...but I can't, because most of them aren't for sale in the U.S. Still, this article makes them sound really appealing.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/01/electric-cars-cheaper-china-than-america/677290/China has a huge diversity of EVs on the market, not just the stupid lumbering monster trucks and ultra-expensive luxury cars that are the only kinds American manufacturers make.
For example, there's the Changli Freeman, the cheapest electric car in the world. It only has a range of 27 miles and a max speed of 23 MPH, but it retails for $1,200. Even a golf cart in the U.S. costs more than that! People in China call it the "old man happy car" because it's used by elderly grandparents for short trips to visit their families or to go to the market.
There's a review of it on Jalopnik that concludes that, quirky as it is, it's a really good car for the money:
https://jalopnik.com/the-worlds-cheapest-ev-is-genuinely-good-1847048450If that's not enough car for you, you still have some great options for around $10,000:
Take the Changan Lumin, for example. It is a sleek four-seat hatchback complete with high-tech headlights that look a bit like a pair of friendly eyes staring back at you. It’ll go about 60 mph, just enough to make it highway capable, and costs about $7,500—new. That’s a new-car price. The Wuling Mini EV is a similar car that’s even cheaper, retailing for less than $5,000; for a little more than $12,000, the technology-packed Baojun KiWi EV comes with a feature that allows it to park itself.
In the U.S., the list of not just new EVs, but any new car, starting at just over $10,000 is precisely zero cars long.
There are cool cars too, not just ultra-budget options:
If you want to know what the post-gas future looks like, the Chinese car market is as close as you can get. Whatever kind of EV you might want, chances are you can find it. There are sleek minivan-like crossovers; premium, high-status vehicles that we don’t really have a category for here in America; and ones like the Xpeng X9 and Zeeker 009, which look like spaceships for the ultra-wealthy villains in a sci-fi movie. There are electric supercars, hardcore off-road vehicles, delivery vehicles, luxury sedans, family cars.
The Chinese EV market is so big that it has room for something sorely lacking in the American EV market: fun. And I don’t just mean “fast,” as fun gets so often reduced to here; I mean actual fun. EVs are bringing more tech into cars than ever before, but the features in Chinese EVs seem downright futuristic. You can find cars with augmented-reality dashboards, massaging seats, in-car projector screens, refrigerators, and customizable emoji headlights.
One Chinese car, the Ora Punk Cat, is indeed a bit punk in the sense that it looks like a retro-futuristic take on an old Volkswagen Beetle, with a 1970s design and big LCD screens. (As if the Punk Cat wasn’t weird enough, the model has a sibling—the Ballet Cat—that is specifically targeted toward women.)
I would love to buy one of these fun little cars. An EV that could go 50 miles would easily cover 90% of my driving, and if it could go 100 miles, it would be 99%. It's insane to spend $50,000 on a car.
The profit margins probably aren't high enough to justify shipping these super-cheap EVs to the U.S., and even if they were, it'd be next to impossible to find a shop that could repair them. But I can dream.
