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ZAP Smart Car Approved for Sale in the US
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It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
for real ? (Score:2, Insightful)
it'll like 5 years old in europe, third gen model are shipping now
Other considerations (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing is then SMART (Score:4, Insightful)
Then the only "smart" thing to drive (extrapolating from your statement) would then be another Hummer or behemoth SUV, which i sure as fuck would not be driving.
Let's not be a part of the problem.
-tid242
smae 'SMART' as the one sold by Mercedes (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not so SMART . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Real Website (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but it looks like ZAP are distributing them in the U.S. Or maybe they just need a funkier name - what we Brits call Vauxhall cars the rest of the world call 'Opal'.
But I don't get it: Smart are DaimlerChrysler, and Chrysler's a big US name - ?
Old news. (Score:1, Insightful)
They are better than you'd expect from such a small package, allso more expensive than you'd expect.
Re:Nothing is then SMART (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who needs this shit?? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:ZAP? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not so SMART . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not so SMART . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, anybody in the car at the time would be dead due to internal injuries. No amount of safety cages, seat belts and air bags will stop your guts from going splat internally when decelerating from 70mph to 0 in about 1 meter.
Re:Real Website (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:roll cages with covers (Score:3, Insightful)
What it lacks are crumple zones which reduce the deceleration rate.
The ideal design for a safe car is a large crumple zone (=length) with a ridged cage to protect the occupants.
Re:Comparison... (Score:1, Insightful)
Daimler has the longest possible record. They build the very first car.
Re:In a Yugo.... (Score:2, Insightful)
It should bother you, it is not all about how much of an impact it has on your wallet you know. It is about pollution also. Twice the fuel consumption is means twice the CO2, NOx, SOx etc let out in our air. Unfortunately most people are too ignorant or too stupid to factor this in when buying a new car.
Perhaps fuel prices are too low in the US (US people probably disagree, but we basically pay the same price per liter here in Sweden as you pay per Gallon in the US) it makes people mindless of how much their car drinks -> how much it pollutes.
The smart is a great car for it's target group, which is probably singles or couples living in urban areas. It is small (easy to manouver in traffic and to find parking space), cheap to run and don't pollute the already bad air too much.
Re:Comparison... (Score:5, Insightful)
Otherwise known as Daimler Benz [thesmart.co.uk]; been making quality automobiles [mercedes-benz.com] since 1886. So, not much track record there.
Re:Survivability (Score:3, Insightful)
70-0 mph in less than 0.2 of a second is not easy to support by the human body...
Re:roll cages with covers (Score:1, Insightful)
Finally? Honda Insight and Toyota Prius both (Score:2, Insightful)
get 60mpg. IMO both look good. 145kph no problem
US EPA [fueleconomy.gov] has a web site where one may compare cars.
Driving a hybrid is rather unnerving the first few months because the engine starts and stops on it's own.
EPA figures are a little off from reality. A friend has a geo and consistabtly gets 50+ mpg on the freeway. Also the Subaru Justy does much better than EPA numbers.
Another friends civic hybrid (honda) averages 47mpg with, conservative, mostly freeway driving.
Re:90 MPH???? (Score:2, Insightful)
Besides - the kind of people who routinely drive faster than 90 MPH are NOT the target audience for this vehicle.
If this car has a price tag that competes with the Geo, I would definately consider it.
Re:90 MPH???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A single collision with a Chevrolet Suburban... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why you *HAVE* to parallel park. (Score:3, Insightful)
A friend with a BMW Isetta (the little one, not the bloated 600cc version) gets tickets in San Francisco for parking perpendicular to the curb, never mind the fact that the car is designed for it.
Isetta. Now that's a scary car. There's no crush space at all in those things, and the handling is horrible - especially the smaller 3-wheeled version. But they're a fun car - I'd love to have one because the BMW logo on it would piss off snobs.
Until the cops are clued, the law doesn't matter as long as paying a parking ticket is less costly than fighting it, if your time is worth anything.I don't think it's an issue of clueless cops. There's a very good reason why you have to parallel park facing the same direction as traffic (at least in most jurisdictions): your brake light assemblies contain red "cat eye" reflectors. If you're not parking with the rear of the car facing the headlights of approaching traffic, your car is very hard to see, and it becomes a dangerous obstruction in the roadway.
Of course, this isn't a problem if the microcar is parked between two adult-sized vehicles, but what if they leave?
One could argue that parking on a lit street, it shouldn't be any problem which way you park. But drivers get accustomed to the shapes of certain things (like taillight reflectors) and drive habitually - it'll take them a moment longer to react to the unexpected shape. They might also panic, thinking the vehicle is pulling into or out of traffic based on its awkward position. The streetlight could go out.
Call your local police and ask them if it's illegal to parallel park your car backwards with respect to the traffic on that side of the road. Same reason - people expect red reflectors, not amber or headlights, as they approach your vehicle.
Along those lines, every year or two depending on how dusty the driving has been, I pull the taillight assemblies out of my cars and my truck, and I throw them into the dishwasher on the crystals and plastics setting. Really makes a startling difference in the brightness of the reflectors and the appearance of the vehicles.
Strange? No. Stupid? Yes. (Score:2, Insightful)
Smart cars, on the other hand, are small roll cages on wheels. While the SUV folds itself up and kills its occupants, the Smart car simply bounces off.
SUVs give the illusion of safety. But they are more dangerous than any car on the road today save a pre-1963 Corvair or a pre-1975 Pinto.
Re:Not so SMART . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it seems that half that is still a bit generous -- that alone doubles your figures, right?
Also, assuming constant deceleration -- for sanity's sake, I understand -- greatly reduces the peak force and impact that you're calculating. You're essentially assuming that the crash will only involve a perfect crumple zone.
I don't work in test-crashing cars, but personally I would be surprised if crumple zones are this effective.
The problem is when you run out of crumple zone during impact, and now it's the hardened "walnut like" steel cocoon hitting a wall.
You don't understand how crumple zones work. (Score:2, Insightful)
However, if you had a car that folded up like an accordian except for where you're sitting, the impact would be much less since the metal absorbed a lot of the energy from the impact.
That is the point of crumple zones. You have a cage around the passenger compartment which is not supposed to deform, and then you have the sheet metal around that cage to act as a shock absorber. The bumpers push in, the engine drops down, the hood bends, etc... the whole car in front of the passenger compartment is designed to deform.
In the case of the Smart car, regardless of how strong the cage is in a Smart car, it only has about a foot of metal in front of the passenger compartment to absorb the impact. If you hit a solid object you'd have a foot to decelerate. However, if you had a car with 4 feet of metal in front of the cage you'd have 4 times the distance to decelerate in a collision, and you'd experience only a fraction of the full impact you'd experience otherwise.
Re:90 MPH???? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is even a good chance of this happening with a Smart Car. As the bumper of the SUV compresses the front end, the front end and cage of the little car will become a ramp, the tires will blow or the axles collapse, and the car will be locked in place by the sheer friction of the weight of both vehicles plus the force of lifting the SUV. The Smart Car will stop abruptly, which is bad, but the SUV will become a tumbling death trap, with 2 to 4 tons of vehicle crushing the heads of its occupants like overripe grapes.
Trust me, stopping is better than tumbling. Accidents aren't about winning. It's about how you stop. SUV's don't, and that's the problem. Even the people that make them admit that SUV's are more dangerous than standard passenger cars.