Not quite a car, not quite a motorcycle: a vehicle built for one(thesunbest.com) |
Not quite a car, not quite a motorcycle: a vehicle built for one(thesunbest.com) |
Looks like he tried again about 8 years ago and then failed again :/
I mean to me the price needs to go down by half or more from $17k or whatever. At which point I might be interested.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duo_(Krankenfahrzeug)
Essentially a motorcycle with a cabin built around it. And yes, technically they were meant for disabled people - but during communist times getting an actual proper car(even a Fiat 126p) was extremely difficult - this perhaps less so.
More like a goldwing motorcycle in size.
I’d rather have a car. I often need to carry passengers, carry large or heavy things, and a new economy car is in the same ballpark price.
Who is this really for? I don’t see many people buying this as their only personal transportation if it only travels 100 miles on a charge and can’t take a passenger. It’s price too high and isn’t fun enough to be considered a recreational purchase.
I'd rather not have a car for my daily commute. Driving my large family vehicle for my job is wasteful and inefficient. I almost never need to carry anything large or heavy on my daily commute. I work less than 20 miles from home. I don't need a daily commuter vehicle with more than 2.5x this range.
I would love to buy a small electric vehicle, but the cost is prohibitive. A small vehicle, safer than a motorcycle and more idiot proof, would be perfect to augment my existing transportation options.
Yes, for rainy days I have a pair of waterproof overpants in the top case and a pair of waterproof gloves. The jackets are all waterproof (Goretex or similar). I got soaked wet while commuting on the bicycle, never on the motorcycle.
Why don't you own a Twizy already?
It shouldn't be a mystery why motorcycle accidents are more common. A superbike like a Yamaha R1 is capable of 0-100mph in less than 6 seconds, all in first gear. Ownership of an R1 is within the reach of many under 25s and most enthusiastic under 30s. Contrast that with a supercar which, for most people, will be out of reach until much later in life, if ever, and even then is such a big investment that most just sit around in air-conditioned garages rather than hitting the B-roads of England every Sunday morning.
None of that means that commuting on a more sensible motorcycle is particularly dangerous in the grand scheme of things.
Basically my thoughts. Not nearly enough for the price. I think the same thing when I see those Crossbows ripping around. The (2) passengers both wearing helmets, probably unable to have a simple conversation due to the wind-blast (unless you put a Sena in there or something), and it just doesn't seem all that fun.
I also ride motorcycles and dirt bikes so I'm definitely pretty biased, but smaller and more fuel efficient vehicles make me happy either way, and I'd prefer for them to succeed. The (lack of) fun factor isn't a beef I have with them, but one that others might have who a) want a new vehicle, b) don't want a motorcycle, and c) want to save money on fuel and take up less space.
I agree.
The only way I could see things like this work is if there were some incentive, like 50 paid parking places turned into 250 free/cheap parking spaces for tiny vehicles. Or roads that permit only small vehicles.
I mean what if you took a 2-lane road designed for cars and split it into 4 lanes, two bike lanes and two tiny-car/golf-cart lanes?
But in +100,000km of total riding time I've had very few injuries, just scrapes and bruises because I'm always wearing boots, helmet and gloves as a minimum.
I've high sided on a track twice (too fast into a corner, lost traction, immediately got traction back and flew me several metres in the air). And I've low sided from road debris twice on public roads (once on a round-a-bout at low speed) and private roads (oil slick in a private car park).
I imagine this vehicle for the average person who doesn't ride a lot with the view of safety first would be safer in this than a motorcycle. But I agree with your and the OP's point above yours. An economy budget car would be a safer and equally viable purchase.
I had a sparrow which was almost identical to this -- $13K, in Y2000 dollars, plus a bicycle and it was great. I could park it anywhere, get around town, commute to work, and pick up a few groceries on the way home.
True, my wife had a Mercedes wagon (T-Klasse) so we also had the ability to transport large objects when needed.
At one point I was on a board which had (including me) three separate sparrow owners!
