Judging by the comments I’ve read on this page it seems that most people don’t give a rat’s about fuel economy or exhaust emissions. I guess its much more important to drive a cool car that can travel much faster than you ever need to go.
sniffle I am interested … also because they make biodiesel and I can buy it half a state away in Mass … so we could go up in the pickup and bring back a couple drums at a time and have fuel for a month on hand=)
Personally, I wish the government would just tell the populace to stuff it, and do the tweal to let gas autos use ethanol, and all diesel will be biodiesel … and cut the use of petrochemicals for transport to a minimum. I plan on my next vehicle to be a diesel just so I can use biodiesel.
It’s more a matter of not wanting to die. I know several people who’d be dead if they drove one of those. Probably most of my local family members would be dead. It’s not safe in a collision with a larger car, and you can’t get rid of ALL the larger cars because people need to haul families or cargo sometimes.
Something like the Smart or maybe even something a little smaller might be a good idea for slow, dense traffic in cities or in rush-hour suburban commuting, but I wouldn’t want one as a general-purpose car.
The Loremo is a toy and isn’t even in the same class as a Smart or a Metro. Maybe it could work in a city as a sort of enclosed scooter replacement. They’d probably have to make a new class of vehicle or something for things lke that to pass safety standards.
And on what basis do you say that? From the Loremo website:
Allowing for the fact that this is manufacturer-provided information, it apparently meets all relevant German crash safety standards. It seems to me you’re declaring it to be unsafe solely on the basis of its being small. Or do you have a background in structural engineering that you’re hiding from us?
People made the same assumptions about the Smart, but it’s actually great for safety because it doesn’t fold up.
Here’s a nice spectacular crash video.
Less sensational footage at Smart Canada.
I want one.
Why do they have to make economical cars look so damn weird? I would think that way more people would want to purchase cars like the Loremo or the SmartCar if they LOOKED LIKE NORMAL CARS.
Style is important to the vast majority of American consumers. Why can’t they make these cars more stylish (or at the very least, more generic-looking and not so far-out?)
Tell me about it. Prior to buying my Saturn, I drove a 1987 Chevy Nova. This was the little hatchback version that was actually a rebadged Toyota or something. Underpowered crap on wheels. At least once, I nearly got into a serious accident because I couldn’t accelerate up to freeway speeds fast enough. You don’t need to be able to do 0-60 in four seconds, but a reasonable amount of power is not optional.
In both these cases, though, if they looked like normal cars, they’d be normal cars.
A big part of the gain in gas mileage comes from breaking away from the idea (taken for granted for so long) that the engine needs to drag a couple of tons of chassis + body around. The Smart approaches the problem in a way that (apart from a PTB frame) puts an absolute minimum of frame around a fairly spacious interior bubble, while keeping the passengers as safe as they’d be in a big boat.
I was resistant to the look of the Loremo at first, because I thought it was “Jetsons for the sake of Jetsons” – but the thing is designed to allow the bare minimum of air resistance, as well as being under 1000lbs. It looks that way because it works better.
You can get a car that looks like a “normal” car and gets 15mpg, or you can get one that gets 65mpg or 157mpg and looks like its engineers started from first principles.
Besides – nearly all the cars on the road today are ugly and ridiculous looking – they’re just ugly and ridiculous in a way that’s so ubiquitous that it’s hardly noticible. Once a few decades have receded into rear-view, only a few designs will stand out as having managed to avoid being plug-ugly, and we’ll wonder how people were ever persuaded to drive most of them off the lot, as stupid-looking as they are. (At least, that’s the way it’s gone ever since blessed Ford forged his flivver.)
Even if it doesn’t break, the small mass means the passengers undergo more acceleration in a crash with another bigger car, and thus they hit the restraints harder and they move around more in the cabin. Crumple zones are there to softten impacts. Does it actually have a good death/injury record in two-car crashes?
Anyway, the Smart is a whole lot more substantial than that other Pow-Pow-Powerwheels Loremo thing. The Smart Car might me a good idea for some applications.
What’s weird about the Loremo’s design? It looks like a conventional modern 2-door coupe to me. (Except it doesn’t have 2 doors, I know.)
It will be interesting to see how this is playing out in the real world, but all the safety testing so far has indicated that the Smart is about as safe as you can be in a motor vehicle. (Certainly haven’t heard any gruesome stories from the past six years they’ve been about-- only good things. Of course, I haven’t heard any particularly gruesome stories about accidents involving specific other models of vehicles that stand out, either.)
I think that it’s likely that the trade-off (if any) in the reduced deformation is to the Smart’s advantage. The Smart is designed so that the transmission absorbs a good deal of the shock of a head-on collision – in most sedans the engine block prevents this from happening, so even without accordioning, someone driving a Smart may experience less sudden acceleration in a head-on than a regular sedan – or at least a similar amount. (The steering column is also designed to absorb force applied in the other direction. It shuts up like a telescope, behind the airbag.) It’s not like you’re driving around in an adamantium cage that won’t deform at all in a collision – it’s just that it’s engineered in such a way that it’s unlikely for the deformation of the frame to intrude into the cabin area. A huge source of trauma in a collision is the sudden intrusion of hard steel into an area occupied by a fleshy human.
Apart from that whole “two door” thing, of course. You do have to admit that a car that opens up like an alligator and has rear-facing back seats is a little unconventional. If I only have to stop for gas three times between here and Toronto, though… 
Apparently I’ve come down with a case of acute parenthetical blindness. (Actually, lousy memory and lately-added thoughts based only on quoted portion of the post-ism.)