We need ultra light four wheeled cars

[RedDevil]

If anything rarity drives people to spend more as that's their ingrained response to closeouts and bargain sales.
The worlds Black Friday decade is coming up soon.

[sendler]

Our evolutionary survival psycho-chemistry has been deftly hijacked. Our brain chemisty rewards evolved over the course of a million years but we have only been living in a modern economy for a few thousand. We have stone age brains living a modern culture. We were once born to survive. Now we are born to shop. It's who we are.
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https://youtu.be/9XdaUth2oUw
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[niky]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

The problem isn't really the weight in the first place, it's the shape and size. If I drove a 5,000 pound Prius, I'd get roughly the same fuel economy as the regular weight one. My motorcycle weighs 400 pounds, yet gets worse fuel economy than my Prius.

Vehicles are designed with aesthetics and utility as first priorities. Aerodynamics are a treatment applied to the first 2 priorities.

I like that Tesla has highlighted the lack of grill on their Model 3, and hope that aesthetic becomes the preferred one, replacing our current atrocious monster (faux) grill fad.

Your bike is overpowered, actually.

100-150cc bikes can hit 100 km/l.

The trouble is that they have about a fifth of the utility of a Prius.

But at a mere fraction of the price.

[Lemmy]

A motorcycle has exactly the same utility as a Pious in the single occupant/single vehicle scenario - look about at your fellow motorists next time you go for a drive and you'll see that the massive majority of vehicles are carrying a single occupant, far and away the most common combination.

So they're of equal utility in the most common vehicle-occupant combination. Yet the resources that go into building and transporting a 1.4 tonne Pious are horrific compared to a 120kg light motorcycle.

The utility argument is, in most instances, simply an excuse, not a genuine objection. The planet is dying, resources are dwindling, we have far too much strategic dependence on foreign fuel and material sources - we should be modifying our lifestyles to suite the most efficient transport methods, not making excuses for continuing to drive around in a 5 seat car with 4 seats unoccupied.

[sendler]

Terry's streamilined Zero got 270 mpge during his world's first and only electric motorcycle IronButt 1,000 miles in 24 hours. Moving average speed was over 75 mph! He normally gets 295 mpge.
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[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by Lemmy

...look about at your fellow motorists next time you go for a drive and you'll see that the massive majority of vehicles are carrying a single occupant, far and away the most common combination.

The utility argument is, in most instances, simply an excuse, not a genuine objection. The planet is dying, resources are dwindling, we have far too much strategic dependence on foreign fuel and material sources - we should be modifying our lifestyles to suite the most efficient transport methods, not making excuses for continuing to drive around in a 5 seat car with 4 seats unoccupied.

Don't forget the 6L V8, AWD, 8' box, and 18,000lb towing capacity.

[niky]

Originally Posted by Lemmy

A motorcycle has exactly the same utility as a Pious in the single occupant/single vehicle scenario - look about at your fellow motorists next time you go for a drive and you'll see that the massive majority of vehicles are carrying a single occupant, far and away the most common combination.

So they're of equal utility in the most common vehicle-occupant combination. Yet the resources that go into building and transporting a 1.4 tonne Pious are horrific compared to a 120kg light motorcycle.

The utility argument is, in most instances, simply an excuse, not a genuine objection. The planet is dying, resources are dwindling, we have far too much strategic dependence on foreign fuel and material sources - we should be modifying our lifestyles to suite the most efficient transport methods, not making excuses for continuing to drive around in a 5 seat car with 4 seats unoccupied.

Oh, I completely agree.

The problem is getting the market to see that.

People got mo' money, they want mo' mo' mo'.

This is why the Tata Nano failed.

This is why Indians are starting to get into bigger-than-Kei cars.

This is why affluent Asians are going straight from 40 km/l scooters (40 in traffic) STRAIGHT into brand spanking new 1.5 ton MPVs and pick-up trucks.

The perception of utility trumps all common sense.

Me, I could get by with a two wheeler for 90% of my own needs. Even taking the kids to school can be done via bike, as their schools are relatively close (or go via busing service. Same cost per kilometer as driving, but no vehicular ownership overhead). Other times, I drive a Mirage (usually four or five up) But try convincing other parents here that they don't need a V6 Ford Explorer to send a single child to school...

[sendler]

We have to educate people about resource depletion somehow. There is too much greenwashing in the media giving everyone a false hope that solar and wind will seamlessly replace everything we are using now so that we can just keep on consuming with business as usual. But solar and wind are not even keeping up with growth. 2005 to 2015 there has been a 4X greater increase in world energy consumption from coal (but tipping down for 2 years), oil, and gas than from solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, and biofuel. Even with the huge build out of the last decade, solar and wind currently provide less than 2% of world primary energy.
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These soccer moms must be helped to understand that young children today will live through the biggest event in the history of humans when the cost of oil goes steadily 5X and beyond in 30 years. And Phosphorus for fertilizer in 30 years. And then natural gas in 70 years. This will be like a 5X pay raise for our virtual workers and the price of all of the products and services that we need to maintain civilization in megacities. The growth/ debt based economy will cease to function. Degrowth is inevitable.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Carbon fiber really isn't that good for building structural parts of a car.
In a crash steel bends, carbon fiber shatters.

It goes well beyond that

Carbon fiber that shatters of burns leaves tiny irritating fiber particles that are a threat to health & environment

They are already an issue in aircraft crashes ...

[jjackstone]

Originally Posted by euromodder

It goes well beyond that

Carbon fiber that shatters of burns leaves tiny irritating fiber particles that are a threat to health & environment

They are already an issue in aircraft crashes ...

There will always be pros and cons to every material in use. Fiberglass does much the same thing as carbon fiber when it shatters but it has been in use for decades now. The thing about carbon fiber IIRC is that when it gets inside your body, whether as a shard or dust, your body does not treat it as a foreign object and try to destroy or eject it. Hence it can actually migrate into your blood stream and cause major problems at a later date.
JJ