EV Startup Reveals $15,000 25

Home News News EV Startup Reveals $15,000 25-MPH Car That You'll Never Have To Park Chip Motors is a new EV startup betting that Americans are willing to go smaller—and pay up to have someone else do the parking

What's Happening

Photo by: Chip Motors Tim Levin By : Tim Levin Jul 15, at 1:19pm ET Add InsideEVs as a preferred source in Google Facebook X LinkedIn Flipboard Reddit WhatsApp E-Mail copy Share Comment Go to any European city and you’ll find tiny city cars jittering over cobblestones and dodging tourists. Japan is positively teeming with adorable “kei” versions of everything from off-road SUVs to box trucks. Across the globe, practical little cars are everywhere. But you’d never know that looking at our Escalade- and F-150-filled roads.

Why This Matters for EV Owners

• A Miami-based startup called Chip Motors has spent the last few years working on a small, low-speed electric vehicle that it’s betting even SUV-obsessed Americans will go for
• On Wednesday, it emerged from stealth and opened up preorders for its first product, a boxy, oddball affair with a tall windshield, no doors, a cheery LED smile on its face, and a bold promise to make driving optional
• It reads like a cross between a golf cart and a Jeep Wrangler—or maybe a VW Thing—and that speaks to the market Chip is trying to conquer
• All over the country, in private communities but also in warm climates, people are hitting the beach and the grocery store in golf carts, Jameson Detweiler, Chip’s cofounder told InsideEVs

The Bigger Picture

Chip Motors Photo by: Chip Motors “During the pandemic, something happened. The golf carts escaped the golf communities, and were adopted widely and rapidly by families in markets where you could have the doors off basically year round, or in seasonal markets too,” he said. “And it just turns out a lot of people are doing this. ” Indeed, market research and reporting indicates that golf cart sales are on the rise, including from people who want to bop around town alongside fully grown cars. That’s possible due to a section of federal vehicle standards that allows for so-called “low-speed vehicles.

What to Watch Next

” They can travel at up to 25 mph and can typically be driven on roads with speed limits up to 35 mph, though that depends on the state. Detweiler had been thinking about small, autonomous vehicles for years—he founded a company in the micromobility space that was acquired by one of the biggest scooter-sharing players—but the "aha" moment came in 2022, when Detweiler got a call from his brother in Florida. His brother had traded in one of his two SUVs for a six-seat golf cart for shorter trips, and was loving it. “He's like, ‘I don't want to get in my car.