The future is Tiny

I wonder how much Governments will hold back society where genuinely useful things are concerned, electric scooters, tinycars, multi-hop cellular networks

The future is Tiny

Some looks a bit like the Buddy electric car that was popular here some years ago.

Thor

... and, of course, Clive Sinclair nearly beat them to it, with the infamous C5

I remember the incredulity when they unloaded a prototype into our test chamber

MichaelG.

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Original TV advert: https://youtu.be/0EQetm_qWDg

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 16/05/2021 08:19:01

Pre-electric cars remember the messerschmitt car, the bubble car, the reliant's - particularly the Bond Bug? Even classics like the fiat 500 have become much larger as has the ubiquitous mini. I'd like to think this was due to safety designs and good regulation but I think the reality is to push people into spending more than they can afford...

There are some small electric cars - The Renault Twizy and Twingo and the Smart ForTwo - but they're not exactly cheap or practical for more than living and commuting within an urban sprawl and designed for muticar families.

The OP's type of quadbike 'car' I understand can be bought from chinese e-commerce sites car
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/changli-electric-car_1600139822093.html?spm=a2700.galleryofferlist.normal_offer.d_title.690c4458RPwiCG&s=p

Off Topic personal view: - folk need to get back to being patient instead of instant deliveries and just in time logistics and get freight off the roads back to rail and canals instead of mutiple courier brands and strings of lorries. The rural road I live by gets less than a half dozen private cars a day and 2-3 tractors passing ... but at least 6 courier vehicles and 2-3 supermarket delivery trucks per day which could surely be made more efficient.

pgk

Another ‘blast from the past’ ... resurrected: **LINK**

https://p50cars.com

MichaelG.

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Edit: __ see also https://www.peelengineering.com/

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 16/05/2021 09:35:09

Tiny electric cars should be the only ones. Full size electric cars are a joke. 4 year lifespan? The car will last forever but the battery won't! By the time the batteries are no use it's not economical to replace them so where is the so called environmental saving?

Most electric cars come with an 8yr battery warranty and replacement packs are/will become practicable depending somewhat on the original design - whether the pack has combined management/charging as opposed to being a seperate component making new battery tech harder to integrate. Pilot recycling plants exist but not yet at the needed industrial scales.

However I'm incline to agree that battery vehicles are a stepping stone to something more sensible - whatever that may end up being. The principle of carrying a ton of extra weight in batteries doesn't sit right. Idealistic answers such as hydogen suffer from energy losses in creation (green hydrogen) or a huge carbon footprint with unsubstantiated claims of capture (blue hydrogen). At the same time fossil fuels have to be considered past their date. Perhaps the answer lies in some hybrid of battery and overhead/slot/induction power?

pgk

Off topic slightly as this one's hardly ideal for your weekly supermarket shop with the family, but I do like the idea of the Swincar

https://www.swincar.net/

Bill

Edited By peak4 on 16/05/2021 11:23:30

I think battery weight is becoming less of an issue with the new Lithium batteries and apparently there are several other types in development that are better again.

Meanwhile, in Australia they are electrifying at the other end of the vehicle scale. Converting heavy long-haul trucks to electric with quick-change battery packs. They can travel 400 to 600 kilometres (350 miles) on one battery pack, then they pull in to a battery station and the guys whip the flat battery out and install a freshly charged one while the driver takes his mandatory anti-fatigue meal/coffee break.

The company that does the electric conversions to existing trucks has set up the battery change stations at existing truck stop sites where drivers already take their mandatory breaks, so no loss of travel time. They say it costs $80,000 to do the conversion and will save that much in fuel costs in one year.

We have the sunshine to make this kind of thing work with recharging via solar too.

You might find the Citroen Ami more to your liking LINK

Some Canadian friends of ours retired to Florida to a 'Golf' community some years ago.

