EVwire brief: Mexico has unveiled the Olinia Uno, the first model from Olinia, the country's first homegrown electric vehicle brand, at a government event on Sunday.
The six-seat city car, which kind of looks like a manually driven version of Zoox’s robotaxi, starts at MXN 150,000 (about US$8,600), undercutting most EVs in the market. The Uno shown at the event was a prototype, and sales won't begin until the summer of 2027.
Details:
The headline specs on the Olinia Uno, per the official Olinia site:
Seats: 6, each with a seatbelt, can accommodate a wheelchair
Top speed: 50 km/h (31 mph)
Range: 100+ km (62+ miles), urban mixed use
Battery: 14.7 kWh LFP (lithium iron phosphate)
Motor: 13 kW, IP67-rated sealing
Charging: any household outlet, about 4 hours at 220V or 8 hours at 110V, NACS connector
Equipment: 7-inch center screen, reverse camera, LED headlights, front disc brakes, Bluetooth 5.0
Production: from summer 2027, in Puebla, MX
Claudia Sheinbaum, President of Mexico, announced the vehicle on X:
Olinia is a state-backed push for an affordable EV designed and assembled in Mexico, coordinated by the Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation Ministry (SECIHTI) with the IPN, TecNM, UNAM and UPAEP, and developed in Puebla.
Sheinbaum drove the six-seat prototype onto a stage inside a Mexican Air Force hangar at the Santa Lucía military base during its unveiling on Sunday.
President Sheinbaum has framed the Uno less as a rival to conventional cars than as a safer, cleaner replacement for motorcycles and mototaxis, which she has called popular but risky. The pitch matters because Mexico's two- and three-wheeler market is enormous, and Olinia's neighborhood and last-mile models aim squarely at it.
The Olinia Uno leans hard into compact-and-boxy to fit six on a city-car footprint. It fits a wheelchair too
Context:
At 150,000 pesos, the Uno also undercuts the EVs already on sale in Mexico from JAC, Renault and BYD. Not everyone is convinced, however. Don Ricardo Salinas Pliego, the entrepreneur whose Grupo Salinas owns Italika, Mexico's best-selling motorcycle brand, criticized the Olinia for its high price and modest specs.
“The perfect image of the difference between a private entrepreneur who manufactures and sells useful products at a good price for people, and a government that develops absurd, expensive, and pointless projects.”
Critics have pointed out the Olinia’s modest specs and lack of apparent safety systems like ample airbags and subpar speed as potential issues
The sentiments of Olinia’s critics today are quite understandable since the vehicle’s specs and features are very modest as far as electric cars go. It has more similarities to the small, super-cheap EVs found on AliExpress than to affordable cars from mainstream EV makers like BYD. Plus, when the project was announced (as we covered last year in a newsletter), the renders of Olinia’s EVs were arguably more compelling.
Olinia’s renders from last year’s presentation
Whether the Olinia Uno can be successful is yet to be seen. A 50 km/h, 100-km city car for 150,000 pesos asks buyers to pay car money for sub-car performance, and the production start is still more than a year out. The counter is that nothing else on the Mexican market offers an enclosed, six-seat, weatherproof EV anywhere near the price.
Source: Olinia, President Claudia Sheinbaum on X
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