A large portion of the public opinion in those countries see those mini-cars as a safer 4-wheel alternative.
I'm not saying that those mini-cars are safe or that they are great for the environment, just putting things into perspective for people who are not familiar with the situation in Europe.
[1] I don't have official statistics but anecdotally I can say that as a teenager, almost everyone I knew had modified their moped or scooter.
I personally hate "unnecessary" noise, like a neighbour drilling on Sunday morning, but I don't mind big cities buzz.
In hindsight, I'm happy that I wasn't allowed to drive it at age 14 without a license; I'm pretty sure that I would have killed somebody...
I also don’t get how these are supposed to be safe for 14 year olds and pedestrians.
I had to get a license at 16 to drive a 125cc (both theoretical and actual driving test) and many of my peers had taken a smaller test (theoretical only) at 14 to drive their 50cc.
I am satisfied that such exams are now mandatory and helmets are mandatory too.
It's electric, the weight is likely due to the battery.
The tiny cube is still tiny - way easier to control (and avoid) on narrow streets.
I’ve heard this claim many times, but more often than not it was just a random mechanic who charged a few hundred euros to put a different speedometer with inflated readings.
I modded some of my own motorbikes to improve air intake, changing the exhaust, and other minor things but I consider those to be in the realm of “cosmetics” (audible cosmetics?) rather than real major performance changing.
I just don’t see how you could bore out an extra 50% of displacement on engines made so cheaply.
But in many cases there was no actual need to increase the size of the engine bore, as more often than not the original engine has much more power and it is limited by external devices (once - think of the '70's/*80's it was common to have the same engine 50 cc with 5-7 HP reduced to 1.5 HP by using an undersized carburetor, a smaller exhaust and even - in some cases a simple washer with a smaller hole in the intake).
I remember how (again this is the '70's) most "legal" mopeds in Italy had a carburetor (a Dell'Orto 14/12, meaning 14 mm diameter engine side, 12 mm air filter side) that was often drilled to 14/14 or replaced by a 18/18 or a 19/19. That was enough, without any other change to go from 1.5 HP (the "legal limit" at the time) to 3-4 HP, then changing addtionally the exhaust it went to 5-6 HP, then lightly enlarging the intake opening and "transfers" in the cylinder (remember these were two stroke engines) and adding 2-3 "transfers" was what made them reach 7-9 HP.
The best (in the sense of funniest) performance kit[1] was one for the Ciao (and similar Piaggio light mopeds that originally mounted an even smaller 12/10) that added a second carburetor (not particularly uncospicuous), example: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCenA3H9siBLrpRUWCiLlWHw
[1] intended for circuit racing only ...
Back in the early 90s when this was something my friends were into, several of them had Yamaha 4 gears capable to going over 100kph (60mph) while the legal limit was 30kph (~19mph).
OTOH, a couple of moped accidents have quickly taught me to pay a lot of attention to other vehicles and to somehow anticipate their behavior. It's a risky but effective school.
As a parent of a current 14yo, I notice that her and her friends show almost no interest in mopeds or any form of autonomous transportation, while for us it was a must have - either you parents gave you one, or you kept relentlessly for fighting for it. I don't know what to make of it.
Is this a broader thing? Are kids just not as interested in getting out of the house as they used to be? Less interested in being independent? Or maybe I'm reading too much into it and they're just more interested in being on TikTok.
If anything, the enclosed body might make it more boring, and thus more likely to be driven slowly.
Edit: Ah, never mind. I just had a look around myself. I think what I've seen are Renault Twizzys, judging from the pictures I found online. There seem to be quite a few of them in Bologna, for some reason.
JFYI:
Unfortunately Covid-19 kept me from going to Bologna this year, bloody thing, so it's been a year since I last saw the vehicle I'm talking about.
Anyway, 2 stroke motors were also easily tunable, and people used to change the escape, carburetor, even sometimes the cilinder was changed to have more power on those little machines.
