MOFA cars: The cheap city speedsters are so dangerous

Lease your own new car for less than 100 euros – or buy it for less than 10,000 euros. This sounds extremely promising, especially in the ears of young people who are allowed to drive at the age of 15 and the driver’s license class. This is exactly what so-called micro cars such as the Opel Rocks-E, the identical Citroën Ami or vehicles such as the Aixam Access offer. The light vehicle vehicles also have other advantages: a moped license plate is enough for little money, and you don’t have to worry about car taxes.

Of course, these moped cars have obvious disadvantages: Because it wants the law – they only drive 45 km/h and, if electrically, are not suitable for extensive tours due to the small reach. But as a small city car, such a vehicle is actually very interesting.

Actually because the DEKRA on behalf of the television program “Auto Mobil-The Vox Automagazin” recently came to be shocked in accident tests, the “” reports. Right from the start, the specialist magazine makes it clear: “Micro cars like Ami and Rocks-E are life-threatening”.

In order to simulate an accident in the city, two vehicles were left at full speed, i.e. 45 km/h, with about half of the front against a “deformable offset obstacle”, i.e. a flexible aluminum structure. This should be the same with an accident with an oncoming car.

The result summarizes “Auto Motor Sport” as follows: “The testers measured loads on the dummies, which in all likelihood would have led to death in human passengers.”

The first vehicle in the test was an Aixam Access. According to the report, this is the most frequently sold car in its class. It is three meters long and weighs 425 kilograms. Conclusion: “After the crash, the Aixam passenger cell has not been strongly deformed, but the stresses in the interior were considerable. The airbagless steering wheel shifted towards the driver’s seat while it was hit by the head of the dummy with full force.”

The “Auto Motor Sport” continues to classify: “In the collision with the steering wheel, 720 kilograms worked. Legal limit values ​​are 80 g, and for some people they are already life -threatening.”

Little Citroën Ami does not get away better: Although the “extreme influences” on the people in the interior, you cannot see the interior after an impact, but the mistake. Because the rigid frame of the car can “absorb no kinetic energy such as a crumple zone”. In short: drivers and co -drivers get significantly more.

Here, too, the “Auto Motor Sport” assumes a fatal course if an impact of this kind is a person at the wheel. Guilt are “extreme forces” that have worked on the cervical vertebrae.

According to the report, the problem is the comparatively low requirements for light vehicle vehicles. AMI-or Access-are equivalent to scooters and S-Pedelecs. This means that the small cars have to meet the same safety regulations as the two -wheelers. And that’s very few. Systems such as ABS, airbags or crash sensors are not prescribed.

“Auto Motor Sport” confronted the manufacturers with the results. While Stellantis, the parent company of Opel, Citroën and Fiat, attracted particular attention to the advantages over other vehicles in this class, the French manufacturer Aixam spoke plain text. According to this, light four -wheeled motor vehicles in vehicle class L6E could not keep up with cars and many safety technologies of modern cars could be “technically unexpected”.