Latest incarnation is at: https://www.theengineer.co.uk/sinclair-c5-revamped-by-sir-cl...
I had a beautiful '72 El Camino, but it had downsides. As a good friend once said, "It's not much of a car, but it's not much of a truck, either!"
A novel idea, I guess it comes down to price in this case.
EDIT: I say "fuel efficiency" referring to the fact that there are gasoline-fueled versions of this same type of vehicle. I realize the Solo is battery powered.
https://www.thedrive.com/a-list/3171/5-times-silicon-valley-...
Apparently Sergey Brin had one.
!
Heck, it looks like it’s so expensive that it also has to compete against brand new vehicles in the “cheapest new car possible” category. Cars like the Nissan Versa eat this thing for lunch from a value standpoint. You could probably even buy a brand new Mitsubishi mid-size SUV for the price and stuff the whole family in (a bit crude compared to the competition, but it’s reliable and repairable!)
> Priced at $18,500, it also costs about half as much as the current average sales price for a new passenger vehicle ($35,667 as of March 2020).
Looking at the average new sales price is almost misleading in itself. Only a certain kind of buyer buys a new vehicle in the first place, and they’re often led in that direction by financing - not purchase price.
Funny, a few years ago I bought a brand new Scion iA (a Mazda 2 rebadged as a Scion, now sold as a Toyota Yaris sedan). The sticker price was $16,499, purchased for $15,999 with dealer incentives (Scion was a no-haggle brand). It had all the features you’d want: A/C, power windows, decent infotainment system with Bluetooth and USB, four seats, four doors, 40MPG fuel economy, and on top of that it was an IIHS top safety pick at the time. It gets service at any Toyota dealership across the country.
Since it had four doors and seats I could even drive Uber/Lyft with it. Just look at how unpopular coupes are in the 2020s (The new Mustang is a crossover SUV! Smart left the United States! The Fiat 500 and New Beetle were discontinued!), people just don’t sacrifice two doors to save five hundred bucks off the sticker price anymore like they did in 1995.
Unlike motorcycles, tricycles can't bank on turns, or are very limited in that.
That said, these things seem brilliant the more I reason through it. I’d guess that nearly all the same sensations of riding a motorcycle are there with the Nikken... all of the things that make riding a motorcycle fun like punchy acceleration, open air, and leaning in corners. At the same time, doubling up the front end in this way has to be a huge boon to traction. I suspect the suspension travel on these things allows for more lean angle than I’d be comfortable with outside of a track.
One way some manufacturers approached this was putting powerful hydraulics for steering, but that made the mass of a bike even higher, thus negating the benefit by far.
A good bike must have low centre of mass, and easy to turn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hz35y4Bywg
I also think Polaris Slingshot can pull over 1G in a turn.
I got a 503 error!
Nor does it exist in a legislative wasteland, like the article implies. It’s considered to be a motorcycle in most US states, with all attendant licensing requirements.
Most of the 3 wheeled vehicles offered in the US are more performance minded.
Leno shows a Vanderhall 'Venice' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X71spAvmw4
Doug DeMuro critiques a Polaris Slingshot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf_O9mZcSs4
> The Sinclair C5 is a small one-person battery electric velomobile, technically an "electrically assisted pedal cycle".[1] It was the culmination of Sir Clive Sinclair's long-running interest in electric vehicles. Although widely described as an "electric car", Sinclair characterised it as a "vehicle, not a car".[2]
Also, the top speed is extremely high compared to the alleged security features. Can you survive a crash in it?
Well, it is significantly more limited than most new passenger vehicles, both in terms of how many people/things it can haul and its safety when sharing the road with vehicles that are on the road today.
If they want anybody to buy these, they better test them anyway.
[0] The founder explaining the car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sDwGazHefM
According to Wikipedia[0], a Smart is actually shorter and it can also be electric.
This actually has quite a few shortcomings compared to a Smart:
* Cannot carry a passenger
* Requires a motorcycle license, which many people might not have
* Technically a motorcycle, so safety standards may not be up to par
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Fortwo#Third_generation_...
