch is exactly.
- harimau777 7y agoVery cool! However, I would be concerned about the safety of driving such a small car.
- ginko 7y agoWith this kind of thinking you'll end up with an arms race for the largest possible car. Guess motorists can play that game, but what about pedestrians and cyclists?
- Johnny555 7y agoIn the USA we're in that arms race, and so far, big cars are winning. I could drive a 2500lb Honda Fit on my commute, but I'm sharing the road with 5000lb+ full-size SUVs and drivers that are not paying attention. I don't want to get crushed between 2 SUV's, so I drive a mid-size sedan instead.
- stevenicr 7y agoEven if you are paying attention, there is an 8 x 10 foot blind spot right in front of many of them, https://www.kidsandcars.org/2019/04/26/millions-of-vehicles-have-unexpected-dangerous-front-blind-zone/ https://www.kidsandcars.org/2019/04/26/millions-of-vehicles-... 7 - 14 sitting kids in front of your vehicle and you can't see any of them if you trying to see them.
- eeZah7Ux 7y agoThis arms race is inherently violent. People are buying heavier and bigger cars to offset life risk onto other drivers. Less risk for one driver equals more risk for somebody else. And it's not a "zero sum game". Pollution and energy usage increases and so the risk for pedestrians.
- simion314 7y agoImagine how a bicyclist feels when a bus or large car drives a few centimeters next to you, I biked once in a city and I decided I can't take the risk so I walked or used public transport instead.
- tobylane 7y agoClarkson drove a similar sized car on Top Gear and talked about that issue. https://youtu.be/dJfSS0ZXYdo https://youtu.be/dJfSS0ZXYdo
- Pxtl 7y agoThe trick is that you wouldn't take it onto roads where people go over 30mph.
- massysett 7y agoThat’s the problem with this car. Only 30 mph means city centers only. In those places there are already many other options for quick trips: public transit, Uber/Lyft, old-fashioned taxis, membership car rentals (Car2go, Zipcar), bicycle sharing, sidewalk scooters. With all that I don’t see them selling too many of these. You buy it, you have to park it, which would be expensive in many of the cities in which you could use it. All those other options don’t need to be parked (not at user’s expense at least.) Even for car rentals parking is a pain because you have to find it, even if you don’t have to pay. I could see a market of selling them to fleet operators who team up with cities to get free parking for them, as Zipcar and Car2go do, but that’s about it.
- Pxtl 7y agoYeah, it's not alternative to a car, it's a bike that takes up more space that's easier to drive in winter.
- chrisseaton 7y ago> Only 30 mph means city centers only. Or around towns. I could use this to go around my town, and to the surrounding towns. And people could use it around suburbs too. So useful to people in cities, towns, suburbs, which is most people.
- asdff 7y agoI'd say a moped offers more utility and range, and can be had for like a grand used right now, but those haven't caught on in the burbs either. People have a highway mentality in the suburbs. They'd rather get on for one mile and take the next exit than take a parallel running surface road. Plus, suburban commutes are long, even errands are long. This EV claims a 40 mile range, so 30 miles in practice. That can make some trips pretty tight whether or not you get stranded, and there isn't going to be much infrastructure in the suburbs where you can pull off and charge. With more range it would be more viable. I think a city setting might be better, for cities without too much congestion at least. Otherwise it's another vehicle on the road that could be a moped taking up way less space to move a single butt from their home to their desk in some office building. Cars pollute, but part of their harm in an urban environment is also the amount of physical space that they demand. You can fit way more people in an electric subway train than you can in a similar length line of traffic of these vehicles, for instance.
- alamortsubite 7y agoConcerned with your safety, or the safety of others around you? We seriously need to de-escalate from this mentality in the U.S. There's nothing inherently dangerous about everyone driving smaller and lighter vehicles, and if we find the political will it'd be easy to put society on that trajectory. Convincing people of the damage they're doing to our environment by driving unnecessarily large vehicles is probably the place to start.
- petre 7y agoThe "E-scooters are dangerous because you could hit one with your Toyota Tundra or Dodge Ram" fallacy.
- rossjudson 7y agoI think that's more like, "The estates of former E-scooter owners are dangerous to the finances of SUV owners."
- chipsa 7y agoOwn safety. This class of vehicles doesn't do crash testing, like motorcycles don't.
- joosters 7y ago...There's only a minimal gauge cluster. An app in the driver's smart phone, placed in a holder high in the center of the dashboard acts like the central display screen in other cars showing things like driving range... Oh great. So without a working, compatible phone, the driver has no idea when the car is about to run out of battery?
- tom_ 7y agoWhat percentage of people don't have a smart phone? What percentage of those people would be in the target market for a little electric car?
