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120ish miles range is more than enough for majority of us drivers despite what people think. Yes long trip will require recharge (which will be quick with tiny battery) or a second car.
This is the near term EV future we should strive for vs expensive, heavy, and environmentally painful 300+ mi SUV and truck.
Alternative is PHEV+range extender like that byd truck
As someone who drove an original fiat 500e with a similar range, I can assure you this is not enough battery for anywhere but the market it’s designed for (South Korea). You will eat through that “best estimate” of 120 miles in a day’s worth of driving, especially with additional passengers and the AC running.
The average US daily drive is less than 40 miles. Accounting for outliers and a margin, let's conservatively say 60 miles. That's still probably more than most average commutes.
That's half the best case rated mileage, which is for sure more than the "realistic" mileage with a full vehicle and A/C running. There's no way that would reduce it by half, even from the best case rating.
It's fine for some. I've been driving my Leaf with 90 miles range for eight years and haven't needed more. It's a daily commuter car.
But I'm lucky enough to have two cars in the family.
How many miles a day did it actually get?
It was found recently that most trips were less than three miles, with only 2% of all trips made are more than 50 miles.
That number is a little misleading as it counts every stop as a "new trip." I could leave my house and drive 60 miles, stopping every 10 minutes, and they'd count that as 20 trips of 3 miles or less. Meanwhile a car with a 120 mile range probably wouldn't have enough juice to make it back home depending on how far away my last stop is from the house.
Multiple stays of longer than 10 minutes before returning home were counted as multiple trips
I see your point, though my own experience is similar to @[email protected], and perhaps just as anecdotal as yours, is that people more often take trips that are A-B-A, A-C-A, A-D-A, than they do A-B-C-D-A.
I suppose it's just a matter of convenience or time constraints, but running more errands in one trip is an overall time save in many occurrences, and more people should do that.
Makes me wonder how many of these 'trips' are one stop then back home and is many contain multiple stops. Or if it would drastically change the average to remove the multiple stop trips.
Thanks for raising that point, I hadn't considered it before.
Even A-B-A is counted as "two trips" which immediately doubles the number of trips and halves the distance of each. I have no idea what the rates of A-B-A versus A-B-C-D-A trips are, but their methodology here makes the entire study seem almost pointless, at least when trying to gauge the average mileage people are driving per day in reference to EV range.
Even using average yearly mileage can be misleading as almost nobody drives a fixed number of miles 7 days a week. I have a fairly long commute at 100 miles round trip, but my average daily mileage over a year is only 60 miles, or 60% of what I actually drive when I'm going to work. Someone telling me that a 120-mile range vehicle would work just fine for me based on my daily average would be completely wrong in that assessment when you account for efficiency losses and extra load from things like highway speeds, using the heater, or me having to make side trips somewhere on a work day.
That's another good point. I guess I assumed that A-B-A was a trip to the grocers and back, for example, but a trip out to the countryside to see the inlaws for the weekend would count as two trips, the A-B and the B-A. Counting the grocery trip as two trips doesn't seem right to me, I don't take hours in there.
For what it's worth, the various electrification plans I've been involved with all assume that these 'long stops' being the employment location, the hotel, the theatre, the doctors offices, all have charging on site. If this were the case - even just at the workplace - it would be a big help for electric vehicles that have small capacity batteries.
That's because people leave their house an insane number of times to go buy one thing at the store and come back. I swear my neighbors leave the house and come home again 10-15 times per day.
This is the near term EV future we should strive for vs expensive, heavy, and environmentally painful 300+ mi SUV and truck.
Even for the 300+mi vehicles we should be striving for sedans and wagons, not SUVs and trucks. Less weight and height means a better combination of handling and ride quality. There's a good reason Mercedes charges you more for the S-Class sedan than the bigger, heavier GLS-Class SUV. The former is optimized for luxury, the latter they market as the "S-Class of SUVs", but really, it's optimized for size. This is despite the fact that usually there's a "SUV tax". SUVs just cost more than their equivalent sedans and wagons.
@lurker8008 @MyOpinion a lot of people have 2 cars so there is definitely scope for a smaller vehicle for around town.
(which will be quick with tiny battery) <
This is where you're wrong.
Charging is not linear. EV's battery only fast charging to about 80%, after that it would halt to a crawl. It would take way less time to charge a 60kWh battery from 20% to 70% (50% = 30kWh) than it would take to charge a 30kWh battery from 0% to 100%.
That's not enough to make it to the next major city over in some parts of the US ; sure for a daily driver commute vehicle with a charger at each end that's great, but if you have to leave for any reason (such as say, a natural disaster like a hurricane that just hit), you're fucked. Having to own multiple vehicles isn't a solution, or an option for many.
Please bring to North America
"We hear you! Here is another hideous SUV with absolutely awful, wildly inefficient energy-to-range figures. Enjoy!"
It's made exclusively for the SK market.
It also likely wouldn't pass US safety ratings because it's lightweight and tiny.
If it does it'll get the import tax so look forward to it being in the high 20ks.
unless they build in the US?
I don't know that they're allowed to. I saw China is building some of them in Mexico because of it.
The headline should specify Korea. I mean, I know it was too good to be true I guess.
Neat, how long till we find out they did something insane like all use the same key or are all running a web server that allows access to the gas and brakes directly without authentication?
Edit: to be clear, no issue with the goal of more electric vehicles. But Kia is having some real deep seated quality issues the last... 13 years according to my insurance agent. They won't even touch a Kia without factory installed push button ignition since 2011. Then there's the whole "we're leaking all your data and access to your car thing"
I'm still too broke for that. Can I just steal one with a stick with the end shaved to be approximately the same dimensions as a usb A connector?
You're a bit late to party
No, no no. They fixed opting not to put a cheap anti theft device in a decade of cars by "updating software" and installing "dont steal this" window stickers. Some lucky devils that couldn't get software got a new metal ring in their steering column, and then a sticker. You could even go to your local police department in some locations and get a free, ridiculously useless steering wheel lock, if you heard about it. Mail them to customers? Nah, that might cost money.
Dont worry, they only did this in the US. Every other nation has laws about having an immobilizer in cars, but not the good ol' USA. Kia even had them in the same models sold elsewhere, just not the US models.
It only affected about 1 million people so far though, who have at best had to go in and have a half ass fix applied at a dealership while being upsold. That just leaves 7 million unprotected cars out there.
At worst, whats a few thousand stolen cars and even more shattered windows among friends? Surely no fine or penalty should occur.
Ohh, also, the software update doesn't seem to be working.
Oh Christ why is it so ugly
I thought the box-shaped car fad died out 10 years ago
Not in Asia. Still very trendy in a lot of countries here. Might be ugly outside, but it sure optimizes size and comfort inside.
For that reason I'm annoyed at large SUVs losing their boxiness in recent years. Like, I get it for sedans and stuff, but if I'm driving a big SUV my main concern is utility (you know, the U in SUV) and a curved back side makes it that much harder to fit my grandma's kitchen table in the back when I give it to my cousin.
It's literally a miniature Kia Soul which is hilarious. I don't think it looks that bad and the boxy design is quite functional.
Utility never goes out of style
Functionality. Based on the built in bed in the picture I'd say they have a head start on the market.
That top picture made me think it was a camper bus (like EV.Buzz) but at a fraction of the price.
But, alas...