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Mexico Unveils Olinia 1: President Sheinbaum Launches First Mexican Electric Vehicle
(latinarepublic.com)
$8-9k, 32 mph top speed, intended as urban transport
this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2026
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Electric Vehicles
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It's a decent start, and more importantly it is a start. Being brutally honest it's a pretty minimal urban commute vehicle. The old 2013 Leaf I just bought for $4500 gets the same mileage with its used battery, and can go 90mph, OTOH the Olinia seats 6. Kudos for getting the ball rolling. It will only improve from here.
Being brutally honest it’s a pretty minimal urban commute vehicle
Oh no, Mexican engineers ended up making exactly what they sought out to make.
Sure, let's compare a 13 year old used car to a new vehicle for value.
It's fair to consider the inventory of used cars (and used car prices) when evaluating the universe of mobility options.
This thing is basically an ultra premium electric golf cart. It will serve certain purposes far better than a Nissan Leaf, and some purposes significantly worse. Same with comparing it to a cargo e-bike capable of hauling kids in the back.
And maybe it will have enough adoption (and associated network of parts, knowledge base for maintenance and repair) to where a 10-year-old example sitting out in the world in 2036 will serve as an affordable option for someone else in that particular moment.
It's unfair to compare Mexico's EV industry plans to Japan's EV industry plans from 20 years ago.
Bring them to Canada. No tariffs on Mexican vehicles. Doug Ford needs to manufacture cars and he can't do it without a foreign owner.
Finally a car you can drive for people who don't have to compensate for some weird issues.
Oh, snap! They're working on a truck variant, coming soon! https://www.olinia.auto/olinia-cargo
I've been thinking of getting a van...
And the dashboard has physical buttons!
I really really hope its just a normal bare-bones car which doesnt listen to your converstations or track your driving or have a kill switch or require firmware updates. If its just machinery intented for driving without burning fossil fuels, I will almost definitely try to buy one
Mexican..... Y para que es este boton con laletra D?
Other Mexican..... En mi troka le pones la D y jala bien. No seas pendejo! La de es para moverse.
First Mexican... A okay. Entendido y anotado!
Debating what the D on their Mexican made car is for.
D de donducir
Que haces?...
Aqui nomas donduciendo mi carro.
La C es de....
They need to lean into the irony and have the horn default to La Cucaracha.
I had a dream I saw one of these irl..
I'm a sucker for microvans. I had a 64' ford econoline. I had a 71 and a 74 vanagon.
I moved onto EV's a few years ago, and now can't go back. I had a deposit down on a Canoo. I don't like the VW id. This lil' tucker seems to capture the spirit of the microvan FAR better than anything else I've seen to date.
430 miles with max payload. ID buzz is overpriced and not very practical.
Yeah its just ..
It's not very cute 😡
And I want it more microvan style. Like I want to have a huge amount of windows and sit far forwards in the cockpit.
I'll go back and look at that Kia again because it does seem very practical.
Hell yeah
Its 3.5-kilowatt electric motor is capable of handling steep terrain
That's slightly less than 5 hp, less than your average lawnmower!!
The vehicle is designed for urban mobility, with a top speed of 50 kilometers per hour,
No way that thing can drive 6 people uphill at 50 km/h.
I think it has some niche use cases where it can be good, and best of luck to Mexico with this. But I don't see this as a popular means of transportation unless it is very cheap. The cost is stated at 150k Pesos. which is $ 8700,- USD. That does not sound quite cheap enough. But maybe it can be used for a lot of public service purposes?
I love comments from people who quote horsepower on an electric motor when horsepower is a fake number generated by measuring torque and using a constant number. Only applicable to gasoline engines.
This vehicle will carry 6 adults up a steep hill.
horsepower is a fake number generated by measuring torque and using a constant number.
It's just a unit of power. You can calculate watts from force x speed, too, if you use metric units. Yeah, you can shift the whole thing to a rotational system with torque and rotational velocity (and then derive the linear equivalent force and speed from those units as the radius of the circle cancel out).
Only applicable to gasoline engines.
Power is power. By using similar units it makes it easier to compare different vehicles. If everyone wants to convert to watts, we can, but we'd still be making those comparisons.
I only used hp because most people are more familiar with it.
And for my own electric car hp is also used in more than 9 out of 10 spec spaces to describe the power.
As I mentioned earlier, it has 150 kW equal to 204 hp.
And no you are wrong, it is in no way only applicable to gasoline engine, even giving you the benefit of the doubt that you probably mean ICE, which can be gasoline, Diesel, propane or even hydrogen.
IDK how old you are, but by your logic you sound like you are 8 years old.
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That's probably an error from the site. The official one says 13kW:
Thanks that explains it, with 13 kW it's much more plausible.
3.5 kW is simply not enough for the claimed performance.
I searched for if something else is 3.5 or 3,5, but that number does not appear at all on the official page.
Weird typo, and also weird that nobody caught it? It simply doesn't make sense.
Yes, it is obviously a typo. For reference, GM's tiniest EV, the compliance-car SparkEV (2014-2017?16?) can dump over 120kW into the front wheels. While that is ridiculous and basically unusable if you like traction, the car only has a 19kWh battery and seats 4. Sure they were just learning but it's tiny and uses about 11kW on average outside of winter.
Edit, forgot EV torque: yes with only 13kW but speed limit of 50kph it probably can go uphill with a typical passenger load at speed.
Yes, compared to even my 2013 Leaf's 80kw motor it's a toy. But I look at this as a starting point. They were at ground zero, and now they have engineering experience, a manufacturing operation, and a finished working product to improve upon.
Turns out it at least has a 13 kW engine, the article is wrong on that point.
Still not a lot, but at least that makes the performance claims much more likely.
Yes, 13kw makes a LOT more sense. That's a little more than half my original Leaf's capacity.
It's just below the power rating of the 1960-70 rear engine Fiat hatchbacks. Given it's an electric motor, it should do adequately.
Yes with 13, not if it only had 3.5.
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The face on that thing is adorable!
I want one.
At that price I want two, one for each foot
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