Chinese low-speed electric vehicles

They grew in the 1990s out of converted tricycles and tiny utility vehicles, and they were built for the small towns and the countryside, where a few thousand yuan bought a car with up to five seats and a top speed of up to about 70 km/h (43 mph).source 1 Most ran on lead-acid batteries.source 2 Their buyers were mostly older and poorer drivers, many without a driving licence, and the Chinese name that stuck, 老头乐, means “old folks’ joy”; another, 老年代步车, means a mobility car for the elderly.source 3source 2source 1 They are China’s grey-market branch of the electric microcar.

By 2016, by Bloomberg’s count, there were more than 100 makerssource 2, and Shandong was the heartland. Green Car Reports, drawing on Bloomberg, counted 330,000 sold there in the first eight months of 2016, against 245,000 official new-energy vehicles sold in the whole of China, and found that one battery maker, Tianneng Power, supplied about 55 per cent of their batteries.source 2 Vehicles with a top speed under 100 km/h were then outside national regulation, and rules for them were promised.source 2

The notice of 2018

On 2 November 2018 six ministries, led by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, issued a joint notice. It described the low-speed electric vehicle as a three- or four-wheeled electric vehicle, for passengers or goods, with a low speed, a short range and basic batteries and motors, and said that most were in substance motor vehicles, built and driven outside the approval system, with braking, steering and crash performance below the standards for motor vehicles. It blamed them for worse congestion and a fast rise in road accidents.source 3

升级一批、规范一批、淘汰一批

The notice set out three stages: a census of the makers in November 2018, rectification in December and January, and then cuts in capacity. No new plants, capacity or models were to be allowed, local subsidies were to stop, and the cars already on the road were to be phased out by trade-in, buy-back or scrappage, while a national standard for four-wheeled low-speed vehicles was prepared.source 3 Whether the standard was ever published has not been found.

The cars did not go away. An Italian report of January 2026, drawing on Sixth Tone and China Daily, says that their sales more than doubled in recent years, that hundreds of deaths were reported in accidents in 2022–⁠23, and that Beijing has banned them and considered classing them as motor vehicles. They still have no airbags and weak frames, many are not registered, and some copy the looks of a Porsche, a Maserati or a Mini.source 1 Two makers, Kandi and Levdeo, grew into regular carmakers; they and Rayttle are described below.source 4source 5source 6

Hu Xiaoming founded Kandi Technologies in 2002 at Jinhua, in Zhejiang, and it is listed on NASDAQ.source 4 In July 2012 it agreed to supply 20,000 electric vehicles for a pilot leasing scheme in Hangzhou, and in 2013 it opened Kandi EV Car Share, whose cars were kept in automated multi-storey garages, “car vending machines”.source 4 It built 5,329 electric vehicles in the first half of 2014 and 16,376 in 2015, the second by the figures of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.source 4 Its models include the Kandi K12, K17, K23, K27 and K32. From July 2020 it sold the K27 and K23 in the Dallas–Fort Worth area of Texas, possibly for under US$10,000 after incentives.source 4 In November 2020 Hindenburg Research accused Kandi of faking at least 55 per cent of its sales, which Kandi denied.source 4

Li Guoxin began with an electric-bicycle business in 2002 and founded Levdeo in Shandong in 2008, building neighbourhood electric vehicles first.source 5 From 2019 it sold cars under the brand Letin, among them the Mengo city car of 2020–⁠23, and a Letin i3 city car from ¥62,800. It sold 6,878 cars from January to October 2022, raised 3.2 billion yuan that November, applied for bankruptcy in May 2023 and completed a reorganisation in April 2024.source 5

Rayttle was founded in Hangzhou in September 2014 to build low-speed and neighbourhood electric vehicles, and it is now listed as a former maker. Its E28, also called the E18, appeared in 2016: a two-door two-seater 2,650 mm (104 in) long and weighing 600 kg (1,323 lb), with a 9.9 kWh battery and a motor of 3.5 or 4 kW, for ¥36,000. It is described as an unlicensed copy of the Renault Twizy.source 6

These are working cars, still built and still sold, and no collecting market or museum interest has been found. Among the photographs here are Levdeo, Kandi and Yika cars parked in Luoyang, Henan, in 2018 and 2023, and Kandis sold in the United States.