Society's got priorities wrong.
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most car travels are 1 person or sometimes 2 person
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the majority of car travels are quite short, less than 40km.
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many car travels are just to get some groceries or drop of a little package or just say "hi" to someone, carrying nothing but themselves.
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cars are fucking expensive, to buy and to maintain
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accidents become way worse with heavier vehicles
Microcar is a valid answer to all of these, while still being sheltered from weather.
How are urban places (i'm in Belgium) with almost permanent super heavy road traffic congestion, bad climate statistics, high polution values, very limited available space left, no self-sustaining energy production and high traffic accident statistics still pooring in billions and billions in subsidies year after year into "regular" big heavy SUV-like vehicles instead of these? It's beyond my comprehension. The only real valid reason i somewhat get is the collective scare of being in a crash and not wanting to be in the smaller vehicle. We could save the climate, we choose not to.
- MICROLINO: 17.990 €
- OPEL ROCKS: 8.699 €
- CITROEN AMI: 7.790 €
- RENAULT TWIZY: 13.000 €
- FIAT TOPOLINO: 9.890 €
A lot of people here casually spend more on a sunday racing bike every few years for fucks sake.
The funny thing is that those cars are available and no one buys them because they don't fit with the objectives of the car buyer.
Safety is poor - especially if there are traditional cars on the road.
They are missing most ability beyond "go there". What about carrying things to and from places?
Can I never go camping again? Where does my dog go when we camp?
Am I not permitted a family?
The use cases for micro cars is very limited to "getting a person to a place" but shit for all other use cases. Let's move to a metro/rail solution and allow vehicular travel for use cases (rentals for parks, road trips, etc.)
Agree these vehicles are nothing more than hypothetical horseshit.
Where do my kids go, on the roof? What about all their shit? How about the things I'm taking with me like shopping, the wallpapering table my Dad wants to borrow, the ladder of his I'm taking in return, the plants I've bought and my dog? Those examples are from just today, which my wee civic had no bother hauling. I'm not renting a vehicle every time I need to do everyday tasks.
I get what you're saying but by that same logic I can just hand waive all of those away by saying they don't fit my specific life case use.
I would have loved to have one of those when I was in college and just needed it to go to school and work.
I couldn't afford a regular car so I just took my cities shitty public transportation which added a couple hours to my commute. I didn't even live far from school and work it was just that sucky.
I think there's definitely a space for those cars in modern society. I would love to have one to just go to the store and regular commute. I looked into the micro line they just aren't available in my area yet.
The ideal use case for these vehicles - short, local trips with a single person and no cargo - is better served by improving public transport, not using a mini car.
I agree with you, I loved public transit in the greater Tokyo area when I was there but this is a change I can do on my level vs public transit which I can only do so much to affect.