Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs) have been touted as a low-cost way to quickly electrify much of the daily driving that people do. They typically don’t go faster than 35 mph and are increasingly showing up in cities as a way to make short commutes and run errands in a fuel-less and environmentally beneficial way.
But after a series of crash tests that the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) conducted on a few popular models of them, including Chrysler’s GEM brand, the consumer watchdog group is making stern warnings that NEVs have very few safety features and could easily lead to fatalities in even moderate accidents at medium speeds.