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The Hyundai E3W is the wildest electric vehicle you’ll never be able to buy in America — a height-adjustable, modular three-wheeler that can disguise itself as a police van and wade through flooded streets.
Hyundai built this thing with a motorcycle company for Asia and Africa, and somehow it still has a built-in phone holder and a version with a wing.
If you’re shopping for the smallest new car you can actually buy in the U.S. right now, the answer is a 143-inch Italian electric hatchback — and what it reveals about American roads and American tastes is worth your full attention.
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I’m in love with another strange car. And, of course, it’s not coming to the United States.
I have a thing for weird, little cars. There’s something exciting about pulling up to a car meet in the Mazda Autozam AZ-1 and having everyone immediately surround you, asking WTF that thing even is. I didn’t think it would get much stranger and smaller than that, but Hyundai has revealed something I need.
But will probably never have.
The E3W revealed (again)
Hyundai held an Investor Day in South Korea this week. This included the reveal of the E3W, which is an electric three-wheeled motorcycle with a silly, geometric body that can be customized to look like everything from a police vehicle to a package delivery vehicle.
Can you imagine getting pulled over by this thing?
The E3W has been designed in collaboration with TVS Motor Company, which usually makes motorcycles in India. It’s being developed for Asia and Africa, where couriers often drive small vehicles like the E3W. To be fair, it would probably get run over in the U.S., where SUVs have like six rows of seating, and people are lifting their trucks. Even in a Miata, you won’t be able to see into most vehicles’ windows while waiting at a stoplight.
So, here’s to another cool electric vehicle thingy we won’t be seeing. America’s battle against cheap Chinese EVs is most definitely part of it. But we’re missing out on many other vehicle types as well. Guess they want us to be trapped with Ford’s new electric pickup, although I got plenty of emails telling me they’d rather buy the Slate.
We don’t know much about the E3W
So, what do we know about the E3W? It’s small, but comfortable inside, according to Hyundai. There’s even a built-in phone holder. There’s also some storage in there.
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Its body is height-adjustable, which will help traverse tougher streets and even flooded roads. The designs are modular, allowing them to take a bunch of different forms. There’s even one with a wing, although I don’t know how fast or aerodynamic (or safe) this thing truly is outside of city navigation.
What small car do we have in the United States?
Depending on who you ask, “small car” in the U.S. usually means something you could still comfortably parallel park a golden retriever in. But there is one model that genuinely earns the title of smallest new car sold in America: the Fiat 500e. It’s the tiniest thing on a new-car lot in the country, electric or otherwise, and it wears that distinction with a kind of unbothered Italian charm rather than apology.
To put its size in perspective, the 500e is still noticeably larger than the original Cinquecento from 1957, which measured a genuinely absurd 116 inches long. Fiat’s modern electric version has grown up a bit since then, but it’s still small enough that American roads, built for trucks the size of small apartments, make it look almost like a toy. That’s part of the appeal. It’s an easy car to thread through city traffic, and parking becomes less of a chess match and more of an afterthought.
What’s charming about the 500e is that Fiat didn’t treat “small” as a synonym for “cheap-feeling.” Reviewers have noted the cabin, especially in the nicer trims, feels more upscale than you’d expect from a hatchback this size. It’s not built for road trips or hauling much of anything, and the back seat is best reserved for people who don’t mind being cozy.
But for city dwellers who want an EV that doesn’t require a driveway the size of a football field, it’s proof that small cars still have a place in America, even if that place keeps shrinking.
What about the Topolino?
The Topolino is smaller — significantly so. The modern Fiat Topolino (the current micro-EV, not the vintage 1930s namesake) measures roughly 8 feet 3 inches long, compared to the 500e’s about 143 inches (nearly 12 feet). So the Topolino is close to half the length of the 500e.
However, the Topolino isn’t really in the same category. It’s a low-speed quadricycle capped around 28 mph, not street-legal for U.S. roads in most places, and recently arrived stateside more as a novelty/golf-cart alternative than a true car.
It will become legal later on, and maybe I’ll be tempted to get one.