Over the years, Sacramento Bee readers have enjoyed a series of bike-friendly editorial cartoonists.
This one poses the classic dilemma. Sure, people like bicycling, but don’t most Americans see themselves inside the limo?
gecko
It’s about time vehicles be designed more comfortable, convenient, practical, and fun than cars and the dilemma would not exist; the prerequisite being that they weigh less than 100 pounds.
Of course, they would also have a minisule ecological footprint.
Larry Littlefield
Looks like the future home of the NASCAR Hall of Fame went with Obama.
Mark Walker
gecko, what would the 100-lb car do to reshape the automobile landscape? Nothing. “Smart car” is an oxymoron.
gecko
Mark Walter, A 100-lb car could easily be both human and electric-powered. A 400-watt to 600-watt motor (maximum 20 mph legal limit) would be more than satisfactory for urban environments and a 1,500-watt motor (about 2 horse power) suitable for longer distances traveling at up to 80 miles per hour. Efficiencies would be measured from hundreds of miles a gallon to thousands of miles per gallon.
They would be much more “distributed and on-demand” since they are a lot smaller and lighter where bikes are an extreme example: you can even put them in your apartment!
Vehicle and infrastructure costs would be fractions of those for automobiles as would waste and ecological footprints.
Safety would be greater because crashing vehicles weighing less than one hundred pounds rather than thousands pounds is not as catastrophic.
Volkswagen spent about $400 million to industrial design the latest “Beetle” for business as usual. It seems quite feasible that the same amount in today’s dollars would buy the design of a new 100-lb car that would revolutionize global transportation since it would probably lack the unnecessary complexity required by automobiles and be a lot more elegant.
