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EU Power Transportation

Citroën Unveils a Tiny $6,600, 6-Kilowatt Electric Car (cnn.com) 210

Posted by EditorDavid from the let's-get-small dept.
An anonymous reader quotes CNN: French automaker Citroën has unveiled the Ami, a tiny electric car that's designed from the outset to be as cheap as possible. The car isn't very fast and it looks a bit like a washing machine, but it only costs €6,000, or the equivalent of about $6,600.

It would be hard to get a good used car at that price, but the two-seat Ami is barely a car. In fact, Citroën refers to it as a "non-conformist mobility object." It has a top speed of just 45 kilometers an hour, roughly equal to 28 miles per hour. It's powered by a 6 kilowatt, or 8 horsepower, electric motor. For that reason, though, the Ami can be driven by kids as young as 14 in France, or 16 in many other European countries, without a license. Under the laws of these countries, the Ami qualifies as a voiture sans permis (literally "car without license"), or quadricycle, a category of small and slow vehicle that, for purposes of regulation, is treated like a four-wheeled scooter...

The Ami is built using as few unique parts as possible. For instance, the body parts used for the front end are exactly like those used in the back. Also, the right door is exactly like the left door. That means the driver's side door hinge is at the front while the passenger side door hinge is at the back... Since it's a lightweight car with a small battery intended mostly for use in cities, the Ami has a range of only about 70 kilometers, or 43 miles, per charge. On the plus side, though, it can be fully charged in only three hours using a household electrical outlet...

Besides buying the car, shoppers will also have the option to lease it for €20, the equivalent of $22, per month.
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Citroën Unveils a Tiny $6,600, 6-Kilowatt Electric Car More

Citroën Unveils a Tiny $6,600, 6-Kilowatt Electric Car

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  • How is that "like a washing machine"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Sunday March 01, 2020 @07:22AM (#59783818) Homepage

    How is that "like a washing machine"? My washing machine looks nothing like that.

    In Europe we already have microcars (and microtrucks!) - little cars that you don't need a license to drive. This is just a cool new one.

    https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]

    • Re:How is that "like a washing machine"? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Sunday March 01, 2020 @07:38AM (#59783832)

      How is that "like a washing machine"? My washing machine looks nothing like that.

      In Europe we already have microcars (and microtrucks!) - little cars that you don't need a license to drive. This is just a cool new one.

      https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]

      Yes but to the overwhelming majority of Americans it news that you can make a passenger car that is smaller and lighter than armoured personnel carrier.

      • To be fair, Europeans are getting a taste for unnecessarily large cars as well.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        That's because we make passenger cars that are smaller and lighter than the average American.

      • How is that "like a washing machine"? My washing machine looks nothing like that.

        In Europe we already have microcars (and microtrucks!) - little cars that you don't need a license to drive. This is just a cool new one.

        https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]

        Yes but to the overwhelming majority of Americans it news that you can make a passenger car that is smaller and lighter than armoured personnel carrier.

        Hopefully you were making a joke. We do have a contingent over here that attempts to make up for shortcomings in penis size with oversize vehicles, but there are a lot of smaller vehicles zipping about. A fair number of Fiats and Smartcars even. The Jeep Renegade has become very popular, and it is pretty tiny. Lotsa small regular sedans as well.

        Now to the laws regarding who can drive what, it varies from state to state. There are differing laws for mopeds, motorcycles under a certain amount of power, thre

        • It also would not be allowed on interstate highways as they have a lower limit for Horsepower.

          Microcars aren't allowed on motorways in Europe, either - they don't go fast enough.

    • Re:How is that "like a washing machine"? (Score:4, Informative)

      by kenai_alpenglow ( 2709587 ) on Sunday March 01, 2020 @09:48AM (#59784060)
      So does the USA. They're call "Golf carts".

  • Controls (Score:5, Insightful)

    by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Sunday March 01, 2020 @07:34AM (#59783826)
    "There's only a minimal gauge cluster. An app in the driver's smart phone, placed in a holder high in the center of the dashboard acts like the central display screen in other cars showing things like driving range and navigation. "

    No. Just...no.
    Please stop tying everything to the damn phone.

    • Re:Controls (Score:4, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Sunday March 01, 2020 @07:57AM (#59783870)

      Why? It's not like everyone doesn't already use a phone in their car for navigation. Why not use it to also show range? Hell car play and Android auto are borderline standard now on midrange cars.

      You've lost this war. The phone is a car feature now.

      • Why? It's not like everyone doesn't already use a phone in their car for navigation. Why not use it to also show range? Hell car play and Android auto are borderline standard now on midrange cars.

        You've lost this war. The phone is a car feature now.

