Swedish microcar maker Luvly wants to be the IKEA of tiny electric cars
Luvly, a Swedish microcar company, is gearing up to produce a tiny, ultraefficient electric car for urban living – and distribute it around the world using a flat-pack shipping method, much like another famous Swedish brand.
Luvly derives its name from LUV, or “Light Urban Vehicle,” which really sets the tone for what they’re going after – small cars designed for city use.
Luvly’s first vehicle, the Luvly O, has specs intended to work perfectly for an urban dweller. Which is to say, those specs are not any more than what you need (or more than what European quadricycle regulations limit them to), combined into a cute, affordable, and convenient package.
The whole vehicle weighs just 380kg (837 pounds), about a fifth as much as the standard 4,000-pound passenger car (the Tesla Model 3 weighs around this much), resulting in lower manufacturing emissions. And its light weight means that it’s tremendously more efficient, with energy consumption on the order of 60Wh/km (96Wh/mi), about two to four times better than “full-size” electric cars.
This low energy consumption means the Luvly needs a smaller battery to get around, and the standard battery is just 6.4kWh. But that’s not the best part – the battery is two separate units, each weighing 15kg (33 pounds), and they are removable.
So, sure, you can plug in the car to charge it. But what if you park on the street and don’t have access to a charging point? Well, you can just take the battery with you into your apartment and charge it there. This might be harder if you’re carrying other things or live in a walk-up apartment or have reduced strength or mobility, but perhaps another carrying solution could be designed for people who need that.
The small battery means fast charge speeds as well. On a standard European 220-230V outlet, each battery unit should take about an hour to charge. In the US, due to our slower 120V outlets, it’ll take about two hours. No special charger or high-amperage outlets are needed – just a regular outlet. Quick charging times and potential battery swapping capabilities also give the car the potential to be used for urban car-sharing schemes.
But despite (and perhaps because of) its small size, the car is still capable of the feats that matter most for intracity tasks. Its top speed of 90km/h (55mph) is perhaps a bit slow for interstates but suitable for quick highway jaunts within a city and for any surface road. Its trunk holds 267 liters, a bit over nine cubic feet, which won’t help you haul lumber but should be enough for groceries, bags, or maybe even a small Costco run. It would also be ideal for last-mile/intracity delivery.
Tiny cars are often thought of as being less safe, primarily due to oversized vehicles taking over the road, leading to an arms race of vehicle size. But smaller and slower cars are safer for occupants and for those outside the car. Luvly says they will use a sandwich-structure composite safety shell with additional energy-absorbing foam material to keep occupants safe. (Luvly calls it “slow formula racing tech.”)
And down to the bottom line: Luvly plans to sell the Luvly O for around €10,000, or $11,000. That’s cheaper than any car you’ll find and not even much more expensive than high-end cargo bikes. If it ends up qualifying for EV subsidies in the various regions it ends up being sold, that price could become even more absurdly low.
Most of these specs are subject to change, especially with varying homologation rules in different territories. And Luvly does see opportunities in several markets, both around Europe and around the globe.
The IKEA of tiny electric cars
Luvly says its main innovation is in its production and assembly process, which it intends to license and allow for different cars to be built with its same processes. A sporty model, a small cargo van, or a three-wheeler are all potential configurations.
The IKEA comparison is not just about the shared country of origin but rather about Luvly’s planned production and shipping methods. Rather than assembling cars in one central factory and shipping them around the world fully assembled, Luvly has pioneered a process that allows for flat-pack shipping of vehicle parts.
Unlike IKEA, these won’t be assembled by the end user, but flat-pack shipping will allow a single shipping container to hold the parts required for 20 total cars, rather than needing a pure car carrying ship or loading one to four fully-assembled standard-sized cars in a container.
So parts can be produced in a central factory, and these parts are then assembled in micro factories covering individual sales regions. One 2000-square-meter micro factory could service a territory the size of Sweden.
Each micro factory then has a smaller footprint, deployment timeline, and capital expenditures to set up. Licensees of Luvly’s process could set these micro factories up much more easily than if they had to build the entire process themselves. And at end of life, these parts can be recycled as well.
