Toronto, Ontario – Electric Mobility Canada, a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of readily-available electric mobility, said it is responding to a number of recent news stories concerning the viability of low-speed electric vehicles in mixed-use environments.

Low-speed electric vehicles are a separate vehicle class from regular passenger cars, as defined by Transport Canada, and are designed for use in low-speed urban areas. They have a regulated top speed of 40 km/h and are able to legally operate on roads with posted speed limits of up to 50 km/h.

Electric Mobility said that these vehicles are statistically among the safest classes of vehicles in the world. Reva, which sells low-speed electric vehicles throughout Asia and Europe and have amassed over 50 million kilometres in mixed-use environments, report no associated fatalities with this particular vehicle. Similarly, 10 years of statistical data available from the U.S., where there is a fleet of over 45,000 low-speed electric vehicles in operation on public roads, shows no associated fatalities with the vehicle class.

The association said that the vehicles’ lightweight construction “ensures the protection of other lightweight vehicles and pedestrians in the event of a collision”, and on an annual basis in Toronto, 50 per cent of urban traffic-related fatalities were pedestrians or cyclists who were struck by heavy, faster-moving passenger vehicles.