I must apologise for the delay. My health issues continue to be, uh, health issues. Suffice to say that I highly regret how long this has taken. Better late than never, right? I’ll be taking a bit of a break before doing another challenge - sorry ALC peeps. Still, I’ve got these reviews done, finally.
I still consider myself very likeable
BetterDeals ShortBoy by @Djadania
Before anything else, let me take a look at the BetterDeals ShortBoy. This is not my first BetterDeals, but for some reason I find myself looking at it in a different light. Perhaps it is because I am looking at BetterDeals in a context unlike prior ones – where my prior times judging BetterDeals were an open brief, this time is a very definitively clear brief and the ShortBoy simply refuses to engage with that. I did not simply request that cars were a certain length, I requested that they use the space well. I highlighted the value of ergonomics and providing good ways to use interior space, the interior of the ShortBoy is two cramped seats of ergonomic hell, the sort of conditions endured by professional drivers willing to sacrifice comfort for their salary and better finishing position.
This fails at the brief not due to incompetence but due to a steadfast refusal to engage with the brief, a refusal which is central to the theme of BetterDeals. It is Dada, it is the banana taped to the wall of an art gallery. Ceci n’est pas une voiture. I believe that the best reaction is to be found in Tristan Tzara’s Dada Manifesto – cut up, reassembled, pilfered and stolen.
Dada doubts everything.
Dada is working with all its might towards the universal installation of the idiot.
Dada is for lying.
Dada is a virgin microbe.
Dada gets into debt and doesn’t live on its well-filled wallet.
Dada, the only loan that doesn’t pay.
Dada limited company for the exploitation of ideas.
Dada recognises neither method nor persuasive excess.
Dada changes – affirms – says the opposite at the same time.
Dada is the chameleon of rapid and self-interested change.
Dada is against the future.
Dada is dead.
Dada is absurd.
Dada is not a literary school, howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
Who still considers himself very likeable
The Big One
MAG Elektron, by @Nebulon
It’s too big.
That’s my first thought upon seeing the MAG Elektron. It’s just too big. It feels like a Renault Clio from circa 2005, in overall shape and size. You know, the car I always thought “that looks interesting” in Most Wanted but never used. Busting out a ruler tells me that yes, it’s the rough size of one of those Clios, but it’s the proportions, the way it feels, more than anything else. The Clio is a B-segment car; this challenge is looking for an A-segment or even below. Yes, the Clio has grown a little, but the Elektron is still just too big.
It’s a dang shame, because it looks good. There’s a tasteful use of body molding that helps it feel like, well, one of those Clios from Most Wanted – but for today. It feels sporty, exciting, fun and enticing. The interior is perfectly cromulent and up to date for the era, nothing too wild but still nice. It’s a great hot hatch, a really fun B-segment EV. But it’s failed one of the core bits of the brief, and that’s really unfortunate. It’s not mini.
Mix And Match
Halvson BeEV by @lotto77
I am reluctant to dwell for too long on a colour combination, but something about this doesn’t work too well for me. I can find home design and fashion blogs using this exact combination and looking good, so why doesn’t it work for me on the car? Is it Automation’s colour rendering? Is it the materials involved – blue flake paint and tan plastic? I don’t know, but changing the colour scheme to literally anything else makes me like the car a whole lot more.
I’m glad I gave it a shot with a different colour palette, because there are some innovative ideas here. Swappable plastic pieces to give some more personalisation is something I’m personally a big fan of, we see it in a bunch of consumer electronics even to this day, so… Why not cars? These are the sort of thing you could design so that they can be easily applied before purchase – the additional fee is more “because we can” than “because it’s a legitimate representation of the cost.” I like that, and it gets points even if I dislike the version that was submitted.
The Halvson BeEV feels like a really good modern design, with few distinguishing features besides those swappable panels. It doesn’t feel angry, or cute, or fun, it’s just a good looking modern car – but that innovative gimmick gets it pretty dang far. It sucks to say “looks great, no notes” but uh… Looks great, no notes.
Attack Of The Kei-lones
Kumamoto Minivan+ by @Er_Foxone , ARO Starser by @mo09 and Xio Express - Lithium Traveller by @PhirmEggplant
So, here’s the elephant in the room, something I’ve been skirting around a little… Body choice. There’s not a lot of bodies to choose from here, and you can’t do all that much to radically change them. These three entries use the same body family – 10sKeiWagonII. They all look similar as a result, the question is how they differentiate each other, but let me take a moment to comment on the thing about body choice.