While Luvly has some stiff competition in Europe from established brands, like Citroen and Renault, and smaller companies, like Microlino, it believes that its flat-pack and sandwich composite methods give it a leg up. But it also believes there is plenty of room for this market to grow and that drivers can be convinced to go smaller.
Why smaller is better
Luvly CEO Håkan Lutz, despite being 193cm (6’4) himself, is adamant that cars are too big and need to be smaller. (He says that he and his brother, who is even larger than him, fit in the car together just fine.) He notes that Sweden has the largest cars in Europe. Despite that, Swedes are an environmentally-conscious lot: They live in a spread-out country with few significantly sized cities; they love to bring the whole family out to the Sommarstuga (summer house) for vacation (and tow a 1000kg trailer while doing so – these are ubiquitous in Scandinavia); and many live in small quaint suburbs.
But this gets down to the current predicament with cities, especially in Europe, but really all around the world. Cars are getting bigger, and city centers aren’t. These bigger cars create more pollution, are more noisy, kill more pedestrians, cause more congestion, and take up more parking space. And this is happening when we need to move more people into cities and make them denser, not less dense, in order to make society more efficient in the face of climate change.
Lutz would like to see this trend reversed. He sees the arms race of larger cars as a symptom of humans seeing each other as competitors to distance and protect themselves from. And this attitude will not help us in the fight against climate change or the fight for better cities.
A reversal of the large car trend would lead to myriad societal benefits and could be paired with making cities more human-centric rather than car-centric. With car-centric cities, we surrender so much of our human space to vehicles that only get used for minutes a day. A smaller car is still a car, and it still takes up space and needs roads, but smaller cars fit better into the lives of city-dwellers than the huge land yachts which US and EU automakers are trending toward.
But he acknowledges that the Luvly O is better for intracity travel rather than for living outside a city and driving in. However, for some drivers who live in a nearby suburb/exurb – say, Lund to Malmö, two cities just 20km away – the Luvly could work and would certainly be easier to find parking for. And despite being a low population density country, Sweden still has an urbanization rate of 88% – higher than the US at 83%. So there are plenty of people in each country who could benefit from an urban-focused vehicle.
Lutz thinks that young city dwellers, who are increasingly tired of their cities being overrun by SUVs, are the perfect audience for Luvly. He wants to target cities with high levels of pollution and congestion and with significant numbers of urban commuters. These will largely start in Europe, though Lutz thinks there are young people in every city in the world who could be interested in a vehicle like this.
Yes, even in the US, where the stereotype goes that small cars won’t sell. And here I am, with a 2,800-pound car in the driveway, still wishing it were a bit smaller – so maybe he’s right.
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For years, Tesla has been the go-to EV recommendation for “normals” looking for a painless, low-effort experience from their first electric cars. In light of questionable recalls and its CEO’s recent involvement in controversial politics, however, people are starting to distance themselves from the trailblazing company.
All that begs the question: what should we recommend to EV noobs now?
Despite early quality issues and ongoing service headaches, the groundbreaking S3XY lineup of EVs have always had a secret weapon in the form of the Tesla Supercharger network.
That network of dependable high-speed chargers, paired with solid app integration that makes it easy for Tesla drivers to find available chargers just about anywhere in the US, gave the brand a leg up – but no more. By opening up the Supercharger network to brands like Ford, Hyundai, Kia, and others, Tesla has given away its biggest competitive advantage.
Add in charging and route-planning apps like Chargeway, that make navigating the transition from CCS to NACS easier than ever with its intuitive colors and numbers and easy on/off switch for vehicles equipped with NACS adapters, and it feels like the time is right to start suggesting alternatives to the old EV industry stalwarts. As such, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Here, then, are my picks for the best Tesla S3XY (and Cybertruck) alternatives you can buy.
Less Model S, more Lucid Air
Developed by OG Tesla Model S engineers with tunes from Annie Get Your Gun playing continuously in their heads, the Lucid Air promises to be the car Tesla should and could have built, if only Elon had listened to the engineers.