Rather like Centerparcs, cars are banned inside the community and all internal 'travel' is via golf carts, with every home having a 'buggy space'. They are prety much self-contained with shops, surgeries and (obviously) golf courses - all located inside the community (which is like a small town). When last heard, they still owned a car but were considering selling it and just hiring a car when travelling "outside" - which apparently they were doing less and less.

Not sure this appeals to me (the Golf that is) but I can see something similar happening here. A small 'electric' vehicle just for local use and then hiring something larger for holidays/longer trips. We already use a local 'Pick & Drop' service to Heathrow and Gatwick (or at least we did) which is very convenient and not much more than the cost of parking there.

Regards,

IanT

Edited By IanT on 16/05/2021 12:20:03

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What a brilliant contraption

MichaelG.

I want one!

Not sure my ancient body is up to it though😢

Edited By V8Eng on 16/05/2021 15:04:30

The battery pack weight on a tesla M3 includes the case and coolant channels and batt management and is 1/2 a ton. Some saving is planned by using the casing as part of the vehicle structure. ab-less battery tech may help reduce lithium sizes a bit but it'll take a leap of tech to squeeze much more out for the next few years.

Originally Tesla planned for their charge stations to carry out automatic battery swaps and they built one or two. The Model s was able to have a batterys wap done in a matter of minutes but then the logistics of how many packs to keep at any station etc led to it being abandoned.

I think one of the neater ideas for road freight that has been tried is a modest pack size and a pantograph head to pickup from overhead wires on motorways - just in the slow lane since the pack is recharged and allows overtakes and fuels the non-motorway sections.

pgk

Even if you add the motor, it's got to compare quite well with the weight of an engine, gearbox, diff, driveshafts and fuel tank of a similar size RWD car.

Top speed: 80km/hr (about 40mph)

Range (I think): 60 - 120km (= up to about 75 miles - but I don't know enough Norwegian to understand the comment following the figures)

Battery Guarantee 10 year (yes, ten) claimed.

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Those are from the description of the Norwegian-built, 3-seater Buddy to which Thor refers us. I thought its makers could have found a better background for the advertising photo than an ugly, graffiti-covered brick wall though. I like the cheeky end-on parking shown in some of the real-street photos!

Is it still made?

= = = =

Pgk Pgk refers to the Bond Bug. I had two specimens of the previous cars built under the Bond brand, by Sharps Commericials, and badged as the Bond Minicar.

This was a three-wheeler somewhat longer than a Reliant. The steel chassis and aluminium + fibre-glass body held a modified Villiers 2-stroke engine fitted with what was called the Siba 'Dynastart', functioning as starter-motor switched to dynamo once the engine was running. Handling was a bit of an acquired art because the engine and powered single front wheel were on a swinging-arm projecting ahead of the base of a vertical column topped by a quadrant and worm rather as on early road-rollers. That in turn necessitated the steering-wheel being in a vertical plane at an angle in azimuth to the dashboard.

As for the Renault 'Twingo'.... I have an idea that 'Twingo' as a brand name was already in use before Monsieur Renualt thought of it. Not for a car but for a particular product of a British manufacturer of gentlemen's underwear.

Another video I found recently, about the repair of a Tesla battery pack.

One duff cell seems to be enough to kill a whole sheet.

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Bill

You see it a lot with rechargeables where only one cell in the circuit has drained, the other one or two are fine

Batteries/electricity are a bit of spooky science

Hi Nigel,

i believe the last Buddy made in Norway was made in 2014. Isn't 80 km/h almost 50 mph? The range of 60 - 120 km depends on how cold it is and how you are driving. The Buddy was intended to be a car used in towns, and there is one parked on the industrial site 10 min. away from where I live, and 5 min. from me there is an owner of a Twingo. Teslas and Leafs are very common in my neighborhood.

Thor

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Google translate appears to do a decent job here: **LINK**

https://translate.google.co.uk/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=kjørelengde%20varierende%20med%20årstid%20og%20kjørestil&op=translate&hl=en-GB

MichaelG.