Lit Motors, Danny Kim, and Changing How Americans Drive

Nerval's Lobster writes "In early March, Lit Motors founder Danny Kim hit the road to meet investors. The Portland native needed to keep the momentum growing for his small firm, which builds the two-wheeled C-1. His modest lab, located in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood, could accommodate another 12 employees—but he needed the money to fund them, and to build a manufacturing facility that could turn his prototype ideas into a reality. Like Elon Musk and other manufacturing savants, Kim is someone who enjoys the challenge of building things—whether it's eyeglasses, chairs, or motor vehicles from scratch. He's spent the past five years re-thinking modern transportation, and using those insights to design prototypes of two-wheeled, motor-driven vehicles that can self-balance with a dancer's grace, thanks to an integrated software platform and a patented gyroscopic system. In a wide-ranging conversation with Slashdot, Kim discussed his plans for manufacturing the C-1, as well as the challenges in convincing consumers to try out a new kind of vehicle. "Seventy-two percent of commuters drive alone, so it just made sense to cut the car in half," he said, explaining the decision to go with two wheels instead of four. 'You have to think about this two-wheeled car as a robot because of its stability. It purely uses our AI/stability algorithm so it can balance and you don't have to. We had to develop our own firmware for our own dynamic system. It is code heavy.'"

Failure modes

[tompaulco]

I prefer a vehicle that doesn't fall over when there is a code failure or the battery dies.

I feel bad for the guy, his plan is terrible.

[bistromath007]

It is an absolute, unmitigated mistake to attempt to market this thing in the US. To get it to work, you'd need to convince each state's DMV to not classify it as a motorcycle, the license for which is more difficult and expensive to get, and testing for which would be unnecessarily dangerous for the C-1's target market. Unfortunately, this is an absolute impossibility; even if you can break through a bureaucracy's natural tendency towards collecting more fees by having more rules to enforce, the venture will be lobbied to death by dealerships that don't want to try to sell the thing. It's going to look like what's happening to Tesla, only much, much easier for the douchebags.

Elio

[Immerman]

Indeed. I recently spotted the Elio, which seems to have real potential if they can pull it off. A spacious three-wheeler with automotive safety features, a large back seat, 84mpg, a top speed over 100mph, and a price tag well under the cheapest mainstream cars. Doesn't look nearly as fun to drive as a C1 or Carver, but better than a normal car, and at a price point that could give it a place as something other than an expensive toy. Definitely gonna take a test drive at least, should it make it to market.
http://www.eliomotors.com/ [eliomotors.com]
http://fox40.com/2013/09/17/be... [fox40.com]

Go Danny, go!

[FridayBob]

As opposed to the seemingly numerous SUV fans here, I'm apparently one of the exceptions who actually believes in this product. I heard about the C-1 in December 2012 and made my initial deposit for one only about a month later.

I love everything about this idea. If successful, it will be the cheapest plug-in electric road vehicle on the market, it will have a range second only to a Tesla and it will have the fastest charging time of all due to its small battery. The latter, along with its speed and acceleration, is made possible by its low weight, and that's largely thanks to the fact that it has only two wheels. Mileage? The C-1 will get 200 miles on a 10 KWh battery, so think about that the next time you fill'er up. In the US that's about $1.25 for a full change, or 0.625 cents a mile. And yes, it'll always be more dangerous to drive than a car, but certainly safer than any motorcycle.

Okay, you can tell from my homepage link that I'm based in the Netherlands, where cars are smaller on average than in the US, where lane splitting is legal (below a certain speed) and where gasoline prices are higher than anywhere else in the world. I also happen to have a motorcycle driver's license. But as much as I hate the fossil fuel industry (global warming, the Iraq war) and wish I could stop buying gasoline, until late 2012 there wasn't an electric vehicle available that I considered worth buying; cars like the Nissan Leaf aren't exactly cheap and don't have enough range, while the Tesla Model S is just too expensive. The Lit C-1 has both of those bases covered. And like a sports car the C-1 may not be very practical (although more so than a motorcycle), but considering what it offers in return I'm willing to put up with that.

Re:These work some of the time, cars all the time

[digitrev]

I actually like this comment, because it brings up one of the major idiosyncrasies of how we buy cars. Specifically, we buy cars that meet all of our needs, as opposed to buying cars that meet our most frequent needs, and we can only really afford one vehicle per driver.

Consider my household growing up (I know, I know, plural of anecdote is not data, but this is just an example). Growing up we always had two vehicles - one minivan, and one smaller sedan. This was mostly fine - my dad took the car to work, and my mom had the van for driving the kids around, doing groceries, etc... The sedan got much more use, and the van mostly stayed in the driveway, except when it needed to be used for something a sedan can't handle. But when my mom went back to work, the van had to be used for the daily commute. And this eats gas like crazy. You shouldn't be driving a minivan with only one person in it, but because we couldn't afford a third car (a sedan to get my mom to and from work) and because we still needed the minivan for groceries & family trips, a huge amount of gas gets wasted hauling one person around.