Micro-Mobility-Artega Deal Means Both The Microlino And Karo Will Live

The Karo, with limitations; the Microlino, only from 2021 on.

Merlin Ouboter promised to release news about the Microlino in 2020. He did not wait long. On January 2, he told us that Micro-Mobility had reached an out-of-court agreement with Artega and TMI for them to part ways. To get that, Micro-Mobility allowed Artega to produce the Karo, but with limitations. In exchange, it will not have to build the Microlino with Artega anymore. The new manufacturer will be CECOMP, an Italian company that you may not know by name, but which creations you certainly have admired somewhere.

CECOMP creates prototypes, show cars, and other beauties. It has produced the Lancia Fulvia Coupé Concept in 2003, a car that could probably have saved the iconic Italian brand. It was also the manufacturer of the Bolloré BlueCar, a vehicle used in the Autolib EV sharing program in Paris.

The list of cars created by CECOMP is long: Icona Vulcano, Toyota MR-J, Ferrari 575M SuperAmerica, the original Toyota iQ Concept, and the NLV Quant, a famous flow-cell vehicle that resulted in the nanoFlowcell Quant F and Quantino.

Wim Ouboter, Micro-Mobility’s founder, starts with the bad news:

“The intensive testing of our 22 pre-series cars has shown us that the current development status does not satisfy our expectations in terms of driving performance, quality and safety. We therefore need to change more things than initially expected.”