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BMW’s MegaCity electric vehicle has been getting a lot of attention despite the fact that it’s still two years out from going on sale and over a year away from an actual reveal. Not content to let a fellow German competitor hog the spotlight, Mercedes-Benz has reportedly begun work on a MegaCity competitor — known under the working title of Mega City Mobility.
Mercedes’ electric vehicle will reportedly follow in the MegaCity Vehicle’s footprints, using rear-wheel-drive with a rear-mounted drivetrain. It’s believed that the small EV will ride on the next-generation Smart ForFour underpinnings, which itself will use Nissan’s small V-platform.
As of now, the majority of the development work on the Mega City Mobility vehicle is taking place in design studios. The styling is being handled by Mercedes’ design studio in Yokohama, Japan, under the direction of Holger Hutzenlaub. Mercedes handed design duties to its studios in Japan because of the new EV’s intentions to be a small, space efficient vehicle — and Japan is a marvel of space efficiency because space there is so limited.
“We have been looking outside the automotive industry, including the trend towards mini city houses, to generate ideas on space utilization and packaging,” Hutzenlaub told Britain’s Autocar.
As such, all of the preliminary design bucks are said to be stylish hatchbacks. They reportedly feature a “one-box” design, completely integrating the car into one fluid shape. For now, the styling bucks are all miniature clay models tucked away inside M-B’s Yokohama design studio, but we should learn more as the project progresses.
While it may be a few years before we see any cars come from Mercedes’ Mega City Mobility project, one vehicle is set to go into production shortly — the Smart E-scooter. Smart unveiled the electric E-scooter at the Paris Motor Show earlier this year and it has since received the green light for production.
Note: The car pictured here is Mercedes-Benz’s A-Class E-Cell.
Source: Autocar
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