The Electric Microcar Built By A Scooter Company

[Music] ciao welcome to Turin and welcome to the perfect car for Turin or any City for that matter this is the microlino and it's the creation of a brilliant slightly eccentric man and his firm belief that modern cars have become too big too wasteful and too boring sort of like a Swiss Robert Llewellyn this is his answer to that problem it's small it's Frugal and it is impossible to drive without a big idiotic grin on your face it is without question one of my new favorite electric cars in the entire world and in this video I'm going to show you why this is Turin this is the microlino and this is the fully charged show [Music] foreign [Music] now before showing you around this remarkable vehicle I'd like to preemptively just quickly answer a couple of questions that may be on your mind number one that logo looks a bit familiar where do I know that from your childhood if you're my age because Vim altober founder of microlino is also the inventor of the metal Kick Scooter the micro scooter in the early 2000s they were selling 80 000 of those things a day I still have the scars on my ankles from mine question two is the one we always get asked when we show cool new products from cool new brands is this real is it ever going to happen when is production starting well it already has this is microlino's Turin Factory where they have already built 50 customer cars production is starting slow but it's ramping up quickly it's here it's real and it's fabulous the microlino is um we always say it's not a car because it's kind of like a mix between let's say a motorbike and a car in terms of the category really in terms of Mobility we need to start rethinking of how we are moving if you think about the cars how big they got and how heavy they got this is absolutely the wrong direction we're going at because yeah we need to be absolutely more sustainable cars need to become smaller so the microlino what is it well it's a micro car designed to zip around city streets comfortably carrying and this is a quote from the website two adults and three crates of beer it is the most adorable thing on four wheels a car so adorable it makes a Honda really look a bit mean and tough we'll get into the nitty-gritty of what's underneath in a second but I think we need to begin with a design walkaround because would you have a look at this design clearly drawing inspiration from the bubble cars of the late 20th century the BMW i seta being the most famous among them this delightful Blobby snail-like shape where you are right at the front the door is of course the front of the car that's not just a gimmick the idea here is that you can park nose into a parking space pop that door open jump straight out onto the pavement safety and incidentally if you do Park this nose in you could get about three of them into a normal car sized parking space lovely light bar across the front these are absolutely delightful aren't they they're actually multi-purpose at the front we've got the headlights at the back we've got the wing mirrors and they're cute normally protruding bits like that are a bad idea on an electric vehicle a because you'll take them off on a Bollard and be efficiency aerodynamics but when you're this small you don't really need to worry about bollards and when you're a bit light you don't really need to worry about aerodynamics because efficiency just comes naturally more on that later coming around the side well it's pretty small isn't it it's not minuscule it's not freakishly tiny you've seen a car this small on the road before it's about the size of a smart 4-2 two and a half meters by one and a half meters give or take so nothing new there but what is new is that this micro car is built on as essentially bespoke EV architecture which means you guessed it unprecedented amounts of space inside for the occupants and in the boots it's roomy when I told my friends I was going to come and film this they were all like oh it's going to be so funny watching you fold yourself into that not that funny I fit quite well price I'm sure you're curious well once we get through these first 999 Pioneer cars and the full ranges available you'll be able to have a microlino from between 15 000 and just under 22 000 Euro now that's not especially cheap for a micro car you could have a couple of Carvers for that money but what I think you're going to see when we get inside this thing is a level of quality and desirability that we've never really seen before in this category of vehicle if you look around all those cars they seem look more and more aggressive we want to bring some a bit Joy back into into Mobility fun into Mobility also a joy joy of living Joy of driving around in the city [Music] oh we're out for the road in the Big Blue Egg hello microlino ah I'm gonna have a silly grin on my face all day except for when Italian people try to murder me which based off the first five ten minutes is going to be every nine seconds or so never driven injury in before it's a character building is this legal what I'm doing don't know not sure ah as ever Crossing and people actually stopped [Music] oh I'm so lost already [Music] let's see three battery options available for this micro Lino six 10.5 and 14 kilowatt hours a nice spread respectively those will give you a quoted 95 175 and 230 kilometers of range 230 kilometers that's like proper proper range that's not just grocery getter range these Pioneer models by the way all come with the middle sized battery the 10.5 kilowatt which strikes me as the right size for a car like this that really is plenty of rain for this sort of vehicle what else not to 50 kilometers per hour or not to 30 miles per hour dealt within five seconds top speed about 50 mph 90 kph more than enough in a vehicle like this it's actually quite Punchy it's a very strange experience it's a bit like a little baby ID buzz in that it's small but it doesn't feel that small on the road because it's so roomy I have to keep reminding myself that where my foot is is the end of the car I think I'm gonna go the rod just ends oh no that's chaos [Music] charging happens here and it can be done via a type 2 charger or just a domestic plug socket thingy either way charging speeds up to three kilowatts means that you can charge your microlino in