With panel fit, material finish, and overall build quality that’s at least as good as anything else in the automotive space, the Lucid Air is a compelling alternative to the Model S at every price level – and I, for one, would take a “too f@#king fast” Lucid Air Sapphire over an “as seen on TV” Model S Plaid any day of the week. And, with Supercharger access reportedly coming later this quarter, Air buyers will have every advantage the Supercharger Network can provide.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Less Model 3, more Hyundai IONIQ 6
Hyundai has been absolutely killing it these days, with EVs driving record sales and new models earning rave reviews from the automotive press. Even in that company the IONIQ 6 stands out, with up to 338 miles of EPA-rated range and lickety-quick 350 kW charging available to make road tripping easy – especially now that the aerodynamically efficient IONIQ 6 has Supercharger access through a NACS adapter (the 2026 “facelift” models get a NACS port as standard).
The company’s sole electric sedan hasn’t seen the same sales success as IONIQ 5, of course – but that has more to do with America’s insatiable lust for crossovers and SUVs than any shortcoming inherent in the IONIQ 6 itself. All the same, Hyundai is helping dealers clear out its remaining 2024 and ’25 models with 0% financing for up to 48 months through June 2nd.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Less Model X, more Volvo EX90
Once upon a time, Mrs. Jo Borrás and I were shopping three-row SUVs and found ourselves genuinely drawn to the then-new Model X. Back then it was the only three-row EV on the market, but it wasn’t Elon’s antics or access to charging, or even the Model X’s premium pricing that squirreled the deal. It was the stupid doors.
We went with the similarly new Volvo XC90 T8 in denim blue, and followed up the big PHEV with a second, three years later, in Osmium Gray. When it’s time to replace this one, you can just about bet your house that the new 510 hp EX90 with 310 miles of all-electric range will be near the top of the shopping list.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Less Model Y, more Kia EV6
If half the fun of driving a Model Y is terrifying your passengers with its straight-line speed, then the Kia EV6 has to be a serious contender for a replacement.
The sporty EV6 GT made its global debut by drag racing some of the fastest ICE-powered cars of the day, including a Lamborghini, Mercedes-AMG GT, a Porsche, even a turbocharged Ferrari – and it beat the pants off ’em. Combine supercar-baiting speed with an accessible price tag, NACS accessibility, $10,000 in customer cash on remaining 2024 models ($3,000 on 2025s) and just a hint of Lancia Stratos in the styling, the EV6 is tough to beat.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Less Cybertruck, more therapy
It’s not bulletproof, it’s not easy to upfit, it shouldn’t be used for towing, and it won’t win in a straight fight against a vinyl picket fence. By just about every standard “truck” metric, the Tesla Cybertruck falls short against the competition from Chevrolet, Ford, and Rivian. On a more subjective front, the Cybertruck has become a symbol for a conservative movement that is (depending on your point of view) either making America great again or plunging a once-great democracy into an era of fascist oligarchy and widespread stupidity.
In short, it’s probably best to skip the CT.
If you disagree with that statement and feel like driving a new Tesla Cybertruck is the key to happiness, I’m not sure an equally ostentatious GMC Hummer EV or more subtle Rivian R1T will help you scratch that particular itch – but maybe therapy might!
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Original content from Electrek.
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Republicans launched multiple attacks against EVs, clean air and American jobs this week, at the behest of the oil industry that funds them. These attacks won’t be successful, and EVs will continue to grow regardless, and inevitably take over for outdated gasoline vehicles.
However, these republican attacks on EVs will still have some effect: they will diminish the US auto industry globally, leading to job losses and surrendering one of the jewels in the crown of American industry to China, where there is no similar effort to destroy its own domestic EV industry.
Republican attacks on clean air this week included moves to block funding that has led to a renaissance in US manufacturing and also to illegally block clean air laws. They also moved forward with a procedural step towards increasing US fuel costs by $23B, an effort which the former reality TV contestant posing as the head of the DOT announced in January.
These moves shouldn’t be a big surprise – republicans have opposed clean air and American jobs for many years now, and they’re doing it because they want to maintain the bribes they get from the oil industry.
