Citroen Ami ARRIVES as a tiny two-seat Urban EV

The Citroen Ami arrives as a tiny two-seat electric runaround for urban areas, costing just over £5k and with a range of around 43 miles.

As we all get led down the road to an electric car future, small city cars, like the Citroen C1, are going to disappear as the cost of building them as EVs makes them just too expensive for the target market.

But Citroen think they have an answer to electric urban mobility, and last year they revealed the Citroen Ami One Concept as a cheap as chips tiny urban EV promising a low cost of use or purchase and a range of up to 100 miles. And now that concept has turned in to a production version – the Citroen Ami.

Officially, in Europe, where these things matter, the Citron Ami is classed as a quadricycle which means it can be driven by anyone over 16 (and over 14 in France) without the need for a driving license – which could see hordes of children electrically mobile – although in the UK you’d still need to be 17 and have a driving licence.

Similar in concept to Renault’s Twizy – although cheaper and enclosed – the Ami is built as cheaply as possible with the same front doors on each side – so each open the opposite way – and the same wings on all four corners and an interior which is minimalist, to say the least.

Under the skin sits a small 5.5kWh battery good for a range of up to 43 miles (a third less than the concept promised), a three-hour recharge from a domestic socket, and a top speed of just 26mph.

Citroen plan to make the Ami available as a purchase at around £5,100, a long-term rental with a £2,220 deposit and £17 per month, or a by the minute charge of 22p. Which, to us, doesn’t seem all that cheap.

But with the UK not playing the quadricycle no-license game it seems unlikely Citroen will deliver the Ami to the UK market.