6 ms·

I'm afraid this car will create more problems than it solves. It is a disappointingly short sighted effort. To make a difference in a city it needs to shrink

by bborud 6y ago

I'm afraid this car will create more problems than it solves. It is a disappointingly short sighted effort. To make a difference in a city it needs to shrink down the area occupied by cars today as well as reduce the absolute numbers. Since this car cannot travel at even modest highway speeds it does not replace anyone's primary car. The result is that people will end up owning more cars. If they can afford it. The second problem is that it puts a new demographic on the road: teenagers. In this segment it would (again, for those who can afford it) replace public transport, bicycling and walking. I live in a city. I have a small car. What I really want is an even smaller car built around the fact that most of the time I am transporting just myself. But I need to be able to drive at highway speeds in order to not cause traffic problems. This is an embarrassingly poor design effort. Europeans used to be great at designing nation changing, important small cars. The french had the 2CV and the Renault 4. The Italians gave us the (original) Fiat 500.

s0rce 6y ago
Its so hard to buy a small car these days in the US. The offerings are pretty poor. Mitsubishi Mirage, Fiat 500, Chevy Spark. And then if you want AWD there are basically no options (I drive a discontinued Suzuki SX4 because everything else is bigger). Not to mention the lack of practical small city cars but everything else keeps getting bigger. The small Rav4 is now much larger and there isn't a little crossover replacing it.
- nsriv 6y ago
  Had the same issue, and ended up settling on an HR-V AWD.
- analog31 6y ago
  I don't know if your use of AWD is for winter driving, but I've learned that snow tires make more of a difference during the winter than AWD. You can get a set of snow tires, mounted on rims, balanced, and inflated, delivered to your doorstep by TireRack for what seems like a reasonable price.
  - noizejoy 6y ago
    The problem with winter tires is in regions where you get fewer than 10 days of snowy roads per year. That’s where AWD plus traction control are really helpful. And that technology is also useful on wet or dusty roads, not just on snow.
  - s0rce 6y ago
    Some snow but mostly I also like to take the car onto gravel and fire roads. Probably wouldn't use snow tires as I'm in coastal California and only see snow a few days per year in the mountains.
  - bborud 6y ago
    You drive on summer tyres during the winter? In that case, yes, being on the right tyre will make a bigger difference than having AWD. Where I live you will actually be fined if your tyres are not "suitable for the conditions" - which essentially means that if you are on summer tyres during winter, you are going to get a pretty hefty fine.
    - analog31 6y ago
      We use snow tires during the winter. But in the US, summer tires are sold as "all season," and handle poorly in snow. We're not required to use snow tires in our region, and they salt the roads heavily, to the detriment of my bicycle. Over the past few decades of living in this region, folks have pretty much settled on "needing" AWD to drive in snow, and then gaining relatively little benefit, while insisting that "all season" means that they don't need snow tires. I asked my mechanic about it. His take: "They should stop salting the roads, folks should get snow tires and learn how to drive."
brmgb 6y ago
> This is an embarrassingly poor design effort. You are completely missing what this is about and the segment this is targeting. This is not a small car designed for the American market. This is not even a small car in the European sense. This clearly is targeting the segment filled by scooters and small motorcycles. European urban driving has little in common with American urban driving. Cities are compact and very dense with little to no parking space and speed limit at 30km/h to 50km/h. You are never going to get close to highway speeds driving inside a city in Europe.
- bborud 6y ago
  I live in Europe. I spend most of my driving time in and close to the city. The sole reason I need a car is that I often need to get from one side of the city to the other. That usually means ring roads and similar, which have higher speed limits and even higher actual speeds driven. Which means I need both something that won't cause a traffic jam there, AND something that is small enough to navigate and park in the city. A lot of people also live just outside the city core and commute by car into the city. This too means roads with higher speed limits than the actual top speed of this car. Which means, it becomes a problem. I live in a country where 5.6% of cars are electric. (By comparison, California has 1.3% electric cars). In part because of exactly this need to combine inner city and the periphery around the city. Authorities try to get cars out of the city, which is why they provide tax incentives to at least switch to electric for those who can't switch to public transport. If we talk about people who only navigate inner cities, electric bicycles, scooters and small motorcycles are preferable from a traffic point if view since they are much more effective. They take up much less space on the road, require less parking space and can navigate the city much faster. (In the summer it is faster to navigate across the city on an electrical bicycle than it is to drive any car regardless of size) From a government perspective, this car doesn't solve a problem. It creates new problems by increasing the space requirements and by putting new demographics into new settings. Dramatically so if the car were to be successful. From a consumer perspective it does offer more comfort for a narrow sliver of affluent teenagers, and a possible service vehicle for companies, municipalities etc. For someone who needs a car anyway this is a typical second or third car - which means we fail to shrink down the fleet; it just grows larger. Its _only_ qualities are size and aesthetics. It falls short in every other respect.

