Car Tipping

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA…………………..

Pranksters tipping Smart cars like cows

By Lisa Arrowsmith, THE CANADIAN PRESS

EDMONTON – Owners of pint-sized Smart cars aren’t laughing about reports that vandals may be targeting the tiny vehicles in a 21st-century take on tipping cows over.

The Internet and blogosphere are abuzz with media reports that pranksters may have pushed several of the tiny vehicles into canals in Amsterdam.

And now a man in his 40s is charged with mischief for allegedly tipping a Smart car onto its side along Edmonton’s Whyte Avenue, a trendy bar-and-boutique strip that sometimes attracts rowdy drinkers.

Windows, exterior mirrors and panelling on the car were damaged, and despite the outrage of owner Kevin Spaans, amused bystanders posed with the flipped car and snapped photos with their cellphone cameras.

Police are seeking other suspects, but one official said it appears to have been an isolated occurrence.

Ken Lust, sales manager at David Morris Fine Cars, which sells the popular car, says goofing around with it isn’t a harmless prank but rather a brazen act of property damage.

Lust has himself been a victim. Three years ago, he went outside one morning on a property he owns northeast of Edmonton to find that somebody had tipped his Smart car over during the night.

“The first reaction is shock and disbelief. The second reaction is anger because your car has been vandalized. It’s the same feeling, I guess, if you walked out and saw your paint all scratched up or your windows smashed in,” he said.

No one was ever arrested. Lust believes it was the work of several fellows who probably had too much to drink that night.

The sales manager spent several hundred dollars repairing smashed windows and a bent gas cap.

“It’s an act of vandalism, pure and simple, and I think if caught, they should be punished severely.”

Smart cars, which have become popular with commuters for superior gas mileage and cute looks, weigh about 725 kilograms.

The average cow tips the scales at about 600 kilograms. Some zoologists suggest stories of hooligans butting over bovines are “udder” nonsense because the animals would resist, making it next to impossible, but cyberspace is filled with such reports.

Back to Smart cars, some customers shell out up to $20,000 for a loaded model and use the vehicle’s unique look to gain attention for their business.

“We sell a lot of Smart cars (to businesses) who want to use it as an advertising vehicle so they put their company name on it because it attracts attention,” says Lust.

All that attention could also make the vehicle a target for vandals, he suggests.

Photos and grainy videos have popped up on the Internet and YouTube of people using brute strength and long poles to tip small cars and outraged owners have vented their anger on blogs.

The Alberta owner of a so-called “Smartie”, who found it tipped on its side, was so furious he posted photos on the Internet and offered a reward of $1,000 for information leading to an arrest.

Another man whose three-year-old Smart car was reportedly flipped outside a home in west Seattle in June, causing thousands of dollars in damage, attracted digs from sport utility owners and sympathy from others when he wrote about it on a blog.

“I’m sorry, too, but it’s funny. They’ll be able to laugh about it in a day or so. SUV hybrids are looking better all the time, ya think?” wrote someone using the name Looniebomber.

“To all that found humour in this story/picture, I can’t help but to hope that karma comes a knockin’ when you’re three shades of furious, because someone else damages your property and you have to foot the bill,” wrote Bruce W.

Some may think tipping over cars is harmless fun, but under the Criminal Code of Canada, mischief is a potentially serious offence, said Sanjeev Anand, a law professor at the University of Alberta.

“I think it’s important for the public to understand that when you interfere with someone’s property and you damage someone’s property, it’s not a simple prank. It is a criminal offence,” he said.

A conviction carries a variety of potential punishments, including a maximum sentence of between two and 10 years in jail, although such sentences are rare, the law professor said.

In fairness the Smart Cars were a lovely little idea that went wrong. They’re fairly clever as far as being gentle on the envronment and all, but if you are in a traffic accident with anything heavier than Oprah, you and your smart car are going to be punted 60 ft into the air. They are golf carts with a licence plate.

Thankfully two companies are doing something that the rest of the world should have caught onto in the 1970’s when the oil crisis was in full swing;

Smoke-belching Trabant to be reborn as electric car
The Trabant, the smoke-belching national car of Communist East Germany, is to be reborn as an electric car fit for the environmentally conscious 21st century motorist

The new model will make its debut at the Frankfurt motor show next month, almost 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and mass productioon stopped.

Its manufaturers hope its green credentials will put an end to the Trabant being the butt of jokes and and an enduring symbol of the imploding nation.

Three million of the old Trabants, whose name means “foot soldier”, were manufactured and the noise of their clattery two-stroke engines as they flooded west when the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 was greeted withn derision by Germans in the west.

Although they could not compete with the muscle and quality of an Audi, BMW or Mercedes, the “Trabi” eventually wormed its way into the hearts of westerners and some 50,000 are still running across the country and beyond.

The new model, the Trabant nT, is looking to make the bone-shaker into a retro hit for green-conscious drivers.

The German motor parts maker IndiKar has teamed up with a model manufacturer to create a consortium looking to attract investors when the nT – or New Trabant – unveiled in Frankfurt on Sept 17.

They are looking for investment of around £100 million to get the new Trabant rolling off the production lines in Zwickau, the site of the original car’s manufacturer.

