What is it?
The new Seat MO is an all-new electric scooter for urban use, very similar in size, carrying capacity and performance to the ubiquitous breed of 125cc four-stroke models, usually Japanese, that have been plying Europe’s city centres for decades.
There’s one big difference: because it’s battery-powered, it has no toxic exhaust emissions and contributes nothing to atmospheric CO2. On sale in the UK from this month onwards, MO gives the Volkswagen Group’s emergent Spanish brand a golden opportunity to enhance its green credentials, to begin fulfilling a promise to offer transportation solutions and not just cars, and to strengthen its already impressive youth image.
Though the name and badging say Seat, MO is a ‘white label’ product, fully built by the Italian company Silence, which makes a very similar-looking own-brand product that’s already sold here by a Midlands-based importer, Silence UK, launched last year by a group of ex-Jaguar Land Rover executives.
What does it cost?
There’s just one MO price – £4996 – which is the amount you pay after deducting the £1500 incentive the UK government currently offers buyers of electric motorcycles. Seat’s purchase price is just £1 more than the UK cost of Silence’s own-brand equivalent, the S:02, and translates to a ‘drip feed’ cost of £95 per month for three years; PCP deals are not offered. By comparison, Honda’s best-selling PCX125 petrol scooter, broadly similar in performance, lighter to handle and arguably better made, costs £3299 – a very solid saving.
True, the Honda is likely to need slightly more expensive annual servicing than the MO, but the warranty on the latter’s 7kWh lithium ion battery is only four years, and (though experience so far suggests such batteries last considerably longer) no one can yet quote a definitive battery life.