You could get replacement cylinders and everything. According to what I heard if you upgraded everything you could get about 16hp out what used to be one of these underpowered machines.
Anecdotally neither me, nor anyone I knew, had their mopeds modded to exceed the limiter
I see a lot more of suits-on-a-tmax and deliveroo-like drivers these days. Oh, and quite a few of those loud-right-out-of-the-box cars and motorcycles.
There is a fair amount of difference even between various states in the US, and I imagine that the difference between European states is much more significant. Difficult to generalize.
"Seven countries require children to be 14 years (Estonia, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland and Portugal)"
and this is only EU members, other non-members such as Switzerland also have 14yo minimum age for mopeds.
In addition,
"Ten Member States allow children aged 15 years to acquire a driving license for a moped (Austria, Czechia, Germany, Spain, Finland, Croatia, Lithuania, Sweden, Slovenia and Slovakia)."
which is just one year older, so I would say it's a very similar situation.
Source: https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-ag...
It's a shame scooters are illegal in NYC, it seems like it would be a great place for it.
Edit: looks like NYC legalized in July 2020
Maybe 45kmh was the best trade off between lethality and speed?
Used small cars are cheap and they come with all the safety features that have been around and mandated for decades. They are infinitely more safe than these plastic boxes. Just tack a safety triangle in the back of the car to warn others of the slow speed. When the young person turns 18 they could just have the speed limiter removed and continue driving the same car.
Sweden has a local exception that allows turning old cars into tractors that 16-year-olds can drive. There are other limitations and those are really slow, and building tractors out of old Volvos doesn't sound too unsafe.
Penalties will take care of most of the tuners. For exampple, if you get caught with a disabled speed limiter you will have your license suspended for two years and your real full-power driver's license postponed by two years. Also insurance companies will impose hefty penalties if you're driving something else (more powerful) than what you've insured. If you crash, the insurance company will be charging you for the damages.
Here's a light-weight minicar after collision: https://is.mediadelivery.fi/img/1920/2965ca321c7a47758ca5a81... -- I'd rather have my kids take that hit in a passenger car, even a small one.
Isn't this 16 in most countries?
> have post-market modifications installed, either at home or by unscrupulous mechanics, in order to go much faster.
Which is ridiculously stupid, as it voids any insurance you have (obligatory at least in Germany) and may prevent you from ever getting a driving licence if caught by police.
With 45km/h you are seen as an obstacle by cars and they overtake you in dangerous ways.
By the way in cities average speed is very low. For instance in London the average speed within a mile of the city center dropped 1.22mph from an average of 6.35mph in 2016 to just 5.13mph in 2017.
https://fleetworld.co.uk/average-driving-speeds-plummet-in-u....
Most people don't respect the strict speed limits in Europe. As long as there's no radar and no heavy traffic around I can guarantee cars will go faster than 50km/h.
With bicycles it makes even more sense - since the reality is that despite what the law says, many people ride them on pavements - so the speed should be limited to what is safe for pedestrians.
speed limits is usually 50km/h and there are 30km/h zones.
These cars are not allowed on high speed roads, such as highways.
When I used to ride a MB in London I did not hug the gutter that's asking to hit a grate or debris - I rode in the lane 1-2 feet from the kerb just like your supposed to.
oh and I didn't not undertake other vehicles that's just asking to be killed (90%) of bile deaths are undertaking related in London
Ami has never been created for teenagers , it was created by Peugeot to compete in the 'Licence Free EV' space.
Most owners of those vehicles are adult living in Urban Areas, not '14 years old'.
It's sad people keep focusing on 'Headlines' these days instead of taking a step back and actually reading the article...
If this is accurate, those 40% under 18 are driving, but not buying. It's probable that parents are buying those cars for their teenage children.
1. half of all Ami _buyers_ have one car and will continue to drive their existing car
2. half of all Ami _buyers_ have at least two children, and those children will the ones driving the Ami
3. 40% of those _driving_ Amis are under 18
4. 60% of those _driving_ Amis are over 18
I think at one point in the past, HN allowed titles to be rewritten to reflect the actual content, vs. having to strictly stick to the original title.
