very light electric vehicles in europe

The Europeans have elaborate categorizations of wheeled vehicles that define things like taxation rates, insurance rates and licensing.  I first encountered these looking at electric bikes.  They define a moped as something called a L1e vehicle - the motor (gas or electric) is between 0.25 and 4 kW and the maximum speed is limited to 45 km/h.  This puts a restriction on ebikes and some manufacturers and enthusiasts would like to see a 350 or even 500 watt cutoff to allow larger motors before you have to treat the bike like a moped.

Looking deeper into the L category one finds two wheeled motorcycles, tricycles (currently mostly motorcycles with sidecars) and, curiously, quadricycles.  In the US quadricycles are usually off the road vehicles, but in Europe they are divided into two categories L6e - light quadricycles with an unladen mass less than 350 kg, motors under 4 kW, and speeds under 45 km/h - and heavy quadricycles with unladen masses under 400 kg and motors under 15 kW (there is a special variation that allows masses to 550 kg if the vehicle is intended to be a small truck that carries goods).

L7e is particularly interesting as that is the ballpark for what is possible with state of the art passenger cars intended for road use.  The Edison 2 team -  winners of the Automotive X-Prize - used a very light vehicle approach to get enough efficiency for their four passenger car to deliver more than 100 mpg at "reasonable" levels of safety and performance.  The winning vehicles had internal combustion engines, but pure electrics are possible and the Edison2 are working on an electric prototype.  This sort of car is within striking distance of the 400 kg (880 pound) unladen mass without a battery and 15 kW is about 20 horsepower.

BMW and Mercedes realized the same thing and are co-sponsoring an academic effort looking at making such a vehicle practical - safe, inexpensive and efficient - all necessary for wide spread adoption.  They are funding work at the Technical University Munich (TUM) under the Visio.M research project called MUTE.  All of this fits in very nicely with the longer term goals of BMW and Mercedes to address the world car market - where automakers will make most of their money ten years out and beyond.  The perception of what can be safe or not in the US probably limits potential massive adoption of this kind of vehicle, but that might not be the case if massive increases in fuel prices occur.

Technical Data

Dimensions:	Microcars
Number of passengers:	2 passengers
Vehicle payload:	2 pieces of luggage
Range:	> 100 km
Costs (TCO):	TCO equal to today´s compact cars
Market	Central Europe
Registration	L7E
Maximum speed	120 km/h
Output at wheel	15 kW
Curb weight	500 kg incl. battery

 

Comments

[Roger]

Not sure how that image fits in with this

or this

but do hope for the best

I was driving along a twisting road in the Alps when I saw a helicopter rising up ahead of me. Rounding the next bend, I saw the front wheel of a large truck resting on a flattened motorcycle in the middle of the road. My concern is always for the safety of occupants in lightweight vehicles in the midst of too many fast-moving, heavy machines.

[Best Man]

Tweezy from Renault is called the egoist car in Germany, becasue it only fits one person, but still the people buy it very often.