Electra Meccania Solo is only half of a car, but it's all electric
Cars
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Today, I'm at Mazda Raceway [UNKNOWN]
In the parking lot in half of a car.
That's because today I'm behind the wheel of the Electra Meccanica Solo.
It's a compact electric commuter vehicle.
And it's called the Solo because, well, there's only one seat in it, it's a solo seater.
It's also inverted tripe, which means it's got two wheels up front that handle steering and a lot of the breaking and one wheel out back that handles motivation.
[INAUDIBLE] Propulsion.
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That rear wheel is powered by an electric motor that puts out about 82 horsepower and around 94 pound-feet of torque.
And Electra Meccanica says the SOLO will have a top Speed of around a 137 miles per hour, though in production it will limit that to around 82 miles per hour.
Probably for two reasons, first, EVs just don't do that great at really high speed, their range drops dramatically above around 50 miles per hour.
It's a very narrow, slick car, but hey, anything you can do to improve range is good when you're dealing with
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Now despite being half has narrow as your average car, it does feel pretty planted around this parking lot at around 15 or 30 miles an hour.
And that's because a lot of its 1380 pounds lives underneath the floor, way down low.
That's where you'll find the lithium ion batty pack.
It's a 16.1 kilowatt hour unit that gives this EV about a hundred miles range.
Charging it takes around three hours with a level two charger.
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Now a lot of what this vehicle is even for is given away in its specs.
And that with 100 miles range, one person can easily get to and from work without having to charge this thing.
And there's space up front and up back, around 10 cubic feet total for your groceries or suitcase or anything you might.
Each spring.
Now the Solo is a very spartan vehicle, but it's not as spartan as you might think.
It's got a couple of creature comforts, for example this very preproduction vehicle has heated seats.
I've also got a Kenwood stereo here that gives me something to listen to while I drive.
And there's a backup camera which improves safety in parking lots and things like that.
It's kinda cool!
There's no power steering, so it's very direct and there's not a lot of vehicle to chuck around.
So it does feel like there's a good connection to the road, although, when you're backing up or parking the lack of power steering can really be felt.
You gotta put some muscle into turning this wheel when the vehicle stops.
I also like the very direct electric torque.
There's a very good connection between what your foot's doing and the motivation from the rear wheel.
That's typical of electric vehicles, but when we're dealing with a vehicle that's this lightweight, you can sorta feel it even more.
Now in the con category, I will say that this is a much.
Louder electric vehicle than I've ever tested before.
And that's partially because there's not a whole lot to it.
So you get a lot of road noise coming up from below.
But there's also a lot of mechanical noise from just over my shoulder from the electric motor, not so much that it's a deal breaker.
But is something that you'll want to note if you're used to whisper quiet electric cars.
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I joke that this is half of a car but one of the benefits of the Solo is that it costs about half as much as the least expensive electric cars on the road today.
For example a Hyundai Ionic seats five, does 120 some odd miles of rain.
The 18.
I'm not 100% sure how many of these they expect to sell.
This is a very niche, very small vehicle that's gonna have to live on the road with large SUVs, so there's gonna be a little bit of a perception of safety, I think, from American drivers.
But personally, I think it's worth keeping an eye on because The packaging is interesting, and I'm sort of a fan of quirky little cars like this.
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