Tiny electric car looks like a washing machine and costs just $6,600
cnn.com
cnn.com
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
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.
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).
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.
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
The other thing I think is a big issue with cars in urban cities is parking. There are simply not enough. Smaller cars would help a bit.
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 But my impression is that even there in the past they were mostly popular with people whose ordinary car license had been revoked for drunk driving.
BTW, I recently bough a new bicycle that cost more than the first car I drove (the car was a few hundred bucks).
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/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.
This Wikipedia article gives the original range as 121 km (EPA rating): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf#2013
Anecdotal evidence on the web suggests that batteries don't lose capacity as fast as people feared.
Here is an article about a Leaf used as a taxi in Cornwall: https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/environment/2017/05/19/no-r...
Highlights:
"The car was 7kw fast-charged 3,800 times and 3.3kw trickle-charged 7,000 times during its working life at the company’s business in St Austell, Cornwall.
Mark Richards, C&C transport manager, was impressed that the Leaf retained 70% of its battery capacity after 174,000 miles and said that other than the maximum range, the performance of the vehicle is just as good as the day it was bought.
...
Wizzy had no breakdowns during its high-mileage four-year working life. Outside of scheduled annual services, the Leaf went through three sets of wipers, two sets of brake pads for the front and rear and one damper, as well as tyre replacements when necessary."
This suggests that the Leaf in the ad has most of its original range as it will not have been charged nearly so often.
But I agree, I want a tiny smart-car-like vehicle for when it’s too cold or wet.
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.
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.
I just submitted as its own HN thread:
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.
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).
In just about any car produced >2000 these radios are integrated in the dashboard, thus not easily replaceable.
* Unlike the builtin system in my 15 year old car, the bluetooth speaker doesn't adjust volume with my car's speed, so I have to constantly adjust it.
* The speaker's interface isn't designed to be used without looking (small buttons flush with the housing) so adjusting the volume all the time is particularly annoying.
That may be the problem with your thinking. By their own definition, it is more of a luxurious golf cart than it is an automobile.
From the article:
>but the two-seat Ami is barely a car. In fact, Citroën refers to it as a "non-conformist mobility object.
>It has a top speed of just 45 kilometers an hour, roughly equal to 28 miles per hour. It's powered by a 6 kilowatt, or 8 horsepower, electric motor.
>For that reason, though, the Ami can be driven by kids as young as 14 in France, or 16 in many other European countries, without a license.
>Under the laws of these countries, the Ami qualifies as a voiture sans permis (literally "car without license"), or quadricycle, a category of small and slow vehicle that, for purposes of regulation, is treated like a four-wheeled scooter.
Oh great. So without a working, compatible phone, the driver has no idea when the car is about to run out of battery?
Literally nobody I know has a reliable connection between their phone and their car.
Bluetooth has proven to be less reliable.
Is that to charge the car?
(Sorry, couldn't resist)
Android APIs change a lot over time.
Sure, let the car stereo connect to my phone so I can play my music if I want. But don't take away simple, basic, essential functionality and lock it in a phone app that I will have to trust/hope will continue to be supported for as long as I own the vehicle.
Yet another product I can't purchase because I'm unwilling to be tied to a software ecosystem that discourages ownership.
That's assuming it's even possible to keep things running, too. If the manufacturer needlessly brings a "cloud service" into the mix my "connected device" stops working when the plug is pulled on a service I can't self-host and can't pay to keep going.
For any one device it's probably no big deal. If my time is worthless it's no big deal. If my familiarity and comfort-with-routine with a particular device's workflow is worthless then it's no big deal.
When it's a multiple of devices in your life, when you place a high value on your time, and when you derive tremendous personal value out of muscle memory and personal routine then I think it adds up to a bill-of-goods.
The general nature of the market for "connected devices" is demoralizing and draining. I don't want to throw all my shit away every couple of years based on the aggregate of various manufacturers. I don't want to change my routine because some marketing plan dictates I no longer get to use something I've incorporated into my life.
