Why this electric ‘car’ the size of two motorcycles should be on your list
Let’s just face it, America. We’ve got a weight problem. No, not that weight problem. It’s the size of the cars. The best-selling vehicles in the US are all of the biggest, heaviest, and most oversized models available. But it doesn’t have to be that way. A new crop of tiny electric cars is changing the game and offering options we’ve never had before. Err, actually, I probably shouldn’t call them “cars”.
I’m talking about Low Speed Vehicles (LSVs), the official term for what many people call Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs).
Earlier this week, Eli Electric announced that it was opening pre-orders for its Eli ZERO, an electric vehicle so small that you can fit four of them in the same parking spot used by a large SUV. In fact, the little EV is roughly the size of just two motorcycles parked side by side.
That should make sense because just in the same way motorcycles are designed with the bare necessities to carry a single passenger, LSVs are generally the same idea, but for two passengers (or occasionally four passengers).
And at just US $11,900, the Eli Zero is finally an LSV that is affordable compared to most of the offerings we’ve seen in the past. Sure, I love me a nice GEM. But those suckers start at $15k, and the price jumps to $25k when you add doors and a lithium-ion battery upgrade. To put it lightly, Eli is making waves with a new electric microcar that is priced at half of the previous main competition.
So how can these motorcycle-sized electric vehicles be priced at less than half the cost of even the cheapest electric cars available in the US? Because they’re not really cars, essentially.
As LSVs, these are classified as motor vehicles, but not in the same way as passenger cars. They have their own not inconsequential set of regulations but don’t have to meet higher standards such as highway crash testing ratings, etc.
They’re also not nearly as powerful, since they are federally limited to just 25 mph (40 km/h) top speeds. As long as they meet the regulations and can be certified as street legal, they’re allowed on nearly any road in the country that has a posted speed limit of 35 mph (56 km/h) or less. That’s most of the roads in any city, which is why they’re so popular as urban vehicles.
And don’t think that since they aren’t cars, that you won’t get a car-like experience. The Eli Zero, for example, has a pile of features that should be familiar to any car owner, such as heat and air-conditioning, reverse camera, parking radar sensors, keyless unlocking/starting, power steering, and more. You even have the option of installing a Sony infotainment center with CarPlay or Android Auto integration.
The point is, LSVs may not be very fast, but for places where you’re not going to be driving very fast anyway (i.e. cities), the top speed just doesn’t matter that much. In Manhattan, for example, the average speed of traffic is just 7 mph (11 km/h). What’s more important is the size, the price, and the convenience.
When it comes to size, you just can’t beat LSVs. They’re small enough to park just about anywhere, and they don’t take up much space in your garage (if you’re lucky enough to have one of those ‘garage’ things in a city).
The pricing also makes them incredibly affordable as a replacement for a real car. Not only are they cheaper to buy outright, but they’re also much cheaper to own. They likely have reduced insurance costs (depending on your state), and the electricy cost to charge them pennies… literally. A full charge on many of these models might be slightly over one dollar, though most people don’t start from a completely empty battery. That means that a recharge likely costs you roughly the amount of loose change you’ve got dangling around in the bottom of your pocket. The cost of one single solitary gallon of gasoline would put around 200 to 300 miles of range into that Eli Zero, for example.
And lastly, let’s talk convenience. Owning an electric car is already fairly convenient because you don’t have many of the same maintenance concerns as combustion engine cars. But an LSV is even easier since you don’t even have the complicated systems that keep Teslas spending so much time at the service center. You get a few nice features like keyless ignition, but these aren’t the same rolling supercomputers as modern cars, meaning you’re giving up your self-driving and other high-tech features in exchange for reduced complexity.
The average city dweller is already on the fence about whether or not to even own a car, mostly due to the inconvenience of car ownership in the city. But if you can get the convenience of having your own weather-sealed ride yet don’t have to figure out how to park a boat downtown, then suddenly the equation becomes a lot more intriguiging.
And for suburbanites who are trying to decide on whether or not to get that second car, perhaps an LSV is the right choice. I generally recommend an electric bike as a replacement second car, but I understand that many people simply don’t want the two-wheeled lifestyle. If you can get something the size of two bikes, but that has glass and metal around you, (not to mention DOT seatbelts and anti-lock brakes), then perhaps an LSV is the right compromise.
There are simply so many advantages here, and I’ve barely scratched the surface. For now, these are still largely seen as quirky little vehicles, and I get it. They are quirky. But that’s also part of the fun charm. Most Cybertruck owners won’t admit it, but they bought that monstrosity because it was quirky and unique, just in a different way. Quirky vehicles can be fun because they mix things up, solving the same transportation problem in a new and fun way.
