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Comment by reaperman | Hacker News Reader

Will either be available for sale in USA?

> The vehicle—priced at 1.68 million yuan ($233,450)—can reach 100 km/h (62 mph) in 2.36 seconds and reach a top speed of 309.19 km/h, the company said. It can also spin in place and enter dance mode, as videos posted on social media showed.

> The car will be available only in China for now, though traders taking advantage of a loophole have been selling luxury Chinese EVs to overseas customers who view them as status symbols—even in markets where they’re not yet officially available.

The luxury one is only officially available in China. The cheaper one ‘s paragraph made no mention of where it would be on sale.

A small EV, even capped at 25MPH to reach regulatory threshold of not being a car, with a range of <100km, with four seats (and optionally, no trunk, or a front trunk so you don't need all the mechanicals) would sell like hotcakes in some cities. Requirements:

- Easy to park

- Goes far enough to get kids to school and back

- Adequate for occasional trip for groceries

Exactly. I've come to the belief that we need to attack the regulatory environment to allow this to happen. Those oldsters driving golf karts all over the Florida retirement communities have it right! But it is basically illegal everywhere without dedicated lanes and regulatory permission.

That’s because it’s dangerous to mix those types of vehicles with full size cars and trucks on the same street. Think about how much drivers hate bikes, and they take up almost no space at all.

Important caveat: It's not dangerous at all if streets are designed for it.

My city's roads are a dumpster fire due to one-wheel idiot-devices, electric scooters, and other micromobility.

With the exception of one-wheel idiot-devices, I've seen all the same stuff work in other cities beautifully, which had adapted infrastructure to them. I love micromobility done right, and I hate it done locally.

Excellent point! I’m not against non-car transportation at all, and generally am of the belief that if a policy decision is bad for cars it’s probably good for everyone. But in my city, at least, the other pieces of transportation are an afterthought and it can be really dangerous.

You're describing Citroen Ami.

Only two seats though?

Edit: Not that I think that this is a big problem.

There are quite a few of these in Amsterdam and other Dutch cities. I don't know if I've ever seen one with more than 2 seats however (but they probably exist). Limited to 45kmph and enough trunk space for some groceries. Keeps the rain off you and they are easy to maneuver in the tight canal lined city streets.

They are planning to build factories in Mexico from what I have read so once those factories are up and running. I expect not before that as direct chinese imports have many tariffs. With the noise starting to come out of US politicians about chinese spying using its electric cars it looks like US car makers and politicians are slowly waking up to the fact that by trying to follow and copy tesla they have been blindsided by cheap chinese ev car manufacturers

They'd have to do a lot more than assembly in Mexico to get around tariffs...

Newer rules require vehicles to have a certain amount of content from US/CA/MX to get around the tariffs. That's a big part of why a bunch of smaller vehicles (e.x. Honda Fit, Mazda 2) left the US market, they were assembled in Mexico but did not have enough local content to keep avoiding duties.

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