RUMCars Forum
General Category => Microcar News => Topic started by: Rusty Chrome (Malcolm Parker) on April 21, 2012, 10:54:02 PM
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Another forthcoming electric car, designed by the same guy who designed the Bugatti EB110 and narrower than a Peel P50. The video mirrors the Peels famous Top Gear exploits
http://www.cars-electric.com/zagato-volpe-city-car-specifications-and-price/ (http://www.cars-electric.com/zagato-volpe-city-car-specifications-and-price/)
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Wheels look far to big but whatever. There are enough designs about now that there can be competition for market. Where is the market? I think some movement by Government/Councils might be needed to tip the balance in favour. Then these designs have to compete with things like the Tata Nano which could well be for sale at half the price. I suspect it would be more money as they might need to westernise the thing a bit. Also electric/hybrid cars would seem to be the preferred option in built up areas. However Asia grows ever balder and more dominant in the auto world and if our markets are niche they are more likely to be offered what they are given. How the pendulum swings. That would leave the way open for limited market machinery at a premium price. MIcrocars become fashionable battery burners.
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Another forthcoming electric car, designed by the same guy who designed the Bugatti EB110 and narrower than a Peel P50. The video mirrors the Peels famous Top Gear exploits
http://www.cars-electric.com/zagato-volpe-city-car-specifications-and-price/ (http://www.cars-electric.com/zagato-volpe-city-car-specifications-and-price/)
Uh, I think he should have sticked to the EB110 design than throwing out this idea of a driving vacuum cleaner!
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Actually Jonathan, thats not a bad idea, the Dyson Diablo, being electric you can now vacuum the office carpets without filling the building with carbon monoxide before you drive home for the day! :D
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Actually Jonathan, thats not a bad idea, the Dyson Diablo, being electric you can now vacuum the office carpets without filling the building with carbon monoxide before you drive home for the day! :D
Carbon monoxide offers a saving on Carbon dioxide. Bargain.
Suggested use - Channel tunnel, assuming fitments of passenger cabins, and ferry parking areas. Goodness me, no migrants in the cargo! Flog the leftovers to Damien Hirst who can export the stiffs for millions. At last immigration really will be solving our debt crisis! No need for border control either so a saving there too.
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So I was correct in my assumption that its only single cylinder engines that emit carbon monoxide , all the other dioxide? :D
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Like various other small cars the design is limited by their dimensions and by legislation, and a lot of them do look very similar due to this, including the Smart Coupe. This looks pretty good to me, but the really important factor is not what they look like but how many people can be persuaded to commute in small cars. These days most drivers are virtually addicted to large executive saloons, MPCs and 4WDs.
Yesterday down in Kent I saw a Triumph 2500 and a Ford Zephyr Mk 6 ("Aircraft Carrier"). These were BIG cars in their day, now they look almost cute and quaint beside all the huge Benzes. Similarly the newest Mini Cooper is almost as big as the first model Range Rover. Cities NEED people to use smaller cars, but still very few are prepared to dispense with their executive barges. As with all of them I hope it meets with success, but not too sure that it will.
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I guess you saw those cars as a result of Drive it day? Did anyone do anything, I rode a small vintage motorcycle around locally, saw a Fiat 500 [real one] and an great big yankie guzzler [very Essexman!] opposite ends of the spectrum really! Nothing else to report.
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Hehe Bob I wouldnt fancy driving a vacuum cleaner myself ;)
Marcus, what makes you say that? They can make the body however they like! Worst is the renault Zoe... What where they thinking?
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I do not know what regulations do or do not apply to Electric cars and very small "City" cars, but the normal regs for cars are amazingly complex, covering things like the size of all lights, what height they are above the road and how close to the side of the car they are. There are regs for impact resistance, the potential risk to pedestrians and bikes, and thousands of other regs concerning the safety and behaviour of cars, and these put major limitations on how a production car can look.
Then when you reduce the size of a car to really small things get really difficult. If you take a Heinkel as an example of a classic small car, it has a very compact air-cooled engine and transmission stuck in the back. next there are arches for two front wheels to revolve and steer in. The rest of the space in this small car is available for passengers and cargo. If you want to make any modern "equivalent", the power plant/transmission/fuel tank and/or batteries is almost certainly going to be far less compact, as people expect water cooling and radiators and heaters, plus all sorts of extras including more bulky and sophisticated steering, suspension and braking. Then add in all the modern safety equipment, and suddenly you find that the space available for passengers is much less than in a Heinkel, so the designers immediately have to get the most space available from the floor-plan, so it will inevitably be boxy. Lastly, it is actually much easier to design a medium to big car to look better. For a start the size will make it look more impressive, but you can also get long flowing curves and swooping lines, whereas a small car is very likely to look boxy. If you look at really basic cars, e.g. Sans Permit cars like the Acoma Comtesse they are all fairly boxy. Add to that the fact that you more-or-less have to keep the price down to attract sales also means you have to design it to be cheap to make.
