Citroën Ami - a tiny, electric 'polypropylene cube on wheels' for urban driving

[Cid]

This isn't the vehicle for me but I am excited by it and what it means.

Yeah, I think that's a good way to look at it. Especially in the UK, which is shit with this kind of thing... But this, with the various covered ebikes that people seem to be working on, do I think represent something of a change in how personal transport in cities will work.

What I would really like to see is widespread electric mopeds and motorbikes. I saw someone on a Super Soco today and wanted to stop him and ask him how he liked it.

These are basically ubiquitous in China. Far and away the most common form of transport... I'm not really sure why they haven't caught on elsewhere. It's not as if Chinese weather is better suited to them or anything. Possibly the safety and licensing aspect... China they can ride in bike lanes (which tend to be bigger and segregated) and iirc don't require any form of license. Which, don't get me wrong, is far from perfect but - as with most things - you get used to it. China I suppose acts on a kind of trunk and side street system - major roads (e.g Holloway road equivalent) tend to have large cycle lanes or mixed use pavements (not always very well implemented), with the road proper limited to larger vehicles. Then the more local roads will be a mix of large vehicles and bikes etc... No one speeds on those because it's basically impossible. There's a lot wrong with it I could get into, but that is probably more to do with aspects of government and rather ad-hoc implementation than anything else.

I've not been to Europe in bloody ages, so dunno how it compares to the better systems there. But there is something incredibly conservative about the UK that is really starting to piss me off. This kind of resistance to trying anything new, whether it be in transport, power generation etc. Even where those things have existed in other countries, and worked, for decades. It's stultifying.

 

[Brainaddict]

The objections on here to using these in towns are from the usual conservative voices and can safely be ignored by anyone with imagination. The practical objection I can think of is that a lot of people in London keep cars partly for trips out of London, and these will be no good for that. As someone said, you can hire cars for longer trips but this is still too expensive unless you go out to an airport and rent there, which is quite a pain in the arse. We need to work out how to provide rental cars per day at a reasonable cost near your home, so that people don't have big lumps of metal sitting around taking up space for their occasional trips out of London. And without rip-off fees for imagined scratches to wheel alloys as well. Guess we probably need public car rental, since the private sector puts a lot of people off renting cars.

 

[SpookyFrank]

How on earth would you get into this situation?

By going round a roundabout too fast in the first place. Which of course makes it more likely that someone will pull out ahead of you without enough space, as they may have seen you but assumed you were driving at a sensible speed and so they had plenty of time.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Now, I'd rather have no cars at all, but if we've got to have them, then I'd prefer these tiny little thid on the city streets. Interestingly, in France kids as young as 14 can legally drive them.

Ami, the tiny cube on wheels that French 14-year-olds can drive

Citroën’s ‘urban mobility object’ is classed as a light quadricyle and can be driven without a full licence

www.theguardian.com

These cars exist purely to allow people to drink and drive, not entirely sure I’d want to be a cheerleader for them.

 

[editor]

These cars exist purely to allow people to drink and drive, not entirely sure I’d want to be a cheerleader for them.

I must have missed that from the marketing material.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

I must have missed that from the marketing material.

The little car you can drive in France without a licence - BBC News

The top speed is 28mph and it's only tiny but the voiture sans permis - often held together with wire and gaffer tape - is a key feature of French village life.

www.bbc.com

 

[gentlegreen]

I was trying to find a meme relating to elderly people "holding up traffic" ...

 

[DownwardDog]

The answer is hydrogen. The cars exist, the filling stations exist. Use wind, hydro, tidal and solar to make hydrogen.

Hydrogen infrastructure is too expensive as it has to be stored and dispensed at 700 bar! Also fuel cell EVs are less efficient than battery EVs. There's a reason why every volume car manufacturer is moving to battery EVs and it's not because they haven't heard of hydrogen.

 

[xenon]

The answer is hydrogen. The cars exist, the filling stations exist. Use wind, hydro, tidal and solar to make hydrogen.

Apparently it may be possible to convert petrol cars to hydrogen fuuled ones too. I imagine expensively so but still.

Regarding charging. An interim solution might be to swap batteries att existing petrol stations or supermarkets. This hub infrastructure already exists after all. Granted extra storage might have to be built and there might be issues with storing batteries adjacent to large tanks of petrol.

 

[Sasaferrato]

Hydrogen infrastructure is too expensive as it has to be stored and dispensed at 700 bar! Also fuel cell EVs are less efficient than battery EVs. There's a reason why every volume car manufacturer is moving to battery EVs and it's not because they haven't heard of hydrogen.

The other year California opened 200 hydrogen filling stations.

