This $8,930 single-seat electric car is a big hit in Japan

In the rural suburbs of Hiroshima, a Japanese start-up is trying to kick-start the nation's electric vehicle (EV) market with the smallest, cheapest car it can possibly make.

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HIROSHIMA - In the rural suburbs of Hiroshima, a Japanese start-up is trying to kick-start the nation's electric vehicle (EV) market with the smallest, cheapest car it can possibly make.

KG Motors has developed a battery-powered one-seater that resembles a futuristic golf cart more than a modern EV, much less a traditional car. And yet well over half of the 3,300 units it plans to deliver by March 2027 have been sold to customers.

That puts it on track to sell more EVs in Japan than the world's biggest automaker, Toyota Motor, which shifted around 2,000 such vehicles in all of 2024. In a country where EVs are still a rare sight, KG Motors is trying to bust a burgeoning myth: that bigger is better.

"Cars are simply too big," founder and chief executive officer Kazunari Kusunoki, 43, said. "Seeing so many big cars traveling Japan's narrow streets — that's where this all began for me."

At under 1.5m in height, KG Motors' mibot has a range of 100km, a charging time of five hours and a top speed of 60kmh. It will cost one million yen (S$8,930) before tax when production starts in October at KG Motors' new factory east of the city. That is about half the price of Japan's most popular EV, Nissan Motor's Sakura.