But they should inspire worry for Americans, because they will only harm the country’s domestic manufacturing base in the face of a changing auto industry.
Republicans keep trying to kill clean cars
The last time a republican occupied the the White House, we saw similar efforts to try to raise fuel and health costs for Americans, and to block superior EV technology from flourishing. That didn’t work in the end, and EVs continued to grow both during that period and after.
All the while, fossil fuels have maintained their privileged policy position, being allowed to pollute with impunity and costing the US $760 billion per year in externalized costs. Much of that subsidy is accounted for in the cost of pollution from gas cars, which are one of the primary uses of fossil fuels, which means that, in fact, gasoline vehicles receive much more subsidy than EVs do.
And yet, EVs still managed to grow substantially, despite these headwinds. EV sales have continued to grow, both in the US and globally, even as headlines incorrectly say otherwise. The republican party’s attempts to kill them were futile, and will continue to be.
It didn’t work, but it did delay progress
However, anti-EV actions from Mr. Trump and the republican party did manage to delay progress from where it could have been if America actually instituted smart industrial policy earlier.
What if, instead of the bumbling, idiotic nonsense we went through the last time Mr. Trump squatted in the White House, we could have had something more like President Biden’s EV policy, which created hundreds of thousands of jobs and attracted hundreds of billions of dollars of manufacturing investment?
Surely the American auto industry would be ahead of where it is now if those investments had had time to come online. But instead, republicans are currently trying to kill those jobs, which has already led to several manufacturing projects being cancelled this year, depriving Americans of the economic boost they need right now.
Meanwhile, there’s one place that this sort of stumbling isn’t happening: China.
China is taking advantage
China has spent more than a decade focusing on securing material supply, building refining capacity, developing their own battery technology, and encouraging local EV manufacturing startups.
This has paid off recently, as Chinese EVs have been rapidly scaling in production in recent years. It took a lot of the auto industry by surprise how rapidly Chinese companies have scaled, and how rapidly Chinese consumers have adopted them, after having an initially slow start.
But that adoption hasn’t just been local, it’s also global. Last year, China became the largest auto exporter in the world, taking a crown that Japan had held for decades. But the change was even more dramatic than that – as recently as 2020, China was the sixth-largest auto exporter in the world, just behind the US in 5th place.
China’s dramatic turn upward started in 2020, and now it’s in first place. Meanwhile, because of all the faffing about, the US remains exactly where it was in 2020 – still in fifth place. Well, sixth now, since China eclipsed us (and everyone else).
Tariffs won’t fix it
The reaction of the rest of the world’s automaking countries has been to put tariffs on Chinese autos, hoping to forestall the country’s dramatic rise to dominance. (Although, due to Mr. Trump’s idiotic flailing, Europe is already talking about removing these trade barriers with China)
But tariffs have been tried before, and they didn’t work. When Japan had a similarly meteoric rise to global prominence as an auto manufacturer in the 1970s and 80s, largely due to their adoption of new technology, processes, and different car styles which incumbents were ignoring, the US tried to stop it with tariffs.
All this did was make US manufacturers complacent, and Japan still managed to seize and maintain the crown of top auto exporter (occasionally trading places with Germany) from then until now.
Then as now, the true way to compete is to adapt to the changing automotive industry and take EVs seriously, rather than giving the auto industry excuses to be complacent. But instead, republicans aren’t doing that, and in fact are working to ensure the American auto industry doesn’t adapt, by actively killing the incentives that were leading to a boom in domestic manufacturing investment.
US auto industry jeopardized by republicans
Make no mistake about it: destroying EV incentives, and allowing companies to pollute more and innovate less, will not help the US auto industry catch up with a fast moving competitor.
As we at Electrek have said for years, you cannot catch up to a competitor that is both ahead of you and moving faster than you.
This applies to individual companies, which took their sweet time responding to the challenge from electric upstarts like Tesla, and have now lost market share to said upstarts and let a competitor establish itself in a big way (even though Tesla’s CEO is now trying desperately to harm his own company specifically, and the US EV industry as a whole, by being the largest funder of the party working to destroy said industry).
