Fun Stuff > CHATTER
Bickering about bicycles, now with occasional tips about motorised vehicles
jwhouk:
"Heavy quadricycle"?
(Looks up on WP)
Oh.
Uhm, one small problem.
Smart cars are nice - if you live in a big city. If you live out in the middle of frakkin' nowhere, they're not much help - especially if you burn an entire tank of fuel/all of your battery power going one way to the next major city.
Which is what happens in the US.
bhtooefr:
Smart cars are actually far heavier than the heavy quadricycle class, or even my proposed American analogue to it (which is nearly twice as heavy). And, I wasn't talking about electrics at all. (That's actually another separate discussion, but in-road in-motion charging is the answer there.) Also, I actually really hate the Smart, it's awful at almost everything it does, but it won't leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere out of fuel.
Most Smarts in the US run on gasoline, have an 8.7 gallon tank, and EPA combined mileage is 36 city/highway. That's 313 miles. Or, if you're driving far enough in a day that this is a concern, it's gonna be all highway, and EPA highway is 41. That's 357 miles.
357 miles will get you to a gas station. OK, you need premium, but 357 will get you to one that has premium, too. And, if you're driving 357 miles one way to work, you are far from typical, policy shouldn't be written around you, and when the hell are you going to sleep?
jwhouk:
I was speaking of cars smaller than a smart car (note: that's how they spell it, without the capital S - except when it's at the start of a sentence; take that, grammarians!). Smaller city cars with smaller motors and smaller engines won't get you as far.
bhtooefr:
Keep in mind that something like a Geo Metro would meet my idea of a regulation, and that would get you plenty far (and using less fuel and in more comfort than any smart...) And, it's just a matter of power to weight, drag (those two affecting performance), and fuel tank size versus vehicle efficiency (affecting range), for how far you can go. And, because I'm proposing rolling back safety regulations for this class (which, European heavy quadricycles also have rolled back safety regulations, being a four-wheeled three-wheel motorcycle (I know, that sentence doesn't parse at all correctly) legally), weight can be far lower for a given amount of capability.
And, the heavy quadricycle is the closest analogue I've got due to the rollback in safety standards, although the kind of car I'm proposing is really more like Japan's keijidosha class in capability. You wouldn't want to take it on the freeway, but it's capable of it.
Grognard:
Geo Metro LSI ... I got some photos of my wreck which would make you never to want to drive one.
Beer can with Styrofoam for rigidity.
I'm VERY lucky to have survived.
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