The old version, for which people had to wait up to ten years after ordering, was a study in basics. The petrol gauge was a dipstick and extra heating came from a rug under the back seat.

The new one comes complete with solar panels on the roof, a petrol tank in case of emergencies and will have a range of a little over 150 miles before recharging.

The German government wants to see around a million electric cars on the road by 2020 and most major carmakers are investing heavily in the technology.

The nT consortium said a poll it undertook showed 93 per cent of people want to see a cleaner, greener Trabi make a comeback.

“This will be one car that it will be impossible to joke about,” said a consortium spokesman.

Germans still love to poke fun at the decrepit Communist system that made the old model.

A Trabant customer is informed by phone in June 1980 that his Trabant will be ready to be picked up on June 1 1990.

“In the morning or afternoon?” asks the man.

“It’s ten years away!” said the salesman.

“I know,” said the customer. “Only I’ve got the plumber coming in the morning.”

The old Trabant

SPEED: Did a breathtaking 55mph downhill

SIZE: 11ft 6in by 4.9ft wide

ENGINE: 37cc two-stroke engine powered by a 6.5 capacity tank that was located under the bonnet

PRICE: less than £1,000

MOD CONS: classed as a luxury model if it had a fog lamp at the back

COLOURS: Trabant was available in a sort of sour-milk white

The new Trabant

SPEED: designed to hit speeds of 75mph… on the flat

SIZE: about six inches larger by length and width but still able to fit into any garage

ENGINE: its electric “powertrain” is still a secret but motorists are promised that it will be easy to plug it into the mains without effort

PRICE: no price tag yet but German media say it will be between £7,000 and £9,000. The boutique model going on show in Frankfurt is intended to draw investors for mass production. If successful, new electric Trabants will be on a production line within two years and motoring along British roads as well.

MOD CONS: will include i-Pod player, telephone and a navigation system inside

COLOURS: will be displayed in Frankfurt in blue. If it goes into production the manufacturers promise a “plethora” of colours

(Now that’s just freakin cool)

Brooklyn-based renewable-energy company plugs all-electric car

It’s shocking but true.

A Brooklyn-based renewable-energy company has snagged the city’s first MINI-E, the only 100% electric, zero emissions “hoopty” made by BMW Group, the same company that makes the Mini Cooper.

“Its got a lot of torque and it runs completely silent. It drives like a sporty little car,” said Lex Heslin, 45, president and CEO of Beautiful Earth Group, the Red Hook energy developing firm that received the e-ride last month. “It really moves and it’s a lot of fun to drive.”

Five hundred MINI-Es were released last month in the U.S. as part of a year-long study to test the car’s road readiness. At the end of the trial, MINI-E will collect the cars and work out any kinks before putting them up for sale.

Heslin’s Columbia St.-based firm, which develops utility-scale solar and wind projects in the U.S., filed an application, along with 15,000 others, for the chance to drive the MINI-E around for a year.

“I haven’t seen any others in Brooklyn,” said Heslin. “MINI gave Mayor Bloomberg 10 electric MINIs as part of an environmental task force, but ours is the only one I’ve seen in Brooklyn.”

The MINI-E runs on electricity in its batteries, which are juiced by a charger that is hooked up to electric service through the grid.

After a day of driving, said Heslin, a cable gets plugged into a hole where the gas tank door once was, and that’s how the car “refuels.”

“And instead of a gas tank, it’s got a gauge that tells you how much energy you have – exactly like your cell phone,” he said.

The car gets about 100 miles per charge and is well-suited for city driving, backers say.

“The car is designed to use the kinetic energy to recharge the battery so you get more from stop-and-go than [from] highway driving. … When you let off the gas, you immediately activate that system,” he said.

With yellow graphics painted on the sides, the sporty MINI-E is easy to spot cruising the borough’s streets.

“The car is here,” said Heslin. “It’s not something of the future. It’s here now, ready to go.”

There’s a certain beauty in the fact that the leaders in electric car innovation are a former eastern European hell hole, and it’s twin brother…Brooklyn. Hopefully these cars actually end up on the market and don’t disappear into history like the Tucker or other electric cars.

Good ideas and the automobile industry don’t tend to get along very well, especially when it comes to fuel efficiency, safety and certainly not when it comes to electric cars.

Oil companies and automobile manufacturers had a good thing going for a long long time. They took care of each other and made sure the public was dependant on both of their products. Any electric car companies were promptly crushed into oblivion and the world continued to become a big polluted stinky place.

Now that the automobile industry is in danger of going tits up they are forced to listen to what the public wants as opposed to telling them what they are getting. People are sick of spending huge portions of their salary on gasoline and many people don’t exactly love the oil companies very much anymore (unless you are an investor) so finally these cars are beginning to see the light of day.

It’s about time that the car manufacturers got out of that abusive relationship. Oil companies have been giving the auto makers the Ike Turner treatment for a long time and finally they are getting sick of the pimp hand and moving towards fulfilling the demands of the people that are keeping them sort of still in business.

Let’s just hope they don’t end up going back to their retarded baby daddy and make more of these cars so we can all afford to buy one

~ by jeff on August 28, 2009.