Motorists in the UK could be one of the first in the world to try a newly-designed electric car which, we kid you not, comes in flat-pack form.
So that’s a fully-fledged car to add to the list of items you can buy as a flat-pack… coffee table, bed frame, bookcase, car.
While it was Swedish brand IKEA that originally gave the world flat-pack furniture, technology firm Luvly – also based in Sweden – has just produced the Luvly O, a brand new (dare we say ‘box fresh’?) electric car for the city.
And it could be spotted on a road near you by the end of this year.
Much like the furniture that can be bought in flat-pack form, the Luvly O manages to keep costs down and has a smaller carbon footprint – mostly because 20 Luvly cars can be squeezed into a standard shipping container, whereas only four fully-assembled cars would take up the same space.
This nimble little two-seater measures nine feet in length, five feet in width and just under five feet in height. It retails at €10,000 (around £8,000) and let’s face it, that price tag IS Luvly.
The futuristic and fun-looking dinky car can reach a top speed of around 55mph, which is not only impressive for a vehicle that comes in a box, it’s more than enough for inner-city use.
A range of around 62 miles per full charge is also pretty impressive.
The Luvly O weighs just a fifth of the weight of most EVs and its battery has been designed to be portable, so you can take into the office to charge from your desk. Clever!
If you’re worrying about the Luvly O falling apart while you’re driving it – because let’s face it, we’ve all had something flat-pack fail on us before, right? – you won’t need to assemble the car yourself. Put the allen keys down!
Luvly will be setting up regional mini-factories that will put your car together for you.
Håkan Lutz, chief executive and founder of Luvly, explained: “If it were legally and technologically possible to assemble in your house, we would think that would be a good thing, but sadly on both of those counts, it is not.
“The production is optimised for micro factories, so we can produce these vehicles not in a mega factory somewhere, but near to where they are going to be used.”
If the teasers are anything to go by, the super-compact Luvly O is set to be followed by other models including a three-wheeled sports car and small van.
While the first Luvly O models could be on British roads by the second half of 2023, a mass roll-out of these cars will be a few years off yet.
Will you be scrambling to get your hands on the first flat-pack car of the future?
