Quote:
Originally Posted by aerohead
And Madison Avenue,at the behest of large auto makers,has succeeded in planting fear in the mind of the buying public (formerly citizens),with respect to safety,as a function of car size,which went all the way up to the White House. All the small concepts I've seen have bombed at the international car shows. There seem to be a deep-rooted psychology embedded within modern culture. Small means,cheapness,retardation,low performance,inconvenience,individual failure,danger,impotence,austere self-inflicted deprivation.
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Agreed!
Personally, I'm attempting to home-build an electric car (really a trike shaped like an enclosed car) with a sub-0.2 Cd that sits 4 and weighs at least under 1500 pounds (and I'm constantly trying to think of ways to make it lighter). In fact, the thing isn't even small (basically Corvette-like in proportions)...but that doesn't stop flaming messages about it being an "econobox" or that it would "never pass crash tests" or "who would want to be in a 1500 pound death trap hitting a 4000 pound SUV?"
In fact, it seems like a self-perpetuating problem...people buying large and heavy cars to "defend" themselves from other large and heavy cars.
This also makes it a royal pain for anyone trying to break the mold and build a light and/or efficient car, such as small companies like Aptera. Not only do you have to challenge the stigmas, but you have to have enough money to crash test the thing (and, even then, many won't trust the safety).
IMO, the Edison2/VLC project (I don't have enough posts to be allowed to give a/the link) nailed it with an under 0.16 Cd car that seats four, has a short enough length to be dead-easy to park, and actually incurred HALF the impact on passengers during a crash test as an average modern car. Not to mention they won the X-prize with that car. But even when I showed that to people on the EV list I'm a member of, they gawked "looks like a death trap...come on...it's a 1300 pound car!". And now, the man running the project, Oliver Kuttner, has apparently moved the project to (edit: the Ukraine) because public stigma is so bad in the US that no major auto manufacturer was willing to license/build his car in mass production.
If anyone has a hack to get past this stigma...I'd love to hear it.