Seat electric city car prototype debuts in Barcelona

7 years, 7 months ago - 5 March 2017, motor1

SEAT’s smallest offering, the Mii city car, just received a much-needed makeover and an all-new powertrain. In place of the standard 1.0-liter 59-horsepower (43-kilowatt) engine is a new electric powertrain with a range of 100 miles (160 kilometers).

The e-Mii made its debut at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017 in Barcelona, Spain this past weekend.

Essentially a rebadged version of the VW e-Up!, the e-Mii uses a more powerful 81-horsepower (60-kilowatt) electric motor with 154 pound-feet (210 Newton-meters) of torque and an 18.7 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery. The car has an estimated range of around 100 miles (160 km), and is able to hit 62 miles per hour (100 kilometers per hour) in 11.3 seconds.

The e-Mii can be charged in nine hours using a standard household socket. Equipped with a more powerful CCS 40-kW system, the battery can go from dead to 80 percent capacity in just 30 minutes. Unfortunately, SEAT says it has no plans to bring the e-Mii to production anytime soon. Instead, the company will focus on mobility as a whole. CEO Luca De Meo made those plans perfectly clear at the MWC.

"SEAT’s goal is to make progress and become a leader in technologies which enable us to offer an experience that is easy, connected and customized," he said. "Technologies such as the ones we are presenting today and expect to include in our models beginning in 2018-2019."

But the electric e-Mii won’t be the only electric car in the SEAT lineup. The company reportedly has plans to introduce more electric cars in the future built on the new VW Group MEB platform, which will be used extensively in development of electric cars and SUVs in the future.