The electricity inside the new Seat

Recently, the known automaker Seat unveiled two prototype cars that were built to work on electricity. The two cars are the Altea XL Electric Ecomotive, which is a car completely driven by electricity, and the Leon TwinDrive Ecomotive, which is a plug-in hybrid.

The auto producer confirmed the rumors regarding plans of building hybrid cars starting 2015 and fully electric cars from 2016. The cars will not be developed in Germany, as the Volkswagen Group is placing car centers for electrical and hybrids far away from Germany. The so-called green cars will be built in Spain.

Seat electric cars

The official photographs are leading to the fact that the current prototypes are totally based on current car models that are close to the end of their lives. You should expect that the when they are released, the electric or hybrid Seat cars will replace the next generation of cars. The first tests on the Altea and Leon will be made by government fleets from Catalonia and Madrid. The purpose of the tests is to see how the cars are reacting to real life terrain and influences, which are different from the test laboratory.

Let us get a bit to the specs of the two new age cars. The Altea XL is powered by an 85kW electric engine. As the producer says, the engine is powerful enough to get the car to a top speed of 84 mph. The batteries will be stored under the chairs of the Altea, so they will not interfere with the space allocated for the load bay.

Seat electric cars

As for the hybrid Leon, it is said that it has autonomy of 30 miles and a top speed of 75 mph, when in its electric version. The petrol engine starts automatically when there is no more electric energy to power the “green” engine. When usage combined, the two power sources will generate an average of 166 mpg and a very small CO2 output of only 39g/km.

You might say that Seat got into the Electric Version area a bit late. Well, there is no point to negate this affirmation. Having 2015 and 2016 as launch dates is quite late, comparing to other brands. Even so, Seat might be preparing a strong offensive that can just blow away the competition, all that after a period of quiet actions. The company is about to launch not less than four new models in the upcoming year.

Seat electric cars

Even though Seat hasn’t gone into the EV segment from the start, the automaker says that almost half of the Seats sold in UK have very low emissions, at around 130g/km. This is reflected from the strong diesel line-up, and the carbon-crunching technology implemented.

Seat is not only working on cleaning their cars from polluting, but also their working processes. The factory from Spain has the biggest photovoltaic cell roof in Europe. Secondly, cars are being shipped by train, this way saving about 2600 tons of CO2 each year. After all, every little help counts more than nothing.