by bborud 6y ago

s0rce 6y ago

Its so hard to buy a small car these days in the US. The offerings are pretty poor. Mitsubishi Mirage, Fiat 500, Chevy Spark. And then if you want AWD there are basically no options (I drive a discontinued Suzuki SX4 because everything else is bigger). Not to mention the lack of practical small city cars but everything else keeps getting bigger. The small Rav4 is now much larger and there isn't a little crossover replacing it.

nsriv 6y ago
Had the same issue, and ended up settling on an HR-V AWD.
analog31 6y ago
I don't know if your use of AWD is for winter driving, but I've learned that snow tires make more of a difference during the winter than AWD. You can get a set of snow tires, mounted on rims, balanced, and inflated, delivered to your doorstep by TireRack for what seems like a reasonable price.
- noizejoy 6y ago
  The problem with winter tires is in regions where you get fewer than 10 days of snowy roads per year. That’s where AWD plus traction control are really helpful. And that technology is also useful on wet or dusty roads, not just on snow.
- s0rce 6y ago
  Some snow but mostly I also like to take the car onto gravel and fire roads. Probably wouldn't use snow tires as I'm in coastal California and only see snow a few days per year in the mountains.
- bborud 6y ago
  You drive on summer tyres during the winter? In that case, yes, being on the right tyre will make a bigger difference than having AWD. Where I live you will actually be fined if your tyres are not "suitable for the conditions" - which essentially means that if you are on summer tyres during winter, you are going to get a pretty hefty fine.
  - analog31 6y ago
    We use snow tires during the winter. But in the US, summer tires are sold as "all season," and handle poorly in snow. We're not required to use snow tires in our region, and they salt the roads heavily, to the detriment of my bicycle. Over the past few decades of living in this region, folks have pretty much settled on "needing" AWD to drive in snow, and then gaining relatively little benefit, while insisting that "all season" means that they don't need snow tires. I asked my mechanic about it. His take: "They should stop salting the roads, folks should get snow tires and learn how to drive."

brmgb 6y ago

> This is an embarrassingly poor design effort. You are completely missing what this is about and the segment this is targeting. This is not a small car designed for the American market. This is not even a small car in the European sense. This clearly is targeting the segment filled by scooters and small motorcycles. European urban driving has little in common with American urban driving. Cities are compact and very dense with little to no parking space and speed limit at 30km/h to 50km/h. You are never going to get close to highway speeds driving inside a city in Europe.

bborud 6y ago
I live in Europe. I spend most of my driving time in and close to the city. The sole reason I need a car is that I often need to get from one side of the city to the other. That usually means ring roads and similar, which have higher speed limits and even higher actual speeds driven. Which means I need both something that won't cause a traffic jam there, AND something that is small enough to navigate and park in the city. A lot of people also live just outside the city core and commute by car into the city. This too means roads with higher speed limits than the actual top speed of this car. Which means, it becomes a problem. I live in a country where 5.6% of cars are electric. (By comparison, California has 1.3% electric cars). In part because of exactly this need to combine inner city and the periphery around the city. Authorities try to get cars out of the city, which is why they provide tax incentives to at least switch to electric for those who can't switch to public transport. If we talk about people who only navigate inner cities, electric bicycles, scooters and small motorcycles are preferable from a traffic point if view since they are much more effective. They take up much less space on the road, require less parking space and can navigate the city much faster. (In the summer it is faster to navigate across the city on an electrical bicycle than it is to drive any car regardless of size) From a government perspective, this car doesn't solve a problem. It creates new problems by increasing the space requirements and by putting new demographics into new settings. Dramatically so if the car were to be successful. From a consumer perspective it does offer more comfort for a narrow sliver of affluent teenagers, and a possible service vehicle for companies, municipalities etc. For someone who needs a car anyway this is a typical second or third car - which means we fail to shrink down the fleet; it just grows larger. Its _only_ qualities are size and aesthetics. It falls short in every other respect.