- michaelt 7y agoAlmost everyone I know has a smartphone. Literally nobody I know has a reliable connection between their phone and their car.
- Johnny555 7y agoMy USB connections (for Android Auto) to my car are very reliable, maybe one day a month I have an issue and have to unplug and replug, or more rarely reboot my phone, but I've never not gotten it to work before my commute. Bluetooth has proven to be less reliable.
- asdff 7y agoWho cares who owns a phone, it's silly to require one to use a basic function of the vehicle when you can have a couple LED lights do the same. What if I loose my phone? Or I drop it and the precious screen shatters? Lazy engineering.
- Johnny555 7y agoIt's only got a 40 mile range, you ought to be able to guesstimate pretty well how far you have left if your phone dies while you're out. You're not going to be going too far from familiar routes from home in this car.
- numlock86 7y agoThat senior writer at CNN sure must have a weird washing machine. But yeah, I guess a title like that generates a lot of clicks and more mental fuel (ignore the pun) to just point and laugh at EVs.
- 14 7y agoHad me wonder too. I am over 6 feet tall. Not too many washing machines I can fit into. I think ride on lawn mower would be a more accurate description.
- mmariani 7y agoI think the Renault Twizy [0] looks more like a lawn mower. At least this has real doors and windows. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy
- petre 7y agoDoesn't have real windows. Maybe the Korean version does but not the EU version.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- animalnewbie 7y agoIt's CNN. They said on TV reading WikiLeaks is illegal (Cuomo)
- Johnny555 7y agoIt has a top speed of just 45 kilometers an hour, roughly equal to 28 miles per hour In the USA, we'd call that a NEV (Well, almost -- NEV's are limited to 40km/hr), and they are significantly cheaper than regular cars since they meet lower crash standards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle I wish NEV's were more popular here, they'd be great for short commutes, a 10 mile commute would take 30 minutes and you can fit more than one NEV in a traditional parking space. I thought about getting one for errands around town, but even though they may be legal on roads with speed limits up to 45mph, I'd be afraid to drive one even on a 35mph road since a 35mph speed limit means most people are driving 40 - 45mph.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Zigurd 7y agoThe default speed limit in New York is 25mph, now. I don't know if NEVs are legal. Cars driven primarily in New York lead a hard life. The low cost, small size, and low maintenance of NEVs could work for New York. Electric bikes are popular in New York, which could indicate an opportunity.
- inkaudio 7y agoThat speed limit is not enforced enough to make it impactful
- alamortsubite 7y agoMe, too. NEV seem to be popular around retirement communities in the U.S. This is also where one is most likely to find mature, patient, and courteous drivers (so, about the only place an NEV is safe from one's personal perspective).
- baybal2 7y agoSo, it's like Chinese LSEV and 2 times more expensive
- 7y ago
- rjsw 7y agoThere was a previous thread here [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22438418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22438418
- Finnucane 7y agoIf it is narrow enough to get down the little alley that leads down to house, I’m in.
- agumonkey 7y agoI still think it's a good item at the right time. Lots of people are on e-scooters or gyrowheel because they don't want a car, but it's unsafe. Full fledged EV are over-sized for many urban users.
- kwhitefoot 7y agoHere in Norway you can buy a used 2013 Leaf with a 24 kWh battery, double the range and twice as many seats for less than that. See https://www.finn.no/car/used/ad.html?finnkode=169083854 https://www.finn.no/car/used/ad.html?finnkode=169083854
- Luc 7y agoSure, but your kids can't drive the Leaf to school.
- kwhitefoot 7y agoAs far as I can tell no one drives cars like the Ami (Ligier, Aixam, etc.) to school here in Norway either. Probably more likely in France. But my impression is that even there in the past they were mostly popular with people whose ordinary car license had been revoked for drunk driving.
- derekp7 7y agoI love comparing apples and oranges too. You can always find an older used car that is cheaper than a new car. Now compare what one of these would cost used in 7 years. BTW, I recently bough a new bicycle that cost more than the first car I drove (the car was a few hundred bucks).
