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Electric

The Uniti One is a three-seat, £15k electric city car

McLaren F1? Pah, what you need is a 65bhp city car with a central driving position

Published: 14 Oct 2019

Until now, your options for three-seat vehicles with a centrally mounted driving position were catered for mainly by supercars and hypercars. Unobtanium like the McLaren F1, Speedtail… heck, even Gordon Murray’s upcoming T50 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 electric city car with 65bhp.

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This Swedish-designed urban pod – engineered in the UK – will be offered with two battery packs. The standard car gets a 12kWh unit offering 93 miles of range from a single charge, while an optional 24kWh pack gives you 186 miles in one sitting. Uniti says 62 miles of range can be added in just ten 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: 0-31mph takes 4.1secs, 0-62mph takes 9.9secs, and top speed is 75mph.

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, simple and features a panoramic roof for better visibility. The door handles are flush, too, while the wheels are covered by aero discs. Three colours are available, and they’re all… grey. Saying that, the body panels are said to be easily removable so that if you ding them, you can just swap them out.

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The interior is pleasingly simple, too, 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 rear-view mirror, lots of safety assistance (ABS, ESC, tyre pressure monitoring and so on), and such things as LED lights, RGB mood lighting and a decent audio system.

It’s headed to Europe first, and then the UK by the middle of next year. Uniti boss Lewis Horne said: “Our goal for the Uniti One is for it to become a catalyst for positive change in our industry.” Reckon it'll do it?

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