It also applies to nations, which could have spent the last decade doing what the Chinese auto industry has been doing, but instead non-Chinese automakers have been begging their governments for more time, even though it’s not the regulations that threaten them, it’s competition from a new and motivated rival that is moving faster and in a more determined manner towards the future.
The way that we get around this should be clear: take EVs seriously.
But that’s not what republicans are doing, and in doing so, they are signing the death warrant for an important US industry in the long term.
Another thing republicans are trying to kill is the the rooftop solar credit, which means you could have only until the end of this year to install rooftop solar on your home before the cost of doing so goes up by an average of ~$10,000. So if you want to go solar, get started now, because these things take time and the system needs to be active before you file for the credit.
To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
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International equipment manufacturer Vermeer has unveiled a full-scale prototype of its Interlune excavator, a machine designed to ingest 100 metric tons of rocks and dirt per hour, extracting valuable helium as it makes its way across the surface … of the Moon.
Helium plays a critical role in the manufacturing of semiconductors, chips, optics, and all the other stuff that makes EVs, autonomy, the Internet, and the rest of twenty-first century life possible. The problem is that, despite being the second-most common element in the universe, helium is pretty rare on Earth – and we are rapidly running out. As such, there are intense economic and political pressures to find new and reliable sources of helium somewhere, anywhere else, and that demand has sparked a new modern space race focused on harvesting helium on the Moon and getting it back home.
To that end, companies like American lunar mining startup Interlune and the Iowa-based equipment experts at Vermeer are partnering on the development of suite of interplanetary equipment assets capable of digging up lunar materials like rocks and sand from up to three meters below the surface, extract helium-3 (a light, stable isotope of helium believed to exist in abundance on the Moon), then package it, contain it, and ship it back to Earth.
“When you’re operating equipment on the Moon, reliability and performance standards are at a new level,” says Rob Meyerson, Interlune CEO. “Vermeer has a legacy of innovation and excellence that started more than 75 years ago, which makes them the ideal partner for Interlune.”
Enter: Japan
America isn’t the only spacefaring nation eyeing a helium mine on the Moon. Japan announced similar plans back in 2023, with Japanese construction giant Komatsu announcing plans to develop a fully electric excavator capable of operating on the lunar surface.
The company showed a scaled prototype of the machine at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas (above), emphasizing the need to develop new ways to operate equipment assets in the extreme temperatures of extraplanetary environments beyond diesel or even hydrogen combustion.
On the airless surface of the moon, it would be impossible for an internal combustion engine to operate on the moon’s surface because there is no oxygen for combustion. Electrically powered machines seem the obvious solution with solar power generation supplying the electricity. But the answer is not that simple.
Temperature changes on the surface of the moon are extreme. They can soar to 110° C and plummet to -170° C. Developing electric construction machinery to perform in this environment is no easy task, but Komatsu is tackling issues one by one as they appear. Using thermal control and other electrification technologies, we are engineering solutions.
Despite Komatsu’s apparent head start, however, Vermeer seem to pulled ahead – not just in terms of machine development, but in terms of extraction potential as well.
“The high-rate excavation needed to harvest helium-3 from the Moon in large quantities has never been attempted before, let alone with high efficiency,” said Gary Lai, Interlune co-founder and CTO. “Vermeer’s response to such an ambitious assignment was to move fast. We’ve been very pleased with the results of the test program to date and look forward to the next phase of development.”
Interlune is funded by grants from the US Department of Energy and NASA TechFlights. In 2023, the company received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research award to develop the technology to size and sort lunar regolith (read: dirt). Interlune has raised $18 million in funding so far, and is planning its first mission to the Moon before 2030.
Electrek’s Take
We’ve got space travel, weird mineral extraction from another planet that’s essential for our technology, and a rapid, unchecked proliferation of AI. All we need now is big worms, a whole bunch of hallucinogenic narcotics, and the will to smash up a bunch of data centers with baseball bats – then we’ll have a pretty decent Dune LARP going. Yee-ha!
SOURCE | IMAGES: Interlune.
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