It all started with a simple question: "How much car do you really need for your daily commute? Wim, Oliver and Merlin Ouboter, the Swiss family behind the famous Micro Kickscooter, asked themselves precisely this question. Coming from a completely different sector, they could not understand why most cars today are too big and too heavy for their purpose. On average, a car is occupied by just 1.2 people, travelling a daily distance of only 30 km. But what would the ideal vehicle for urban mobility look like?  

They realised that, like the kickscooter, which uses the niche of mobility between walking and cycling, it would have to be halfway between a motorbike and a car. Small and agile, but at the same time weatherproof and spacious enough for shopping. In the course of their research, they came across the "bubble cars" of the 1950s. Inspired by them, they began to make the first designs for the Microlino.

In collaboration with the Swiss university ZHAW, the design and technical specifications were carried out. For the next stage, the construction of a prototype was developed in China in mid-2015 with the aim of presenting it at the Geneva Motor Show in 2016. At the last minute, the three Ouboters were able to book a tiny 6 m² stand. The Microlino was presented to the public for the first time and was a huge success. In just two days, around 500 reservations were made and the media reported about it all over the world.

In order to move from the prototype stage to a real production vehicle, they started a cooperated with Tazzari from 2016 onwards, an Italian car manufacturer specialising in small electric vehicles. After an intensive development phase, we presented the first pre-series of the Microlino in January 2018. The Microlino was officially homologated in Europe in 2018 and there are now more than 16,000 bookings. Production is expected to start in 2021.