The Nissan Tama

This might be an Earth Day post...
It may just be be rambling.


That car, there, is the 1947 Nissan Tama.

It is cute, isn't it?


It is an electric car.





From 1947.

The Tama had a top speed of 22MPH and a range of about 40 miles.

Which, when you think about it, is not much worse than the newest crop of electric cars. Sure, the new ones go faster. The range isn't really that much better...really.
Hell, the brand spankin' new Nissan electric car has a range of 73 miles.


I have a tiny computer in my pocket that lets me know how to get to the store by chatting with satellites in space, that can also receive various formats of communications and allow me to watch a goddamned movie if I want to...

You would need a warehouse full of electronics shit to do that in 1947.


Why hasn't the electric car seen similar progress in the intervening sixty years?


Anyway, either way, why not have a new set of safety rules for electric cars. The battery life is the big bugger right? It takes more energy to move around a heavier car, right?
Why not allow electric cars to be tiny little things, like this Tama?

Bag the mandated safety gear, shave off a thousand pounds of stuff. Make them minimal?
Sure, there could be more risk for the occupants...but you are helping to save the world.


Some of my interest is a styling thing, too.
Hell, if there were Leaf drivetrain bits under that Tama and I could buy it today...well, I would think about it.
That is a lot closer than my conversion to an electric car than anything any manufacturer has offered.

There are other factors that have kept me out of an electric car, but if I am buying a car then I don't want to hate looking at it.


I am just pondering...what if we made them smaller and lighter, used less stuff to make them, so they could be sold for less, so it would take less energy to run them, so there would be less scrap when folks wanted a new one?
Doesn't that make sense?


I am wandering now...


My point is that we, collectively, suck.

This little car is half as good as this company's current offering - and it is sixty years old.


If we are going to only slow down the active destruction of the planet we live on, all of us are gonna need to average better than that.