Pakistan's mini EV moment: big promise, bigger problems

There is a particular kind of hope that blooms on the roads of Pakistan. It is the hope of the first-time car buyer, someone who has spent years on the back of a motorcycle, squinting against diesel fumes in Lahore traffic, dreaming of four walls, a roof, and an air conditioner. For three decades, the Suzuki Mehran was that hope made metal. 

It was obsolete the day it launched, carbureted long past shame, and stripped of every safety feature known to modern engineering. And yet, it sold. Half a million of them, right up until Pak Suzuki finally pulled the plug in March 2019. Now, another generation of vehicles is making the same pitch. They are smaller, stranger-looking, run on electricity, and arrive bearing names like Nora, Alektra, and GuGo Gigi. But can they make the same impact?

The vehicles

The most affordable of this new cohort is the Alektra Metro, a two- or four-door quadricycle that arrived in Pakistani showrooms in late 2025 with a starting price of Rs 10.45 lakhs,  making it, for a brief moment, the cheapest four-wheeled enclosed vehicle in the country's history. Technically, it is an L7e-class quadricycle, a regulatory classification that places it somewhere between a heavy electric moped and a microcar. It is smaller than a Suzuki Alto. It has four seats, air conditioning, a Bluetooth multimedia system, and a claimed range of 80 to 180 km depending on the battery variant chosen.