G-Wiz safety

[MB]

GOINGREEN STATEMENT

The Department of Transport announced yesterday that the Government is seeking a review of the European regulations for quadricycles with regards to their safety performance. This is in response to the growing popularity of quadricycles as a more environmentally friendly alternative to cars.

The G-Wiz has an exemplary safety record with over 20 million miles driven in London and Bangalore and over 4,000 years of ownership, with no reported serious injuries.

As the health and safety of our customers is paramount we welcome any informed debate or Government initiatives to make quadricycles an even safer means of urban transport.

The G-Wiz is designed and used as a low-speed urban commuter vehicle. It meets all regulatory requirements and has received Full EU Type Approval. Actual data from the 750 G-Wiz already on London’s roads show that the average speed driven is 10mph.

GoinGreen is the UK importer and retailer of the electric Reva G-Wiz - the first quadricyle to be tested by the Department of Transport - and the creator and market leader of this new emission-free automotive sector, focused on environmentally and socially responsible motoring.

The manufacturer of the G-Wiz, the Reva Electric Car Company (RECC), like all vehicle manufacturers, is constantly reviewing safety features and innovation relative to usage and has advised GoinGreen that it would be pleased to collaborate with the authorities in such a review.

For more information on safety visit the GoinGreen website (http://www.goingreen.co.uk) and look at sections FAQ/faq and About/safe driving tips.

[Mark time]

I am sure that we would all aggree that the danger does not lie with the G-wiz itself but with the nature of some other vehicles that it has to share the roads with.

Marktime

[MB]

I would agree with that.

A number of members have had accidents in their G-Wiz's, both minor scraps where the G-Wiz has appeared to suffer no damage at all, and major impacts - Edward's old car was involved in an accident where a Passat ended up writing off a G-Wiz.

Other than being a bit shaken, the driver was unhurt.

This statement from GoinGreen was in response to a press release from the Department for Transport that was issued yesterday. This has been picked up by the Daily Mail and The Times. There has not been any attempt to provide a balanced report though - which is why GoinGreen produced this statement.

You would have thought the journalists would have bothered to call GoinGreen or the owners club to at least get a response. Not so far though...

[nat]

As a new poster I have to say that GoinGreen's response is a bit disingenuous.

The G-Wiz is not a quadracycle .... it's a car.

When it looks like a car...
... when it drives like a car
... when it is bought as a car...
... then it's a car.

This 'news' has been an accident waiting to happen if you will pardon the pun.

Now that electric cars are growing in popularity the makers of the G-Wiz will have to address the safety issue quickly if they are to survive in the marketplace.

[Wizard]

True, Nat. The pics in the West End Final Evening Standard apparently due to be repeated in this Friday's Top Gear look nasty (but so do most crash tests). The GG statement needs beefing up. WHAT safety tests are required, what has been done in India and to get the "quad" into Europe.?I need something to wave at all my colleagues who have been festooning my pigeonhole with copies of the press reports today!!

Wizard

[Tim]

One might also wonder about the crash worthiness of motorbikes. After all a quadracycle is supposed to be part way between a car and a motorbike.

[Matt]

This deliberate reputation-damaging enterprise has been orchestrated by Top Gear for the amusement of the petrolheads. The BBC are hammering the story to hell on their news programs in a thinly veiled promotion of Top Gear.

Here’s a link to the BBC news video report:-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news/s ... 6x9_bb.ram


The TopGear Magazine news page is here:-
http://www.topgear.com/content/news/stories/1832/


Or you can watch the crash test video here:-
http://www.topgear.com/content/timetobu ... iz_225k.rm


Matt

[ashaw]

Hi, I'm first time poster - had my Gwiz a couple of months and love it but found the owners club while trying to find info on these safety tests that the Gwiz has failed. So thankyou for the previous E Mail with the pictures etc. However, not sure what to think. These tests were carried out at 60 and 56mph, is there any information available as to what happens at lower speeds? When I bought my car there was no mention in the sales pitch of it only meeting safety standards of a quadricycle - it was sold as an an electric car that meets all the safety standards. It feels a really difficult as you obviously buy the'car' as an enviromental statement but you want to be safe. I bought mine todo the school run so I particulalry asked about safety as an issue at the test drive. With two young children in the car I don't want to feel that I am risking their lives by using it.

What are peoples views on this? Is it unsafe? Should I be driving my children in it?

Any views would be very helpful.

Thanks

[edward]

It's just another aspect of breaking the mould, gang.

I wouldn't cycle on a dual carriageway; I wouldn't advise taking a gwiz there either.

I'm happy to cycle on 40 mph roads. My experience of quadraycle use is that it feels right on faster rural roads too, as long as you maintain around 40mph (AC will help). The irony of 'surviving' 16000 miles of that kind of use, and then the recently-sold wiz coming a cropper in the slower city is one thing. The happier outcome for the driver is hopefully significant.

For all that, my use is a minority of a minority. It's a city car, and that's where the need for a breaker of several moulds is the greatest. Soon enough larger (heavier) EV's will appear including son of wiz, I imagine.

Percieved safety risks, whether proved in reality or not, are likely to have some impact on the nervous majority. The ways things have worked out to date, putting out 'quadricycle = car' is a mistake: not a sustainable claim for first generations of EV.

We are still pioneering one of the more intelligent alternatives to the status quo. I'll happily take the plunge for a few more years.

[Tim]

According to the TopGear website the tests were conducted at 56 and 64 km/hr - not miles per hour as posted above. That's about 35 and 40 miles per hour which is about my sort of speeds.

If you double the vehicle speed then the energy to be dissipated is quadrupled, so the speed of the test is very significant. Regular cars that can easily exceed 70 mph are only required to pass a test at 35 mph, it would seem odd to impose the same requirement on a vehicle barely capable of 45 mph.

If one applied the same rule and tested at half the maximum legal speed then the G-Wiz would be tested at 22.5 mph - which involves dissipating less than a third of the energy actually dissipated in the video.

Would I be any safer on a motorbike or pedal bike than in my G-Wiz? I think not.