Everything you need to know about electric micro-cars, NEVs, LSVs, & golf carts
As American cars and trucks continue to bloat, growing longer and wider decade over decade while roads and parking spaces stay the same size, there may be hope glimmering on the horizon: tiny electric vehicles. I’m not talking about small cars. I’m talking about tiny ones – micro-cars, if you will.
They’re a small but growing category of motor vehicles in the US, and they may just save us from a future of massive, energy-guzzling vehicles that can somehow plow through a playground without noticing yet still struggle to wiggle into a parking spot.
This is Part 1 of a three-part series on these useful little vehicles. In today’s segment, we’ll dive into the “what” and “why” of electric micro-cars.
From the definitions (which have so far eluded most of the industry) to the use cases (which have so far eluded most Americans), we’ll set the stage for what could be the next big wave of tiny cars. In Parts 2 and 3 we’ll cover the legality of such vehicles and the options currently on the road.
What is an electric micro-car?
Let’s start off with a few definitions to set the record straight about these tiny vehicles.
There are three commonly used terms for describing these little runabouts: micro-cars, NEVs (neighborhood electric vehicles), and LSVs (low-speed vehicles). And they’re all wrong in one way or another. Let’s explore each, below.
Low-speed vehicles (LSVs)
The term LSVs is currently the least commonly used term for these, but it’s actually the most correct. That’s because it’s the only legally defined category. LSVs are a federally mandated class of motor vehicles in the US.
They’re more or less equivalent to what are known as “quadricycles” in Europe, with the exception that European quadricycles are allowed to reach speeds of up to 80-100 km/h (50-62 mph), depending on the country, while LSVs in the US are limited to just 25 mph (40 km/h).
It is a common misunderstanding that all that is required for a vehicle to be considered an LSV is for it to have a maximum speed of 25 mph (40 km/h). In fact, that is only one of many requirements. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards for LSVs have laid out around a dozen standards that mostly cover speed and required safety equipment, but that also include requirements for the manufacturer’s factory to be federally approved by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (as well as the factories that produce key components like the auto glass, seat belts and other important components). That’s why it isn’t enough for a small vehicle to simply have seat belts and not exceed 25 mph.
For this reason, it is actually quite difficult for new manufacturers to receive street-legal status for LSVs, though we’ll dive into the legality of these vehicles in much more detail in Part 2 of this series. It’s an important issue since many of the supposed “street legal” LSVs now being offered for sale in the US are far from actually being street legal.
For now though, suffice it to say that LSVs are a federally mandated category of vehicles that are allowed to reach speeds of up to 25 mph (40 km/h) and are allowed to drive on roads with speed limits posted up to 35 mph (56 km/h).
LSVs are not required to be electric vehicles, and many low-production-volume combustion engine models have existed over the past two decades, similar to the phenomenon of “kei cars” in Japan. But these days nearly all LSVs in the US are also electric vehicles, largely due to the simplification of manufacturing/maintenance as well as reduced regulatory hurdles associated with emissions testing.
The term LSV is really the only important term for this industry because it is the only one that is clearly defined. That brings us to… NEVs.
Neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs)
The term NEV is probably the most commonly used term in this industry, which is problematic because it doesn’t mean anything. There is no clearly defined boundary for what makes up an NEV.
The term originated before the LSV category was created by the federal government, and it largely referred to small, slower-moving electric vehicles that were similar in appearance to golf carts, yet were designed for traveling on roads and around neighborhoods instead of across the golf course. The most famous example of an NEV is likely the GEM, which started out under the Chrysler umbrella before moving to Polaris and finally to its current owner, WAEV.
The GEM popularized the concept of an NEV before the US government had created an LSV category, and thus the term NEV stuck.
The problem is that despite everyday usage, there’s no clear line drawn to determine what is and what isn’t an NEV. It’s similar to the word “truck” in its vaguery. Is an F-150 a truck? What about an 18-wheeler semi-trailer? Or a U-Haul? They’re all called trucks in common parlance, yet the Department of Transportation would beg to differ.
The other issue with the term NEV is that it implies a purely neighborhood use for these vehicles. While neighborhood and local community use is a common application, densely populated cities are quickly becoming another major market for these tiny electric vehicles.