around three hours from empty to full as for what's under this gorgeous retro body where we've got a unibody design that's something unique to the microlino something like a Citroen Ami is basically a stiff platform with some plastic housing on top which is not especially safe and that's okay when you're only traveling 30 kilometers per hour this is actually the class up of micro car slightly heavier slightly faster and slightly safer which is a relief mostly aluminum and steel construction of that unibody that means it's going to be stiffer better to drive and again just fair a bit better in a crash we've got a 12.5 kilowatt motor powering the rear wheels two of them notice you might think it's going to be a three-wheeler it's not it's a four-wheeled vehicle power going to those rear wheels only might be quite a lot to drive we'll find out foreign [Music] [Music] Crossing now going to be beat in a moment yes no come on through come on that's fine yep yep I know I think right [Music] you know I say it every time but it is just so delightful to be in a city car it in a city this is a car fit for purpose it's doing what it was built to do all these other land Yachts they are slowing themselves down by being too wide too fat and they're wasting energy be it petrol or electric by being too heavy not me I'm small I'm agile I can slip through gaps you do get a lot of looks in the microlino that's one thing you should be aware of before buying one if you're incredibly socially anxious this may not be the car for you that being said it may just be my questionable understanding of Italian road traffic laws that's generating all the stairs I think it's a 50 50 split oh my God I don't believe it's the same group of tourists oh here we go again yes hello hello hello hello it's nice to be in a car that makes people happy yes absolutely oh dear [Music] suspension it's comfortable enough I mean this is a very bumpy cobbled street that I'm on right now it's handling it just fine steering is completely unassisted but that doesn't matter as long as you only steer while you're moving it's simple Speedy snail right what is this road situation is it me well he's gone I'm going what are the rules right I feel perfectly satisfied that this car has proven itself as being outstanding in the urban environment I'm now going to park up I have a lie down and possibly a coffee and maybe a cry and then I think we'll take it out into the mountains [Music] now as I alluded to earlier there is quite a lot of space inside this little tiny vehicle thanks to that skateboard chassis thanks to all the gubbins being in the floor and to illustrate that point I think we need to start with the boots what are you imagining just picture it for a moment how big this boot is going to be you're wrong it's 230 liters it's really it's really quite a big boot really quite substantial extremely impressive it's a two-seater just in case that wasn't unspeakably obvious you don't have like pop-up rear seats back here but you do have enough room for well my bag that I've been living out of for the last few days and a few camera bits as well very impressed with that and then we come round to the bit that you sit in and this is the Moment of Truth again the Jack test the now world famous track test six foot five and a bit little teeny tiny micro car [Music] it's taken me a while to figure out how to get in with dignity Ample Ample space ample space it is properly room in here the whole bench sheet goes forwards and back I've got it pretty much all the way back and I've got absolutely plenty of room okay I could do with a little bit more Headroom but hey if I just do this open the manual sunroof which comes as standard I've got infinite Headroom so much to talk about in this interior so simple yet so delightful we'll start with this steering wheel which is absolutely gorgeous it's like something you'd find in an old classic Porsche vegan leather wrapped absolutely no buttons anywhere on it really speaks to this thing having a bit of drivability about it which is something you may not expect on a car this Blobby we've got a little readout here which is super super simplistic it tells me my speed it tells me when I'm regenerating because this car has one pedal driving as standard there's no settings to fiddle with there what you get is what you get down here I've got my little gear selector drive neutral reverse in the middle is a sport button and that sport button has a little diagram of a micro Lino with a rocket strapped to the roof which really speaks to the sense of fun with which this car has been designed old school handbrake down here haven't seen one of those for a while there you go that's fun little door pocket bit of storage we've got Windows nice to have Windows um very high tech method of adjusting your wing mirrors you just kind of move it a bit more cup holder storage down here this is really nice you get a portable Bluetooth speaker this is the sound system in your microlino it plugs into the car it turns on when the car turns on and once you parked up take it with you have a picnic enjoy some music and this is maybe one of my favorite design highlights inside of the car this steel bar is a genuine part of the unibody construction this is structurally integral but inside of it they've mounted this lovely little LED touchscreen which is super responsive and provides me with all the functions that I could possibly need I got my blower I've got my heater I've got my D mister I can open the boots and well that's about it because there really isn't much else that you can do in this very very simple lovely this car it's not absolutely perfect in here there's a couple of little teeny tiny things that kind of whisper this is a new car from a new car brand that just started building cars if you have the windows open when you're driving and you brake heavily they do slide closed of their own volition my seat belt keeps on jumping out of this slightly plasticky sort of bracket that it's supposed to be held into we're talking about very very small pedantic things there are worse quality issues on certain new Tesla models and actually those small gripes aside I think the quality in here is really impressively high Everything You Touch feels good nice materials used and just a sense of real solidity to this