They advertised this but in reality it's rarely possible. They are 2.5m long and most cars in Europe are <2m wide.
E.g. in the UK standard parking is 2.4m wide so a smart sticks out
Caveat lector. I know this to be technically illegal in some European countries, even when the entire vehicle is parked within the lines.
Then there's the whole Kei car phenomenon..
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a27310639/smart-fortwo-dis...
The main use of these cars was the Car2Go service, which was owned by Mercedes themselves, and that service has also shut down in North America.
They were cute cars, decent for a short trip certainly, but we never saw an all-electric model
I think they are all electric now, at least in the UK.
https://www.autoweek.com/news/a2065371/cabin-cruiser-flying-...
So the question I asked myself is why would anyone buy this instead of a motorcycle? I guess some may argue that it's safer, what with it having four wheels instead of two, but that's about it.
You still need some sort of gear if you don't want to end up wet, you still need some sort of gear in the winter if you don't want to freeze.
I also wonder what the summer situation looks like. As it's not closed, it most likely has no air conditioning, but it's enclosed enough to get much less wind than on a motorcycle (which is still unpleasant in a congested city).
It's big enough that you can't filter in places where it's allowed, you have to park it like a regular car, which in France means paid and limited street parking, or far away and expensive underground parking. Motorcycles can park on the sidewalks for free (at least for the moment).
The few that are here are limited to 25 mph, 40 kmh and are car share novelties.
This is the land of the pickup truck and massive SUV. Heck, even motorcycles are bigger than the Twizzy here.
We live in a house and it's our only vehicle (granted, we commute to work by e-bike). I actually fitted it with a trailed attachment so I can run some "big" errands (to the waste-center, buying some wood, etc..).
Maintenance wise it's great: only thing to change is the windshield fluid.
Negative points: the range. You can do 80km with it only. I plan to buy a tesla battery module one day and double the capacity, thus doubling the range. But for now the rare time we've had to go "far" we just rented or borrowed a car.
I think it hasn't done very well, probably mainly because it's an open vehicle. If it had proper doors I think it would've done better. The formula can work, it just has to look a bit more normal.
At the moment, in my country people are much more likely to go for an e-bike.
We should be hoping for ubiquitous public transport infrastructure that everyone can utilize and afford.
This is a form of ubiquitous public transport infrastructure. Automobiles and roads are already the most inclusive form of public transportation ever invented (measured as percent of public served), and have the cheapest per-rider cost to maintain for any government out of any infrastructure ever invented to date, while still supporting full distances and high service rates.
And while cost of vehicles and driver requirements are currently barriers -- reducing the cost of vehicles and improving their ability to self drive, would let everyone utilize and afford it.
That means that any attempt of pushing everybody at mass transportation at those places will fail, even if executed perfectly. But small cars are perfect for feeder routes.
Jokes aside, the dependence on self-driving OP was alluding to is wildly exaggerated in my eyes, because the other kind of self-driving (user drives a short-term rental) works just as well. And with short term rentals, physical footprint is making an actual difference because their availability is bounded by storage.
There used to be a wave of microcar concepts that were trying to solve parking by folding up a little. Back then those never made sense because they were still intended as personal vehicles and those end up taking up a one-size-fits-all spot anyways. But combined with the innovation of micro-rentals (modeled after docked bike-share) those fold-up tricks could turn from a gimmick into a key enabling technology. All you need is self-parking to store them in a compact FIFO and self-parking is beyond solved. Once you have that, all minor extension of the unparking range (from unparking just enough to unfolding at the storage dock to dedicated pickup locations nearby to pickup anywhere) would be incremental improvements to service quality that would require much less than full autonomy.
To the end customer, the only difference would be cost, and if you are rich enough, or the service is subsidized enough by investor cash, or the cost of living in your area is low enough, then it all ends up roughly the same.
Sidenote: i wonder whether the lockdown may work as a selection pressure on the covid to produce the more viral, like long living on surfaces, etc., mutation of the virus.
