Until now, your options for three-seat vehicles with a centrally mounted driving position were catered for mainly by supercars and hypercars. Unobtanium like McLaren’s F1 and Speedtail...heck, even Gordon Murray’s upcoming T.50 supercar.
Joining that esteemed list of exotica, then, is this cheery lil’ fella. It’s called the Uniti One, and it’s a three-seat...£15,100 (P996,600) electric city car with 65hp.
This Swedish-designed urban pod—engineered in the UK—will be offered with two battery packs. The standard car gets a 12kWh unit offering 150km of range from a single charge, while an optional 24kWh pack gives you 300km in one sitting. Uniti says 100km of range can be added in just 10 minutes using a 50kW CCS charger.
Being the size of a small sports shoe—it’s considerably shorter but a smidge wider than a Volkswagen Up—has resulted in the One weighing just 600kg. Acceleration times are adequate for something that’ll spend the majority of its hectic life in the city: 0-50kph takes 4.1sec, 0-100kph takes 9.9sec, and top speed is 120kph.
We’re told the ride has been set up for comfort, which is good because modern city roads are mostly rubbish. There are also two driving modes, one for the city called City, and one that boosts everything called, um, Boost. It sharpens the accelerator and adds artificial heft to the steering wheel. Feel free to make your own vwoom-vwoom noises, because we certainly are.
Design? Well, you can make up your own minds on that. It’s compact and simple, and features a panoramic roof for better visibility. The door handles are flush, too, while the wheels are covered by aero discs. Three colors are available, and they’re all...gray. Saying that, the body panels are said to be easily removable so that if you ding them, you can just swap them out.
The interior is pleasingly simple as well, with that central steering wheel surrounded by a trilogy of configurable screens. All your Spotify, Waze, and other such connectivity things are catered for, and the whole system runs on Android. There’s a wide-angle camera in place of a rearview mirror, lots of safety assistance (ABS, ESC, tire-pressure monitoring, and so on), and such things as LED lights, RGB mood lighting, and a decent audio system.
Uniti boss Lewis Horne says: “Our goal for the Uniti One is for it to become a catalyst for positive change in our industry.” Think it’ll do it?
NOTE: This article first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
