By seeking a balance between simplicity and the use of the most efficient technologies, Avatar Mobilité strives to minimize the impact across the entire life cycle of its vehicles. Our goal is to make travel sustainable and environmentally friendly.
However, this revolution should not benefit only the privileged few or serve only specific purposes. True sustainable change will come from replacing a large number of vehicles with low-impact solutions. That’s why we’ve designed our vehicle to be affordable, safe, and suited to all daily needs.
The Ulive electric car is not just an ecological and economical means of transport. It mainly embodies the shared aspirations of people who believe that change is possible when we act together.
Striving for the Lowest Environmental Impact Across the Vehicle's Life Cycle
To keep mobility sustainable, our ambition is to reduce the environmental impact of daily travel by a factor of 5 for those who need to use individual transport such as a car.
Avatar Mobilité acts at various levels, across all stages of the vehicle's life cycle, from design to end-of-life.
The Ulive small electric car is based on simplicity and energy efficiency:
- A vehicle’s impact is directly linked to its weight. It is not sustainable to simply convert all combustion vehicles into electric equivalents. Vehicles must be lighter by design. Ulive weighs less than 400 kg (empty), compared to 1.5 tons for a Renault Zoé or a Peugeot e-208.
- The vehicle’s aerodynamics have been thoroughly optimized, shaping its innovative design.
- Its frugality also shows in the reduced number of parts and the use of standard components, making maintenance easier and extending vehicle lifespan.
- We use sustainable and recyclable materials, aligned with Avatar Mobilité’s mission.
A Local Factory Operated by Avatar Mobilité
The Ulive electric car is assembled in a local micro-factory, which manages manufacturing, maintenance, and distribution within its catchment area. Our goal is to replicate and deploy these micro-factories across the territory. This approach aims to:
- Re-industrialize French regions
- Create local jobs
- Improve scalability and adapt deployment to confirmed markets
- Facilitate community ownership of the vehicles
- Reduce initial investment costs
The Open Source Choice
Ulive and the micro-factory are both developed in open source. In addition to simplifying vehicle maintenance, this choice enables:
- A collaborative watch for identifying the most virtuous solutions for future versions — both for the vehicle and the factory
- The creation of vehicle variants adapted to other contexts (reinforced vehicles, alternative drivetrains, versions tailored to specific industries…)
- Knowledge sharing with entrepreneurs who might take over local factory operations under a franchise-like model
The Story Behind Avatar Mobilité
Born from an initiative by the Rochelaise non-profit Esprit 360, Avatar Mobilité was founded in 2021 to address the need to reconcile constrained mobility with environmental limits. In many cases, neither public transport nor active mobility solutions are suitable for everyday travel. Policy often focuses on encouraging behavioral change.
In practice, this leads to oversized, over-equipped, and therefore over-polluting private cars. Based on this reality, the team decided to design vehicles that are lightweight, efficient, affordable, and as low-impact as possible across their entire lifecycle.
Avatar Mobilité’s activities focus on designing, manufacturing, distributing, and maintaining lightweight vehicles for everyday journeys.