Our new post-pandemic reality might make shared rides less desirable. Or more desirable as a marginally safer alternative to public transit.
A single ride hailer should be sent a sedan when they are on a more conventional route with easy pickup and drop off points. That would make more sense from both a unit cost and quality perspective than pooling every time. Augmented reality could also highlight and fill open seats quickly, including when that second carpooler can’t be found.
Parking would be a huge advantage in a dense city. Limited parking can create a psychology barrier that impacts your realized mobility even if you own a car. I regularly decide to not go somewhere because I know how much of a pain it will be to park. I've been tempted by motorcycles for this reason alone.
Edit: I couldn't find anything on their website about safety at all. I'm guessing that means the safety story isn't something they can brag about. So probably no airbag.
- You can't take an arbitrary person as passenger (they need gear and pillion experience)
- You can't take more than a backpack's worth of cargo (slightly expandable with panniers)
This can't take a passenger at all, and looks like it has the same cargo restrictions. It looks fun but I can't see it replacing a small car which solves both of these problems, so it needs to be cheap enough to be a 'fun' second vehicle.
It's like they distilled bad down into a concentrated form.
The key difference is that motorcycles are cool and fun to drive. Unless this thing accelerates like a Tesla, nobody will want it.
User drives short term rental gave me all kinds worries which I don't have driving my own car. Being responsible for checking damage when picking it up, worrying about minor (as in accidentally kerbing a wheel) damage while I'm driving, having someone hit it while it is parked somewhere, getting caught in traffic while returning it and being fined for going over the allotted time.
Writing this down has just made me realise how nice it would be if there was a car rental company which worked on a first come first served basis with rental charged per minute. If they also had some kind of automatic photo booth to take detailed before and after photos that would be almost perfect.
I'm not sure I agree with that, but there is some logic that to thinking that a larger, slower, clunkier vehicle might lead to fewer fatal accidents.
A vehicle that can take the same corner at higher speeds can also take more difficult corners at lower speeds and is a lot more forgiving.
For reference, 800HP is 600kW.
Not even bicycles can even approach the density of a train/metro/bus, which is required to have cities with the density we currently have, and I don't think covid-19 is nearly enough of a threat to make us give up on that.
Luckily it happened in a city and I was in full leather tracksuit. I got through with a few bruises and ruptured spleen (which thankfully healed on it's own and I now have two of them).
Am I reading your comment right? Your spleen ruptured, healed it's self, now you have two of them?
Apparently this is the current medical consensus in my country- if the spleen is ruptured but not causing massive internal bleeding, the course of action is to monitor patient to see if it heals on it's own. In my case the ruptured part formed scar tissues around it, separating itself from the original spleen.
Oh please; it doesn't fall over, keeps its occupant dry, protects its occupant more in general, it obviously doesn't have all the detriments of a motorcycle.
Which is incidentally exactly the same situation as falls on a motorcycle.
Tabletop gamers have a more precise words however: "rules as written" and "rules as intended". RAW and RAI for short.
It’s not cheaper vs. better. Subscriptions will be both cheaper and better.
Investors have no reason to subsidize costlier transportation modalities that customers may not even prefer half the time. As for the verbiage, I don’t think self-driving car subscription services will brand themselves as taxi fleets. They will replace the vehicle that you own and that sits on your driveway 97% of the time (that’s a general “you”). However, Americans like the feeling of ownership over their vehicle. The name of the service should take that into account.
Assuming your native language is French, I think you mean “wide”, not “large”.
Automating out a taxi/Über driver saves 50× to 1000× more money per traveler. And the infrastructure for a car ride cost way less than train + track + catenary lines + stations + antiquated ticketing system etc., so salaries represent a higher percentage of total costs.
So unless you put in a lot of engineering effort to get rid of these unlikely-but-still-common problems, running a driverless operation is going to be more disruptive and less cost-efficient than paying the driver salaries.