It's massively frustrating that "the future" has arrived for so many things, except nobody will sell it to me on terms I can accept. I don't have enough time in my life to build the stuff myself. I'm a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a mainstream market so nobody will ever create what I want.
I can think of a decent number of "connected" devices I'd love to but, except they don't exist in a form that respects me. They exist in forms made to serve manufacturer's needs to sell me the same thing again in a few years, to build the lowest cost, most disposable devices for the maximization of profit with no regard for the environment, and to have the lowest long-term maintenance cost for software (by way of just throwing it all out and re-spinning every few years).
You certainly can't lease an existing €60,000 car for €200\month
And it's explicitly a down payment, not a deposit. I don't know exactly how that works in combination with a 4-year lease of €240 a year, totalling €960. I assume after 4 years, the lease ends, you don't own anything, and you're down 3500+960 = €4460, or €€3560 in France. That equals €92 a month for the lease. If you factor in time value of money over 4 years (or financing the downpayment), you're looking at €100 a month minimum.
Not sure if everything is included in this lease... insurance, taxes etc? I assume it does.
Not a bad deal, particularly for young city-dwellers. But at just €100 more, for €200, I can get something like a Toyota Aygo which has an 800km range instead of a 75km range and refuels in a minute instead of 3 hours, and seats 4 instead of 2, and can take trips outside the city.
Great city car, but spending 7k on a car that can't go to another city 30 minutes away, seems a bit silly. I think it's great for ridesharing though. We've had the Smart Electric cars in Amsterdam for a few years now at 25-30 cents per minute or so, they're quite nice. I typically use bike/publictransport, but when you're with a friend, it's raining or you have to go to the other side of the city, particularly after midnight or with annoying public transport transfers, the car is nice. But as you can see, it's already a niche category for me. Once these things become super cheap and ubiquitous, I'd love to use them more. Now I tend to have to walk a minute or two to the nearest one, and it's a bit expensive still. I think these cars would do a better job as they're 2-3x cheaper than the Smart. At some point the per-minute fee should drop for ridesharing to perhaps 15c per minute. At that point it gets interesting, because you get demand, and with demand it makes sense to make them ubiquitous, at which point there's a critical mass for them.
Full fledged EV are over-sized for many urban users.
This car even uses what looks like orange cloth straps for the inside door handle. Cost cutting... or just another reference to classic model.
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.
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.
We're already at the point where we're unlikely to see the "normal 20th century" price of $20/barrel ever again...
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.
7 - 14 sitting kids in front of your vehicle and you can't see any of them if you trying to see them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The one thing I would say is I wish the range were a bit higher. We have a Ford C-Max plug-in hybrid that gets 18-25 miles before turning on the gasoline motor. Two trips in succession will sometimes run out the electricity. A 50 mile range would make me more comfortable, but still I'm excited to see a vehicle like this (even if I'm not super-hopeful they'll catch on in the US).
Now, since this is a smaller vehicle with a smaller battery, it might able to charge faster on 110, but likely you'd want a 220 charger.
Really, it feels like all EVs will need a 220 line to be practical. Small-battery and PHEVs need frequent top-ups and you don't want those to take hours, and full EVs just take forever to charge on 110.
I saw a demonstration of an electric moped that worked like this. You pull up to the station, put your empty batteries in the rack for charging, and take a set of full ones.
Fully charged EV faster than filling up a tank of gas.
We've been siloing our thinking that an EV should be some quasi hybrid between plugging in your phone to charge, and putting in a gas pump into a car. The best and most practical EV in the future will look nothing like a car today. Maybe in the future we will just bring back street car wiring to our cities and run an antennae above the vehicle like a bumper car.
Swapping batteries makes sense for a car you don't own. For a car you own, I don't know. Of course car ownership is probably going away soon enough.
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.
* 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.
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...
It looks like this really reduces costs because the price is so low.