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as people expect water cooling and radiators and heaters, plus all sorts of extras including more bulky and sophisticated steering, suspension and braking.
That is the problem. We are talking transport, they are talking lifestyle and the option never to use gadgets which are considered a must for the fashion conscious successful person around town. The simplest way to impose your image is size so the smaller the car the more difficult to bring it into line with modern values. Bizarrely come out to the country and such things are less important to the indigenous population who prefer practicality over flash yet have room for these 'off roaders'. These off roaders that cannot actually go off road in the form they are sold. Answer, proof of ownership of stock or land significant to have a battle barge or you get to pay a humongous tax bill for blocking the road up. This include non functional off roaders as they cannot perform the function for which they are made. Yep, so the toffs get the big cars. What is wrong with that?
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I do not know what regulations do or do not apply to Electric cars and very small "City" cars, but the normal regs for cars are amazingly complex, covering things like the size of all lights, what height they are above the road and how close to the side of the car they are. There are regs for impact resistance, the potential risk to pedestrians and bikes, and thousands of other regs concerning the safety and behaviour of cars, and these put major limitations on how a production car can look.
Then when you reduce the size of a car to really small things get really difficult. If you take a Heinkel as an example of a classic small car, it has a very compact air-cooled engine and transmission stuck in the back. next there are arches for two front wheels to revolve and steer in. The rest of the space in this small car is available for passengers and cargo. If you want to make any modern "equivalent", the power plant/transmission/fuel tank and/or batteries is almost certainly going to be far less compact, as people expect water cooling and radiators and heaters, plus all sorts of extras including more bulky and sophisticated steering, suspension and braking. Then add in all the modern safety equipment, and suddenly you find that the space available for passengers is much less than in a Heinkel, so the designers immediately have to get the most space available from the floor-plan, so it will inevitably be boxy. Lastly, it is actually much easier to design a medium to big car to look better. For a start the size will make it look more impressive, but you can also get long flowing curves and swooping lines, whereas a small car is very likely to look boxy. If you look at really basic cars, e.g. Sans Permit cars like the Acoma Comtesse they are all fairly boxy. Add to that the fact that you more-or-less have to keep the price down to attract sales also means you have to design it to be cheap to make.
I'll just stick to petrol microcars ;)
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Agreed!
The 50s and 60s were a golden age for micro cars, most of which we all know and love today. However, few or most likely NONE of them would be road legal if made today, and companies like Bond, Fend, Iso, Heinkel would have a far tougher time trying to get a good design today, and would probably only be able to add to the numerous "boxes-with-rounded-corners" which we see today. At my Studios we share a Suzuki Wagon, a car which many people deride for its boxy looks, yet it does everything a compact modern car is expected to AND can carry a surprisingly large number of drums, timpani, Drum Car, passengers and luggage etc with ease, far more than a bigger car like a Golf or Astra, and a similar size car like a Ka or Corsa would be hopeless for my needs.
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Agreed!
The 50s and 60s were a golden age for micro cars, most of which we all know and love today. However, few or most likely NONE of them would be road legal if made today, and companies like Bond, Fend, Iso, Heinkel would have a far tougher time trying to get a good design today, and would probably only be able to add to the numerous "boxes-with-rounded-corners" which we see today. At my Studios we share a Suzuki Wagon, a car which many people deride for its boxy looks, yet it does everything a compact modern car is expected to AND can carry a surprisingly large number of drums, timpani, Drum Car, passengers and luggage etc with ease, far more than a bigger car like a Golf or Astra, and a similar size car like a Ka or Corsa would be hopeless for my needs.
Fritz Fend was a Genius, I'm sure he would have worked something out!
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Alas, genius counts for nothing against bureaucracy....
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Hehe Bob I wouldnt fancy driving a vacuum cleaner myself ;)
Marcus, what makes you say that? They can make the body however they like! Worst is the renault Zoe... What where they thinking?
I actually like the car very much Jonathan. I like the doors, the fact that its a single seater and the big wheels too, are not the small wheels the reason why many microcars have such terrible ride quality?
