Mobilize Duo: Renault's answer to the urban jungle
Small, electric and surprisingly high-tech: the Mobilize Duo marks a new chapter in urban mobility. Here's how the electric quadricycle from the French manufacturer fares
by Danilo Loda
City mobility has become the real challenge of the decade. Renault, through its Mobilize brand, offers its solution: Duo, an electric quadricycle designed to move nimbly through urban chaos and park where others just cannot.
The Duo does not go unnoticed. Its scissor doors, reminiscent of a Lamborghini rather than an urban quadricycle, are not a designer fad but a practical choice: they are used to get on and off even in the tightest of parking spaces. The squared-off headlights, the wheels positioned at the four corners and the one-piece plastic bumpers create a strong, clean look that makes it look like a reborn, more mature and geometric Twizy.
The Duo has been built with only a fifth of the components of a conventional car, thanks to a modular design using identical gauges, panels and structures. The result is a car that uses 40 per cent recycled materials, is 95 per cent recyclable and produces only a third of the emissions of a conventional city car over its entire life cycle.
Despite its lightness, the Duo is not fragile. The tubular steel frame, covered with plastic panels, guarantees rigidity and safety. Mobilize unhesitatingly calls it 'the safest in its class': it boasts progressive deformation zones, disc brakes on all wheels and - an absolute first - an airbag for the driver, absent in all other quadricycles on the market to date.
At 2.43 metres long and 1.3 metres wide, the Duo takes up half the space of a city car and can turn around in just 6.8 metres,