While it was a bit controversial, as it left some trust to the OP, and sometimes resulted in debate, I do miss that it didn’t give clickbait titles the satisfaction of sensationalism, at least here.
I often wish we were still allowed to do that.
So much so that the car I drive the most via car sharing and that I'd like to buy is a smart fortwo.
And I rode a bicycle at the same time - me and my friends used to cycle 2-3 times per week, 100-120km per day, just for fun. But that's not a good option to go with friends to a cinema, when the nearest one is 45 minute bicycle ride away along major roads. A scooter improved that ability immensly, and I'm sure a small car will as well.
45 minutes doesn't seem like a big deal, most people, especially in cities, probably live a lot closer to a cinema, and the main issue is dangerous main roads without sufficient cycle infrastructure.
Taming car traffic in cities and providing easy to use cycle infrastructure would be enormously more beneficial across the board that a competition for "fast as legally possible" mini cars and scooters, even electric ones.
I didn't get my drivers licence until I was 23 and I didn't miss out on anything, because I could (and did) travel the whole country via train and bus - despite growing up in the countryside. The train station was just under 2km away and that helped immensely and had regular service (2 times an hour) to the nearest cities.
Sure it did. What kind of power does a 15 year old have, exactly, to influence it though? A scooter has improved my mobility when I was 15. Going on the internet and saying that the lack of public transport is at fault would have not.
Besides, we do have really good public transport! It's just that even with buses running every 30 minutes it can still take a long time to get anywhere if you live couple towns over from where you need to be. So it's like.....45 minute bike ride, 15 minute scooter ride, or 1.5 hour bus ride because you have to swap buses twice? Not everything works for everyone, not everyone lives in the major cities. I didn't live out in the countryside either, but in a collection of smaller towns 4-5km apart, 10k population each.
This is an extremely good point.
The city where I live, Milan (Italy) has truly exceptional public transport, accessed via a single cheap monthly pass (39€/month, includes all subways, trams and buses).
It's so good that my gf got her driving license at 27 and she didn't even had to do it, she got it "just in case", and to occasionally use the car sharing services available in the city.
Her mother has a driving license but never drives, and despite this has been going to work and has been doing her things without a car for the last 32 years (!!!)
With the right roads and equipment it's not that bad, but you really have to be in shape for this.
People forget that bike riders, once its past a certain amount of distance will sweat + are exposed to the elements. Sure ebikes help with this. But nobody in my country is going to go to work in a full suit + on a bike.
When considering what the right direction is, you should consider convenience, but also environmental impact. It's a trade-off to be made.
Humans are terrible at turning food into energy, and only the most efficient (vegan) foods have a footprint below 1g CO2/kcal.
Your typical vegan on a bicycle has a footprint of 22g CO2/km and that's the best you can get with human-powered transport.
The Ami has a driving footprint of 7g / km in France, a 5.5kWh battery, which has a one-time impact of ~450kg, and seats two.
Long term it's the less impactful opttion really, especially if you take into account that only 2% of the population is vegan.
Driving home yesterday in a light rain I saw a gentleman in a bright yellow soccer shirt riding a bicycle slowly on the sidewalk. A wide stripe of dark brown mud ran up his back and onto his helmet! As I drove past I just had to laugh and wonder what the front wheel was doing to him!
No one owned a bicycle without fenders when I was young; today finding a bike with fenders is difficult. And some of today's aftermarket fenders are ridiculously flimsy.
I do not understand the absence of fenders on today's bicycles.
I know not all offices have showers, but it was something I looked for when I was deciding on a coworking space a couple of years ago.
Don’t present your opinions as facts.
Not everyone is fit to ride a bicycle, and riding a bicycle where there's cars on the road is a lot more dangerous than being in a car.
And let's stop using the word "should" for every problem out there, people are free to make their own choices.
