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Smart Car Coming To the US In Jan. 2008
Blahbooboo3 writes "After many delays and missed promises, the Smart Car is finally coming to the US in January 2008. Smart Car uses a specially designed crash cage to protect the driver and gets upwards of 40 miles per gallon. Crash tests are very positive. The car is deceptively large inside, as showcased by this great ad from the Smart USA site. The second-generation Fortwo will be offered first, starting around $14,000. Unfortunately the slick roadster isn't coming any time soon."
For some reason when I look at the price all I think is that there are better cars for that price. Why would I buy one of those when I can get a yaris or scion that gets the same milage?
Why would anyone buy any new car at all? They're all over priced and instantly loose a considerable chunk of their "value" the moment you drive them off of the lot.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Yeah, being able to park nose in between two parallel parked cars on the street would be great for cities. But what the crash test video didn't show was what happens when you get hit by someone in a big SUV. The biggest selling point of the big cars these days is still safety for the people inside. Soccer mom don't give a shit about gas milage when it comes to protecting their babies.
We are all just people.
I used to think the same thing, but guess what? I'm driving a brand new Mitsubishi Eclipse right now. The argument that they "immediately lose a bunch of resale value, the minute you drive them off the lot" is technically correct. But realistically, it doesn't mean as much as people pretend it does. In reality, MOST people buying a new car plan on keeping it for a while. The initial loss in value only affects someone who makes a poor purchasing decision and tries to trade the almost new car back in after only a few months through maybe the first year or two of ownership.
Meanwhile, loans on new vehicles tend to have much better interest rates than loans on used vehicles, so you're not giving as much of your money away to some bank as you pay off your car....
My new car also included such "bonuses" as free roadside assistance during the warranty period. Used car owners generally don't receive benefits like this, and have to pay for a "motor club" membership like AAA to get the same thing.
The warranty itself can be a factor, too. You may or may not get one with your used car purchase, depending on its mileage and all. But it could easily "make or break" the overall "value" of your purchase if something major like a transmission fails 2 or 3 years into the vehicle ownership.
Ultimately, for me, the assurance that my new car doesn't have some worn out part just waiting to fail and greatly inconvenience me when I need my car the most is the *best* reason for buying new. I only own one vehicle, and I count on it daily. If I'm supposed to go to a customer site and can't make it because my car breaks down, that costs me income from both ends at once on a used car that's not in warranty. (Loss of income on a job I can't do, AND loss of income paying for a car repair.) Generally, the dealership will even give me a free rental car while repairing mine under warranty - which they'd never do on used car repairs.
The car was introduced in 1997 and I first saw one in person in 1999.
I've been waiting for it to be on sale in the US ever since. But after 2 car purchases myself, it's still not available.
Man.. we're talking about 11 years here.
My wife has had one for over a year (Canadian). We love it. So far my only regret is that we couldn't afford one for me as well.
The main competition when we bought it was from the Toyota Echo. The Echo had Toyota's reliability record (+400k on our 1990 Tercel), a back seat, an $1,800 cheaper price, and worse fuel economy. My wife does a lot of driving and I'm crazy, so we went for fuel economy and goofy eccentricity.
We just got a letter from Mercedes-Benz last week touting the new Smart coming out late this fall. There have been a few changes to the new model:
1) The vehicle is slightly larger. Not sure why this is necessary. The car will already carry two people on a weekly shopping trip that includes stops at Costco and the occassional 20kg sack of dog or cat food. The extra space will not be enough to make this a family car.
2) The engine will be gas instead of diesel. This might be a good thing for the mass market. The diesel Smart accelerates a bit like a diesel truck - forget the jack-rabbit starts away from stop signs, but once it's moving you don't have to keep it wound out to get up hills like you do with a small gas engine. If you are used to small gas engines it's easy to over-rev the diesel when you're learning to drive it.
Perhaps the switch is to deal with emission standards in states which don't sell ultra-low sulphur diesel yet? The main thing that annoys me about it is that the gasoline model will consume more fuel than the diesel - about 5 litres per 100 kilometres, or about what you'd expect from a small Toyota.
Maybe it's just my reaction to marketing bumpf, but I've got a bad feeling that the marketing droids might be over-riding the engineers and knackering the Smart for the North American market. They're going to have to drop the price if they want to compete with Toyota, at least once the supply of eccentrics dries up.
Of course, if you actually drive like that, which car your driving becomes totally moot because no driver will respect you anyhow.
I take it you've never driven in Boston...
And for the record, no, I do not regularly drive like that. But having the option to forcefully merge...
In any case, "respect" comes from a long relationship. On the road, that means nothing. A bunch of strangers that I'll never see again, and around whom I drive defensively because I can't trust any of them to have slept well last night; to have at least one hand on the wheel rather than one on the coffee and one on the cellphone; to have a BAC of zero; To have a blood benzo level of zero (Xanax/Klonopin/Ativan/etc have warnings on them for a reason, bluehairs!); to generally count as what we might call "sane" and not suddenly express their self loathing with suicide-by-head-on-collision. I "respect" them only in the same way I "respect" a pissed-off badger - I do my best to avoid them.
Besides, you can park perpendicularly in a street that only allows parallel parking.
Does Mercedes offer an address to send all your parking tickets to?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Sheesh. What an arrogant SOB you sound like.
Not everyone has the same value system, or makes a large salary as you apparently do. Just because you're an aerospace engineer doesn't mean what you value is any more important than anyone else values. You seem to put an enormous value on safety. That's fine, that's a good thing to value IMO. Of course, not everyone makes the nice salary that I imagine an aerospace engineer makes, so we can't all afford expensive Volvos or Mercedes.
Get a grip buddy and maybe try to get out into the REAL world where many people can barely afford to buy their Corolla, and many others still dream about just having a car in the first place.
AccountKiller
So smaller vehicles are the answer......guess we need semis and trains the size of pickup trucks.
That, or we need to be as strict with the licensing for every car as we currently are with the license for a semi or train. If you are going to drive a vehicle that is that dangerous to everyone else on the road, shouldn't you have to meet much stricter requirements?
We are all just people.
Am I missing something on fuel standards? I had an 89 Honda CRX which looks like it was bigger than a smart car and it got 50mpg even when I had run 250000+ miles on it. I now have a BMW 328i sport coupe that gets in the high 30s and has 267hp. Why would I want a little car like that if I only get 40? Other than it is cheap and cute. But just purely on economic and enviromental impact, I don't get it.
That's okay; the Smart Fortwo only seats two people anyway (hence the name), so it can't carry soccor moms' "babies!"
... but if she plows through an Accord or a Neon somebody's still gonna die. Best not to have the accident in the first place, but that would require accepting some responsibility and actually learning how to drive. Frankly, given the poor track record of SUV drivers as a class, I think they should be required to obtain a CV license. What, that's too much trouble? Tough ... get a minivan.
... much as I detest fools with clamshells glued to their heads I dislike my government assuming that I am one even more. And I really can't stand it when government bans specific behaviors with the express (albeit unstated) purpose of increasing ticket revenues.
Besides, the reason soccer moms drive those damn SUVs is that they are just as hooked on the feeling of power as any male driver: maybe more. They may say "It's for the children!" but that's unadulterated pure baloney. There are plenty of comparatively safe vehicles that don't require a V8, enclose enough space to serve as an aircraft hangar, and need a "WIDE LOAD" sign on the back.
If they cared about those babies (much less all the other women around them driving their babies) they'd drive their vehicles more safely. If they really cared they wouldn't have chosen an overpowered four-wheeled behemoth in the first place. Sure, our hypothetical soccer mom may be more likely to survive an accident in a Yukon
Regardless, cell phone usage should be treated the same way as any other potentially dangerous behavior: we'll trust you to know what you're doing until you screw up. Then we'll take it away from you until you learn your lesson. Pre-emptive banning and presumptive ticketing are punitive and paternal
Focusing on a single attribute of an overarching problem is typical behavior of politicians who either don't know how to deal with the issue, or know that they'll never convince the population to do what has to be done to fix it. Bad driving is becoming endemic to our society: cell phones contribute to that but they are not the root of the evil. Matter of fact, trying to fix this particular problem with laws and penalties is akin to trying to cure diarrhea by tinkering with your toilet.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Fully agree. Given the various harms monster vehicles cause, the only way to rationally preserve people's freedom to drive them is to take steps to make their owners bear the costs imposed on all other motorists by their self-indulgent vehicle choice.
First, increase the gas tax until the drivers of heavier vehicles are paying their fair share of the road repair bill. (There are very rational arguments for subsidizing road wear caused by heavy vehicles, such as semis, used commercially. There are no rational arguments for subsidizing excess road wear by mindlessly heavy personal vehicles.)
Second, actuarially increase insurance premiums for large, poorly performing vehicles until they are in line with the extra deaths caused by those vehicles in collisions with rationally sized vehicles.
Third, given that truck-based vehicles in particular are much more challenging to drive safely than average cars (as they take much longer to stop, have less body control which means more likelihood of losing grip, and are far more prone to rollover), require special licensing. Of course given the variety of vehicles on the road any line we draw between normal vehicles and heavy, trucklike vehicles is likely to be arbitrary. But I'll propose one anyway: To drive a vehicle for personal use that is EITHER over 5000 pounds empty OR over 78" tall, you need a Class C CDL with the attendant training and much tougher skills test.
Or a minivan. Or a crossover.
You realize that what you've just admitted is that you're ...
1) putting most other drivers around you at risk, because of your high bumpers, poor braking and handling, and excess weight; ...
2) paying who knows how much extra in gas, and putting the resulting extra CO2 into the atmosphere;
3) actually *sacrificing* space compared to rational people-moving vehicles (because of your high floor and long hood)
... because you're insecure about how you look.
I got a VW rabbit (diesel) in 1980 that got 55 mpg highway and 42 mpg city.
How come I can't get a car with better mileage than that by now?
Already done!
Oh, wait, you meant making semis and trains smaller, didn't you? Nevermind.
"Hey, the third matrix movie would have been good except for the plot,story, and acting." --AC
Try two adults and four kids. That was my family when we were growing up. We never had an SUV. The typical seating arrangement when we all went somewhere was Mom and Dad up front with one kid between them and three kids in the back. Was it cramped? Sure, but rare were the times when we all had to be piled into the car at the same time.
Nowadays, I would suggest against that arrangement for safety reasons (this was when most cars didn't even have seat belts). Still, there is nothing wrong with two adults up front and three kids (or one kid and two cats, in carriers) in the back of any modern sedan.
I can't believe that someone out there actually thinks that two adults, one child, and two cants (in carriers) will not fit in a sedan. I mean, really. Damn. Not only can they safely fit, but quite comfortably.
By your standard, almost every family in the country should have an SUV.
Actually, there were (relatively) a lot of cars from the late 80s and early 90s that got better mileage than most cars do today: Geo Metro XFI (51 mpg), Honda CRX HF (50 mpg), your Citroën, etc. But what you seem to not realize is that those cars were also a heck of a lot lighter than modern ones, because they weren't weighed down with airbags, ABS, etc. It's much harder for a modern car to achieve that same efficiency and still meet safety regulations (let alone customer expectations, which are also a lot higher).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You know I am not planning to get a Suburban or anything like that. I consider a crossover a small SUV. I have no special love for the SUV. I've never owned one and I am happy with my existing sedan.
...
:-)
:-)
Anyway to answer your questions
1) Actually, according to consumer reports. The SUV I plan to buy is as safer as the sedan I drive
2) Hybrid
3) I tested my requirements and 2 adults, 2 children with safety seats and 2 pets in carriers all work. This is purely a question of the design of the vehicle. I am buying it for space so I obviously made a point of checking.br
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The burden of gas taxes disproportionately falls on the poor, not the rich people who are driving the large, luxury SUVs. Gas taxes are flat, $ per gallon taxes, which means, all things held constant, that a poorer person is paying more than a richer person. But, all things are not held constant, you say? Too true. The rich can afford new cars that get better gas mileage, whereas a poorer person must drive the car they have, which is likely to be an older, less efficient car. Connecting the dots, that means the rich are likely paying less per mile than the poor person. If the function of a gas tax is to pay for wear and tear done on the roads by vehicles, then it would seem logical to tax the travel, not the fuel. This doesn't even get into the whole debate over alternative fuels or electric vehicles, which would completely bypass any/all vehicle fuel taxes.
Keep in mind GM pays no income taxes.
Need Mercedes parts ?
You're confusing Imperial gallons with US gallons. $1.94/L would actually be about $7.33 per US gallon.
While I agree that the Oil Titans and the Auto Executives are working together to screw working people (I recently aquired a 13 year old Honda that averages 45mpg, and higher on the freeway), Ford is not a good example of how to run an automobile company.
This 'Smart' car should get at least 50mpg. They've probably just geared it for performance, and not fuel economy. Another way to make sure no one can hide from the oil companies' money vacuum.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
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