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Smart Cars Coming to Canada and U.S.
AgniTheSane writes "Most importantly the Smart Car looks cool. It also gets 60 mpg, is four feet
smaller than a Mini Cooper (you can park two in a standard parking spot), the
plastic panels are easily swappable and one color all the way through (so you
can't scratch the paint), the steel frame makes it safe in an accident, and you
can get it with in-dash Bluetooth (and in Europe can read and write email via
the car speakers and a microphone). The Smart car is coming to the US soon, and will cost as little as $12,000. You can read about it in
Wired or on
MSNBC, or you can go straight
to ZAP who will be
selling them in the US soon, or the smart car
website in the UK. "
These are already popular in parts of the USA.
Yanks won't give up their monstrous SUVs for these. Too insecure about their sexuality.
Provided the accident is a frontal collision with a Mercedes Benz sedan, like in the publicity video, with the Mercedes' crumple zone absorbing all the impact.
And also it doesn't have cupholders for the giant Slurpees that you lot consume. Nor is it powerful enough to propel 250lbs of excess flab that most USians have.
For all those screaming about security - this car has been specifically designed to be safe despite it's size; to achieve this, there are certain tricks involved, eg sliding the motor under the chassis in case of a crash.
It _has_ been rigourously tested.
You know, we here in Europe do make more out of less and don't need a 2 Ton SUV to have a save car.
I live in Switzerland and had the possibility to test drive one of the two seats model.
Positive points:
- looks cool
- each passenger has a lot of room (really)
Negative points:
- automatic shift is very slow, it is dangerous and reduces confort (it brakes the car during the shift)
- the vertical construction implies rather hard suspensions, with reduced confort (you feel every bump in the road in your spine)
- noisy inside
- pricy
In Europe you can find lots of small cars that have a comparable MPG (or better km/l), have 4 seats and are cheaper.
To sum it up, coolness factor aside, I would not reccomend it.
I'm guessing page 3 was a little too far for people to read, so I'll copy it here:
A steel frame absorbs front-end impact - no cockpit crumple. Get hit head-on, and the car collapses behind the doors near the back wheels.So there is a crumple zone, it's just behind you
Zero to sixty in twenty seconds?
These things are going to need all the crash protection they can get. They're going to get flattened on any highway on-ramp.
...It is not user-serviceable without a proprietary toolset.
Jokes about comparing proprietary software to a car with the hood welded shut are very chilling if this car is the beginning of a trend.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Still safer than a motorcycle (yes, I ride one) and better weather protection, too. Listen: no one is putting a gun to anyone's head and forcing them to buy a Smart car. I'd like to think that people are smart enough to choose the balance of safety and utility that's right for them.
That being said, I wouldn't buy a Smart. Why? Because it's too wide, and can't be used to "split" between lanes of traffic. In NYC, 9 or 10 months out of the year, a motor cycle or bicycle makes a much better "city car."
-b.
A few years later I heard things like great mileage, funky distinct design, low price, reliable, and most importantly able to park it in the tiniest of spaces.
I don't think that the SMART will ever be the cross country driving car of choice, but as a second car in the city for the 2 parent working family I think its a brilliant idea . . . Why drive a 4000 pound SUV to pick up a gallon of milk at the supermarket if you don't have to?
I would expect that the majority of the US and Canada will continue to buy more 'full on gas guzzzlers' as opposed to these not so smart cars. We've had them in Europe for a while and they really haven't made a big impact here, even with the more green and liberal thinking that we have.
Why? welll like i say, they really arent that smart. Selling cars that reduce the amount of co2 is always a worthwhile thing however you cannot substitute sensible, flexible and economically sound public transport policy for the automotive industry's equivalent of the 'light/lite' cigarette. Not that most of the tax payers in the western hemisphere care anyway, that's why we still buy and love the freedom of our cars.
Make no mistake, car sharing and long distance travel is pretty much unviable in these things so understandably they only really get bought in urban areas. Mostly smart cars are seen and viewed as a posher and wankier version of the scooter. Mercedes would be thrilled if everyone in the city bought one; I'm not so sure our planet would be
Cool? not...