See, I initially wanted to review the cars based on length. Who did a good job to minimise their footprint, to make an actually small car? The Elektron failed and I addressed that, but you’ll notice that I didn’t mention compactness in the last two reviews. I’ve been saving it for here, because…
It just comes down to “who got the right body?” There happens to be one single body that optimises for size. Picked the right body? You get to be under 3m. Picked the wrong one? You can’t get smaller than you already are. The three 10sKeiWagonII entries are all the same size to within a centimetre, because they’re right about the smallest you can make the body family. They all look like the Wuling, but they’re half a meter longer – because there is no way short of 3Ding everything to make a car that looks like the Wuling and is the size of the Wuling. It’s a limitation of Automation, it’s something fundamentally impossible to change without ripping out code that sits at the core of the game and completely revising core functionality. The game will always be like this. We’ll see the other side of that coin later, but let’s continue for now. The upshot of all this is that the three cars are easy to compare. They got similar bases, but what did they do differently to them?
Lithium Traveller
Well, let’s start with the Lithium Traveller and uh… It doesn’t quite cut the mustard in a few ways. It’s missing important things like mirrors, and it has a completely redundant tailpipe. The seats are almost comically undersized, using two separate seats in the rear split by the transmission tunnel – acceptable in the roomier parts of the ultra-luxe segment, but it’s adding a lot of unused space, it’s inefficient and those seats are a sleight of hand at best. The interior is there, yes, but doesn’t have much flair or 20s complexity to it. On the outside, the Traveller doesn’t really do much with the base, there’s the default lines of the body and not much more. It’s a quintessential “5 fixture wonder” – the not-a-grille is one fixture, the lights are one fixture on either side, the vent is a single fixture and such. That’s fine, but when I’m looking for innovation and a clear identity, it really falls flat. I’d recommend aiming higher in future.
ARO Starser
Now to the ARO Starser, and we see an interior bereft of controls and physical gauges – but we have a pair of screens, so it’s a deliberate decision, using all-digital systems. Do I like it? No. Does it make sense and happen IRL? Yes. The centre console is enlarged to take up the space once dedicated to gear levers and handbrakes, another nice touch that helps make the all-digital decision pay dividends in feeling roomier. The extra 70mm of width helps too. The fixtures on the outside are all angles and lines, but they clash with the underlying body. Because the underlying body is a lot curvier and the fixtures don’t fit too well on it, it just doesn’t feel like it’s there. This car really could have used a little more finesse, a little more body torture or a different body – but all three of those are just a bit difficult.
Kuwamoto Minivan+
Now we come to the Kuwamoto Minivan+. As a concept and an identity, it’s the best of the entries on this body. It feels like a cute, kid’s toy version of a minivan, a “minivan minus” if you will. The interior features actual gauges and controls, which really make me appreciate the way that the digital options in the Starser helped save space. The problem is less with anything the Minivan+ does but rather with something the Minivan+ doesn’t do. This body has many flat surfaces that it expects you to break up with stuff – with a grille, with vents, with body molding. But this car has large chunks that are just missing that stuff. There’s a big old chunk of nothing wrapping around the rear, from side to side. There’s a massive void where a grille or “beauty panel” would be between the headlights – where a grille or “beauty panel” is on the other entries – and there’s just a charging port here. The side has those cool wheel covers but little more. It’s just got not enough there. The giant frowning vent paired with the big eye headlights doesn’t help the fun, toy vibe either – flip it vertically so it smiles and looks happy to see me!
Ultimately, these three entries all fail to execute in their own ways. The Minivan+ and the Starser have interesting concepts, they could go somewhere with more refinement, but they’re just not there yet.
The Third Power
Dangao Cube EV by @sweetener
The Dangao Cube EV is on a different body, I swear. The overall shape looks a lot like those last three, the dimensions are similar, but it really is a different body, it’s 18_wagonq. And I have to give kudos to the idea here, the Dangao Cube’s marketing material would be a real laugh. Yes, the name was used, Dangao really thought inside the box on this one. It’s boxy, and it revels in it. The front and rear have matching beauty panels – rounded rectangles, nice and boxy. Those shapes are highlighted by the lights which form an outline and accentuate the shape, and inside those shapes are more boxes – LEDs arranged in a rectangle! It’s here, there and everywhere. It’s hip, hip, so hip to be square! Maybe it’s just my sense of humour. Maybe it wouldn’t translate into sales. I don’t care, I like it.
