SEAT Mii Electric Review

Performance

On paper, the Mii’s performance figures won’t get many pulses racing, but in the real world, the SEAT feels anything but leaden. With the motor delivering maximum torque from standstill, the Mii is seriously quick out of the blocks and has more than enough thrust to deal with the rigours of city driving. 

And despite having just 81bhp to call on, the baby SEAT has plenty of mid-range speed and is perfectly happy cruising at motorway pace or a flowing A road. Top speed is just 81mph, but that’s still 11mph more than the legal limit, so if that’s a problem for you, it might be time to move country. 

Drive

If we’d all learned to drive in a Mii, we’d have needed no more than maybe three lessons. Piloting the SEAT is simplicity itself. Just select D on the gearshift and drive off. 

Strangely, the Mii doesn’t offer much regenerative braking in D mode, so if you want to help recharge the battery when you’re coasting or going downhill, you need to engage B mode on the shifter. You can choose different levels of regen by rocking the gearstick from left to right, but if you’re used to a Nissan Leaf or BMW i3, they all feel a little soft. We found that even on gentle downhill gradients, we needed to use the brakes to slow the car down - which is a shame given the potential to channel all that wasted energy back into the battery. 

The Mii offers drivers three driving modes; Normal, Eco and Eco+. In Normal mode, drivers can access to the maximum power output of 81bhp and 212Nm of torque. In this mode the little SEAT can go from 0-62mph in 12.3 seconds and has a top speed of 81mph. In Eco mode, the electronics limit the output to 67bhp and 167Nm of torque. The performance of the air conditioning is also adjusted in Eco mode. Eco+ is the most efficient driving mode available to drivers. In this mode, the motor’s output is limited to 53bhp and 133 Nm of torque, providing a top speed of 59mph. The air conditioning unit is disabled in Eco+ mode.