As the pool of available LSVs in the US grows, so too will the demand. The numbers are already growing, albeit slowly. I’ve touted the Eli ZERO several times in this article, largely because it’s fresh in the news (I’m not connected to the company, and I have no financial incentive – I just like the thing). But there are other models out there. The previously mentioned GEMs have offered solid LSV solutions in the US for decades. Wink Motors is a fairly new startup with interesting offerings, and has a new model coming to the US soon. Several golf cart makers have LSV versions, though they’re open-air vehicles that don’t have many of the same advantages of enclosed microcars. But the point is, there are more options than ever before.
Now, if we could just get the US government to get it together and include LSVs in the federal tax incentives for electric vehicles, that’d be something! These are electric vehicles, just smaller ones. And if the US truly cares about all the benefits of electric vehicles, then helping people turn these things into daily drivers with four-figure price tags will go a long way.
So here it is, the end of my rant. There are a lot of cars on the road, but few can match the utility per pound that LSVs offer.
If you live in a city and have been looking for an affordable electric car, here it is, in all its glory. And there it goes, at no faster than a federally-limited 25 mph.
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Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving Supervised’ expansion is back firing as it exposes its shortcomings. Customers left without promised features are growing discontent and demanding to compensated.
It’s turning into a multi-billion-dollar iceberg of Tesla’s own making.
In 2016, Tesla proudly announced that all its vehicles produced onward are equipped with “all the hardware for full self-driving,” which would be delivered through future software updates.
The automaker turned out to be significantly wrong about that.
At the time, it was producing its electric vehicles with a hardware suite known as HW2, which it had to upgrade to HW3 because it couldn’t support self-driving (FSD) capability.
HW3 was produced in vehicles from 2019 to 2023 and Tesla switched to HW4 in 2024.
At first, CEO Elon Musk claimed that FSD software updates on newer HW4 cars would lag roughly 6 months behind updates to HW3 cars to make sure to deliver the promised self-driving capability to those who have been waiting and paid for the promised capabiltiy a long time ago.
That strategy barely lasted a few months. Tesla quickly started releasing new FSD updates to HW4 cars first and it now hasn’t released a significant update to HW3 cars in close to a year.
Tesla only admitted in January 2025 that HW3 won’t be able to support unsupervised self-driving. Musk claimed that Tesla would retrofit the computers, but there has been no word about it for 10 months.
Tesla customers are starting to be fed up.
The catalyst is Tesla’s current FSD expansion in international markets. Previously, Tesla’s FSD was limited to North America, but over the last year, the automaker has been expanding FSD to China and now Australia and New Zealand.
However, the expansion is back-firing as HW3 owners are starting to realize that they will never get what they paid for.
In Australia and NZ, Tesla only launched FSD on HW4 vehicles with no clear plan for HW3, which the automaker already admitted won’t support unsupervised self-driving. The automaker appears to have only adapted its latest version of FSD for HW4 to the Australian market.
To add to the insult, with the launch of FSD in Australia, Tesla started to offer FSD subcriptions for $149 AUD a month for both HW3 and HW3 cars despite the software not being available for HW3.
HW3 owners reached out to Electrek after seeing this in their app:
It’s unclear why would Tesla sell a subcription to something that doesn’t even exist, but it is not helping build confidence with customers.
To try to appease owners, Tesla started sending emails to Australia HW3 owners offering $5,000 discounts on new inventory vehicles when transfering their FSD package:
However, this offer is misleading in itself, as it is not actually specific to HW3 owners as the email leads people to believe.
A visit on Tesla’s Australia inventory website shows that Tesla is offering a $5,000 disounct on all inventory vehicles with FSD for any buyer:
Therefore, it has nothing to do with “loyalty”.
As we recently reported, thousands of Tesla owners have now joined a class action lawsuit in Australia over Tesla misleading customers with its self-driving promises.
It adds to similar ongoing lawsuits in the US and China.
With hundreds of thousands of FSD customers who paid up to $15,000 for package, Tesla is on the hook for billions of dollars in compensations or retrofits in the best-case scenario.
Electrek’s Take
We are seeing more people losing patience and it is only going to get worse.
There were a lot of interesting interactions on this post, which is pretty mild in my opinion. And yet, you see the usual Elon lemmings downplaying Tesla not delivering features it promised:
I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble, but we need to be realistic here. If you are a HW3 owner and still think that Tesla is going to retrofit your up to 10-years-old car with a computer that is going to make self-driving, you are being delusional.
Tesla will have to end up compensating owners and at this point, I have serious doubts that it will do it by itself without being forced through courts.
Furthermore, it shouldn’t be just people who bought FSD. Tesla said that all cars had the hardware capable of self-driving whether people bought the software package or not. If that’s not true, it affects the resale value of the vehicle regardless of if someone purchased the package.