Yet it still has enough edge cases to mean it's not worthwhile
The airline industry doesn’t work very well as an analogy. It’s not a completely free market, and costs are so high that it’s genuinely hard for airlines to provide a better experience without charging a lot.
Why do some of you think that finding a wierd edge case is enough to invalidate a whole infrastructure? This isn't derivation of a mathematical proof where counter-example invalidates the hypothesis.
Last year I was nearly going broke spending money on Ubers when my then girlfriend's kidney's failed. She wasn't considered immobile enough to qualify for the transport to and from Dialysis, but would be drained enough that walking to and navigating public transit home after would be impossible for her. So this is not just weird edge case for me, this scenario was a constant part of my life.
These days they run almost empty at huge losses. You still need to haul 300 tonne of steel through whole country, even if there are 5 passengers.
Maybe its the best implementation of the train network for civil travel, but still needs to be heavily complemented by network of buses to all small places.
And that grandma drive to the door would still have to use a taxi every single time.
Why do you feel you need to talk about a different infrastructure when people talk about the one you yourself acknowledge is needed to transport people to/from trains?
So you won't mind electric cars then, which fix that problem ?
My father-in-law hates that I ride a street bike, and he frequently texts and drives. I'm like, you are directly creating the scenario for me which you are warning me about. The complete lack of realization of this makes my eyes bleed.
Let's be honest, nobody really believes doing wheelies, lane-splitting or being able to go at 130mph actually make us safer. That's just what we tell our moms when they're worried about us, and we know they won't be reassured by the truth - which is that we know what we're doing is dangerous but we're going to keep doing it anyway because it's fun.
Most if not all of the inherent danger of motorcycles is due to the existence of cars, driven by distracted people. You can mitigate just about all risk of riding a motorcycle. When I want to be an idiot on two wheels, I'll go mountain biking, or downhilling, or ride my dirt bike. On the street I keep my ass as safe as possible.
Bikes a) take up less space, b) don't cause traffic jams, c) are only more unsafe than cars because of people in cars not paying attention. Funnily enough, bad behavior on a bike is regarded as 10x worse than bad behavior in a car, despite the fact that a distracted driver in a car can easily cause 10x the damage, and that no one on a motorcycle is scrolling through their Instagram feed while riding. Let's be realistic - more people are distracted in cars than on motorcycles because you need all of your limbs to operate a bike.
You say you've seen someone pulling a wheelie and it "needs to be banned" (it already is illegal, so I don't know what your plan is here), well I have seen easily hundreds of distracted drivers of cars who can actually end my life because of their actions. No one in a car is going to get killed by a motorcycle, but the exact opposite happens all the time.
That ended it for me, bike was totaled, wife decided I stopped and I had no intention in getting involved in a more serious accident. I miss riding, I miss the sensation of freedom.
> I miss the sensation of freedom
I'm not surprised.
The distant second place is road condition - surprise potholes, open manholes, spits of concrete, pools of lubricant and cooling fluid after previous crashes is also nice.
And only then comes something that can be remotely called reckless riding.
I will suggest that motorcycles are inherently more dangerous. A car has four points of contact, so like a table, there's some inherent stability to it. A motorcycle's two points of contact means that stability has to be in some sense active, which seems problematic.
They are so stable in fact, that at high speeds one needs to use a technique called counter-steering in order to induce a gyroscopic and geometric reaction that sends the motorcycle into the required position. This technique is also used by some bicycle riders, to a smaller extent and also partly subconsciously.
Motorcycles are very stable. In comparison, the steering and suspension dynamics of four wheeled vehicles have to be very finely tuned in order to avoid feedback effects, instabilities, and this tuning has to be balanced with phenomenons such as oversteer and understeer. Overconstraining is also the cost for many issues, as is the consumer demand for bad form factors that lead to loss of control, rolls, and sometimes even death-wobbles.