        My new Jeep has Carplay as standard. It is tremendous for navigation, and unlike older nav systems, you don't have to take it to the dealer and pay for an update.

        Do a "Hey Siri", and ask for the closest gas station or even type of restaraunt, and she'll search it out and map it for you.

        Phone integration is top notch as well. Do the "Hey Siri", tell her to call someone in your address book, or give her the numbers, and it's completely hands free. I imagine the Android version works just as well.

        I know a

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by DogDude ( 805747 )
        It's not like everyone doesn't already use a phone in their car for navigation.

        I don't, and none of our company's employees are allowed to, either. It's dangerous and stupid.

        • If you use a mount it's no more dangerous than using the built in navigation.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by DogDude ( 805747 )
            I think that staring at a GPS while driving is dangerous and a bad idea. In our company, all of our drivers have to know where they're going BEFORE they leave.

            • If you're staring at it, you're doing it wrong. The occasional glance should suffice, especially given voice prompts. I don't know what kind of Fisher-Price phone you use, but mine gives me audible prompts and tells me which way to turn on which streets and such.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by DogDude ( 805747 )
                Relying on a GPS is a dumb and dangerous way to drive.

                A. The GPS isn't always right.
                B. You need to be able to anticipate turns ahead of time.
                C. You should be focused on what other drivers are doing, not looking at yet another screen.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      Please stop tying everything to the damn phone.

      Why?

      I want my car to have a speedometer. All other instrumentation, including the "radio", is better left to something which is replaceable and has a decent chance of being kept upgraded.

      I hate dealing with outdated useless crap in cars. My current car has navigation with a map from 2012. I could pay for a map upgrade... to 2014. The DAB+ radio is clunky to deal with and might not survive the next upgrade in DAB standard. The Bluetooth is great but only works for phone calls.

      The only solution non-Tesla (and

      • Why?

        I want my car to have a speedometer. All other instrumentation, including the "radio", is better left to something which is replaceable and has a decent chance of being kept upgraded.

        I hate dealing with outdated useless crap in cars. My current car has navigation with a map from 2012. I could pay for a map upgrade... to 2014. The DAB+ radio is clunky to deal with and might not survive the next upgrade in DAB standard. The Bluetooth is great but only works for phone calls.

        The only solution non-Tesla (and now this Citroen) offers is to dispose of the car every 3-4 years. I can live with that, more or less, in a $800 phone, but it is ridiculous for a car.

        Honestly, I'd be concerned that we're just shifting the issue. What I mean is that my first car with built-in Bluetooth was built in 2008. It worked fine with the phone I had then, and the next phone I bought. But by the time I bought my current phone in 2016, it didn't work well. The modern BT stack in Android wasn't playing well with the legacy stack on the car's head unit. Other new phones had similar issues.

        Point is... just as your old car's interface wouldn't get updated, your old car's ability

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by amorsen ( 7485 )

          Yes, that is certainly a concern. You may certainly be right and this will be as much of a disaster as the current approach. However, we KNOW the current approach is a disaster, and the new Citroen approach as least has a theoretical chance of working.

          Frankly I am making do with relatively cheap legacy cars until I can upgrade to a Tesla. They have lousy privacy, but they are the only car company that understands electronics. The other car companies are all like Windows CE when the first iPhone came out.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DogDude ( 805747 )
            They have lousy privacy, but they are the only car company that understands electronics.

            What does that mean?

        • Indeed.
          I strongly approve of keeping the auxilliary "computery" bits as a separate "standard" consumer device, but the interface needs to be standard.

          Fortunately we have a standard well-suited to the task: USB. It can even double as a phone charger on the same cable that's been around forever.

          Let the car present itself as perhaps a USB sensor cluster with readout of everything of interest (I'd even vote to include include any available self-diagnostic sensor data - normally ignored, but useful for both tr

      • Speedometer AND fuel gauge (or battery gauge in this case).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        >All other instrumentation, including the "radio", is better left to something
        >which is replaceable and has a decent chance of being kept upgraded.

        for some reason, I'm kind of fussy about a fuel gauge, too . . . and at lest an idiot light to tell me I've lost the brakes . . .

    • On the contrary, it would me much better to have that phone plugged into a dash board than have every other driver scratch their genitals with it while they're driving, as is the case now.
    • thats just what we need, everybody staring at their smartphones while driving, that little car would be crushed like a beer can if it was hit by a real car or truck

      • thats just what we need, everybody staring at their smartphones while driving, that little car would be crushed like a beer can if it was hit by a real car or truck

        So you don't look at your speedometer or gauges while you drive?

        Seriously, we've gotten the idea that one must look ahead and only ahead, and any deviation will immediately cause an accident.