This is true. Nor is the climate suitable everywhere, etc. However:
> riding a bicycle where there's cars on the road is a lot more dangerous than being in a car.
This is a problem that absolutely can solved by more "should". The police should police more, and the courts should be strict about endangering others with deadly weapons, even if those deadly weapons are on wheels.
> people are free to make their own choices.
People are "free" to speed, or to drive drunk, or to otherwise endanger others "where there's cars on the road". Looks like these "own choices" aren't a terribly good fit to many of the problems posed by cars.
Taking my quote out of context? It's pretty clear I meant that they are free to decide to have a car if that is best for them. Nowhere did I encourage speeding.
As long as it doesn't impact too much the rest of society. For instance, people aren't free to drive a tank on the highway.
If we believe data on global warming, and if we consider it's an issue to be addressed (and most people believe both), some choices which are available now should be restricted in the future.
It will be easier to make people make these choices if they look attractive ways to go forward rather than blaming them about using what is available for them to live their lives.
I do not live on flat land and I live in a place with winters. I, in fact, live in a mountainous area. Riding a bike is not an easy feat here - I've been testing this summer. Short slight inclines aren't too bad: The occasional steep hill isn't so bad. 15-30 minutes uphill, however, is too much for me. All uphill one way isn't easy. I'm not the only person that struggles with this: Biking forums are full of folks that struggle with uphill, and it takes time to get fit enough for this.
Quick facts about Paris:
- there is motorcycles and scooters everywhere
- most people make trips way superior to 5km to go to work or even to go out
- no one can really afford parking his car outside of it's own neighborhood, because you don't have discounts then => 35 to 50€ a day!
You can buy an 125cc scooter with heated grips and a nice warm rain cover for around 3000-4000€ (new) / 1500€ (old) with a 200-300km range and you don't need to pay parking anywhere (yet).
IMO French automakers are lost and this car has almost market. They know they can't compete with Tesla in the near feature on real electric cars. It's way too expensive, for sure it's not targeted at 14-18yo in Paris "intra-muros". Its only features are you don't have to wear a helmet / protects you from rain. It has almost the size of a gas Smart ForTwo without the speed and range to go on a weekend trip.
Only 250 parts are used compared to 30 000 for a standard car.
Source (in French) https://www.caradisiac.com/la-citroen-ami-la-meilleure-amie-...
They start selling it this year. How such a number could bring anything to the discussion ? We don't know if it will be 0 next year (if it's failure) or 200000 (if it's a success).
They're causing issues as you are allowed to park them on the sidewalk (which is already crowded by bikes).
https://setis.ec.europa.eu/system/files/Driving_and_parking_...
Price can be a significant step toward transport electrification.
That doesn’t seem like a good comparison, perhaps the tweezy would be closer (smaller/easier to park while a tad less comfortable, still electric and “two-wheel” category)
I bet the insurance for that car is much cheaper.
Con: On main arteries vehicles definitely move faster than its speed limit. I'm thinking University Ave or Spadina in Toronto.
Pro: 50 km/h (30 mph for Americans) is already the speed limit in most neighborhood streets. It would be interesting to see an Ami cut across 4 lanes to turn left on a multilane boulevard. :) But then again, Paris has tons of these multilane boulevards (like the Champs Elysee) and it seems to work there.
Con: An Ami would be treated like a bicycle except one that takes up the full width of the lane, which might annoy drivers who can't pass it.
Pro: ... which the regulatory framework technically already allows for (bike riders can take up the full lane, and motorists are supposed to allow a 3 ft buffer if passing).
Con: Canadian winters. In Southern Ontario, winter temperatures hover around -10 to -15°C (-30°C wind chill on some days).
Pro: There is a heater, and since it's an enclosed space, it should be fine if one bundles up.
Maybe it could work in denser cities like Toronto and Montréal...
Cities should subsidise these services, or at the least not charge sales tax on them.
