Electric Hearses In Asia Sure Are Different

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Call it a cultural thing, because it is, but when we think of an electric hearse what immediately comes to mind is a Tesla or maybe a Ford Mach-E converted so it can carry a casket. But in Asia there’s a robust market electric hearses that are truly horseless carriages, not modern cars, able to carry the dead through the streets in a more intimate way.

Someone turned a C3 Corvette into a Dodge Viper, sort of.

If you know anything about the culture in much of Asia, you’ll understand why these are favored more over a modern car. Perhaps that’s why Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has so many of these horseless carriages that run on batteries available to purchase.

Interestingly, we checked Temu and it doesn’t have electric hearses. We can only imagine their quality if it did.

Some of the electric horseless carriages are rather ornate with plenty of filigree, mock gilding, expansive glass windows, and other formal details. While there are models rolling on what looks like wagon wheels, it’s funny to see those which are using modern car wheels with aggressive designs. It’s a reminder these throwback designs still live in this century.

Also available on Alibaba are electric hearses styled after pre-war cars. Some are more like impressionists’ paintings of the classics, while others you have to do a double take to make sure you’re not looking at an old Rolls-Royce or Mercedes.

While a few of these car-like electric hearses have normal windows, most at least have one expansive pane of glass on each side in the rear. There are those with huge hinged clamshell sides, allowing operators to open up the cargo area for all to clearly see inside without glass or anything else in the way.

To us Americans, this all seems so very odd. After all, we drive on public roads at normal speeds when going from one location to another during our funerals. But in Asia, the procession is slower and old traditions hold tight, making the electric hearses a blast from the past.

Image via newmanshua/Reddit, Alibaba