        When in fact, the big cause of smartphone related accidents are from texting while driving.

        Anyhow, people should look at things while they are driving. Straight ahead, look in the mirrors, look at the gauges, just not straight ahead 100 percent of the time. That causes highway hypnosis. https://en.wikipedia.org/ [wikipedia.org]

    • >No. Just...no. Please stop tying everything to the damn phone.

      So don't think phone - think dedicated tablet that can be easily upgraded whenever you want, instead of integrated system that's going to be obsolete in a few years.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DogDude ( 805747 )
        I drive a 20 year old car. It's in no way "obsolete". What part of a car goes "obsolete in a few years"?

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by stooo ( 2202012 )

          >> What part of a car goes "obsolete in a few years"?
          The whole combustion engine drivetrain.

        • Sorry, I thought I was clear. The *car* doesn't go obsolete, but the in-dash entertainment/navigation/etc. system does. With an integrated system, you're stuck with it - and likely an expensive repair if it ever needs replacing.

    • OBD data already feeds your vehicle gauge cluster and that signal is also read by popular apps like Torque.
      Dispensing with an expensive conventional gauge cluster and wiring makes perfect sense as the phone reads the same signals. and apps like Waze can display speed along with routing info.
      For what technical reason does using a phone bother you?
      As a mechanic it bothers me not a bit. I use Torque Pro (Lite is fine for most and free), Waze, Google Maps etc and the conventional gauge cluster is inferior to a

    • I hope that the phone isn't required ignorer to operate the Ami. Accidents can happen to your phone such as dropping it into water or just breaking it or it could be installing a major update so I decide to run an errand. Hopefully it would charge your phone too or else that would be another reason for not being able to use it, waiting for the phone to charge.

  • Citroen (Score:5, Funny)

    by Arthur, KBE ( 6444066 ) on Sunday March 01, 2020 @07:42AM (#59783844)
    English for Lemon.

  • They built a golf cart and gave it a cooler sounding name to attract young buyers? That's not very original on them.

    • "They built a golf cart and gave it a cooler sounding name to attract young buyers? That's not very original on them."

      Renault has already had the Twizy for years, but its monthly battery rent is more than I spend on gas in 6-8 weeks.

    • My mom has had a SmartLab electric minicar for years (she lives in Milan, Italy). It's great for city use actually. You can drive it on no-traffic days and limited-traffic streets, it parks anywhere, there's barely anything in it that can break.

  • Any colour you like, as long as it's grey.

  • 7.3hp pulling half a ton. You better do your shopping at the top of a hill (on your own) because this thing won't be climbing anything once you've loaded it up.

    A strong headwind will practically stop this moving - its top speed is under 30mph. The wind outside my house today is about that, and exceeding it in gusts.

    People who design these things seem to think that the purpose of an "urban" car is to drive along a flat road to work (which is about half a mile from home) and back while constantly stuck in tra

    • Well, in back-of-an-envelope mode, a bicycle + rider is roughly 100kg powered by 200W (1/4 horsepower), or around 1hp per half a ton, so this is roughly 7x the power per kg that a cyclist uses, seems decent to me.

      Whatever load this car is taking around is going to be a fraction of its weight, as opposed to a bicycle where the load is many multiples of the vehicles weight, so not a significant factor here.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nagora ( 177841 )

        Well, in back-of-an-envelope mode, a bicycle + rider is roughly 100kg powered by 200W (1/4 horsepower), or around 1hp per half a ton, so this is roughly 7x the power per kg that a cyclist uses, seems decent to me.

        I don't think anyone makes a motorbike that weak. The lowest figure I've seen ois 3hp for a scooter. Most motorbikes are into double figures. I think a little 100cc bike would come in about 20hp.

  • This is a bad vehicle. Really Bad.

    I do not understand how a vehicle with a car form factor (call it what you like, but it is a car) that needs to drive on proper roads is even permitted when it cannot keep up with traffic even in urban areas.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      We already have such a car in my town: The Cadillac XTS. They are usually prominently advertised in the silver alerts [wikipedia.org] posted in the area.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      You have to share the road with vehicles that are slower than you, including bicycles. You'll have to deal with it.

  • Author should have google Citroen Ami... (Score:5, Informative)

    by FaxeTheCat ( 1394763 ) on Sunday March 01, 2020 @08:27AM (#59783924)
    Interesting that the article compares the car to 2CV, when Citroen used to have a car called ... Ami! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • How do you lease a 6000€ vehicle for 20€ a month?

    • Good point.

      Another article explains it slightly more clearly:

      In France if you rent it for 48 months you are required to pay 19.99 euros per month, paying an advance of 2,644 euros

      https://engnews24h.com/the-cit... [engnews24h.com]

      So in fact you are paying 3603 euros to rent it for 4 years, or the equivalent of 75 euros a month.