- kwhitefoot 7y ago> compare what one of these would cost used in 7 years. Probably nothing at all, unless it becomes a collectors' item. In comparison with other voiture sans permis like the Ligier or Aixam then it's cheap. But if we allow comparisons with non-electric vehicles then you can get a new Dacia Sandero in the UK for GBP 6 995, only about 25% more than the price of the Ami: https://www.dacia.co.uk/vehicles/sandero/configurator/summary.html?conf=https%3A%2F%2Fuk.co.rplug.renault.com%2Fc%2FBABBi0AhhAjHiHhHj%2FA843Y https://www.dacia.co.uk/vehicles/sandero/configurator/summar... Not sure what you mean about apples and oranges comparisons. Both of the objects in question are cars, both the Leaf and the Ami are electric. The Ami is much less car so one might expect that it should be much cheaper and it is cheaper than a new Leaf or Zoe, but my point was that new cars have to compete against both new and second hand cars. The only thing the Ami has in its favour is that people without full driving licenses can drive one. A point against the Ami is that it must not be driven on motorways and other roads designated as express way. When one can buy a much better second hand car with no such restrictions for the same or lower price why would anyone buy the Ami? Only a very tiny segment of the population would find it attractive.
- micheljansen 7y agoWhat’s even more remarkable is that it can also be leased for as little as €20/mo. That’s less than many people pay for their cell phone plan.
- astura 7y agoPresumably you'd also have to pay for insurance, right?
- asjw 7y agoUsually insurance is included in the lease plan
- aquark 7y agoThat number seems incomplete at best .... if leasing is purely a financial transaction it seems odd it would cost €6,000 but lease for just €20\month unless there is a large up front downpayment required anyway. That would be a 25 year payback just to cover the initial cost. You certainly can't lease an existing €60,000 car for €200\month
- mrep 7y agoIt's €2,644 and then €19.99 a month [0]. Super misleading. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22438418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22438418
- micheljansen 7y agoGood point! Still cheap.
- ianai 7y agoIf you’re looking to spend 20/mo how likely are you to have about 132 months of payments available up front?
- pinko 7y agoVery misleading -- but that's still only the cost of two high-end iPhones, plus cell service! For a car!
- animalnewbie 7y agoI want to see "closed" electric bikes with wide tyres , basically a batpod with glasses. Good in traffic, and cold/hot as I need it to be. Also cheap enough for Mass use. China would buy two for each person.
- Doctor_Fegg 7y ago> In some ways, the Ami is reminiscent of Citroën's iconic 2CV. Truer than the writer thinks. It’s a deliberate homage: the original 1970s Citroen Ami was a part of the 2CV range. Our family had one. Very few survive now: I haven’t seen one on the move for about 10 years.
- rhn_mk1 7y agoReading the comparison to a classic, I took the minimalist philosophy to manifest as a reduction in complexity, but I had to stop at the moment they mentioned having a smartphone for gauges. I get that this is probably a cost cutting measure, but putting enough electronics in a car to make a smartphone an important component of it doesn't fill me with confidence in the minimalism (and robustness, accessibility, repairability) of the computers inside, straying from a chunk of what made classics in the 20th century classics. EDIT: seems that my post was misunderstood. I'm all in favor of cutting cost and not having speakers or a radio, or gauges. But I seriously doubt that minimalism is the leading idea in this car, if it has enough electronics to drive a phone. The more electronics, the less minimalistic, and less repairable an object is. I would not consider very minimalistic a vehicle that has any digital electronics apart from the maintenance port mandated by law.
- 0xcoffee 7y agoIt says it has the gauges, the phone is for extra info like range and navigation. But I agree, having a car with no inbuilt radio/speakers will be strange.
- LeonM 7y ago> having a car with no inbuilt radio/speakers will be strange. I actually like that part about it! Most in-car infotainment systems (esp. in this price range) are useless anyway, and are basically already outdated on the day they leave the factory. You'll always end up with using your phone instead of the build-in system, as it is orders of magnitudes better at doing everything. So why car manufacturers even bother with trying to build their own systems always seemed weird to me. Not sure if the car has no build-in speakers at all, the article doesn't mention that. Maybe it does have build-in speakers with bluetooth connectivity, just no head-unit (frontend).
- BlueTemplar 7y agoHow do the speakers go obsolete? And in most cars the radio itself can be easily removed.
- thdrdt 7y agoI like the fact that they just designed one door and one front/back. It looks like this really reduces costs because the price is so low.
- imtringued 7y agoIt doesn't. There are cheaper cars that don't skimp on these things.
- thdrdt 7y agoCan you name some? I am curious.
- nonamenoslogan 7y agoI work under 5 miles from my home in a city in the Northwestern US. I ride a 50cc moped throughout the warm months here (anything over mid-50 F so late-March through mid-October usually). I think a reliable sub-40mph electric would work well for me the other times of the year provided it could drive in the snow if equipped with reasonable snow tires.
- devmunchies 7y agoI have a little 125cc Honda Monkey with a top speed of 45mph (55mph downhill). Not able to go 40mph seems like I’d be moving dangerously slow on a lot of roads. But I agree, I want a tiny smart-car-like vehicle for when it’s too cold or wet.
