As promised at EICMA 2019, Spanish automaker SEAT just unveiled its very first electric step-through scooter at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. It’s called the e-Scooter Concept, and it’s just one vehicular prong in SEAT’s Urban Mobility master plan.
Concepts We Can Grasp:
SEAT’s vision for the future of urban commuting currently consists of two kick-scooters, one saddle-type scooter, and one pocket-sized electric car aimed at car sharing programs. So far, the SEAT EXS KickScooter, designed in collaboration with Segway, is the only one of these urban mobility solutions that has entered the production model stage.
Gallery: SEAT e-Scooter Concept
Since the e-Scooter Concept is just a concept, we don’t have hard details on specifications as of yet. What SEAT does say is that it’s completely electric, produces neither noise nor emissions, and also that it accelerates quickly. It also uses a conventional electrical plug and battery to make charging easy.
Vehicles frequently change between the concept and production stages, but it will be interesting to see how similar the production version of this scooter is to what we see above. Clearly, the battery unit is big and heavy. Anticipating this, SEAT has given the battery door landing gear and a slide-out file drawer mechanism that seems to attach to a rolling luggage handle.
If the plan is to take your battery inside buildings with you to charge, it makes a lot of sense. If SEAT is smart, it will also market some nice coordinating shoulder bags and briefcases with those luggage loops on the side to go over the handle of that battery pack. I mean, how else is an employee or student going to get all their stuff in the building at once?
Another common thing SEAT’s urban mobility vehicles all have in common is that they’re supposed to feature easy connectivity with dedicated apps on your smartphone. That’s becoming increasingly common even among non-electric vehicle manufacturers, to the point where it’s practically expected. No doubt, it will be even more so by the time this e-Scooter is ready for production.
SEAT no doubt calls it an e-Scooter to differentiate from its own-brand KickScooter, and we have no indication that it will be offered outside Europe. If it did come here, though, it would probably have to have a different name, since that nomenclature could easily be confused with the kick-style e-scooters currently causing urban headaches across North America.