I’m starting to notice more and more small cars on the road today. With gas prices soon to be above 5 dollars a gallon, car companies are targeting people with cool looking compacts like the Scion IQ, Fiat 500 and Smart Car.
This trend works in Europe because the majority of the cars are this size, gas prices are about $10 dollars a gallon and the roads are much smaller. In America though, these cars are out of place, if you put a smart car next to a Ford Focus, one of the the best selling car in America, they’re dwarfed.
You can put as many airbags as you want in one of these compacts but against a vehicle of superior mass traveling at the same speed, a compact becomes a grim place to be. As we all learned from Newton’s law of motion “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. “
If you watch the video below, you’ll see what I mean. The mass of the larger car transfers its momentum into the smaller car; this transfer basically pushes the smaller car out of the way.
With car companies trying to appeal to a younger generation with less money for a car and even less for gas, they may be pushing them into danger. I would like to see more companies aim for standard sized cars with more efficient power supplies, I mean nobody likes to be pushed around…. especially at 70mph.
