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The New Messerschmitt

AriLea

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Back to come play in our sandbox, well in the city car arena at least.
"Messerschmitt Werke began production of its newest models in Spain earlier this year. It is currently offering the KR-202 Sport for special pricing starting at €10,950 (approx. US$13,200) and the KR-E5000 Sport starting at €12,950 ($15,600)"

Link 1
Link 2
NewMesser.png

Anyway, too expensive, too slow (56MPH top speed), too little traction(RWD),
(you can see in the video where he comes close to a roll over, lifted inside wheel, at a medium speed)
too little in wheels sizes and wheel track width for US freeways. Interior size is OK with me!
So, it's good for Euro-fun-driving if you have the money to toss at it.
Just stay off the Autobahn! Our catalog on the original cars.

My Morphic Study of a modernized US version... (mid-page)
 
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AriLea

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I found this one too. Don't know anything about it...Mitsuoka K2 in Japan
Mitsuoka K2.jpg
Mitsuoka K2 1.jpg

The Smite from Sweden never made it to product AFAIK.
SmiteWestergard3.jpg
Smite641a.jpg

Looks like a Go-Cart with a balloon on top, but I like it!
HeinkelKamakura-450x300.jpg

Finally the Veloschmitt and the KR - mic-drop...
2530865_orig.jpg

Messerschmitt KR.jpg
 
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AriLea

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If you are talking about the Messerschmitt vehicle, I think they are still being made. KR-202-e.
From the site;

top speed of up to 80 km/h

There have been any number of these City-Car level vehicles, at max 48mph. Usually, very short lived businesses.
Not very useful except down town, except Arizona where 'surface streets' often are marked 50mph and 55mph. While most are 40 and 45mph. We could only drive it on a golf course.
 

RSchneider

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What's the deal with the "city" car? I rarely see them in cities. For example, go to Paris, it's e-bikes, bikes and scooters. Go to London and it's the same. Even Frankfurt is now doing the switch to the same. After 2020, NYC is flooded with scooters and e-bikes. Yet none of the city of cars. I wonder why? Last mile delivery in these cities is being dominated by scooters and e-bikes. Mostly because an e-bike can be parked on a sidewalk and scooters take up very little footprint. In addition to that, if you are in NYC, you can literally walk at the pace it takes traffic to move. Bikes and scooters just wedge themselves between the traffic and go at a much better clip. I don't see doing that with one of these city cars.
 

AriLea

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Well, it's a very good question. First of all, of course, it's called a city car for a reason (also mirco-cars). It's limitied to a city environment and (this is important) adjacent urban housing areas. These are all areas where speeds are low and crowding is heavy, parking limited, especially during high traffic times.

So in those areas it competes (as you noted) with basically every other form of motion..., cars, trucks, motorcycles, scooters, all mass transit systems , bikes, roller blades and even walking. And frankly, so far, it costs more per-mile-ton and per-passenger-mile than everything except for (some but not all) car-truck-motorcycles .

So where does it make sense? I'm guessing people who commit to building these are upper middle class, who have the most applicable evnvironment for a city car,... adjacent urban living. I believe they don't realise that not everyone has that environment. Infact most don't. So I think they over estimate the interest. Maybe a place like Tokyo has a lot of this, but they also have excelent mass transit.

If you are to sell a city car at a volume to get the price attractive, I think you have to reach that limited and select customer niche in multiple citys in multiple countries. That's reason #1 for Solo to expand to the US. But they need to hit wide to multiple cities and not deep in just a few.

Most city cars have had some success only while it was a shiny new penny, and until the local niche was saturated. That's a lot of commitment for a marginal profit. Some that sold for a short time too much locally, HMV Freeway, Sparrow, Gizmo, City-Car(Vacouver BC, 1970's), Citicar (New York), Bobbi-Kar, Pluse/Litestar, Stearman ,Honda S500, Suzuki X90, Suzuki 360 , come to mind. In that link, they include the Elio. (Being freeway ready, enclosed and with AC, Elio breaks out of the city-car limitation.)

BTW, I'd love to own an Autozam AZ-1 (a Kei car).
 
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