Disclaimer: I'm not a 'manc', I'm Scottish
my other sig is written in brainfuck
The American 'aesthetic' sense rears its ugly head again.
And when they hit another SUV, everybody dies.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
To complain about people not understanding Linux or open source would be entirely hypocritical of this community, with all the posts about the lack of safety of Smart Cars posted here! This is one of the safest vehicles in the world.
Lighter = safer
Everything else aside, this vehicle is safer because it's lighter. There is no substitute for a lack of mass when your vehicle becomes a ball of plastic and metal momentum; the more weight, the more force is required to curb that momentum, so to speak. Force, in this case, typically translates into rolling, or crumpling. Modern vehicles do lots of both, particuarly SUV's. So bear in mind, mass is an inherent evil in vehicle safety.
Solid cage = safer
Second, this little critter has a solid cage that can withstand the problem I just mentioned - its own mass. Most vehicles will crumple under their own mass at moderate speeds. At 65 km/h, head-on this car will walk away mostly unscathed, and the passenger will only have minor injuries.
Lateral weakness = myth
From the side, the risk of being "T-boned", or laterally impaled, is highly overrated. The solid beam connecting the rear wheels, the axle, and the similarly reinforced front wheels, in such close proximity pretty much insure that if you are hit, unless it's a motorcycle, two of your strongest and most reinforced points of impact (the tires) are involved in the crash. Furthermore, there is a metal cage surrounding you that can easily withstand substantial impact.
Run-over = myth
The risk that it will be "run over" are also highly overrated. If a big vehicle hits a smart car, it becomes a wedge, pushing the larger vehicle into the air so that the larger vehicle can dissipate its energy on other things, like concrete, pavement and telephone poles.
See, eg. Smart and Tough, The National Post, 6/11/04
Arguing that this car isn't safe is being on the wrong side of competence, akin to arguing the superiority of Microsoft Windows' security. There may be valid points, but for the most part, you're just wrong.
(Not to sound too cynicial, but I think it's a valid point, and hypocricy is a peeve)
>>problem is, when they hit a Smart even slighly, they kill the occupant.
There's an upside, however. In the event of a collision, the Smart folds conveniently into the shape of a coffin.
Not actually 'free', but subsidised. Either your employer, your bank, the mall, or your town paid for the land, paid to have it paved, pays to have it maintained and striped routinely. Unless vast expanses of asphalt just appear by magic, someone is paying for it. And that someone is almost always us, either directly or indirectly.
Money that could go elsewhere.
Also, you might want to check out this: http://www.insidercarsecrets.com/women.html
Or the stats a bit further down the page:
So it's a "chick car". So what? That's what people said about the new Mini - but I see guys snapping them up, and their girlfriends love 'em.A woman isn't going to get all gushy over you 'cause you have a 454 under the hood. She'll just think you're another one of those "horsepower substitutes for penis" idiots.
(disclaimer, I just Swapped my For2-shape Smart for a Smart Roadster) The Smart is actually one of the safest small cars there is thanks to the stridion safety cage, ands also since you can't t-bone one between the wheels in anything wide than a motorbike, due to the short wheelbase.
Smart were well aware that the car looks easy to break, so they put a LOT of effort into safety. I've seen pictures of a from end collision between a Samrt and a Mercedes E-class, the Merc was a write-off, while the Smart drove away.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Of the two, I would have certainly preferred to be in the Smart. Of course, cars tend to fare better when hit from behind, but even so, the disparity in damage caused was incredible. I always thought that Smarts looked really fragile, being used to old Citroens and Volvos (which are can run over armoured personnel carriers with barely a scratch), but this was impressively strong.
They still look like they'd flip up and lie on their tailgates, though.
The Smart car has a Euro NCAP rating of 3, which is not good by modern standards.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
The moms love the SUVs coz they feel safe - problem is, when they hit a Smart even slighly, they kill the occupant.
