by ecib

In Beijing’s southwestern outskirts, past a four-lane overpass with sidewalks as wide as the streets themselves, is Zhengyang Road. It has the usual banks, small convenience stores, and noodle houses of many areas in the capital, but it is set apart by a row of about a dozen shops all selling the same thing — tiny electric cars. The cars look, variously, like small Range Rovers, golf carts, trolley cars, or rickshaws with sheet-iron sides, and they are slow. Their fundamental attraction is their price — between $600 and $2,500 — and that drivers can charge them the same way they would a cell phone. They also come with the perks of being loosely regulated. These low-speed electric cars, nicknamed “elderly transport vehicles,” have an enormous market, made up mostly of people who earn very little. And in China, there are a lot of them — more than 40% of the population, or some 600 million people, make around $150 per month.