An LSV could easily drive from Battery Park on the southern tip of Manhattan up to Washington Heights, a 13-mile (21 km) commute covering dozens of neighborhoods. In fact, I drove an LSV across the Brooklyn Bridge earlier this year as I travelled around NYC, highlighting the urban appeal of such small electric vehicles.
What are micro-cars?
The term micro-car has become something of a catchall. Similarly to NEVs though, there is no clear definition for the term. It is generally used more for fully enclosed LSVs than for open golf cart-style buggies like the GEM vehicles (though GEMs do have optional hard doors that make them fit better into the loosely defined micro-car category).
This door quasi-requirement is likely due to the fact that many people think of micro-cars as looking more like a conventional car, but simply scaled down into a smaller (and often cuter) vehicle.
Micro-cars can be as small as single-seaters or can even fit a family of five. I’ve driven a Chinese micro-car around Florida with my wife and our three nieces and nephews, showcasing the family-friendly nature of electric micro-cars.
Micro-cars, just like NEVs, are not a federally defined class of vehicle, and thus the term is limited largely to everyday language. For legal use, LSV is the only federally defined category of motor vehicle.
Golf carts
Golf carts are perhaps the most commonly understood of all of these categories due to their ubiquitous use on golf courses around the country.
While they can be powered by a combustion engine or by an electric motor, most golf carts produced today are electric.
They generally reach speeds of up to 20 mph (32 km/h), though can often be modified to reach speeds of closer to 30 mph. Some come with seat belts, radios, and other fancier features, but many are bare-bones vehicles designed for basic transportation.
Traditional golf carts are not street legal, though many small communities have created local golf cart ordinances to allow for their use on low-traffic roads.
Several large golf cart manufacturers have begun to produce LSV versions of their carts that have been homologated for street use. These versions, if produced to meet the LSV regulations laid out in the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, can be used like any other LSV on public roads that have posted speed limits of 35 mph (56 km/h) or less.
Golf carts are generally open-air vehicles that lack doors or locking storage. This is one of their main downsides compared to micro-cars, which generally have locking doors that can provide security as well as an all-weather ride.
Use cases for electric micro-cars and small vehicles
LSVs have two main uses in the US: transportation and utility use.
For transportation, LSVs have several advantages. Many owners prefer their small size that makes them nimbler in traffic and easier to park. They can often even be parked in small spots or psuedo-spots on the edges of parking areas that a traditional car couldn’t fit into.
Their simpler design and smaller size also means that they generally cost much less than a traditional electric car, both to purchase and to charge. Some new LSVs can start at below $10,000, compared to much more expensive electric family cars.
For some people, they’re also more fun to drive due to the novelty and go-kart feel that the small size offers. The 25 mph (40 km/h) top speed can be appropriate in many cities and communities, and the slower pace is often more fun for folks that enjoy cruising around their community and seeing the smiles on faces from onlookers. This is especially true in beach communities, older resident villages, and other planned communities.
For utility, LSVs can offer many of the same benefits. Electric mini-trucks are becoming more popular in the cargo and delivery fields, especially in crowded cities that can be difficult to navigate with a larger box truck.
These vehicles can often offer similar bed sizes compared to traditional pickup trucks or small flatbed trucks, yet the entire vehicle is much smaller.
The increase in demand for electric mini-trucks has even spawned a new US-produced vehicle known as the AYRO Vanish.
Which LSVs and NEVs are street legal?
Street-legality is perhaps the most important aspect of electric micro-cars, especially as new importers and manufacturers begin to crop up.
We’ll cover this issue in-depth in Part 2 of this series, which will return this Wednesday. Stay tuned!
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For most of human history, currency was a direct claim on tangible, productive output. Before the abstraction of government fiat or cryptocurrency, value was stored in things that required real work and resources, bushels of grain, livestock, gold, assets with their own direct productive output: horses, and tragically, slaves.
These were the foundational assets of economies, representing a direct link between labor, resources, and stored value.
As we accelerate into an all-electric, all-digital age, this fundamental link is re-emerging, but with a new unit of account. The 21st-century economy, defined by automated industry, robotic, electric transport, and now power-hungry artificial intelligence, runs on a single, non-negotiable input: electricity. In this new paradigm, the real base currency, the ultimate representation of productive capacity, is the kilowatt-hour (kWh).
The kWh is the new economic base layer.
