Yeow, the price of those went up.

Small e-vehicles need mass marketing to bring prices down. Which means they need purpose built front ends and gearing and such. But without that customer base, companies like Shimano don't have much motivation to scale down the running gear of a FWD car to suit a small e-vehicle.

There is a lot of potential there for these to be cheap year round commuters. But it looks like it will need government support to get things going.