  • The Ami 6/8 is quite an iconic car. A friend of mine still takes care of an Ami 8 since it was his late father's car, and it is not a bad ride - for such an old car it is very resilient due to an efficient but simple design - you save yourself some trouble if you don't even have a radiator (600cc air-cooled). Some people might not like how old Citroens look, but they are distinctive. And this ugly little thing doesn't seem to draw any inspiration, except the spartan interior, which was mostly due to the era

  • If the pricing of a PodRide, Bio-Hybrid, PodBike, or hell even the Organic Transit Elf or PEBL (which are, you know, actually out) was more in line with the pricing of this car, I'd probably already own one. But dropping five figures on a fancy bike with a shell around it is just not going to fly. If you can get a car with that much larger battery pack, that much more metal, etc, down to a 6k price point, these bikes should be down around 3-4k and they'd have trouble meeting demand.

    • IMHO these bikes shouldn't cost more than 2K$USD.

    • I suspect the price of manufacture is far more relevant than the price of materials.

      Steel costs around $1000/ton, so if this car weighed the 450kg "unlicensed vehicle" limit mentioned elsewhere worth of steel, you're only talking ~$450 in materials. And manufacturing is probably mostly stamping components out of sheet steel and bolting or welding them together.

      Tube frame construction on the other hand involves a lot of cutting and welding - or worse, since human-powered vehicles are generally far more conc

  • Yes, Please (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Sunday March 01, 2020 @09:40AM (#59784036) Homepage Journal

    $22/mo? I'd totally get one for my daughter's six-mile trips to school.

    The USG will probably prevent me from doing so on the claim that she needs a car much safer than the one I drove to high school in.

    I'd love to be proven wrong, but I get that they value long-term tax-extraction potential over personal benefits.

    • That would definitely never pass US crash test standards. But they could conceivably build one for only twice as much that would do so. I hope they do, and make it flat towable. It would be a great toad for RVing. It also has to go twice as fast to be legal here as anything but a NEV, though.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        That would definitely never pass US crash test standards.

        So eliminate the crash test standards. They are pretty useless anyway, since they don't prevent people from riding bicycles, electric scooters and motorcycles. Just put a NHTSA sticker with a crash rating on the window in the dealership and let the market (and your insurance company) decide.

        • I'm not against crash test standards. But I'm also not against communities creating places where these vehicles can be driven. It's not safe to mix these with full sized cars. As a full sized person, I want those larger vehicles to continue to exist. (I'm two meters tall...)

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by PPH ( 736903 )

            It's not safe to mix these with full sized cars.

            Places like Europe and Japan have a 'tradition' of town cars* or Kei cars. And no problems restricting the areas in which they might operate. But try that in the USA and someone will just get into the freeway left lane and cry "Muh rights!" when they start stacking up traffic. And not just tiny cars. Some years ago, I traveled through Austria. On some of the narrow mountain roads, the rule was "No trucks. No RVs." If you need to get from one town to the next with your oversized rig, you drove to the local t

            • "Some years ago, I traveled through Austria. On some of the narrow mountain roads, the rule was "No trucks. No RVs."

              We have roads here where there are length limits. For example, no combinations over 39 feet on highway 175 between Lakeport, CA and Hopland, or no RVs over 40 feet on the very northern end of Highway 1 between Leggett and Rockport.

  • It is designed to create the worst impression possible for BEVs. Make them look and behave like a wheezing asthmatic golf cart. Lets make sure people think, "Its an electric car. It does not go fast. It does not go far. And if you drive it people think you are gay".

    In the BT era this technique worked wonderfully. But in the AT era it would fall flat.

    BT = Before Tesla. AT = After Tesla.

  • In the US it's a Class B LSEV (Score:5, Informative)

    by nickovs ( 115935 ) on Sunday March 01, 2020 @10:33AM (#59784184)

    In the USA there is already a category for vehicles like this; it's called a Class B Low Speed Electric Vehicle. These are electric vehicles that have a top speed between 25mph and 45mph. This puts it a step up from golf carts, which are usually classed as Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (which can't go more than 25mph), and as a result they are allowed to go more places but also subject to more restrictions. In most states a LSEV-B needs to be registered, taxed, insured and then driven by someone with a license whereas generally an NEV does not.

  • > It would be hard to get a good used car at that price

    WTF?

    https://www.autoscout24.de/lst... [autoscout24.de]

    gives me > 100000 hits for Germany alone. Don't tell me these are all bad.

  • Is slashdot going to embrace UTF-8 in 2020? Finally?

    that IS news for nerds and stuff that matters ;-)

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