Not necessarily. Smart is designed with safety in mind and has pretty good crash test results. Don't forget that crash tests describe only the passive safety (can you survive when bad things happen?), while Smart excels in active safety (can you avoid the bad things to happen in the first place?). I was driving a rented one on a business trip and the thing is agile like a TIE-fighter. Unless you're asleep at the wheel, you will be able to make an evasive manoeuvre avoiding getting hitted by the SUV.
On the other hand, large SUVs are hopeless in active safety (a pick-up truck with a wagon-like interior will always remain a pick-up truck in terms of agility), they prone to rollover and the frame chassis does not add to passive safety, contrary to popular belief. Yes, the chassis will remain untouched by a minor collision, but it does not mean your spine will remain untouched as well. If someone drops you in a steel cage from a steep cliff, the cage might itself remain untouched on the bottom - but your spine probably won't. Modern cars wreck so horribly precisely because the chassis takes all the energy that would otherwise release - among other things - on your spine. It's no wonder that the safest 4x4 according to NHTSA is subaru forester. It's a car-based SUV that gets totally wrecked in a crash - but that's because the driver leaves from collision in perfectly good health. Someone has to explain this to all the SUV moms...
All the same, in an accident where I need to walk away, I'll take my Mercedes or my old Volvo before I'd take some of the cheap, tinfoil crap I see on the road every day (not saying the the Smart is one). On top of that, at the price I paid for my car, I'm much more careful with my driving and keeping the car in top mechanical condition. Small, cheap, disposable cars tend to be more dangerous simply from the standpoint that their owners may not have the same "investment" in keeping it in one piece.
Also, having a rigid frame around the driver is a great idea IF there is something sacrificial around it to absorb the impact energy in an accident. I can build a car that's strong enough to withstand an impact and drive away, but you'd have to scrape the occupants out with a paper towel. I have some experience in this. I built an ultra-light aircraft for my wife and decided to make is extra strong. When she crashed it (pilot error), it took almost nothing to put the ultra-light back in the air. My wife, on the other hand, was almost killed and spent 2 years with countless surgeries recovering. The investigation concluded that had the aircraft structure been weaker and able to absorb the impact, she might have been able to walk away. Needless to say, I don't fly that one any more.
On the other side of the equation, I was filming from the back seat of an ultra-light for an instructional video when we augured in (yep, camera rolling - great footage!). There was nothing left of the plane. It practically disintegrated around us, but we both walked away. The pilot broke a bone in his hand and the restraint system left some really impressive bruises on me, but we were able to spend the night out and wait for rescue just fine. The aircraft I fly now is designed to absorb the impact of a crash (I've also added a ballistic parachute to it).
Last week I was early on the scene of an accident where I thought for sure someone would be dead. One of the cars looked like no-one could have survived. However, upon closer inspection the driver's compartment was entirely intact, with several airbags deployed. The driver was standing a short distance away, talking to one of the other people one the scene. He looked shaken, but [apparently] unhurt. The other car look like it was in better condition, but the driver was still sitting in it (and was being attended to - so I didn't get any closer).
It sucks big-time to have your car looking like a grotesque piece of $50,000 modern art, but seeing your kid getting safely out: priceless!
:-)
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
The thing is, SUV's are the most unsafe vehicles out there.
For starters, an SUV is far more likely to be involved in an accident, thanks to increased stopping distances and high center of gravity and weight mean that they are hard to perform emergency manouveurs in.
Once in the accident, it's not the sudden stop that will kill you. The crumple zone in the front isn't designed to slow you gradually. The cabin deforming and crushing you is what kills.
The reason the cabin crushes is because there is a lot of weight at the opposite end of the car which needs to be decelerated. In a smart, there isn't. The engine is the only really heavy thing, and that goes under you.
Having an accident in a smart is like bouncing around in a small padded box with airbags. An accident in an suv is like being front and rear ended at the same time.
Seriously though, I live in Alaska now and to get to most places you have to fly in small planes. We also do a lot of hunting and fishing which you pretty much need to fly out to do effectively. There's nothing better than tossing the fly rod up into the wing of my ultra-light and landing somewhere on a gravel bar for some quiet fishing.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution