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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."
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.