I personally think of “automobiles” so self powered vehicles. Velomobiles (human powered) are cool but i live in the mountains and I do not get decent comfort with them.
My daily driver, is a Renault Twizy. It comes with a (electric) engine, steering wheel, gas and brake pedals, a roof, a windshield and other stuff most people associate with “car”.
It also weights about 400 kg empty and four of them use less parking space than one traditional car. I power it with solar power for my own roof. It maxes out at about 80 km/h which makes it suitable for short trips on the Autobahn.
Might not be a usual car but still quite traditional and much more energy efficient than a 2100 kg Tesla.
I get you now. But I still feel like “car” is intended to be (or ought to be) narrowly defined as a 1000-lb metal box on wheels with an engine. I think referring to other vehicles as “cars” just muddles the discourse.
Then again, I’m conflicted. If I replace “car” with another word like “meat” or “milk”, I have a different reaction. If someone wrote an article about factory-farm chickens vs free-range chickens and said, “There really is no such thing as ‘good’ meat,” I’d definitely chime in with, “What about vegan meat?”
Maybe it’s because I perceive the gap between animal meat and vegan meat as narrower than the gap between 1000-lb metal boxes with engines and other types of vehicles. Like… if I have to pedal, it’s not a car.
Do those really count as cars in the usual sense of the term?
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I’m not sure I follow.
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I personally think of “automobiles” so self powered vehicles. Velomobiles (human powered) are cool but i live in the mountains and I do not get decent comfort with them.
My daily driver, is a Renault Twizy. It comes with a (electric) engine, steering wheel, gas and brake pedals, a roof, a windshield and other stuff most people associate with “car”. It also weights about 400 kg empty and four of them use less parking space than one traditional car. I power it with solar power for my own roof. It maxes out at about 80 km/h which makes it suitable for short trips on the Autobahn.
Might not be a usual car but still quite traditional and much more energy efficient than a 2100 kg Tesla.
I get you now. But I still feel like “car” is intended to be (or ought to be) narrowly defined as a 1000-lb metal box on wheels with an engine. I think referring to other vehicles as “cars” just muddles the discourse.
Then again, I’m conflicted. If I replace “car” with another word like “meat” or “milk”, I have a different reaction. If someone wrote an article about factory-farm chickens vs free-range chickens and said, “There really is no such thing as ‘good’ meat,” I’d definitely chime in with, “What about vegan meat?”
Maybe it’s because I perceive the gap between animal meat and vegan meat as narrower than the gap between 1000-lb metal boxes with engines and other types of vehicles. Like… if I have to pedal, it’s not a car.
Is the Flintstones car a “car”?
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