Tricycles, such as this one, at least aren't overconstrained, but they are a lot less stable as they have neither the inherent reactive stability of bicycles nor the balanced resistance to torque while maintaining stability. This is further compounded by demand for non-optimal geometries, such as the one in the article, that lead to even less stability. This obviously doesn't apply to vehicles such as the Yamaha Nikken.
still, unless you're driving at the limit, the main risk is probably hitting or getting hit by other vehicles. most of the "inherently more dangerous" comes from having essentially zero protection in a crash compared to a modern car.
That 3 wheeled vehicle is fine for commuting or small shopping, you never consider going there on a R1, but on a mid-range city bike or adv bike you can do it pretty well.
Even if people drive their cars safely, the huge difference in performance means they're more likely to get in trouble on a bike.
I tell them either lean with me when I'm going around a bend or stay directly up right. I've not had any problems. And I've had a fair number of Tinder Dates with people without any experience of riding who've came accustomed quite quickly.
Regenerative braking means less wear on the brakes, and there's no particulate matter from the exhaust pipe. In what way are electric cars worse?
https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/2020/1/28/tyres-not-...
The figures in the linked article are overblown: 5,8 g/km means one throws away a pair of used tires every 1000 km, which is not the case since the average tire lifecycle is 20k to 30k km.
Incorrect. I drive a lot in the city and I use the friction brakes so little that they start malfunctioning after a week or so if I don't do some hard stops once a week or so to clean up the pad surface. I only use the 'regular' brakes if I am stopping from high speed, quickly, or at the bottom of a steep hill. Probably use regenerative breaking for >90% of all normal stops.
But I too have ridden heaps of miles in a previous life when I'd habitually tour the US on two wheels, and there can definitely be frustrations and risks with inexperienced passengers.
From having to convince them things like No, your Keds are not satisfactory for us to go riding. Yes, you must wear a helmet and some pants and gloves would be smart. No, you should not lean into the corners, just be a predictable appendage of the bike especially at low speeds. No, you should not put your foot anywhere near the chain/chain guard, regardless of how annoyingly high the rear pegs are on this superbike. Yes, you must hold on to me and not let go and bail in a panic, yes, even if the front end comes off the ground and you're looking at the sky briefly.
This walk down memory lane reminds me of the time I had to give my ex a ride to work when her car wouldn't start. I had an 04 R1 back then and she never rode on the back before because she was terrified of the thing, and I never had taken passengers on it because it was so poorly suited to it, I actually had to put passenger pegs on for that trip. Just breathing on the throttle in first with her on the back would pull the front end off the ground, it was comically bad with the combination of short wheelbase, high CoG of the passenger on that steep tail, and liter bike tq. When she got off at work she was shaking with fear and said she almost fell off the first time the front end came up a bit and that was having significant experience riding on the back of my previous sport-tourer.
On that previous sport-tourer years prior we had an annoying spill where she was leaned over to see around my helmet while we were riding in an unfamiliar part of Chicago when the front end locked up briefly over an oily patch on Ashland braking for a light. Due to her leaning to see around me we were down and tumbling down the road in the blink of an eye, it was rather shocking but things happen quickly when the front end locks up with a passenger leaned over. Fortunately we walked away with just skinned knees, bruised egos, and a ground through stator cover.
My Kawasaki Z900 (2017) is pretty comical for wheelies, more so with a pillion on your R1 as you noted.
Here's a pick of a stock version of the bike. Because of the position of the pillion seat, it being so far to the rear, the short swing arm and because the pillion seat sits so far up and away from the rider. The front wheel lifts with such a trivial amount of power to the front.
I've still had a few rides on it with pillions but god damn, like you said. It does not inspire confidence with an additional passenger.
The Adventure Tourers I've had I was a lot more comfortable with, to date that's a Tiger 800 (2015) and a current Kawasaki Versys 2020 (1000CC). Both were great for additional passengers. Especially the Versys with the electronic suspension to cater for additional pillions or luggage.
My experience with riding with pillions must be close to, maybe, 2-3000km at best. And that's being generous. I've not had any accidents with a pillion, only when solo. As you've shown, motorbikes are fickle beasts.