cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21667133

I’m a country boy all my life. I can’t cycle or take the metro anywhere. Walkable cities are great but they’re a hundred miles away.

Everyone goes on about how they hate cars, but what else are you supposed to do?

https://electrek.co/2023/12/04/livaq-equad-unveiled-as-most-capable-electric-atv-ever/ – this article talks about something with a 108km/h and a range of 273 km. It’s mad expensive unfortunately, but that is normally to do with adoption rates and scale.

(It says “claims a range of 170 miles (273 km) from its 15.4 kWh battery pack”, which implies consumption of about 55 watt-hours per km travelled, though that’d be variable depending on speed and conditions)

If I had one of these, I could get to town, get to a train station, without a car. I could carry one child, which is worse than a car, but the energy consumption is a 3-4× lower than a car. If train stations had swappable batteries, that would be ideal, but I don’t see that coming any time soon.

  • AlligatorBlizzard
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    4 hours ago

    LOL this unlocked a memory. For about six months, my grandma was in assisted living without my grandfather, who staunchly refused to move off the farm, but he was not safe to drive anymore due to being caught driving the wrong way up main street a few too many times so he also had his keys taken away. He started driving his 4 wheeler to HyVee so he could keep having breakfast with the other old farmers. Was it legal? Doesn’t matter because nobody was going to say shit.

  • GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk
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    11 hours ago

    If it cuts down on the absolute cunts who tool around town on loud quads, I’m all for it.
    Just make sure they’re taxed and insured.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 hours ago

      Those thin wheels are not going to hold up to what passes for roads in the places where someone is considering an ATV.

    • _haha_oh_wow_OPM
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      6 hours ago

      Velomobiles are pretty cool but IDK if that’s quite what they’re looking for. If it is though, they could also check out reverse trikes aka tadpoles for something similar but lighter/more bare-bones.