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I actually like the car very much Jonathan. I like the doors, the fact that its a single seater and the big wheels too, are not the small wheels the reason why many microcars have such terrible ride quality?
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Small wheels yes. However reasonable size wheels with suspension would be better than to larger wheel with low profile tyres, they love those don't they, minimal suspension movement or else no room inside the car. This is a classic designers car so the look is dreadfully important. The doors are OK as it allows flexible parking into small spaces. I have no doubt there are other dribbly bits that could be dispensed with for practicality.
Comparing most of these prototype machines with our beloved classic Microcars only serves to show that if you put an engineer in charge they make something work, if they are any use. If you put a stylist in charge you get something the looks good. You then have to give it to an engineer who has to make it work. One reason most of these flights of fancy come to nothing as in reality by the time the engineer has done his stuff perhaps the car does not actually look like the prototype or it has become far to expensive to make. Where we touch on the third element of the job, finance.
Our miniature manufacturing heros mostly self financed or found backers and made the car and attempted to sell them. Classic entrepreneurial activity and just what our country needs. Sadly it is just what our country has all but banned or legislated out of existence. Very little is made like that now. Any prospective manufacturer has to negotiate a minefield of bureaucratic traps, find finance having used his up just attempting to get to the start line. Having now got an accountant/financier and an advisory overhead telling him what to do he then has to create the product. If that is successful he then needs employees who are trained to be able to work rather then cop off every five minutes and in trades he needs. Since the UK does not do this to well, might be OK in Germany, he probably uses imported workers. However the whole thing is costing so much the finance guys are in full control and would much rather make a 4 wheeled purple car than a green 3 wheeler and our fledgling manufacture is farted out of a meeting with nothing while the money boys make a quick killing off his back.
Alternatively we are offered hand made sweeties in the shop window full in the knowledge that mass production will never happen.
Yet our little cars exist and in fact could be re manufactured into the very thing we desire. Cheap urban transport. Though at the cost of originality. Spacey engined Schmitts, Majasty Heinkels are just the glimpse of what could be done. Having gone far enough to create a fully modernised model it would be worth salvaging all the IDs one could get and someone with the correct skill base, it is not me, manufacture them. Either that or do it from Vietnam or something. Some creativity on historical facts and there is money to be made. My vote would be the Heinkel as in fact it is a very neat design and would rub up rather well.
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Isnt that what Tritech, Harrington and a host of others tried and failed?
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Bigger wheels require much more space lost to steering clearance in the wheel arches, but do improve ride, so perhaps more compact suspension is allowed. Bigger tyres last longer too and give better grip and braking. It's always a compromise.
The doors are great. During my lifetime there has been a MASSIVE increase in car safety: Impact/crumple Zones, safety cells, anti-lock brakes, seat belts, airbags, Side Impact Protection, dual circuit brakes, collapsible steering columns, padded steering wheels.....a monumental change from 60s cars, but all aimed at protecting the safety of those inside the car.
If car makers had to be concerned about the safety of those that the car hits, then normal front hinged doors would have been banned 50 years ago! Sliding doors (as on a few new French cars) and upwards pivoting doors SHOULD be the only legal doors. Every year thousands of cyclists get injured, and scores killed by front hinged doors being thoughtlessly flung open right in front of them. Just 3 days ago one of our tenants got a bad leg injury from just this. Like me, he is a very experienced and "Road Wise" cyclist who is also a regular driver so he knows how irritating bad cyclists can be to motorists. I know another who lost his left arm and shoulder to a car door.
Sliding/upwards pivoting doors also mean the car can be parked closer to walls to make for much more compact parking space requirements.
To add to that many people who drive big executive saloons and 4WDs now park in the middle of a parking bay to ensure they have plenty of room to swing open their large doors, and prevent getting dings from the cars either side. If safe and compact sliding/pivoting doors were mandatory these problems would vanish overnight.
As I said, "car safety" is rarely extended to anything beyond the safety and convenience of the occupants.
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how would YOU know, Stuart he he ;D
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Isnt that what Tritech, Harrington and a host of others tried and failed?
I did put in the caveat 'the right person'. Tritech tried making to many shortcuts - mainly due to finance I think. They also did two cars rather than one better. Harrington, is he trying to make whole modern cars or steal in on a regulatory whim? Not up to speed here but the issue with Asia is to be very hard on quality control. iN A HURRY SO HAVE NOT THOUGHT OF OTHER SPECIFICALLY BUT IN NO WAY IS SUCH A THING EASY.