I couldn't wait. For me, that meant cars that came with six wheels. Or at least let the wheels rotate a full 180 degrees so you could parallel park more easily. Or a door design that really stood out. Or a fundamentally different shape. Three rows of seating, but only one seat per row, like a hot dog.
What we got (this is hearsay. I've not owned a Saturn personally, though I have ridden in a few, and know some Saturn owners) was a slightly different customer experience and a bunch of average looking cars that I couldn't get into without banging my head on the door frame (long torso exceeded tolerance).
I've longed for a solution to the whole car thing. This idea that people would get into a long term loan to pay half to a year's salary for a motor, four wheels, a couple seats, and a steering column (ok, sure, you want A/C too) always seemed ludicrous. It also seemed ludicrous that the price of a car never seemed to drop either, the way they seemed to drop for TVs and other consumer items. Yes, I know that there are a lot of things that make these types of purchases different, but as an average consumer, I never felt that the features of new cars adequately made up for the fact that price of new cars didn't seem to be coming down.
On top of that, as I've aged, I feel a larger push to use only what I need to use when it comes to resources. I'm not the kind of fellow who feels comfortable in a vehicle where gallons-per-mile is as reasonable a unit of measure as miles-per-gallon. I never understood why, despite all the concern about fossil fuels, cars never seemed to get much better. They got better, sure. I'm talking doubling or tripling, though. That's what I wanted. Orders of magnitude better. That's what science is supposed to do for us.
The battery technology is great, but even batteries themselves haven't gotten much better in about 100 years. Someone even pointed out the other day that electric cars have been around since before 1900. That shouldn't have blown my mind, but did.
Auto makers keep trying to push more electronics inside the car. USB? Bluetooth? Wow. Little tablet mounted in the dashboard? Big whoop. Car talks to you? Old news. This is not the kind of advancement I want. I want advancement in the core capabilities of what a car really is: a transportation device. I don't want to hang out in my car. I don't want it to be a little bachelor pad with disco lights and a flat screen (obviously, my idea of a bachelor pad is a little off). I want a better car.
While auto innovation isn't exactly gangbusters , there is some hope on the horizon. There's progress on the self-driving car: GM and Nissan both say they'll bring a lot of this tech to bear by 2020, but those won't go mainstream for another decade, and ubiquity is a ways off. The real game-changing impacts of that technology (Automobile-as-a-Service or AaaS) are so far off that I'll need another car by then.
And I'm actually thinking about this one. I'll say this. I'm in no way related to this company, other than I am a super-fan of what they're trying to do. I don't get any commissions, nor have I been able to go to one of the events to drive one.
The high points for me
- 84 mpg highway - this is one heck of a leap forward.
- Perfect commuter car - it's for when you're just driving yourself and don't want to drive around a heavy box full of air.
- $6800 - I liked the Smart car and could have handled the fact that it drove poorly if it wasn't priced the same as cars twice its size that handled better. At this price point, you could get a lot of people into these commuter cars.
- Groovy colors - Yeah, it matters to me. I like groovy colors.
I appreciate what they're doing. They're innovating. They said, "How can we make a car that's less expensive and can still get better mileage than most cars get today?" And then they got to the drawing board and did it. Now even if they miss their mark and are off by a grand and 10 mpg in the wrong direction, that's still an $8,000 car that gets 75 mpg. That's still remarkable.
They're not on the market yet, but they are taking pre-orders. I've not put mine in, but I'm sorely tempted to do so. I really want to wait to see how they handle before taking the plunge, and if they got to my area for a test drive, I'd be much more willing to plunk down the down payment.
What are your thoughts? Would you drive this car? Would you buy one without a test drive, just to support innovation?
Oh, cars, I have so much to say.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Saturn: they came on the market with a few innovative concepts (for the time). The biggest one was "no haggle pricing." You paid sticker price, full stop. Everyone paid sticker price. That price was the same at every dealer. This evened the playing field for buyers, made it so they didn't have to wonder whether they were getting the run around.
Another was the ground up design. Saturns weren't some rebadged Chevys or Pontiacs under the GM umbrella. They were actually newly engineered powertrains, interiors, chassis (mostly). And it showed. Where other GM cars were kind of "flat and American" on the inside, Saturns were more driver and passenger friendly. The seats actually had a shape, for example.
There's also the famous Saturn plastic body panels, and the lesser known fact that the engines used timing chains instead of belts. The SOHC 4cyl was on the slow side, but the DOHC was great. I'm not familiar with the V6, but I get the sense that it was not outstanding, but serviceable.
The batteries in the 2013 Fusion Hybrid are "next gen" batteries, Li-Ion instead of NiMH. Smaller, lighter, makes it so there's trunk space ... kind of. And Ford just put out a powertrain control module reprogramming which changes the way the hybrid drive works, most notably increasing the electric-only operation speed from 62MPH to 85MPH. They might actually reach the EPA 47MPG in real-world conditions, at least on the highway.
The big thing about hybrids and electrics is that the ones that get decent mileage (or range, in the case of electrics) have historically been either little econoboxes or expensive luxury cars (think Tesla). There's a few now that are filling that mid-range gap: Ford Fusion, Hyundai Sonata, Kia Optima, Toyota Camry, some others. But people still have concerns about the longevity of those pesky batteries, and the prices on these are still on the high side compared to their gasoline brethren in the same class. The fact that the hybrid car tax credit is gone no longer softens that blow.
The Europeans, of course, must be confused about why we ooh and aah about 40MPG when they've had affordable small cars doing 75MPG for some time. They're small diesels, but we don't have them here because our emissions regulations are strict enough to rule them out. Diesels make more particulate emissions, we can't have that.
I think that will change at some point, especially when someone figures out how to leverage biodiesel and/or diesel from coal. Maybe this whole hybrid car thing will end up being "that weird fad in the early 21st century."
Self-driving cars, though - they're going to go through that early phase of "way too expensive or everything else has been stripped out," the same way hybrids have for so long.
That Elio definitely sounds interesting. I think their success is going to hinge on how Tesla does against the courts, in their fight to be able to sell direct to consumers, without a dealer network. Otherwise, they're going to have to plunk down a huge amount of capital to get their car line into existing dealerships, or more likely, build their own. Car manufacturers really want their dealers to only sell their cars, not multiple brands, especially this kind of experimental brand.
Awesome feedback, Chris. I didn't know all that about the Saturn brand. I guess having a buying model that was flat is kinda like the Carmax no-haggle thing, which I love. Thing is that the cars themselves looks and felt very generic. Still do, really. I'm excited by the modern innovation. Tesla's a great example, too. Love what they've done, and once they make a model that's sub 10K, I'll really be in the market for one.
ReplyDeleteIf I could test drive an Elio, and it didn't suck the way the smart car does (cheap and cruddy handling), I might plunk down the down payment on principle. I'm waiting for the test drive to come somewhere local...