Society's got priorities wrong.
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most car travels are 1 person or sometimes 2 person
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the majority of car travels are quite short, less than 40km.
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many car travels are just to get some groceries or drop of a little package or just say "hi" to someone, carrying nothing but themselves.
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cars are fucking expensive, to buy and to maintain
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accidents become way worse with heavier vehicles
Microcar is a valid answer to all of these, while still being sheltered from weather.
How are urban places (i'm in Belgium) with almost permanent super heavy road traffic congestion, bad climate statistics, high polution values, very limited available space left, no self-sustaining energy production and high traffic accident statistics still pooring in billions and billions in subsidies year after year into "regular" big heavy SUV-like vehicles instead of these? It's beyond my comprehension. The only real valid reason i somewhat get is the collective scare of being in a crash and not wanting to be in the smaller vehicle. We could save the climate, we choose not to.
- MICROLINO: 17.990 €
- OPEL ROCKS: 8.699 €
- CITROEN AMI: 7.790 €
- RENAULT TWIZY: 13.000 €
- FIAT TOPOLINO: 9.890 €
A lot of people here casually spend more on a sunday racing bike every few years for fucks sake.
Hmm, I wonder how many of these cars are used to replace existing ones...
Most of the micro cars I see are parked by a highschool so to me it seems like people view them as a stop gap between no car and car ownership and not as a way to replace existing cars.
It's making cars more viable, especially to young people and I fail to see that as a positive thing.
Here in italy they are mostly bought because you can legally drive them with the license you can get at 14y; essentially it's used as a car to get to high school/ university where you rarely can find parking spots.
In France, they can be driven without a driver's license if they don't go faster than 45km/h, so they are exclusively used by alcoholics.
France. Not even once.
Okay, that's stupid.
The very few I see around are either elderly people (it's an excellent vehicle for them) or local firms buying it as a marketing gimmick.