Futuristic MINI Urbanaut becomes reality

MINI has seemingly brought its Urbanaut people-mover concept a step closer to reality by revealing a full-size prototype in Germany.

First revealed as a computer-generated concept in November last year, the Urbanaut is a four-seat electric concept car that is said to represent MINI’s new vision in interior space utilisation.

This week at the Digital-Life-Design Summer conference in Munich, Germany, the British car-maker pulled the covers off a physical concept as a means of allowing “audiences to engage more extensively with the spatial concept and sustainable materials at work”.

Event-goers were able to witness the Urbanaut’s three curated ‘MINI’ moments – Chill, Wanderlust and Vibe – and play with its spatial layouts and innovative materials.

At 4.46 metres long, the Urbanaut is 150mm longer than the MINI Countryman but ushers in a new design language for the brand – with elements said to be channelled in a revamped model line-up that includes two all-new small SUVs.

The MINI Urbanaut retains the short overhangs and round headlights and tail-lights of the brand, but shows off with transparent wheels that are illuminated from inside to communicate with the outside world.

It retains a MINI grille too, but it becomes a closed-off hexagon and it’s mainly there to serve as the intelligence panel and data collection panel for the driver assistance systems.

Conceived to be a leader in automated driving, the MINI Urbanaut concept retains its steering wheel and pedals because the driver can take over at any point, so it has been engineered for Level 4 self-driving.

MINI has revealed no details on the EV powertrain of the Urbanaut, but it’s safe to assume the car will be based on the BMW FAAR (front/all-wheel drive) architecture that plays host to every other MINI model, along with the BMW 1 and 2 Series and the X1 and X2.

Like the larger CLAR architecture, BMW conceived the FAAR platform to accept petrol, diesel, plug-in hybrid and full-electric powertrains, so the Urbanaut concept isn’t stretching the imagination much here.

While there are still no firm plans for Urbanaut production, we suspect the concept serves as a loose preview for a slew of forthcoming MINI models, rather than a direct rival for Volkswagen’s upcoming electric ID people-mover.