It helps that the Dangao is a rather fetching design too. This car has that level of refinement that the others lack. The positioning of those beauty panels is just right, the lines of the wheel arches flowing into them. The vent is smiling this time, and the curve flows up into those rectangles. There’s just the right amount of stuff on it, everything feels spaced about right. Moving inside, we get a modern interior that I actually like, with a nice mixture of modern digital controls and classic physical ones. It just feels right, it feels complete, it’s a really nice package.
Two-thousand-zero-zero, Party Over, Oops, Out Of Time
The Mara Skuter EV feels old. It feels like a completely average B-segment car… From about the year 2000, give or take depending on market. I get that it’s Mara’s “thing” to be behind the times, but this is a challenge that asks for innovation, that asks for good looks. The Skuter is “an car”, a completely unremarkable old hatchback you’d pick up used as a little runabout beater. It doesn’t have good looks, it doesn’t have bad looks, it just is. It’s an appliance, and I can appreciate appliances, but not here. It aims low and absolutely hits, but I asked you to aim high. The execution interior is solid but similarly unremarkable. I just can’t find much more to say, you executed what you wanted super well but what you wanted wasn’t what I asked for – much like the MAG Elektron.
It's In Your Face But You Can't Grab It
Nistany EEEV (Extremely Epic Electric Vehicle) by @1989VauxhallFrontera
I don’t wanna sit here and nitpick, I really don’t, but here’s the issue: The seats extend into the wheels. Not the wheel wells, the wheels themselves. The chassis sticks through the seats, but the seats are in the actual wheels. Trying to bring the seats closer together makes it difficult to fit two in. Trying to bring them up pushes the seats through the rear window. There’s no room to move it forward. As far as demonstrating how the car can fit four people, this entry kinda fails. It’s unfortunate, but it just didn’t work.
Speaking of unfortunate but not quite working, we need to discuss the overall aesthetics. A lot of work and fixtures went into getting the car to look just the way it does. Where the lines and angles of the Starser just sat there, they’ve been carried through the entirety of the car here, the body reshaped to suit this more angular take. The work on the side is exemplary and you deserve kudos for that. It’s the front and the back that don’t work for me. The front is almost a caricature of the modern scrunched origami look, the license plate making it look like the car has buck teeth. The rear lights are almost 45 degrees to vertical, making them hard to spot and just feeling wrong, leaving this massive gaping space on the rear. Much like the Skuter, it is a well executed idea but an idea that I’m just not sure I like.
One Body To Rule Them All
ZIP!² by @mart1n2005 and Jinshi Micro F-EV by @Danicoptero
So, before, we mentioned that there were three entries on the same body, and I talked about how being under 3m comes down to picking the right body. That’s these. That’s 95_jp_hatchback_3door_XS_cpp – it’s a 1995 body with one single variant, one real shape. So what do I do here? Reward the entries that picked the right body and don’t look like what I wanted? Ignore size but punish the ZIP! for picking the smaller body and struggling to fit two seats? Neither of these are satisfying, I think. The body looks a bit dated, it looks like something from 2010 at the latest, but it’s the one body that does this. How do I handle this? Well, I do the one thing I can do. I look at what everyone did to the bodies, how everyone handled them, how we all went forward – except for the BetterDeals. I already said everything I want to about that.
Here’s the thing about these entries: They handle the dated body well. The Skuter looks like Mara just slapped an electric engine into some old tooling, but these two look like really good efforts on this body, ways to make it more modern. The complex stretched-hexagon patterns used by both entries for their vents brings a modern EV feel, the cars both have wonderful balance between positive and negative space. The Jinshi brings with it a fairly cool modern vibe while also feeling like, uh, a Chinese knockoff of something I can’t quite put my finger on? The interior fits four seats better than many of the big entries, it feels like a weird Japanese EV that really does exist, using a combination of old tooling and new parts. If that was the vibe you were going for, kudos.
The ZIP! on the other hand leaves no questions about the vibe you were going for, I think. It feels angry, like it’s daring you. It heard you talking shit about EVs and wants you to say it to its face, punk. It’s probably the face, right? The black plastic cladding on the bottom gives it an ever so slight air of a crossover too, a solid way to follow the trends in that form factor. The three colours work well together, it’s a really awesome package. Only having two seats isn’t great, but the challenging sports car vibes help redeem that, it’s like a little tiny boy racer. The seating arrangement helps it feel roomy too, because there’s less to put in it.
Wrapping Up
So, which is my favourite car? Well, it’s probably the ZIP! In spite of its seating arrangement, it delivers well on good looks, EV-ness and overall package, and the exterior justifies the two seats. Honourable mentions go to the Dangao Cube and Halvson BeEV for having something innovative and fun, and to those plus the Jinshi for good looks.
