Electric cars

I'm sorry, I want a car I can hop in and hop out off. If I have to wait as long as the animation on this clown car takes then no thanks. Can you say "death trap"? HOLY COW! if you rear end someone and have to wait to be cut out of one of these stupid things. Please go back to the drawing board.

they look cute and may well be practical but...I would hate to be in one after it is rammed by a big SUV or truck!

We have an electric car in India which costs $5000. GM also took part in the development.

Zero emission kinetic energy driven engine proto-type soon to be exposed! Stand by for breaking news.

Are electrics vehicles really an option for business use?
Andrew Yeoman, the Managing Director at Trimble UK said in his recent blog (http://www.trimblemediaeurope.com/blog/4560012387):
“The recent launch of the Hiriko electronic car has propelled electric vehicles into the limelight once again. These new funky, zero-emissions cars are not only environmentally friendly but also claim to be a ‘social innovation’! The idea being that local authorities owns a fleet of Hiriko cars and rent one to people when they need it – for a small fee. This makes them ideal in large cities where limited mileage is covered and charging points are plentiful. But are these or indeed any electric vehicle really of any use in the business world?
Would the average businessman or woman use these cars to drive up and down the motorway to attend meetings or to load up the boot with the tools and equipment they need to do their jobs out on the road? Probably not today.
While electric vehicles are wonderful in terms of green credentials, in reality at the moment they can be expensive and impractical for those doing significant miles.
Take for example a typical field or service engineer, for argument sake lets say a printer engineer. They travel an average of 500 miles per week, carrying 5kgs of equipment plus, in many cases, a spare printer adding another 35kgs. An electric car would be totally unviable for them due to current vehicle range and battery life.
The manufacturers manual states that they’d have to charge their vehicle every 50-75 miles but with a lack of charging points across the country, it would be impossible for the engineers to reliably get from appointment to appointment.
And of course, lets not forget that electronic vehicles cost between £10-15,000 more than a ‘normal’ petrol/diesel car.
So what’s the answer? It’s clear electric vehicles aren’t yet suitable for the business world but macro hybrid vehicles are. They don’t cost the earth but with their combined electric and internal combustion engine they will help save the earth. They can be filled up at any service station or charged where a point is available saving an average of 20% on annual fuel costs. They are now a viable option for businesses and could be the first step in paving the way for electric vehicles to offer the same value in the future.

Israeli's are way ahead.
The company to look up is Better Place who already have fully electric cars on the road!

The Hiriko's range of travel will increase substantially in a few years from battery technology. What could be a major flaw in the design is how do you get out of a parking space, on a busy street, safely and easily? If you drive head first into the curb, then you must back it out into traffic. Parking by backing it into the curb produces a similar problem of not being able to see the traffic when you decide to pull away from the curb.

The biggest hurdle that these sub-sub-compact cars face is that they cost too much. Why would I want to pay $16K for what is little more than an enclosed motorcycle when I could get a much larger and more versatile (albeit much thirstier)for the same price. What is needed is a giant leap backwards in technology away from expensive, twitchy high-tech lithium-ion batteries and ultra efficient motor systems until we can produce an urban runabout capable of 70-90 kph for about as many kilometers, which costs less than than $10K. In other words, we need a glorified golf cart, not an electric car which might come close to matching a petrol car's performance, but at several times the cost. There are Canadian companies which manufacture such vehicles, but they cannot legally be sold in the US because they don't meet our crash standards.

A question that I never saw completely answered is “ are cities really prepared to easily recharge these vehicles? It seems to me that, above all other questions of comfort, mobility, design, etc. an electric car must be easy to “feed”. Is it?

A question that I never saw completely answered is “ are cities really prepared to easily recharge these vehicles? It seems to me that, above all other questions of comfort, mobility, design, etc. an electric car must be easy to “feed”. Is it?

Are such small cars safe? I mean I've been hearing about how car-makers lately have been going to lengths to decrease the likelihood of passenger injury in the event of a crash, and I can only imagine that a smaller car would offer less protection.

If Iran retaliates to the trade embargos it faces from western countries & stops selling oil to the West, gas prices will soar here & then electric cars like "Hiriko" & other tiny compacts will surely gain in popularity. Not by choice, but by necessity, needless to say.

So "Why this Kolaveri"?? Live & let live, for our own sakes. Stop meddeling in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations, for crying out loud..

I certainly like the concept of small, electric vehicles for rental/sharing within the cities and I'm glad Hiriko is meant for that. However, the design of this particular vehicle doesn't seem to be practical.

