Visit any European city and you'll find tiny city cars zipping 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.
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.
View Price on AmazonAll 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. Chip Motors has 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.
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. I drive it everywhere. I just charge it in a normal outlet in the garage. It's easy,'" Detweiler recalls.
The Chip starts at $15,000 for a four-seat model with a soft-top roof, which is in line with what you’d pay for a nice street-legal golf cart. That’s before options like different types of doors, paint colors, a rack for a surf board, and other accessories. It uses in-wheel motors and a roughly 15-kilowatt-hour battery to deliver a range of around 100 miles, Detweiler says. That's pretty amazing efficiency, but remember that this thing has a top speed of 25 mph.
It’s a bit larger than a golf cart and includes a front trunk for some enclosed storage. A six-seater version will cost $18,000. Deliveries of the U.S.-assembled vehicle are scheduled to start in 2027 in Florida, before expanding from there.
Source: insideevs.com
