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Comment by paimapi | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's impossible to have a small car that drives great - I drove a CR-X as a starter car and upgraded to a 00's Celica. I think the likelihood of a sub-1-tonne EV being specced outside of it's intended market niche at this price point in this stage of corporate wealth hoarding is extremely low. If it does turn up that the car is well-suited for highway driving, I'm happy to eat crow but that doesn't mean that I won't still think the probability of the inverse is higher until that point.

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There are plenty of small cars that drive great. In fact some of the best driving cars are the smaller ones. But you have your mind made up in spite of lots of evidence so I think that maybe there are other reasons or other definitions that make 'driving great' land in a different set of qualities than most people would associate with 'driving'. I normally associate that with handling, ability to accelerate/decelerate and in general that the car does what I want it to. Heavier cars have a very clear disadvantage here.

But if, for instance, you're hauling lumber then most small cars are not going be driving great. Ditto if you have to move a family of five (or more). So without your definition of what 'well suited for highway driving' is specified in terms that I can appreciate that do not include the actual driving characteristics of the car then it is very hard to have a productive conversation, regardless of 'corporate wealth hoarding' or other off-topic bits. FWIW I've had just about every type of Citroen and without exception they handled very well within their respective weight class, and they also held their own in terms of hauling capacity. Reliability, now that is something where we can probably come into agreement, the French car industry for the longest time had serious issues (but not as many as their UK counterparts). Even so that too is a thing that is mostly in the past.

I mean a Toyota Yaris (first facelift) from 2016 for example sits around a ton (1070), and it's completely comfortable to drive on the highway.

And it's not some niche car, it's one of the most sold compact cars on the planet. And the 2026 versions are actually slightly lighter at 1025 and are very comfortable.

Of course comfort is up to interpretation, and as cars get better, our window of expectation moves, the cars my dad used to drive for 8 hours in a row for our summer vacations in the 1970s are considered ridiculously loud and cramped by today's standards. Just like Kings of the past had no tropical fruit in winter, while even unknown shitty corps hand them out for free to their unpaid interns at this point, our standards move.

But even with today's standards I think a modern Yaris at 1 ton (+2%) is completely fine for highway driving.

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