Meet the ‘Volpe’ - the world’s smallest electric car. The car is being made by Italian automotive design house Zagato and it’s set to go on sale in 2013 with a price of €6,900 ($9,000). Apart from being small, it's also not bad to look at and, despite its size, it can seat two people with the passenger sitting behind the driver, pretty much like on a motorbike.
From a design standpoint - the first standpoint you need to consider when looking at a funky Italian-designed car - it looks great, especially from the side, where you don’t notice its slightly awkward narrow profile. However, with its and streamlined shape, this two-seater city car is quite unique, especially in a class of cars where they are all boxy and made of cheap ugly plastic.
The Volpe is extremely small at just 2.2m (7ft. 2in,) long and 1m (3ft. 3in) wide. Other touches which serve both a functional purpose and an aesthetic one at the same time are the scissor doors which, apart from looking cool, also enable you to get out of the car in a tight parking spot.
For power, the car will get two different versions - one solely electric which is boosted by solar cells on the roof and one which will feature a gasoline or natural gas engine to recharge the batteries, but not drive the wheels directly. The latter version also has a top speed of 50 mph (80 km/h) and a range of 236 miles (377km), with the EV version being limited to 30 mph.
We have also linked an excerpt video from an Italian news program for you to see the car in motion and get a better idea about its proportions and size relative to normal cars.
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