I have a driving license of germany, which allows me to buy the lamborghini killeveryoneinstantli WRX V-Tec10 SHO V12 and drive that.
What I can’t buy is a funky chinese small EV that is limited to 45kph and realistically does 30 unless there’s 8 middlemen involved that offer a certificate of conformity that seems mostly based on the reasonable hope that whatever crashes the drivers of those get into kills them instantly and as such can’t sue.
I’m a cyclist for god’s sake, I’ve made my peace with god. Just occasionally I’d like to not eat shit in icy conditions on my bike or not get hail’d on.
I can legally buy and register a motorcycle that goes over 200 mph, or an antique car with wheels made of wood, but a Japanese kei truck is “too dangerous.” Yeah right it’s just competing with the Ford F150 Child Mulcher Edition.
wait for the Fiat Topolino to become cheaper on used market
For some reason I can’t figure out they sell for more used than new.
this has been the case for every single car since 2020, cars are just priced like that nowadays
Plus the banks will give you a lower interest rate on new vs used (at least in burgerland).
Can you get a BMW Isetta or a Trabant? lol
Sure, but those are expensive to buy these days, hard to service and still require inspections and tax
I’m just throwing goofy ass suggestions out there. Totally forgot that you all have actual auto inspections/standards!
Any chance you can get/run a tuktuk? A Piaggio Ape or something similar would be sick as hell.
An Ape here runs around ~5k unless you want something that by this point is mostly dust and spiderwebs. Which is about the same price as the funky chinese EV cargo trike, new.
Kind of what I’m mad at here, they sell for around 1000€ on Alibaba. Sure, needs some middlemen to get here possibly, but certainly not 4000€ of middlemen. Profit motive and all, but a lot of this must be tied up in regulations of conformity to get a piece of paper that says it’s street legal and accomplishes basically nothing.
It specifies, for example, allowable tyre sizes. But I’ve test ridden one of these, the speedometer is like 20kph over what you’re doing anyways. Which is perfectly legal, it can be entirely too high, just never too low. But now if I maybe fit a wheel that’s slightly smaller on it, what if that suddenly throws the speedometer off by 20kph? Never mind the fact that the speedometer is not in any way based on the wheels, it does best-guessing on account of how much the engine works lol. Most people who have one just install a bicycle speedometer, apparently. Also perfectly legal.
Or another example: Maximum Persons allowed. Which, if you exceed it, nets you a whopping 5 - 10€ fine. At which point I’d argue instead of doing an ardous regulatory process to discern that a trike with a handlebar in the middle is, actually, a one seater just let the cops decide if they think it’s fine or not. It’s a fucking 10€ fine, who gives a shit. The exact process of the cops vibing into it already exists for motorcycles, where whether or not you can take on a passenger is based on whether there’s “appropiate seating arrangements” for them. Just do that here!
tied up in regulations of conformity to get a piece of paper that says it’s street legal and accomplishes basically nothing
Isn’t this basically German culture?
allowed tire sizes
This comes up in inspections for you all? This is a whole thing for aftermarket wheels/tires for cars, but it’s only a problem when you get a speeding ticket. That bicycle speedometer (based on GPS, I assume) trick sounds solid for cool low speed stuff.
That’s a sick EV tuktuk. When I needed to get a car (for
reasons), I seriously thought about getting a kei truck but ended up with a newer sporty sedan because I needed something that I could at least not have my family flattened in and wanted something that i would find joy in. Having a bit of a mechanical hyperfixation is admittedly a personal problem lol.I’ve been enjoying the shit out of riding my cheap ass bike for runs to my city library and my favorite beer store in on the other side of town (most of my commuting tbh). I’m seriously considering getting a little half-height basket to slap on my front rack in the near future.
This comes up in inspections for you all?
Yeah, albeit these don’t have inspections. But if you do wrong sized tyres suddently the thing isn’t street legal at all anymore, i.e. you’re riding around in something not street legal, uninsured, which kind of like a medium crime. So not really plausible.
That bicycle speedometer (based on GPS, I assume)
Nah, wheel size and a magnet + sensor attached at the front wheel mostly. Reports from GPS bicycle speedometers is if you put them into the faraday cage that is this thing they don’t work so great anymore and they don’t exactly come with an antenna port
something that i would find joy in.
I’d guess these aren’t viable for
but honestly, surprisingly fun ride! Especially empty these have some pick-up to them and there isn’t a lot of dampening and shielding involved. Felt much more like doing 40kph on a bicycle than 40kph in a car on both speed perception and also comfortI’ve been enjoying the shit out of riding my cheap ass bike for runs to my city library and my favorite beer store in on the other side of town (most of my commuting tbh). I’m seriously considering getting a little half-height basket to slap on my front rack in the near future.
Hell yeah
I’m sure that’s an 80s monster who never put the “bigly flat body” retrains but to all the gas from a full body on fumes until something happens.
you can already buy a swasticar
