The Seat Mii city car is going electric-only

Volkswagen Group politics, much like actual politics, are something our weary little brains may never fully fathom.

Who gets which tech first – from the mainstream brands of Audi, Seat, Skoda and VW itself – sometimes feels as random as a village green tombola. Only with fancy engines and platforms wearing the prize numbers, not tins of Quality Street or a fat scented candle.

Muddling our brains a little further is the Seat Mii electric. Rather like Skoda’s plug-in Citigo, it arrives over five years later than the really quite similar Volkswagen e-Up. Conversely, the similarly electric Seat el-Born electric hatchback was shown in Geneva many months before we’ll see VW’s own ID.3. The plot thickens.

The Mii electric’s Performance is improved over that original e-Up, we must add, its combination of 83bhp and a 161-mile range (under newer, more stringent test conditions) make it a better real-world proposition. It also completely replaces the petrol-powered Mii, so if your heart’s set on a training shoe-sized Seat, plug-in is your only option from the summer.

Quite why it’s taken so long to electrify the Up’s near-identical siblings remains a mystery, though perhaps it suggests – if we wait long enough – Skoda and Seat will sneak their own electric supercar lap records at the Nürburgring…