this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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It'll be interesting to see if Americans would ever go for a "City Car". I believe Citreon are bringing the ami to the USA and I'd be tempted to get one a second car - it's certainly well under that pricepoint.
Just some thoughts:
I've owned a first gen Leaf for about 6 years and it's my daily. I bought it for very cheap. My commute is about 25 miles total on surface streets and I've put about 40k miles on it. The usable range is probably 40 miles if you want to take care of this style battery, which I do because a new one is the value of the car.
It's been a good experience but I need to have a 2nd car or a rental if I want to leave town. It's worked for me, but there's no way anyone else I know would accept this.
IMO, the experience of "refilling" the car will need to be much quicker for wide adoption in the US, especially for those who are not able to charge at home. You'd also have to convince people that going electric is better for some reason, be it a feeling that you're saving the earth(which is debatable depending on all kinds of factors) or that the performance of some models is pretty awesome.
It's the same as the pick-up truck argument. It seems insane to me to drive a $60k vehicle so that when you need to move a piece of furniture you can... i can literally rent a pickup for an hour for $20. For the half-dozen times a year that I need to move something it seems ridiculous to own it.
To be honest I don’t see much use for this vehicle in the US. Even in most cities, you will likely need to drive on the highway sometimes, which this can’t do. And if I’m not on high speed roads, why wouldn’t I just use a bicycle? Particularly as e-bikes are now widely available and far more affordable than this thing.
Here in Montreal we have a very popular car sharing company that allows many of us to not own cars.
It's biggest issue at the moment is that the company can't buy cars as quickly as demand increases. This type of cars would be a great addition to their park since a lot of the trips their customer do are short inner city trips.
As a parent, I don't know if I agree. It takes significant effort to get my kid out on a bike as our road system isn't great for them. (My city is actually fairly good, but we still can't, for example, get to his school without needing to ride on the road)
If it could do 45mph and had a 40 mile range then it'd work for nearly all our in-town trips. We have a phev that can only do about 20 miles on battery and at the start of the pandemic we went 9 months without needing to put gas in it. I wouldn't want it as our only vehicle but it'd be pretty viable as our secondary one.
The top speed is 28. So that’s what I’m saying, this vehicle occupies largely where riding a bike is fairly safe.
Maybe in some places, but that's definitely not true in my city. The intersection i can see from my home office window has a 35mph speed limit and their are accidents there all the time. I haven't seen anyone badly injured, but there was at least one that went up a berm, over a multiuse bike path, through a fence and crashed into a neighbor's house.
I'd totally take my 9 yr old on a 3-4 mile bike ride if we're going somewhere that we can get to on protected bike lanes, but there are lots of places in this city that aren't accessible that way and I'd be much happier in a small city car. I've taken him along a 45 mph road on a few occasions and it's nerve-wracking, legally you aren't allowed to pass a bike until you can give them 3 foot of space but it happens ALL THE TIME and it's a real deterrent to cycling for us.
The 28mph top speed i think is a european classification thing, but yeah that'd be the showstopper for me - not the size or range.
What a cool little car!
Their Oli concept car is probably even cooler and would likely work better in the US market.
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The issue with the Ami is that it is closer to a fast golf buggy than a standard car (even a "city car" in the standard sense can keep up at highway speeds, like Japans Kei class) if it were available in a country like the US, it could really only be targeted at the few small communities where NEVs are encouraged. Technically they can be legal in most of the country to drive on roads up to a certain speed, but only a few areas have specific incentives and laws for them.
If more US states incentivised small, low to mid speed short range EVs as second cars for short local trips, made them the budget option for the many, many families that don't need multiple full sized cars would take one on as their first EV.
I mean the real way forward would be walkable towns, mixed zoning in suburbs, disincentivize large vehicles, hell disincentivize driving in general, expand bike lanes, dedicated bus lanes, invest in other options like light rail, remove "stroads", shut down the false narratives that every car needs 1000miles of range, every house needs a multi car garage, every shop needs a theme park sized car park, etc etc etc...
Totally agree. I think the lack of mixed zoning is fucking weird about this country. When I lived in edinburgh I was upstairs from a bar and an indian restaurant - but where I live now it's almost a mile to get to any kind of retail or dining.
I was also reminded in a recent story about revitalizing downtowns that lots of asian cities have all kinds of stuff inside high-rise buildings. Like you'd got a noodle restaurant that was on the third floor of a random building in hong kong. But the US seems to practically require that they be entirely office space.