- kiliantics 7y agoWhy not just cycle? That is a <30 minute trip by bike
- DesiLurker 7y agosweat, inability to bathe afterwards
- Zach_the_Lizard 7y agoI biked to work in a much hotter climate (DC area) and managed to survive by getting to work at 8am before the worst of the heat set in. The afternoon was quite hot, to say the least, in the summer though. With an electric bike I'd likely not have broken a sweat at all.
- eatmyshorts 7y agoSo it is a golf cart? I must be missing something. I’m not sure why a golf cart would require such fanfare. I guess because most golf carts don’t have doors?
- thekevan 7y agoThink the moped of cars. I'd personally love it for grabbing groceries, visiting close friends, jaunts out to dinner and quick errands from spring to fall. I live where many of those things are extremely close.
- abootstrapper 7y agoI wouldn’t want to drive a golf cart in the cold or rain. But, this little car looks like it could work ok in those conditions.
- asdff 7y agoProvided the range doesn't take a nose dive due to the cold
- asdff 7y agoThat's exactly what they are. They are ubiquitous among the maintenance staff at most American universities, if you are curious about what some of these look like. Here are a couple that USC uses: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0200651,-118.2869857,3a,75y,288.54h,68.33t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sduBJh2L3QBi7-i8zSo4fdg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0200651,-118.2869857,3a,75y,... Sometimes they have doors: https://i0.wp.com/dailytrojan.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/EV_Warren_Poh_web.jpg https://i0.wp.com/dailytrojan.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09...
- bane 7y agoThe ultimate problem with these kinds of cars is that they're generally intended for city driving. This is fine, except most city dwellers don't have a place to park electrics that also happen to have an outlet. This leads most ownership to be on the outskirts/suburbs of cities where people will more likely have a domicile with some kind of garage or spec right where they live so they can drive to/from the city or to a mass transit station that serves the city and happens to have parking, yet too far out and it's more likely that those people will need a more robust vehicle for their driving needs. There's definitely a market for these kinds of vehicles, but it exists in a fairly thin band right at the edges of urban areas.
- telesilla 7y agoFor such a small car, perhaps it fits into a motorbike spot in a parking garage, there are plenty of these to rent in European cities, a moment's walk from the apartment.
- Zach_the_Lizard 7y agoHere in NYC, a parking spot in a garage can cost more than a car payment AND it won't have an outlet in most cases. There is a small electric car charging pilot starting soon, but the rates are so ridiculously high (2x retail electric prices) that gas cars would be much more economical. Source: I live in NYC and thought about getting an electric car to save money when visiting family + make a few road trips cheaper
- michaelbuckbee 7y agoAgreed -> which is why I think that they were seeking to do the hybrid leasing/car-on-demand style of sale as well with these.
- bane 7y agoYeah, the car-on-demand price was incredibly appealing.
- ohiovr 7y ago
- kipchak 7y agoI like the concept of these, bridging the Gap between a small bike/golf cart and a EV like the leaf, but at least for the US they unfortunately would need to be bigger, from a safety and speed perspective, to catch on. Maybe something smart car like with a 40-50 mph top speed, sub highway but capable of matching speed on larger roadways. Unfortunately at that point you're probably close to EV cost.
- kiliantics 7y agoIt's so sad that vehicle ownership has become a kind of security dilemma, where people feel forced to constantly buy bigger. I used to cycle to work every day and in recent years I feel less and less safe to do so as more and more cars in the roads have become these massive SUVs and Jeeps. Cyclist deaths are on the rise and it's no wonder when drivers have less ability to see around their vehicles and far more momentum to hit others with. What you are basically saying is that there is never going to be a market solution to this problem, since no alternative could "catch on". We obviously need government action if we are ever going to kill the addiction to fuel-guzzling vehicles and carbon in general.
- BlueTemplar 7y agoOil isn't unlimited. At this point it's price is only going to go up (smoothed over decades). We're already at the point where we're unlikely to see the "normal 20th century" price of $20/barrel ever again...
- kipchak 7y agoThe only market solution I can see would be an increase in gas causing people to buy smaller cars. In 2008 SUVs and trucks did poorly vs sedans and hybrids. For example the Ford F series models sold 690.589 units in 2006 and 413.625 in 2009, but has since climbed back up to around 900,000.
- zoomablemind 7y agoAnother link to the same announcement, with more pics, including a side glimpse of the interior: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/this-french-electric-sofa-car-spins-out-of-your-bedroom-141483.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/this-french-electric-sofa... This car even uses what looks like orange cloth straps for the inside door handle. Cost cutting... or just another reference to classic model.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoI'm 6'4" (193cm) and cannot imagine I could fit in that thing?
- asdff 7y agoHopefully they have a sunroof package