Marketing it as a city vehicle, especially in dense Paris, seems strange to me. The only people who are going to be attracted to it in that setting are those who really hate public transport.
Many cities lack appropriate and affordable public transportation and force folks to buy a car. If you live in a town large enough to have shopping centers and you work in that same town, this car would fit well.
Unfortunately, living in a rural area actually makes these cars more difficult, at least in some places in the US. There are roads you couldn't drive on due to speed, and your commute would be longer. Unfortunately, the roads you need to take are also the roads that get snow cleared less often and seem to have a higher rate of disrepair.
We don't own a car, and used to just get everything done by bike and public transport.
But we've stopped using public transport. We do more by bike now, and use car sharing wherever that would be impossible.
Under EU regulation these count as light vehicles (class L; Mopeds, Motorcycles, Motor Tricycles and Quadricycles - L6 to be specific), not cars.
You need a class-B driving licence to operate cars (i.e. age 17+), but these vehicles can be operated with a class AM license (i.e. age 14+).
I wished more people would understand this.
I can get work either via a highway, or by driving through the center of town. Besided adding to trafic in the city center, I’m also looking at an additional 30 minute drive.
In my mind by only designing these tiny city cars to urban driving, manufactures are limiting them to the extend that they are bound to fail. Instead, with minor tweaks, they could remove full size cars and help lower pollution levels.
There are other vehicles for driving on the highway, but in Europe they need crash protection and so on.
You raise a great point though, cargo bikes are much more expensive than conventional ones. I don't see why either as I'm guessing there would be a big market at a lower price point (£500 vs £300 for a conventional rather than £2500), hence the scale to make them cheap.
(Thanks for link BTW, not seen this bike before)
As a parent of kids a bit younger, I aspire to help them avoid this sort of thing entirely
Cargo bikes don’t have to be expensive (Yuba Komba is 999€) except that they are, in the long tail format, 50 to 100% more steel, and because of the weight, drivetrain and brakes have to be good as well. A 250€ cargo bike would be an injury waiting to happen
As it happens, the bike I linked is a nice Chromoly frame, disc brakes, hub gears etc. If you look at other bikes with similar components you’d be hard pressed to beat the price.
usrusr's comment in that thread: "And less obvious ones, like https://www.ellenator-gmbh.de/ which exists solely to exploit a legal loophole to get something that is arguably more dangerous than a car into the hands of people who are not licensed to drive a car."
In university and since, I lived in many different countries. I haven't had a long-term visa. Currently I'm in New Zealand. Here it takes 2 years to get a driving licence. If my residency visa is approved, I'll be able to start learning to drive. For now, I use an old rusty bicycle that I bought from a scrapyard for $20. It would be nice to have a vehicle like that in Paris, because it would cover my head when it rains.
Legislation was intended to educate and protect people, and that is good. The problem is that the educators realised they had a captive market, ramped up prices, and now entire market segments (foreigners, young people) are excluded. Compared to the dangers of other mobility options (e.g. scooters), I think the Ami is much safer. It would be interesting to see how it is treated in other areas of law (parking fines, collisions) compared to bicycles.
Right now, I would prefer to have this over my bike or a scooter because Indian roads are such a hell. Many people here don't even have driving license and jaywalking is common. A new emerging trend is people sticking to their phone while driving.
I would feel much safer. Even my dad get into almost accidents a few times monthly. He has been driving for decades and always maintain a stable speed of under 45kmph.
In Auckland there's a busway with regular services to the city every 5-10 minutes. The connecting bus to the house goes once every 30 minutes. By bike it takes 10 minutes.
To go from the house to the office would take 1.5 hours by bus. By bicycle it takes 20 minutes.
Similar story in Kaohsiung: the MRT wasn't near my house, so I'd ride a bike to go to it. Other people there drive motor scooters (also dangerous) to and from the MRT. It was somewhat romantic to ride on the back of my girlfriend's scooter, hugging her from behind. I know we would've appreciated the privacy of an enclosed Ami though.
