G’Day and welcome to Overdrive a program that samples as much as it can of the experiences of cars and transport

I’m David Brown

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There has been a suggestion that we do away with the yellow phase in traffic lights altogether – is this a constructive revolution or destructive recklessness

Road Test

We road test a large Kia electric vehicle – the EV9

Marcello Gandini – master car designer dies aged 86

He came to prominence with the design of the Lamborghini Miura and went on to other groundbreaking designs.

Some highlights from the program (including times they start in the program)

00:01:46

An “expert” in road safety suggested that perhaps we don’t need a yellow phase in traffic lights at all – it should go straight to red.

There’s evidence that the longer the amber time is, the lower the frequency of people running the red.
The speed limit might be an issue.

00:06:43

A colleague said he went to India and got a taxi from the airport to his hotel. When he got to his hotel, he asked the driver which side of the road do they drive on because he couldn’t tell.

00:07:16

The Woonerf proposal. It is defined as a living street, as originally implemented in the Netherlands and in Flanders. Techniques include shared space, traffic calming, and low speed limits. It is a proposal where you have to decide how you should behalf rather than rigidly defining spaces for pedestrians.

00:10:16

Brian has an Ioniq 5 but would he think about going to a bigger electric vehicle such as the Kia EV9?

The EV9 it is an upper large SUV. It’s over five metres long, but then again the big pickups now are about 6 metres
They have two sizes of battery. There is the large at 76 kilowatt hours and there’s the very large at nearly 100 kilowatt hours
The base model weighs around 2.3 tonne to the top of the line that weighs over 2.6 tonnes.
It’s got great performance at the top of the range. One can do nought to 100 in 5.3 seconds.
It’s not a safe design to have the bonnet so high. It means that, you know anyone you hit with.

00:14:06 DB

The actually bonnet is quite high and underneath it of course there’s a storage space with the smaller engine of the electric motor. You could perhaps lower the bonnet at a little. There’s surprisingly though, the CD rating, the coefficient of drag is only 0.28

It does look big and aggressive, although that does depend on the colour.
Top range model has heated and cooled seats for the front AND middle row.
Very easy to drive

00:17:32

Tell them the price, son.

Base model, drive away price in NSW $107,200. The the top of the line GT line will cost you $142,200.
Toyota Land Cruise between 106,000 to $156,000,
Nissan Patrol from around $92,500 to about $106,000.

00:19:22

Charging: time and cost

00:23:38 DB

The sad death of Marcello Gandini, who was a person who designed some very significant cars, most notably, to begin with, the Lamborghini Mura.

Where does these low exotic European sports cars fit into our feelings?

Scissor doors
A Miura was destroyed at the beginning of the 1969 movie The Italian Job
A mid engined motor V12 enormously and in 1965.
He designed the Autobianchi for example, the what the MINI could have become if only the British had not sat on their hands.