The JMEV Elight joins the exceedingly long list of Cat A EVs in a now-overcrowded market, but it does have its strengths as a value-driven electric sedan.
When I first saw the JMEV Elight at The Car Expo earlier this year, I have to admit, I had my doubts.
“Another new Chinese brand?” I thought to myself. It didn’t help that JMEV didn’t exactly have the same sort of brand recognition as some of the more well-known Chinese names that have landed on our shores in recent times. Could they be another flash in the pan like Neta?
After test driving their first model, the Elight, I think JMEV might be able to make a few people change their minds.
Contemporary Simplicity
At first glance from afar, the Elight looks rather nondescript. Its blobby shape is fairly ordinary, and it feels like a car that might get lost in the sea of sedans that populate our roads.
But look closer and you’ll see some details that stand out. The sharp-nosed front end looks faintly Continental in nature, which is not surprising given that this car was originally conceived as a joint-venture project with Renault back in 2022.
At the back, the T-shaped taillights look distinctive, while the swoopy fastback shape, with a slight hint of a rear spoiler, does give off a slightly Tesla Model 3 vibe. As a whole, the Elight’s styling can be described as contemporary and modern, but it doesn’t quite break new ground in design.
Old School Modernity
Step inside the Elight and you get a strange sense of both familiarity and modernity. There is the usual large touchscreen, which over here is a 14.6-inch item. But there are also lots of physical buttons down on the centre console, mainly for the climate control system, which gives the interior a rather old-school feel.
The touchscreen itself is fairly simple to operate, certainly a lot less complicated than many other EVs out there. Part of it, though, could probably be just down to the fact that there aren’t that many functions on the Elight to control anyway, so you don’t have to deal with the headache of going into menu after menu just to find something.
One particular sticking point though is the gear selector lever, which oddly requires quite a bit of effort to shift correctly. It can get mildly frustrating if you’re doing multi-point turns and find yourself in neutral instead of being in gear, but you do get used to it after a while.
The interior’s fit and finish and overall build quality are not the best either. The cabin materials feel very plasticky, and betrays the car’s budget nature. It’s fine if this was say, a decade ago, but these days, similarly-priced cars like the Dongfeng Box have shown us that low price does not have to mean low rent.
Despite that though, the Elight does have a few nice features. The 360-degree camera is especially handy for parking, while the centre storage compartment has a chiller function that can keep your drinks cool, although it is not a full-fledged refrigerator.
The double glass moonroof though, which comes without sunshades, is an odd choice. You can’t open them, unlike a sunroof, and while the glass does give the cabin an airy feel, it also tends to heat up the interior on particularly hot days.
Surprisingly Spacious
It doesn’t quite look like it, but the Elight is actually longer than a Toyota Corolla Altis. That means a sizeable wheelbase of 2,750mm, which translates into extremely generous legroom for rear passengers.
The 410-litre boot is also fairly decent, and is more than enough to accommodate the average family’s weekly grocery shopping.
Smooth Ride, Ordinary Drive
One of the more surprising things about the Elight is its ride quality, which is impressively good for what is otherwise a budget sedan.
The suspension has great pliancy, and copes well with our construction-riddled roads, smoothing out bumps capably and with great ease.
The rest of the driving experience feels fairly ordinary in contrast. It is fairly manoeuvrable, like most sedans of its size, but the steering feels dead and lifeless, and the Elight is definitely not the last word in excitement.
It’s not fast either, despite its claimed 0-100km/h sprint time of 8.9 seconds. The problem is that the accelerator feels rather dead in its first third of its application, and you need to put your foot down quite hard before it makes any meaningful progress.
Perhaps that could account for the rather disappointing efficiency figure of 5km/kWh over the course of my test drive, which is quite a fair bit away from its official claimed figure of 6.2km/kWh.
JMEV says that the Elight has a range of up to 460km on a full charge, but in the real world, you’ll probably be able to get somewhere in the low 400s.
The Budget Sedan for the EV Era
After test driving the Elight, I started to realise its place in the automotive ecosystem in Singapore.
It feels like the JMEV Elight is the Toyota Vios of the EV era, in the sense that they are affordable entry-level sedans for folks who want something that’s easy to drive and offers minimal fuss and frills.
Of course, at today’s COE prices, the Elight’s price tag of $182,888 with COE is not exactly what you’ll call cheap in the objective sense. But put into context, the Elight remains one of the more affordable ways you can get a brand new electric sedan on the roads right now.
It does have to contend with a whole host of others though, like the Aion ES, Citroen e-C4X and the BYD Seal 6, but the JMEV Elight has more than enough to hold its own to hopefully stick around for a while yet.
Technical Specifications
JMEV Elight
Engine: Single Electric Motor
Powertrain: Front Wheel Drive
Power: 108 kW (145 bhp)
Torque: 225 Nm
Gearbox: Single-Speed (A)
0100km/h: 8.9 Seconds
Top Speed: 150 km/h
Battery Capacity: 63 kWh
Drive Range: 460 km (claimed)
Energy Consumption: 6.2km/kWh (claimed)
Price: S$182,888 with COE (accurate at the time of this article)
Photo Credits: Ben Chia (@benchiacars)
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