Originally posted by PapeteeBooh
Another thing that puzzle me is this: on a properly engineered vehicle (i.e. a bike) one sits behind the steering-wheels (or handlebar) in the middle of the vehicle. Makes sense. On a car, you are only at the left (or right depending on the country) of the car when you are holding the steering wheel. What poor design? drivers may have gotten use to it but it makes it obviously harder to stay in the middle of the road or to turn right (if your steering wheel is on the left etc).
These machine are poorly designed
You're right that cars are poorly designed, but not for the reason you state. There is actually a good reason for position the driver to the side. On a two way road the driver is sitting closer to the centre of te road (as opposed to lane) which allows better judgement of distances to oncoming traffic, which is a good idea. It does somewhat limit the ability to judge distances on the non driver side eg. passing cyclists, but drivers learn the spacial dimensions of their vehicle pretty well and can deal with this much rarer situation.
The
arepoorly designed for the following reasons:
1. The amount of energy they waste in:
a. generating heat.
b. generating noise.
c. hauling their own massive weight around.
2. They are rarely used to capacity eg. the single occupant vehicle is a monument to wastefulness.
3. They are way overpowered for normal use. Even allowing for the amount of energy wasted in '1' above, they still have far more available than they need.
4. They are rarely configured for city use, favouring what the ads would have us believe is their use - the open road. Instead of idling, which they do a lot in the city, they should shut down, and be able to be restarted efficiently.
5. They are far too big. The amount of room they require even for simple storage is a waste of expensive real estate.
6. The amount of waste they produce, both in their production and use.
There are, of course, exceptions that address one or two of these issues, but no car resolves all of them.
That said, Doug Malewicki's electric California Commuter is damn near the perfect commuter/city runabout. Even the petrol version is pretty good (157mpg at normal traffic speeds)
Allister