The Swiss manufacturer’s electric quadricycle is arriving in France this summer 2023. Micro’s main selling point is surprising: the Microlino would not only be an alternative to the thermal car, but a direct competitor… to electric cars. We drove it.
You have to face the facts: driving a white electric mini-car makes you likeable. Accompanied by Thomas, videographer of Numerama, I walked the streets of Paris aboard the new electric Microlino, absorbing the smiles and compliments of passers-by and drivers stopped at red lights. It was to understand nothing. Even when we blocked a garage door to shoot a few shots at a standstill, several cars patiently waited for us to move the vehicle, even giving us a wave of the hand once released from their parking lot. In Paris, Parisian drivers smiled at me.
Maybe that’s the Microlino effect. ” That’s how gorgeous people should feel all year round, actually. “, analyzed Thomas, just as subjugated.
Micro’s small vehicle is not officially a car, but a 4-wheeled, electric rolling object that can go up to 90 km/h, but is banned from French motorways. The Microlino falls into the L7e category (heavy quadricycle) and can be driven from the age of 16, with a specific licence.
A single door that opens from the front
From a distance, it looks like a remixed Fiat 500 with a washing powder capsule. The Microlino is tiny (2.5m long, but above all only 1.47m wide and 1.5m high) and its rounded body gives it a bumper car look, just a little too stylish for us to have want to bang it on a closed circuit.
The biggest surprise is its single door, which opens on the front of the vehicle, slightly upwards. We therefore extricate ourselves from the front and not from the side, which has something to be disturbing – I have several times, mechanically, sought the handle of the door on my left. Conversely, I regularly groped to find the handbrake on my right, while it is wedged on the left of the seat (logical, to make a maximum of space for the two passengers on the single seat).
Once seated in the driver’s seat, you then have to grab a small strap to fold down the front door and close the cabin. A word of advice: put yourself in the passenger’s seat to successfully reach the tab, then close the door.
As in the Ami Buggy – which we also tested with Thomas recently – there is no car radio, but a speaker to which you have to connect via Bluetooth. On the other hand, the dashboard is a little more provided (you will tell me, it is not difficult, given the level of purification of the Ami…), with even a horizontal screen connected, integrated in the bar of the front door. It is very easy to navigate there to activate the air conditioning, turn on the heating or change the language. Very basic, but effective.
Two small flats after an hour of driving: the steering angle and braking are both very hard. It’s in our interest not to have to pound at the last moment, otherwise, it’s a guaranteed shock.
20,000 euros for that?
Of course, there is its price, which surprises: 20,000 euros on average for the vehicle (more precisely: 17,990 €, 19,990 €, 21,990 € and 22,990 € depending on the model), it is huge, for a micro-car of this size.
It is certain that the world cannot break prices like Citroën with its Friend – to achieve this, the manufacturer has also bet on plastic, minimalism and resourcefulness. However, Micro here is barely cheaper than the “real” entry-level electric cars. Numerama recently listed four cars at less than 25,000 euros (once the ecological bonus removed) that are currently on the market. Especially since for the moment, the Microlino is not eligible for a bonus higher than 900 euros.
Nevertheless, Micro’s speech is appealing: what’s the point of striving to build huge 5-seater cars that will continue to bottle up the streets and encourage uses from another time? The Swiss manufacturer told the press: it wants to compete with electric cars, not thermal ones. These will eventually disappear anyway. The question is rather, are we obliged to seek to replace them with pale copies, which will strive to try to reach a fantasized autonomy of 1,000 km, even if it is perfectly useless?
The Microlino wants to be faster and lighter than other small electric cars, to keep a competitive range (between 90 and 200 km), it wants to be more spacious inside and tighter outside, in short, it wants explode the competition on the bottom and on the form. Will she get there?
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