Cars and Automotive Design

Hi! Interesting to know, which are speed limits in cities and on highways in UK? And a wind velocity during stormy weather?

Hi!

I have some questions:

• Will this vehicle be street-legal?
• Expected retail price for customers?
• What about speed? In actual city traffic it should be capable to perform a bit better - up to 90-100 km/h.

Hi Gordon, your low speed city EV sounds great! There are a few single seat cars I've come across recently which look like they will become more mainstream. "Electra Meccanica Solo" and "Uniti-1" being two examples.

I agree that experimentation and new ideas are required.

The car industry has developed towards vehicle designs which are dependant upon the low cost and high energy density of oil and I think even when electric cars become more affordable, there is still the issue of embodied energy (and therefore embodied CO2) in building them. This is not insignificant!

No EV can be truthfully be described as zero carbon. Grid electricity used for recharging has a carbon footprint, (kgCO2/kWh), and all materials have a footpring (kgCO2/kg). I've been using data from various academic research groups and have concluded that my 500kg EV will have a carbon footprint (embodied) of around 7-10 metric tonnes of CO2, before it has even completed it's first journey. A big chunk of this is the Lithium battery.

So a conventional EV with it's high embodied CO2 will take years before it offsets the CO2 your petrol/diesel car would have produced.

This may sound radical, but it is my belief that companies selling products have a moral duty to account for this and present it to consumers, by quantifying and presenting 2 costs at the point of sale: "Monetary cost" and "climate cost". This would mean consumers would become aware of and understand the impact manufacturing has, make informed buying choices and hopefully result in a more widespread shift in behaviour, away from "throwaway" and towards "circular economy".

The reason I say all this is that the reality is if we want to really take responsibility for and tackle climate change I believe we can't just electrify everything and not make any other changes.

I love the Chesapeake designs by the way! Not at all crazy to use that style of construction for a lightweight EV in my opinion. I've been looking into flax composites, for some of the panels (interior, possible some body panels). These materials are already in use in some areas of the automotive industry.

If you'd like to discuss any ways we can collaborate or share thoughts & ideas please keep in touch!

It appears to be not an easy task to sell for this price. Is it intended to be somewhat luxurious or sporty?

And what is age group of 'young idle and rich' customers?

I am asking just to prepare some portion of constrictive criticism.

Do customers really care about CO2 emission?

Dear Mark,

I would love to be able to help you in the process. I do unfortunately live in the U.S. Im not to sure if this complicates anything, but I am nonetheless excited to see if I can collaborate.

Best Regards,

Anthony Scaccia