I envy countries that have driving as part of the school curriculum. I was in the same boat as you, and it's an incredible PITA to make the required logbook hours unless you have a partner or very patient friend.
I'd suggest looking into a 150cc motorcycle license, for some reason the regulations are less strict. Still won't keep the rain off your head.
If you do an advanced driving course it's 3 months
but possibly less dangerous than a moped/moto-scooter, which is what most 14 year olds drive in many European countries.
But it's not only about the passenger, is it? It is also about the pedestrian. A cube might be safer for a kid but the same cube going 45 kmph driven by an unlicensed person can be lethal to others.
Nobody's buying a car on the merit that it will protect victims of a crash that aren't in the car itself. I think that's mostly due to the cognitive dissonance that people have where they think that they're not going to be the one to cause a wreck somebody else dies in. Because if you were aware of that possibility, you'd have to be aware of your responsibility to drive safely. But driving should be cool, fun, and maybe even practical, at least that's how car companies sell their product.
Safety is only ever marketed to the consumer as something that protects them.
You are required to have a class-AM driving licence to operate these. Unlicensed driving is a criminal offence in many countries anyway so it wouldn't matter if the person drove a little cube or a fully loaded lorry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_Ami_(electric)
It doesn't seem to be for sale in EU :(
Not exactly true: by law, employers must pay half of that amount, so most Parisian pay €38/mo for that "all-zone metro and suburban rail pass". If you don’t work, that’s free. Pretty much nobody pays the full amount.
But the target of younger people generally pay a reduced/student price anyway, which is low too.
That is not true, if you don't have the transit pass (eg. you only take your car) you are not paid 38€ more than your coworkers.
Personally, I didn't feel more in danger compared to other cars when they're around.
[1] https://www.renault.fr/vehicules-electriques/twizy.html [2] https://www.automobiles-chatenet.com/accueil.html
In fact, most of Europe for a long time had multiple tiers of licenses for "regular" cars. It's my understanding that part of the popularity of the three wheeled Reliant Robin was caused by the fact that until 2001 you could drive it with a Motorcycle license, which I presume is much easier to get than a full car license. Also, I believe it was cheap.
This can be a game changer in urban set up especially in my part of the world where it can protect the occupants from the weather that is either rain or hot.
I'm involved in an IoT project where we have a few Toyota EV COMS cars (2nd generation) that is similar in size and purpose to Ami [1]. It's a joy to drive and convenient to use if you want to travel from A to B in urban environment.
[1]https://www.newlaunches.com/archives/toyota-releases-ultra-c...
Then I saw this article and followed it up: "More disposable cars: Ignoring unintended side-effects" https://joshuaspodek.com/more-disposable-cars-ignoring-unint...
I started by saying:
> Walking around Manhattan, with many people moving out, sidewalks are overflowing with what they don’t value enough to keep. What are they disposing? Sofas, mattresses, shelves, chairs, books, televisions, printers, scanners, lamps, mirrors, plates, toasters, silverware, . . . I could go on.
> Notice anything about them? All those things used to be once-in-a-lifetime purchases. Some were high-tech wonders when introduced—now disposable. We don’t value them as much as the effort to maintain them. We turn them into pollution.
> Our market system has shifted from creating value to creating craving. People like novelty, I guess, so marketing engineers figure out how to generate craving so they can temporarily satisfy it.
> Meanwhile, markets motivate people to figure out how to deliver with lower cost. The result? Everything becomes disposable—food, plates, furniture, silverware (now plasticware), clothing, everything.
. . .
and ended with
> We don’t lack comfort and convenience. We’re choking on waste.
> We like comfort and convenience, but our world doesn’t lack it. On the contrary, we’re drowning in it. Our lack of physical activity and feeling entitled is making us depressed, obese, and sick, lacking resilience, discipline, or initiative to respond.
> History implies people will buy this product in droves, competitors will match it, the market will keep driving down cost and durability, increasing landfill waste. We will increase total waste and lower quality of life, meaning, and purpose.