I have a fairly simple solution for Tesla to make it right.
Tesla needs to offer all HW3 owners a $5,000 loyalty discount, that goes on top of all other incentive program, when upgrading to a new car.
As for HW3 owners who bought FSD, which basically turned out to be an interest free loan to Tesla for years, the automaker needs to offer free FSD transfer and a $10,000 discount on a car upgrade.
While this might sound like a lot, I think it’s in line with the incredible liability that Tesla is facing from all the on going lawsuits.
On top of it, it will go a long way to regain the trust of long-time customers, which Tesla swindled by selling them features it simply can’t deliver.
The main reason why I think Tesla doesn’t want to do that is that it will likely have to do the same thing to HW4 owners in the next few years and that would be the death of the company.
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![From $189 a month: 5 of the best EV lease deals in October [Updated]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/11/Ford-Saudi-Arabia-Mach-E-side.jpeg?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
EV lease prices look better than expected, despite the end of the federal tax credit and the 25% import tariff being in place. Prices have crept up compared to last month, but several automakers have covered the $7,500 credit themselves or added extra incentives, and the price of one EV even dropped. Here are October’s top EV lease deals, spotted by our friends at CarsDirect.
2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 lease from $189/month
The updated 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 SE RWD Standard Range remains one of the standout EV lease deals this month, holding steady even after the end of the federal EV tax credit and new import tariffs. Through November 3, you can lease one for $189 a month for 36 months (10,000 miles per year) with $3,999 due at signing. That works out to an effective monthly cost of about $300 – just $40 more than September.
The price bump is far smaller than many expected, especially with Hyundai’s $17,000 in lease cash factored in. And if you’re tempted by an upgrade, the SEL RWD trim is just $50 more per month under the same terms. You’ll get a model that’s roughly $7,000 more in value and $18,750 in savings.
The IONIQ 5 SE RWD Standard Range offers an EPA-estimated 245 miles of range, and this particular offer is available in the Los Angeles and greater California metro areas.
Click here to find a local dealer that may have the Hyundai IONIQ 5 in stock. –trusted affiliate link
2025 Hyundai IONIQ 6 lease from $189/month
The 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 6 SE RWD Standard Range is tied with its sibling for the most affordable EV lease deal this month, offering standout value even after the federal EV tax credit ended. In the California metro area, you can lease it for $189 per month for 36 months (10,000 miles per year) with $3,999 due at signing, and Hyundai is sweetening the deal with $13,250 in lease cash.
That brings the effective monthly cost to around $300, which is only $20 more than last month when the tax credit was still active. With an EPA-estimated 240 miles of range, 149 horsepower, fast-charging capabilities, and a sleek, distinctive design, the IONIQ 6 remains a fan favorite. This offer is valid through November 3.
Click here to find a local dealer that may have the Hyundai IONIQ 6 in stock. –trusted affiliate link
2025 Kia Niro lease from $209/month
The 2025 Kia Niro Wind EV returns to our top 5 this month with an impressive regional lease deal. You can lease the Niro Wind EV for $209 per month for 24 months (10,000 miles per year) with $3,999 due at signing. The offer includes $11,800 in lease cash and $14,940 in total savings, bringing the effective monthly cost to about $376. That’s about $80 more per month than September’s tax credit-incentivized deal at $129, but it’s still a solid offer given the policy changes.
This deal is available to California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington residents through November 3.
Click here to find a local dealer that may have the Kia Niro in stock. –trusted affiliate link
2025 Ford Mustang Mach-E from $219/month
The 2025 Ford Mustang Mach-E Select RWD with Package 100A is offering bigger savings this month, making it an even stronger pick for EV shoppers. Known for its premium design and an EPA-estimated 300 miles of range, the Mach-E remains a favorite among drivers who want style and substance.
You can now lease it for $219 per month for 24 months (10,500 miles per year) with $4,499 due at signing. That’s $20 less per month than September’s advertised deal, though the term is shorter. With an effective monthly cost of about $406, it’s only $45 more than last month, a smaller jump than many expected.
The offer includes $6,750 in lease cash for qualified lessees, plus a free Ford Charging Station Pro with complimentary home installation – a rare perk. If you already have a home charger, you can choose an extra $2,000 in bonus cash instead.
This deal is currently available in California through January 5, 2026. Ford is offering discounted leases on EVs through December.
Click here to find a local dealer that may have the Ford Mustang Mach-E in stock. –trusted affiliate link
2025 Chevrolet Equinox from $269/month
Through November 3, you can lease the 2025 Chevrolet Equinox EV 2LT for $269 per month for 24 months (10,000 miles per year) with just $679 due at signing – one of the lowest upfront costs we’ve seen lately. That works out to an effective monthly cost of around $297. It’s got a quirk, though – this deal excludes Black Cloth Seats.