Last week, I was in Bijiashan Park at night overlooking Shenzhen, arguably the most technologically advanced city on earth, built over the previous few decades, partly on cheap electricity, cheap labor, and manufacturing innovations.
I could see the giant high-voltage power lines coming over Yinhu Mountain to power the constant light show that is Shenzhen at night. I couldn’t help but think about how cheap electricity and a strong grid have been critical to China’s exceptional economic rise.
As you stroll around the city, you see power everywhere. There are charging stations at every corner, including insane 1 MW charging posts, electric cars and trucks, trucks that carry batteries to electric scooter shops, which are also literally everywhere.
Everything moves on electric power. Industries are powered by electricity, and now, with the advent of AI, virtually everything is increasingly processed by LLMs, which are ultimately powered by electricity through power-hungry data centers.
In a world where everything runs on electricity, electricity itself becomes the currency of civilization.
It is measurable, divisible, storable, and universal – all qualities that a currency needs, but unlike fiat and crypto, it’s actually directly linked to productive output. No politics. No inflation. Just physics.
This concept is not merely academic; it appears to be the quiet, guiding principle in China. While others debate the merits of decentralized digital tokens, China is executing a multi-pronged strategy that treats electricity as the foundational strategic asset it has become.
First, China is building the “mint” for this new currency at an incredible, world-changing scale, and it has retained absolute state control over its distribution. Its deployment of new electricity generation, particularly from renewables, is staggering. The country met its 2030 target of 1,200 gigawatts of renewable capacity five years early, in 2025.
In 2024 alone, renewable energy accounted for a record 56% of the nation’s total installed capacity, with clean generation meeting 84% of all new demand.
Here’s a comparison of electricity generation between China and the US:
If this chart doesn’t scare the West. I don’t know what will. The trend is not reversing any time soon. In fact, it appears to be accelerating as China is doubling down on solar and nuclear.
State-owned monoliths manage this entire system, primarily the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), the world’s largest utility. For better or worse, this centralized control allows the state to execute massive national strategies impossible in a liberalized market, such as building an Ultra-High-Voltage (UHV) grid to transmit power from remote solar and wind farms in the west to the power-hungry industrial hubs on its coast.
Second, China wields its control over the grid as a precision tool of industrial policy. China’s average electricity rate of $0.084/kWh is cheaper than most of the rest of the world, but its power lies not in the base price but in its strategic application. The government deploys a “Differential Electricity Pricing” policy: a “stick” that penalizes low-tech, high-consumption industries with higher rates, and a “carrot” that provides preferential pricing to incentivize strategic sectors.
The most potent example is in the AI sector. China is now offering massive electricity subsidies, cutting power bills by up to half, for data centers run by giants like Alibaba and Tencent. The condition for this cheap power is that these companies must use locally-made, Chinese AI chips, such as those from Huawei.
China is spending its “electricity currency” to directly fund the growth of its domestic AI chip industry and sever its dependence on foreign technology. This same logic applies to its global dominance in green tech, where state-subsidized firms like BYD benefit from a state-controlled industrial ecosystem built on reliable, managed power.
Third, and possibly the most explicit exemplification of China viewing electricity as the base currency is its moves against cryptocurrency.
In 2021, the government banned all cryptocurrency transactions and mining. While the official reasons cited financial stability, the move might have had a deeper, strategic intention.
From the state’s perspective, it was a tool for capital flight, allowing wealth to bypass government controls. But in a world where electricity rules, cryptocurrencies are, in effect, a competing “currency” that burns the foundational asset (electricity) to create a decentralized store of value.
By banning crypto, China simultaneously reclaimed its monopoly on economic control and shut down a massive, “wasteful” leak of its most precious resource. It freed up that generating capacity to be strategically allocated to its preferred industries, like AI and manufacturing.
China’s actions, viewed together, are a clear and coherent strategy. By massively investing in and securing total state control over its domestic electricity supply (the “mint”), using its price as a tool to fuel strategic industries, and banning decentralized competitors that consume the same resource, China is making a clear bet. It has been recognized that in an age where all productivity is powered by the grid, the ultimate source of national power is not gold, fiat, or crypto, but the state-controlled kilowatt-hour.
The Blockchain and Crypto: Ledger vs. Furnace
This perspective brings a critical nuance to the role of blockchain technology. In an economy where electricity is the base currency, the blockchain makes perfect sense, but only as a ledger, not as a store of value.