car it seems to me increasingly common to see new car companies like Sono or light year Outsourcing production to experience manufacturers to guarantee High build quality from day one micro is keeping production in house but being a Swiss company they have gone to Great Lengths to ensure that build quality is high from day one and sitting in here you can feel it production wise at the beginning we never wanted to be a producer ourselves and we really basically stumbled a bit into it because at the end if it's the only way to really have everything under control when it comes to Quality when it comes to cost and at the end we said okay we are already so far ahead why not do the production in-house as well currently we have built around 60 cars and let's say the First Market that we're selling them in Switzerland and certainly what we are doing now is really trying to ramp up production of course now with the whole supply chain situation it's not that easy but we're doing our best and the plan is to arrive at around 25 cars per day at the end of this year [Music] thank you [Music] oh this is a little bit better we've escaped the confines of Turin we found a lovely twisty mountainous Road all of 25 minutes from the city center because Northern Italy and finally I can unclench enjoy the car and speak to you without the crippling anxiety of being suddenly T-boned by an honor in a punta [Music] this is a fantastic driver's car the weight is low down the power is being sent to the rear wheels only the steering the brake pedal and everything else are completely unassisted so I've got more feel through this steering wheel than I would in a Porsche Thai can or a pole star 2 performance likewise the brake pedal if I want it to slow down I've got a step on that brake I've got to really stand on it and put some effort into it it's a tactile experience and it really handles itself through these Corners I'm chucking this around with some intent here it stays nice and flat it's pretty stiff it's not especially fast I'll be honest with you but it doesn't really matter think of the Mazda MX-5 one of the great handling sports cars rubbish engine no performance whatsoever but that just encourages you to play with it to carry momentum through corners which is exactly what I'm doing here but the thing that really makes this so delightful to drive on a road like this is the size because I'm almost half the width of my Lane I can treat this like a little race track enter wide look for the Apex there it is foot flat on the floor for all of this onto the brakes sharp hair pin I haven't broken the central Lane partition I haven't exceeded the speed limit and I'm go-karting on a public road entirely legally delightful little thing just a word on the wine because it is quite loud personally I don't mind it because it sort of reminds me of racing cars with straight cut gears it's the gearbox it is quite hard as you can imagine to come by a gearbox suitable for a vehicle like this so Michael you know somewhat had to make do for the time being but much like Tesla do they are going to continuously settle with and improve the microlino incrementally as the production run goes on so my suspicion is before they've even gotten to this 999 run of pioneer Edition cars they'll have replaced that gearbox with one that is quieter personally I like it sounds like a little formulary car [Music] and let's just be sensible for a minute I'm going to slow down and stop mucking about to talk about sustainability because that is at the very core of microlino's entire Vision this car is and this is direct quote from their website eco-friendly as that comes from a few things it comes from the sheer size of it meaning that it's less energy intensive to construct meaning that it's made up of 50 less components than a regular sized car it comes from the minuscule energy consumption because of course this is a very efficient vehicle despite having the aerodynamic properties of literally a big front door this will do 8.8 miles to the kilowatt hour that is more than double the efficiency you'd get from a Tesla Model 3. it's more efficient than a light year zero why not because they've spent any time at all designing an aerodynamic shape in fact they didn't they made a point of telling me we haven't bothered with Aero we don't need to because it's so light lightness is the key when it comes to efficiency and as it turns out fun concluding thoughts on the microlino then well you could probably tell based on the giant stupid grin that's been on my face this entire video I adore this thing and how nice it is to get to the end of a video about a new car from a new car brand without having to go I really hope they make it three years from now they've made it this is happening they're building these things right now if you live in Switzerland you're going to start to see these on the road very soon and then a few months later in Germany and then hopefully a few months later that in Italy and then other parts of Europe and then hopefully the UK next year please Mike rolino I think micro cars like this have a big part to play in our electric future they just make too much sense not to they're so much better suited to the task of urban transportation and they're cheaper to buy and they're cheaper to run and they're kinder to the planet and with Brands like microlina making them as lovable and adorable as this their surge in popularity is only going to happen faster and faster a car that wants to make you grin while saving the planet what's not to love so they have it the microlino one of my new absolute favorite electric vehicles please make sure to like And subscribe and if you have been thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Fully Charged Show

Views: 2,172,192

Keywords: electric car youtube channel, why should i buy an electric car, green energy comment, grid storage technology, renewable energy youtube, new transport ideas, green technology review, renewable energy comment, renewable energy electric vehicles, electric vs ice cars, latest news on renewable energy, crowd funded youtube, kryten, fully charged show live, ev show, fully charged show, robert llewellyn, electric cars, fully charged

Id: uNp_M76wIws

Length: 22min 24sec (1344 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 06 2022