In the launch video, it is quite evident how hard it is for people to board it. The door provides a handy umbrella for those rainy days so frequent around the Bay of Biscay, but it is so low that banging your head against it must be quite frequent. From that hunched position, you need to climb aboard through a narrow gap forced by the steering mechanism, turn around and sit. Though gravity helps when entering the vehicle, I cannot imagine anyone with the slightest physical problem getting out. I can't imagine anyone with a skirt doing so either, I guess YouTube would get filled with videos of ladies unintentionally emulating Sharon Stone in that famous scene in Basic Instinct. If you are physically fit to climb in and out of this vehicle, you might as well ride your bike. I can't do either.

I don't understand what is the point of the wheels turning 90 degrees and the car folding, they seem incompatible to me. You see, if the car parks as shown in the picture above, what is the point of having the wheels turn, since they are not parking in parallel. They don't save much space either since, anyway, to board and drive out, they need space to unfold and maneuver in and out, blocking the space behind while this happens. They also rob quite some space in the sidewalk as, after having people hurt by opening doors or hitting an opened door which is at eye level, the sidewalk around designated parking spaces would have to be fenced.

If they do parallel park in small places, you have to climb down before it folds and enters the parking space, right in the middle of the traffic. If, on the other hand, they park in a queue as car sharing vehicles are bound to do, so that people board the first in the queue, what is the the point of moving sideways to enter a parking slot?

All in all, I don't see the point of having any steering mechanism at all in the front wheels, much less a bulky one capable of turning the wheels 90 degrees. Instead, I would have the front wheels fixed and the steering in the back, which is what the Isetta had in the '50s (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isetta), which provided for much easier access than what the Hiriko offers. The Isetta, with its door hinging sideways, allowed people to board it fully standing and then sit down, and gave access to its admittedly small storage space from the very front.

If the cars are to queue one after the other in designated car sharing lines, you can only have one car boarded at a time so you want to make your customers climb up and down fast. Hiriko does not allow this.

Cut down on fancy features: no folding and no sideways crawling, and make it easy to board and climb down. Adding fancy features simply increases maintenance costs which for cities implementing car sharing schemes is a big issue as is the problem that many potential users, not fit enough to use it, would be excluded.

One trouble with the now is that in a city the capital cost of a vehicle is outweighed by the running costs. So, for a small car parking cost the same, tolls are the same Tunnels, road tax, insurance etc etc are the same. In city driving, with low mileage, even the fuel costs are less relevant.
One is often better off with a second hand larger car.

One trouble with the now is that in a city the capital cost of a vehicle is outweighed by the running costs. So, for a small car parking cost the same, tolls are the same Tunnels, road tax, insurance etc etc are the same. In city driving, with low mileage, even the fuel costs are less relevant.
One is often better off with a second hand larger car.

I think Daimler is still putting money into the hapless idea of a hydrogen powered viecle. That should make them less compatible, since if true, it would be a waste of money.

I think the electric vehicle will be, in fact, economically affordable when it has an efficient built-in thermoelectric converter. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqnk19hn7Rc

This is Carlos Fdez. Isoird, Managing Director at Denokinn and Coordinator of Hiriko project, I will like to clarify some important issues about Hiriko concept.
Hiriko is not just a car, it is a new communication system, integrated with the city, designed to be electronic, the vehicle folds, it is able to omnistering and incorporates a drive by wire system as mejor innovations.
The business model behind it, it is focuss on the integration of the vehicle in the cities as a new public transport media to solve point to point mobility and last mile connection problems.
The vehicle is manufactured in a modular way and assembled in mini plants in the cities where it is going to be used, in this way we generate local employment.
Finally Hiriko is aimed to generate a social change.

I would say a great deal of the lacking success of small urban vehicles is owed to unjustified fears and missing creativity among marketing departments in the old economy.
To make urban commuters a success, they should follow Apple’s example when introducing the iPad. While critics stigmatized them as overprized personal computers with deficient computing power, Apple succeeded to establish tablets as a new class on its own, freeing them from any direct comparison with existing computer types.
In the same way car manufacturers should put more effort to stimulate desire for an object, that people want to possess and which they would use in a different way.
Another complementary approach lies in incentives on behalf of lawmakers. In this regard, they could lower age restriction for that type of vehicle, or grant them privileges in city centers.

I already use a wonderful zero emission vehicle for city travel. When I get to work, it folds up and parks next to my desk. It cost around 1000€ and costs 0€/km to run. Although its motor isn't very powerful, I still get around my city (Cambridge) faster than most motorised traffic on my bike. If we want to lead healthier lives, in more pleasant cities, the solution for most city journeys is the bicycle.