Comment by stetrain
6 hours ago
Lighter weight does improve range a bit in stop and go city driving, but not really on longer trips. Once the weight of the car is up to speed, most of the energy is spent fighting aerodynamic drag. Lower weight would probably reduce rolling resistance and has other benefits to vehicle handling and costs.
I doubt a sub-1 tonne car is going to be pleasant to drive at highway speeds (thinking about the noise insulation here) and especially if there's even a little bit of wind. This is clearly designed for localized city driving. I suspect that it's also more (though not totally) pedestrian friendly in that the kinetic energy stored will be far less given any kind of impact.
I personally love that it is running counter to the trend of car masses and sizes increasing across the world [0]. There's a reason why there's a small, very fun and niche community of Kei car enthusiasts - the case against pavement princesses and absurdist masculine performativity is a strong one.
[0] https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/global-car-economy
My first car was a Twingo 1, it was around 800kg, I traversed France highways from south to north mutiple times, never had any problem, very comfortable. It was even better than Lada 4x4 on snow (traversed plateau du Larzac fully covered in snow, no problem, without chains or winter tyres, saw some (french) Lada on the road side). Perfect car, but maybe you need to be French or Italian to appreciate it.
> I doubt a sub-1 tonne car is going to be pleasant to drive at highway speeds
My car is 945kg and the biggest issue with longer trips is that the chairs aren’t that comfortable. Although at higher speeds it feels a bit dodgy. It does 170 no problem and that feels quite fast already. Top speed is 190 which I only tried once on the autobahn but that’s quite scary. At about 170 acceleration drops significantly and it takes a few minutes to go from 170 to 190. Won’t ever try that again. Cruising at around 150 for several hours is perfectly fine.
My first car was a (UK) Ford Fiesta Mk 1 (1981). It had a sub 1l engine, something like 960cc and weighed not much.
At the time I lived in Plymouth, Devon and my parents live in Exeter and still do. In between is the A38, which is a dual carriageway and quite a lot of fun to drive. Halden Hill is a good test of a vehicle!
My old Fester managed about 60mph at the top of Halden Hill, going from Exeter. My current EV can be doing 120mph at that point.
The fester used to start chattering at about 65 and then quietened down at 70-75. After 75 (which of course I never achieved, what with that being illegal) it made a strange whining sound, which was not unpleasant. It passed away at M5 J30 (Exeter Services) with at least two shot cylinders.
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My mx5 will happily sit at 150kph cruising, it's just a bit over 1000kg. At 200+ it feels like it's growing wings and about to take into the air. (motorsport)
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well, I did a test once upon a time on an Opel Corsa D 1.1, full weight about 1.3t, and it did reach 139 kph on gps, but.. let's say it if had it in it to go 170, i'd just back off at about 150.
I had no problems going 190-210 on a motorcycle. It's just like boat hull speed, after some limit no matter what you do it just won't go faster.
> I doubt a sub-1 tonne car is going to be pleasant to drive at highway speeds
Why would you think that? Well, you sort of explain it, but you don’t have any evidence or experience to back it up, so I’m still not sure why you think it?
Back in the day (think 1990s) plenty of small European hatchbacks weighed less than or around 1000kg, and noise at highway speeds was not a problem: Peugeot, Citroen, Renault, VW, Fiat, and others all had small hatchbacks that were absolutely fine, and perfectly comfortable, at motorway speeds for long distances.
My first car was a used 1998 Renault Clio: depending on which engine and trim level you bought they either weighed a bit less than 1000kg, or a bit more. I looked mine up and it weighed 1050kg.
I did about 50,000 miles in that car, including lots of long journeys. Back then I had a far too heavy right foot - which eventually got me a speeding fine - and even then noise wasn’t an issue on the motorway.
There’s so much more to how noisy a car is inside than merely sound insulation. Aerodynamics are a huge component, but so are shut lines, seals, and panel gaps. Materials and surface finishes also matter. Even things like the shape of the wing mirrors, or how the shape of the front corners and headlights direct air around and past the wing mirrors[0], can have a massive impact on whether or not a car is noisy at speed within the cabin.
This is Hacker News. We all to a greater or lesser extent work or dabble in incredibly detail oriented disciplines. Why would you assume disciplines outside those in majority representation here aren’t equally, or even more, detailed?
[0] I want to say either the Nissan Note or the Nissan Leaf had nobbly protrusions on its headlights specifically to reduce cabin noise by changing the way air flowed around the wing mirrors.
Since this is Hacker News, perhaps we can acknowledge that psychoacoustics is also an incredibly detailed discipline. Perceived noise isn’t simply a matter of decibels. Expectations change, and we find some sounds more tolerable than others. Engine noise can mask wind and tyre noise, for example, so removing it can make a quieter car subjectively less pleasant. It’s almost as though there’s more to acoustic comfort than remembering that your 1998 Clio was fine.
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> Why would you assume disciplines outside those in majority representation here aren’t equally, or even more, detailed?
Because there's literally a market carve-out for city-driving electric cars like the Leaf and the BMW i-series. As much as I would love for a group of engineers to go hard on specs out of passion, I also believe that corporations are run much more by MBA-brained types than engineers now and any over-engineering outside of strict business criteria will be immediately vetoed and dumped
> My first car was a used 1998 Renault Clio
And these days the over-reliance on plastics for structure and cost reduction in combination with large scale production sourcing issues that are hangovers from a global pandemic and an increasingly aggressive imperial trade regime by certain bad actors means there's little chance you are getting similar quality standards like those from 20+ years ago
Enshittification is a real thing and I'm not the kind of corporate brand loyalist who still believes these companies are going out of their way to make a car better than it needs to be
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I did lots of highway driving in my 2010 Yaris (weighs about a tonne) this weekend and I was perfectly comfortable. Though I guess the more used you get to larger, heavier cars the more you would find such a small car uncomfortable.
I started in a CR-X then upgraded to a Celica then a two-door Accord with a V6 (that was fun) then a Civic Hybrid and now a decade-old Forester. There's a significant difference between even the Civic and the Forester for road noise even with the tires both having been Michelin Ecopias and the Civic being far more aerodynamic - I chalk most of that up to noise insulation (or the lack thereof) in the Civic. It really shouldn't be that the taller, boxier, and heavier Forester is quieter but it is.
It will also have less drag than your typical electric brick of a SUV.
Also, at least here highway driving is quite a bit of slowing down and speeding up, rarely it is just one speed whole way (that unless you're sitting on right lane behind the trucks)