Mexico Has An $8,600 Electric Car And Dammit, Why Don’t We All?

I feel like every time I get excited about some extraordinarily affordable car, electric or otherwise, there’s always someone around to tell me why such a thing is impossible in America. And, sure, they usually have some pretty valid reasons, not meeting safety requirements or not having the profit margins that companies demand, or being just too crude or basic to be appealing to the mass market, or something like that. Fine. Whatever. I could do without the weird glee some people seem to have in shooting down my dirt-cheap car dreams, but more importantly, I can’t ignore the fact that these cheap cars do exist in other places. China, for example. And now, it seems, Mexico.

Yes, Mexico! Mexico has a pretty long history with affordable cars, being the final holdout of original Volkswagen Beetle (Vocho, as they say) manufacturing. Now the country – and I mean that at least partially literally, since the Mexican government is backing this new EV startup, Olinia – has put their support into a clever-looking and useful-seeming little electric van that is planned to sell for about 150,000 pesos, which translates to about $8,600. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum even drove a prototype around at an event yesterday.

Here, see for yourself:

That’s gloriously cheap. Even better, it seems understandably cheap, not some wild startup wishful thinking kind of crap. The vehicle, the Olina Uno, is realistically modest, but enough to do its intended job just fine. It’s designed for its intended purpose – a flexible, multi-use electric city car – and that’s it. The speed is limited to 50 kph/31 mph, so it’s definitely just a city car, but for a huge amount of driving, this actually is plenty. I learned this lesson when I was driving my Changli every day.

It’s a six-seater van – there’s also a cargo pickup truck variant –that moves around with a 17 horsepower electric motor, sucking electrons from a 14.7kWh LFP (lithium iron phosphate) battery pack, with a range of over 62 miles or so. This is a very basic vehicle, but a clever, useful design. Honestly, it doesn’t seem all that different than similar Chinese small, lower-speed electric vehicles, but that makes sense: this isn’t necessarily the place to re-invent the wheel.

The Olinia Uno will recharge from normal wall outlets, eight hours at 110 volts, four at 220 volts, which, like so many specs relating to this car, isn’t impressive when compared to modern, full-price EVs, but for the use cases that this is targeted? Definitely good enough.

Smaller than even most compacts, the box-on-wheels design allows for more interior volume than most small cars, and provides better weather protection and comfort than three-wheeled tuk-tuks/auto-rickshaws that are in use for similar intra-city travel. The Olinia site offers an operating cost comparison between a regular automobile taxi, a three-wheel moto-taxi/tuk tuk, and the Olinia Uno. Unsurprisingly, the Uno comes out the cheapest, at $900, compared to $2,194 for the moto taxi, and $4,320 for the conventional cab.

This isn’t a sub-$10,000 that’s going to be absolutely everything to everyone. But it is a sub-$10,000 transportation machine that is far more useful and capable than its simple specs would suggest. People could definitely use this thing, in the right locations, of course, as their day-to-day transportation for about 75% of their driving needs. This category of vehicle is viable and, I can tell you from experience, appealing. Small, lower-speed EVs work for so many things, and I think the way they’re handling this in Mexico makes a ton of sense.

I’m excited to see how this all plays out.

Top photo: Olinia