The folks at Moke America were very nervous to let me drive their car.
More nervous than the fellas who lent me their $3 million Bugatti Chiron or a priceless Mercedes C111s (one of only 10 in existence). “It doesn’t drive like any car you’ve ever driven,” promised founder Todd Rome. He initially said I could drive it, then said I couldn’t, then said he preferred to drive it “away from the highway” before I got behind the wheel. (We were in the middle of Manhattan.) After that, he kept telling me to slow down—even though top speed on this sucker is 25 mph.
Hey, I get it. This was the only example of its new electric baby that Moke had in the states at the time. (They’re on sale now in the U.S. in NYC at Manhattan Motors and in Southampton at Aventura Motors, or online, with 500 total expected for production this year and 1,000 next year.) And the street outside the Bowery Hotel can feel busy to those who don’t live in the neighborhood.
But the $16,000 electric four-seater—called the eMoke—performed fine. It uses front-wheel-drive and runs on a 12kwh lithium battery that gets the car to 60 mph in … well, like I said, never. But if it could, it might take 20 seconds or so. It gets to 25 mph in, say, 12 seconds? It takes eight hours to get a full charge on a 110-volt outlet, and it can go 40 miles on each charge.
Rome, the company founder, was right—it doesn’t drive like any car I’ve ever driven. It drives like a golf cart. And that’s OK.