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Collaborative post
Back in August, Seat UK kindly sent me their all electric Mii model to test out. I was lucky enough to drive around this great little car for a week. First things first: I’m not a confident driver. The smaller the car, the better. I’m from mainland Europe and I find the London parking system a bit too much, often narrowing roads in the suburbs where we live to one single middle lane. So, smaller cars are better.
The Seat Mii electric is small enough – a really good city car as you’d imagine, looking at the photos. However, it’s also has Isofix build in, so it would take two car seats for the children. (We didn’t try this.) The other thing is what makes it more than just a city car: the range it can drive without charging. But let’s start with the specifics in this review of the Electric Seat Mii.
Seat Mii Electric details
- Performance: 160 mile range (based on combined city & motorway driving but increasing to 222 miles with 100% city driving).
- 100% electric motor
- Fast charging option (CCS (Combined Charging System) charging socket)
- Can be charged in around four hours to 80% capacity from a 7.2kW home wallbox or one hour from a 40kW public fast charger.
- Rear parking sensors
- Lane assist and traffic sign recognition
- Rain sensor
- Heated front seats, aircon, DriveMii app (this app connects and displays your maps and streaming services from your phone to your car)
- Awarded as Car of the Year by What Car? in the small electric car category under £25.000
What I thought about it:
To drive this little car was a delight. It’s a breeze: quiet, small, easy to drive automatic with sensors for parking dummies like me. It has the smoothest and fastest acceleration I ever experienced. It literally just goes and gets to driving speed in no time. The steering is so light and effortless.
The interior is a bit plasticky and plain but looking inside it has lot more space to offer than you’d think just looking at it. I took a little video, have a look. It’s very comfortable, the seats are ergonomic and the booth holds quite a lot too.
As we had the chance to test it for a week, I can confirm that the 160 mile range is perfectly achievable. Charging-wise as we don’t have a garage – we took it to charge at various public charging points near us, we didn’t find this any problem at all. From Waitrose to free (albeit slow) street charging stations we didn’t find it to be a problem. Since we were thinking about buying an electric car when we move house – this might just happen before as we now know that even without having access to our own charging station it’s perfectly manageable to drive an electric car. Charging it for about an hour with the fast charger gave us 80% just as it says in the description.
The price compared to a same size, new, petrol car is not compatible in my view, because in the end the. transition has to and will happen, especially, that the UK government currently offers a grant of £3500 when buying electric cars for personal use. Compared to other electric cars available, the Mii is cheaper.
Switching to electric car
A poll of 17,628 drivers finds 47% want to make the switch to electric driving. This number is of course bigger in the younger age groups. and city dwellers. With increasingly stringent emissions regulations and profit pressures, there’s little life left in city cars unless they’re electric. There’s a certain anxiety around the switch naturally, but it’s never been easier. Read one of my posts about this here: 5 Reasons Why It’s Never Been Easier To Make The Switch To Electric Cars
New charging stations
Seat is actually just in the process of planting you charging stations UK wide and we helped to design the wrapping for the charging stations! There was a competition in August for children to enter and to draw a picture about how they imagined the car of the future. And Bobcat’s little flying car made it to the final design! How cool is that? Can you spot it on the final design?
Review Electric Seat Mii