Mexico’s Olinia Uno Brings Six Seats of Practical Electric Mobility to City Streets for Around $8,600

President Claudia Sheinbaum drove immediately into the stage set up inside a Mexican air force hangar in Mexico City, giving the world its first glimpse of the Olinia Uno, a 100% Made-in-Mexico electric vehicle. The project was spearheaded by a team of Mexican engineers and academics who worked tirelessly to create a vehicle that could help propel the country into the electric-vehicle era. The Olinia Uno is a compact six-seater van that starts at 150,000 pesos, or around $8,000 to $8,600 USD at current exchange rates. Its intended demographic is, as expected, people who take short trips about the city, which is exactly what most driving in Mexico’s cities involves.

The vehicle adopts a no-nonsense design, pairing a boxy shape with a high roof to maximize interior space and ease of access.. There are multiple wide windows along the sides and back, which improve the driver’s visibility and allow the passengers to enjoy some natural light inside. The styling is quite apparent, with a solid basic two-tone white and black scheme that looks clean and utilitarian, and because the doors open wide and have grab handles on the side, getting in and out of the van is a snap for families or anyone with a lot of gear to haul around.

Engineers picked a 13-kilowatt electric motor and a 14.7-kilowatt-hour lithium iron phosphate battery to power the van, which should have a top speed of roughly 50 kilometers per hour and a range of more than 100 kilometers on a standard city trip. The Olinia Uno also offers standard safety features like front disc brakes and electronic power steering to make it stable at low speeds, as well as a reverse camera and LED lamps for enhanced safety.

Charging the Olinia Uno is simple; users simply connect it into an ordinary household outlet like any other appliance. The recharge time will be approximately 4 hours if you have 220-volt energy and up to 8 hours if you have 110-volt power. This requires neither a pricey wall box nor a public fast charger. And the running expenses are modest. After accounting for gasoline, maintenance, and reliability, it costs around 0.50 pesos per kilometer, which is much less than a gas-guzzling cab or even many motorcycles.

The interior is meant to seat six people, all with enough seatbelts, and because the designers took wheelchair users into account, there is enough room to accommodate a full-sized wheelchair without having to fold it up. There is also adequate inside lighting to help with nighttime boarding. The dashboard has a 7-inch central screen that shows speed, some basic gauges, and media controls. Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, USB and USB-C ports, power windows, and central locking are all standard. The canopy totally protects against rain and heat, giving it a substantial benefit over an open motorcycle for day-to-day transportation as safely as possible.

It took 18 months to bring the Olinia Uno to market, with the help of many public colleges, research organizations, and over 80 Mexican academics and engineers. The plan is for 50% of the parts to be made in Mexico from the start, with the goal of increasing to 75% by 2030. They’re opening an assembly plant in Puebla later this year, with plans to increase production to 20,000 units per year by 2027. If that wasn’t enough, they’re also planning to install 2,000 public charging points in Mexico City, the State of Mexico, and Puebla to make it even easier for people to get behind the wheel of the Olinia Uno or set up taxi fleets.
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