This is one of the rare EVs to see a price drop in the post-tax-credit era. Compared to September’s offer of $309 a month with $2,609 due at signing, this Chevy Equinox lease is $121 cheaper in effective monthly cost.
The deal is available nationwide for current Chevrolet lessees or those switching from another brand, and it includes a $2,250 loyalty or conquest bonus on top of $1,750 in lease cash. Want to drive away with the newest model? You can upgrade for just $30 more per month.
With an EPA-estimated 319 miles of range, the 2025 Equinox EV 2LT offers solid value for drivers looking to get into Chevy’s newest electric SUV.
Click here to find a local dealer that may have the Chevrolet Equinox in stock. –trusted affiliate link
Other post-tax credit lease price changes
BMW has held steady with its EV lease prices. CarsDirect pointed out that the 2025 BMW i4 is now cheaper to lease than a 2026 Tesla Model 3 despite the former having an MSRP that’s $20,000 higher than the latter.
The 2024 Acura ZDX used to be one of the best EV lease deals around, but Acura discontinued lease offers on the EV more than a month ago. That’s likely because the company is dropping the model for the foreseeable future and it’s pretty much sold out.
Tesla’s most affordable EV, the 2026 Tesla Model 3 sedan, is up to 36% more expensive to lease than before. The new entry-level Standard Model 3 and Model Y trims can’t be leased.
VW leases lost up to $12,000 in discounts after the federal tax credits were killed off. CarsDirect found that 2025 VW ID.4 lease prices went from an effective cost of a little over $230 a month to an eye-watering $800 a month.
Read more: From $0 a month: 5 of the best EV lease deals in September
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The Recon EV will be revealed in full soon. Jeep’s CEO shut down rumors that the Wrangler-sized electric off-roader was dead, saying the Recon EV will go on sale shortly.
Jeep’s electric off-roader will go on sale in Spring 2026
Although the Recon was initially set to debut in 2023 with sales starting the following year, don’t count it out just yet.
Bob Broderdorf, who took over the reins as Jeep’s new CEO in February, says rumors that the electric off-roader has been cancelled are far from true.
In fact, Jeep plans to sell it, even if you don’t want it. According to MotorTrend, Broderdorf is promising more details on the Recon EV are coming soon with sales kicking off next spring.
With Stellantis shaking up electrification plans, speculation began to spread that the Jeep Recon EV would be next to get the axe. Luckily, it doesn’t look like that will be the case.
Jeep first unveiled the Recon EV as a concept in 2022, promising the electric off-roader would be not only be able to tackle the Rubicon trail with enough charge to get back to town and recharge. It’s not a replacement, but the Recon is “inspired by the legendary Wrangler,” according to Jeep.
The Recon will be Jeep’s first true off-road EV. Leading up to its official debut, we’ve seen the electric off-roader out in the wild a few times now.
Spy shots of the interior surfaced on JeepReconForum last year, confirming the SUV will feature Jeep’s signature Selec-Terrain traction control system with different modes like “Rock” and “Mud.” The closer it gets to its final form, the more the Recon looks like a Ford Bronco rather than the Wrangler.
Even if it doesn’t sell well, Jeep considers the all-electric Recon as a key model as it looks to corner the off-road market.
Stellantis will build the Recon at its Toluca, Mexico plant alongside the Wagoneer S, Jeep’s first electric SUV in North America. The Jeep Cherokee and Compass are also built at the facility, all of which share the same STLA Large platform.
“We can shift and move. It is OK if [Recon] is low volume,” Broderdorf said, adding “If I have to sell more Cherokees, so be it.”
Although Jeep has yet to reveal final specs and prices, the Recon EV is expected to debut with about 350 miles of range. Prices are expected to start at around $60,000, or slightly less than the Wagoneer S. More premium trims, like the MOAB and Rubicon could cost closer to $80,000.
Broderdorf promised more details are coming soon. He also said the company plans to reveal more info on the future Wrangler shortly. Will we see an electric Wrangler? If so, it likely won’t be until the next generation in 2028.
Until then, Jeep will use the Recon EV and Wrangler as a twin threat as it looks to gain control of the off-road market.
While the Recon will arrive soon, Stellantis cancelled Ram’s first fully electric pickup and trimmed the Dodge Charger EV to just one variant.
Jeep’s CEO sees a market for electric vehicles, in particular the Recon. “We’ve got a great car. We’ve already built it. We should sell it, we should learn. I don’t know how many it will be. I’m not really that worried about it,” Broderdorf said. Even with the $7,500 federal tax credit now expired, Jeep expects EVs to sell in markets like California.
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