A distributed ledger is the ideal technological layer to act as the accounting system for this new economy. It can track the generation, transmission, and consumption of every kilowatt-hour with perfect transparency. It can automate complex industrial contracts and manage the grid’s load balancing without a central intermediary. In this sense, blockchain is the “banking software” for the electricity standard.
However, “Proof of Work” cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin face a fatal contradiction within this paradigm. They aim to serve as a store of value by burning the base currency (electricity) to secure the network. If the kilowatt-hour is the 21st-century equivalent of gold, then Bitcoin mining is akin to melting down gold bars to print a paper receipt. It destroys the productive asset to create a derivative token.
Bitcoin is quickly losing credibility as a classical safe store of value. It trades like a security, at least over the last year, and its value is only whatever the next moron is willing to pay, with no valuable asset behind it.
China’s strategy reflects this precise understanding. While they ruthlessly banned Bitcoin mining (the “furnace” that wastes the asset), they have simultaneously championed the Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) and the Digital Yuan. They have embraced the ledger to track and control their energy economy, while rejecting the supposed asset that destroys it.
This is a trap that crypto fans often fall into. They recognize the value of the blockchain, which is real, but they mistakenly broadly assign the same value to cryptocurrency, which is simply an application of the blockchain.
Electrek’s Take
What I’m trying to explore in this op-ed is the idea that if the present is electric and the future is even more electric, then it makes sense for electricity to be the foundation of the economy.
If electricity is the backbone of global trade and the metric of productivity, the kWh ultimately becomes the real currency of a truly electrified world.
And I think China has figured this out, as evidenced by its new electricity generation surpassing the rest of the world combined and by its ban on cryptocurrency.
They are going to let the rest of the world hold the crypto bag while they have more electricity generation than anyone to power their industries, which are already taking over the world.
I think the rest of the world should learn from this. Instead of pouring capital into meme coins and made-up stores of value, we should invest in electricity generation and storage.
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![Classic Jeep Grand Wagoneer gets a battery electric makeover [video]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/11/grand-wagoneer_EV_2.jpg?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
Texas-based tuning firm Vigilante 4×4 is known for its wild, high-horsepower Jeep SJ Hemi restomods – but they’re more than just a hot rod shop. To prove it, they’ve developed a bespoke, all-electric skateboard chassis designed to turn the classic Jeep Grand Wagoneer into a modern, desirable electric SUV.
The scope of the Vigilante 4×4 electric chassis project is truly impressive. More than just a Jeep SJ frame with an electric drive train bolted in, the chassis is a completely fresh design that utilizes precise 3D scans of the original SJ Wagoneers, Grand Wagoneers, and J-Trucks to establish hard points, then fitted with low-slung battery packs to give the electric restomods superior weight balance, a lower center of gravity, and objectively improved ride and handling compared to its classic, ICE-powered forefathers.
The result is a purpose-built platform that delivers power to the wheels through a dual-motor system – one mounted in the front, and one at the rear – to provide a permanent, infinitely variable four-wheel drive system that offers both on-road performance and the kind of off-road capability that made the Grand Wagoneer famous in the first place.
Vigilante 4×4 electric Jeep SJ
“This isn’t a replacement for our Vigilante HEMI offerings,” reads the official copy. “It’s a total revisit of the Vigilante platform under electric power.”
The company emphasizes that its new chassis is still in the prototype stages. As such, there are no specs, there is no pricing, there are no range estimates. Despite it all, the response from Jeep enthusiasts has already been strong. “Keep in mind this is our first prototype,” a spokesperson said. “There’s still a lot of work to be done – but the journey has begun.”
Electrek’s Take
Retro done wrong – think the Dodge Charger Daytona EV or VW ID.Buzz – is a disaster. Always. If that nostalgic tone is just a little bit off, the song doesn’t work. The heartstrings don’t pull. Done right, however, the siren song of nostalgia will have you putting a second mortgage on your house to put a Singer Porsche or ICON Bronco in your garage.
It’s too soon to tell what side of that line the Vigilante 4×4 Jeep SJ will eventually fall, but one thing (at least) is certain: it’s closer to the mark than that Wagoneer S.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Vigilante 4×4, via Mopar Insiders.
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