Matt

Er, are you crazy ABG? Split on this one? Really?

Cars like this are what we need more of. People out there still think of electric cars as the dodgy looking g-wiz things or even worse invalid carriages and milk floats. Striking, unusual looking cars like this stand out, promote discussion, and raise the awareness and crucially the beholder's conciousness to what a car is or can be. People will see this and, with their curiosity piqued, go find out more about it.

Would you rather Kia trotted out another terminally-dull car like the Nissan Leaf? No one would realise it was electric, it would be a case of "oh, its just another boring kia picanto" which would be ignored. Make a statement, make an impact. Redefine what we consider a car to look like.


(Obviously this wont make it to market like this - at the very least I'd expect the rear seat, side windows and lights to change, but hey its the thought that counts)

Interesting that the consensus seems to be that nissan will make a loss on this. They couldn't go lower than the volt otherwise it would have made their car out to be "less good" or somehow not a proper car.

In 4-8 years time I am sure battery packs will be a fair bit cheaper than they are now anyway

"Dear Fiat

As an american, I cannot possibly tow a boat up a mountain every day with a car with anything less than 6 litres of displacement.

Yours,

Stupid fat americans."
America, 2010

The rest of the world is of course happy to do their bit; americans are obsessed with "hemis" (whatever they are) and towing boats up mountains.

It is interesting because - despite what the article says - London is taking measures to stop this.

Not only is there the congestion charge to deter people from driving into the central London zone (inclusive of very generous discounts for low-emission vehicles), but there is also a huge fee to drive a commercial vehicle into all of London (basically anything inside the M25 instead of just central London) which is called the Low Emission Zone. To drive a commercial vehicle over a certain size (anything larger than a transit van) that is not Euro III now and not Euro IV from Jan 2012 it is £200 ***per day*** compared to £8 for a car in London. That is a pretty huge incentive.

Then there are the electric car charging spots, the bike hire scheme that is just about to launch, the hybrid buses due soon - basically there is lots going on.

I'd have to question some of the existing buses and black cabs as someone else pointed out, but then buses are starting to be replaced with hybrids that is true.

I do not know the specifics but I'd also wonder if there are geophysical reasons for the air quality too - if its been a "bad air" day a lot recently that might simply be due to the weather and the fact that its been really hit lately with not much wind.

So what?

You took a risk, it didn't pay off. That's business (and indeed life)

Ugliest car ever. They're not helping by painting it yellow.

Still, nice to see an electric one.

400? yeah right.

London is about 2,000 years old, and that is positively young compared to many of the southern/near est cities - e.g. Athens as a city is about 2,500 years old, but the location has continuous human habitation for about 7,000 years.

Nether the less, the roads are fine. Sure there are tiny narrow ones but they have been pedestrianised. Big cars are not popular because they use too much fuel, are awful in traffic and make you look like you're trying to make up for a small cock.

Video seems to be america only.

karma--

Software is expensive to develop.

I work in professional software development for very well known multinational IT company - I wont say who but hopefully its obvious - and its not unusual to have teams of hundreds writing code and testing it, and even then we often only manage to test 70-80% of it with any level of detail.

Obviously for just a website, only testing 70-80% of it is not a problem. You test the core functionality, enough to know that fundamentally the software *works* and does what it is supposed to do, and then leave the less-used functionality for maintenance fixes as and when a problem is found. Would you drive a car where the brakes or air bag were only tested for 70-80% of the possible scenarios? I'd certainly not want to.

The trouble is the whole 80:20 rule, in this case to get up to 70-80% tested is (fairly) easy - pushing up to 90% or even the magical 100% is pretty difficult and will take a long time.

Software Engineering is *hard* - its called engineering for a reason! If you want quality, you've got to pay for it.

Open Source is great - sure you get a lot of time for free from developers, but typically Open Source is developed with the "many eyes" approach, i.e. develop something, send it out there and let people incrementally improve it as they stumble across problems. You cant expect that to happen if its the ECU - sure someone might find the Toyota Bug's equivalent in a desktop application and fix it, but you cant say the same for a car's ECU, particularly if you died in the accident.

Software for the in-car entertainment system - yeah, sure that is cheap and easy to develop and will be churned out in some sweat-shop in India, probably for less than the combined sticker price of 10 new cars. Your car's ECU, its ABS, its EBD, its air bags, its collision avoidance, its seat-belt tensioners, its traction control, hell even the anti-trap electronics to stop some kid's fingers getting bitten by an electric window - that sort of stuff can hurt or even kill people if its not done right, and that folks is what costs you money.

Whoa wait what, you throw your oil containers into the rubbish in america?! And people there have the nerve to complain about BP when they are doing essentially the exact same thing themselves (albeit on a smaller scale of course).

In the UK you're not permitted to just throw this stuff away or pour it down the drain. This is why all councils offer recycling facilities for it, and there are websites such as http://www.oilbankline.org.uk/ that show you exactly where your nearest recycling centres are - e.g. there are 10 within 8 miles of my address.