Seat plans lightweight city car with electric drive system

It is a rapidly growing car brand, sells mainly electric cars - and comes not from China, but from Spain: Cupra, started as the tuning division of Seat, is winning more new customers than any other VW Group brand: "Cupra is currently growing by 59 percent. We have already sold 400,000 Cupra since 2018, have become the fastest growing brand in the VW Group," says Wayne Griffiths, responsible for the Spanish Seat and Cupra brands in an interview with Car-Eidtors.Net. In the process, Cupra customers are spending more money and buying larger models than Seat customers, which has a positive impact on the bottom line.

The success of Cupra is fueling speculation about the end of Seat as a car brand. Seat does have the youngest clientele in the VW Group. But they mainly buy the low-priced Ibiza small car. That's because the young clientele usually can't afford a larger car, let alone a battery-electric car, which are around 10,000 euros more expensive than models with a gasoline engine.

In Spain, a solution is now being worked on to enable young, urban customers to remain mobile in the age of e-mobility: With a vehicle in the L6e or L7e vehicle classes, such as the Opel Rocks-e or the Microlino. Wayne Griffiths: "It is a concrete project that we are currently working on."

A first prototype is to be shown soon, possibly before the end of the year. In Griffiths' view, such a light electric car is the ideal city car: "There is less and less supply of small cars, but demand, especially in cities," Griffiths says in the interview. "City cars should be as small as possible. The city has to belong to the people who live there. We have to respond to that - but not by banning individual mobility, but by offering solutions."

It is possible that the project is a renewed collaboration with Silence. The Spanish manufacturer delivered its first microcar, the two-seater S04, in the middle of the year. The Seat Mó electric scooter is already an adaptation of the Silence S01. (aum/gr)