The windows are a nice touch, and the identical doors and interchangeable panels are, frankly, ingenious!
Something I didn't see mentioned in the article was the range - as a city car, I guess it's not that important, but does anyone know what it is?
You can fit two such pods side by side in one of the tunnels of the Boring Company. If they run at 2 second intervals, one after the other, with an average occupancy of 1.5 people, a single tunnel can provide a peak throughput of 90 people per minute or 5400 per hour. That's about half of what a subway can handle. You could also create "formations" of pods even more tightly packed for longer cross-city links. Full computer control requires much less safety devices such as airbags - like in a subway, the crash is ruled out by proper management of trafic.
Outside the tunnels, they can blend in easily and provide a sane mass transport alternative, as opposed to congesting the city with more full sized cars. An existing row of paralel parking spots is all of a sudden a mass transport station where pods dock perpendicularly and await commuters; no need for fancy elevators, just an steep slope to the tunnels below.
I like optimism in general, but think about that for just a second. At the vehicles' top speed of ~45km/h, 2 seconds translate to an average distance of just 25m.
This leaves very little room for error and isn't enough of a safety margin.
Then there's the obvious thing which renders this idea completely impractical: have you ever tried to stop a car going at 45km/h, get out of it and have another person enter the vehicle in well under 2 seconds?
That's practically impossible.
Also, it's time to rethink cities instead of regurgitating failed concepts (e.g. individual transport within densely populated areas) over and over again. A liveable city should be made for people, not cars (no matter the size). Going through the insane effort of stuffing individual traffic underground wouldn't change anything - you'd just have your congestion during peak hours underground; it wouldn't go away, though.
Clearly the stopping and picking up of passengers is not gonna be done on the main lane. Just like with regular cars, pods exit the speed lane, enter a deceleration lane, then stop into the actual station - a series of parking spaces - where people can embark and disembark at will.
This is even more impractical. Just to be clear: impractical doesn't mean impossible - it just means that there's no way this can be as economical, safe, and efficient as existing concepts.
An actual station or "a series of parking spaces" as you put it, has no advantages over a traditional subway/people mover station in terms of efficiency, cost and space requirements while offering significantly less throughput.
I just don't see how any of this would be an improvement in any way.
Btw, using the same optimistic math, mass transit can do 90,000 pphd (2k ppl every 90s), in reality the max is around 40K.
Also, there is a more fundamental problem with reaching high thoughtputs with mass transit: you need to force people out of optimal routes from their distributed destinations and origins, into enforced stations. This makes sense for point to point links like LA to SF, but it's very inefficient when trying to cover a 2D city: the more routes and stations you add, the less you are likely to reach peak capacity of any one link. If you are going for city-wide subway, you will pay much, much more to build large, expensive tunnels that will stay mostly idle at the perifery of the system.
Yes, and this would be an even bigger problem for your proposal, that's the point.
> Also, there is a more fundamental problem with reaching high thoughtputs with mass transit: you need to force people out of optimal routes from their distributed destinations and origins, into enforced stations. This makes sense for point to point links like LA to SF, but it's very inefficient when trying to cover a 2D city: the more routes and stations you add, the less you are likely to reach peak capacity of any one link. If you are going for city-wide subway, you will pay much, much more to build large, expensive tunnels that will stay mostly idle at the perifery of the system.
You're hugely exaggerating the problem. You get some inefficiency yes - if we imagine a grid system then many journeys require a change of line and the average journey is 1.27x longer than an ideal path between two points, assuming people don't change their actions at all (e.g. living on the same line where they work). But that's outweighed by the efficiency gains of mass transit - in a city with a decent subway system that longer journey with a change will still be significantly faster than driving.
As for tunnels sitting idle at the periphery of the system, in the real world that's really not the issue you make it out to be, for a number of reasons; housing concentrates along commuting corridors, the places where the population thins out are, by the same token, the places where land is cheap and the train line can run on the surface, and if necessary then trains can turn short or split/join. If you look at the usage levels that subways actually achieve, they're incredibly cheap for what they do.
Counting cars instead of people again. You should work for the department of transportation.
At peak, the 1.5 occupancy rate I factored is achievable and quite typical for car commuting.
I keep wondering how you are supposed to charge a car in an (un-specially-prepared) city if you can't afford a place in an indoors lot. Do you just throw an extension cord out your window? Do you book lamppost electricity from the local authority?
Though I guess Paris is not a place with this problem.
I've taken the bus for years at that age (10-18 years old) to go to school, I regret so much not using a bike, I could have woken up later and have more freedom (not have to wait for buses)
> ..., two young women stared open-mouthed. “How did you manage to get hold of it?” asked one. “ ... it’s environment-friendly"
Part of its appeal is to the lazy and stupid.
OTOH, riding a bicycle in Paris is not ideal, although the safety of this thing doesn't convince me either.
Meanwhile a kilometer of driving this vehicle in France has a footprint of ~7g.
The battery's manufacturing footprint sits at around 450kg of CO2 - and this is something that has to be "paid off", but it's entirely possible within the car's lifecycle.
Basically unless you're vegan, it's likely more environmentally friendly in France to drive this.
Luckily, it may not be true that this is more environmentally friendly than cycling. I would think this 485 kg car uses more road space and causes more wear and tear on roads than a 25 kg bicycle. That must count for something.
You also have to take the health benefits of cycling/the effect of more car driving on obesity into account.
We call them mini car or micro car.
A popular brand is Ligier.
The solution for traffic jams have always been mopeds here, but given their higher safety, and the price tag that was very close to a modern scooter, parents have started buying them for their children.
But they have soon become a status symbol for rich kids, the prices went up considerably (between 10k and 15k but up to 30k) and now they usually rally in some of the popular high end neighborhoods (such as Parioli) and act like gangs.
They fight for territory with those coming from other neighborhoods, spice up the engines and make a lot of noise.
To the point that they have become a nightmare for the residents and for the police.
If you are interested there are is a news video reportage about the "rich babies" generation in Rome, it's in Italian but auto generated English subtitles are not bad
Around minute 23 they talk about the mini cars
On this quote, it should be noted this is for the Ami specifically, and not for the market it is targeting.
There are other vehicles already existing in this “less than a car, more than a scooter” niche, notably Renault’s Twizy, but also makers like Aixam who build “license less” cars mostly for elderlies, people who never bothered passing the driving license or lost it at some point etc.
Perhaps the Ami is just not competitive enough to take significant market share from those, and is pigeonholed in 18- market, but the whole targetable market is larger.
But I don't think there is much to do with design, I guess all shapes have been already designed for these cars, and they all invariably end up being a sort of caricature of a "real size" car, more or less the inside needs to be big enough to house the driver and passenger (that do not and cannot shrink) whilst the outside is reduced in size as much as possible leading to things that are "stubby".
The only two exceptions I know are (like it or hate it) the already mentioned Renault Twizy that has a somewhat unconventional design and the Microlino which is a sort of (good ol') Isetta replica:
The weird design is to cut down on costs: as mentioned in the article, the doors are identical, the front and back panels are as well.
A sleek carlet wouldn't have cost 6000€.
The kids will be fine.
What a waste of energy.
If batteries improvements aren't just rumors a v2 could work.
plus I know there is big kick here on HN for bicycles but it is wholly unrealistic to rely on a mode of transport that is not useful in all weather conditions. Hell the number of people who fall into the trap that a motorcycle will save them money and then don't ride it for the same reasons is legion.
They are fun, your chance of injury is magnitudes greater though, and they are not suited for all people. This can be based on needs to carry stuff, to being secure from the weather, or being handicapped.
Sure, if you're in Dallas or Phoenix or Atlanta, it's not going to work, unfortunately.
What would insurance requirements look like for this?