 

[Pickman's model]

Now, I'd rather have no cars at all, but if we've got to have them, then I'd prefer these tiny little thid on the city streets. Interestingly, in France kids as young as 14 can legally drive them.

Ami, the tiny cube on wheels that French 14-year-olds can drive

Citroën’s ‘urban mobility object’ is classed as a light quadricyle and can be driven without a full licence

www.theguardian.com

proper dodgems would be better

 

[souljacker]

Apparently it may be possible to convert petrol cars to hydrogen fuuled ones too. I imagine expensively so but still.

Regarding charging. An interim solution might be to swap batteries att existing petrol stations or supermarkets. This hub infrastructure already exists after all. Granted extra storage might have to be built and there might be issues with storing batteries adjacent to large tanks of petrol.

Isn't the whole floor of a Tesla batteries? I don't think you can just pop one out and swap it over.

 

[DownwardDog]

I was trying to find a meme relating to elderly people "holding up traffic" ...

The is a whole sub-culture of performing "débridage" on VSP where kids back off the throttle adjustment bolt and remove shims from the variator to get more rpm and speed. I wholeheartedly condone behaviour of this type. 70km/h in one looks like a laugh.

 

[Badgers]

£5,550

That can fuck off unless it comes with a 10 year warranty
You can get a second hand campervan, decent ebike, a holiday and have some change.

 

[Teaboy]

The is a whole sub-culture of performing "débridage" on VSP where kids back off the throttle adjustment bolt and remove shims from the variator to get more rpm and speed. I wholeheartedly condone behaviour of this type. 70km/h in one looks like a laugh.

Whilst it is scarcely possible to believe I still suspect this video would be even more boring if you can speak French.

 

[skyscraper101]

Hydrogen infrastructure is too expensive as it has to be stored and dispensed at 700 bar! Also fuel cell EVs are less efficient than battery EVs. There's a reason why every volume car manufacturer is moving to battery EVs and it's not because they haven't heard of hydrogen.

The other year California opened 200 hydrogen filling stations.

If you can stand to watch him, there's quite a good video of James May arguing with himself and summing up the pros and cons of Hydrogen v Electric cars here (from 9m30secs)

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Normal route:

View attachment 229940

Max 30mph route:

View attachment 229942

I hope you don't smoke. You'll set yourself on fire with all that straw. Just looked up Coventry inner ring road and the speed limit is 40 mph (no doubt the actual speed is way lower than that a lot of the time). Why do you assume a small car capable of 30 mph would not be allowed on such a road? Also, again having just looked up Coventry, a bunch of main roads there had their speed limits reduced toi 30 mph this year, with plans for more. I would wager that the whole of Coventry will be 30 mph before long.

 

[gentlegreen]

There is massive investment going on

The is a whole sub-culture of performing "débridage" on VSP where kids back off the throttle adjustment bolt and remove shims from the variator to get more rpm and speed. I wholeheartedly condone behaviour of this type. 70km/h in one looks like a laugh.

The tickover sounded a bit rough arfter the test ride ...

 

[Spymaster]

The is a whole sub-culture of performing "débridage" on VSP where kids back off the throttle adjustment bolt and remove shims from the variator to get more rpm and speed. I wholeheartedly condone behaviour of this type. 70km/h in one looks like a laugh.

Showing good skills there in managing to film the instrument pod smoothly and at the same time drive at 70kph around country lanes

 

[DownwardDog]

We must now turn our attention to the other quasi-legal European car for children: the EPA tractors of Sweden.

 

[DownwardDog]

Showing good skills there in managing to film the instrument pod smoothly and at the same time drive at 70kph around country lanes

GoPro bite mount is the best tool for filming the cluster while driving at ridiculous speeds. That's what I used for my 260km/h run in the Supra. You can just spit it out into the passenger footwell if the cops appear.

 

[Cid]

I'd totally forgotten about the weird French counting system from 70-100.

 

[Spymaster]

I'd totally forgotten about the weird French counting system over from 70-100.

Same. I just remembered it from that video.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

I'd totally forgotten about the weird French counting system from 70-100.

"Four twenty ten nine" being the pinnacle of the genre.

 

[DownwardDog]

I'd totally forgotten about the weird French counting system from 70-100.

Francophone Belgians eschew vigesimal counting and use septante, huitante and nonante.

 

[Cid]

Francophone Belgians eschew vigesimal counting and use septante, huitante and nonante.

Evidently because they 'av the little grey cells.

 

[gentlegreen]

"Four twenty ten nine" being the pinnacle of the genre.

"Four score and nineteen". It's kind of Biblical.

 

[Chz]

So it's a stylish G-Wizz, with all the same problems. Mainly safety-related.

Citroën also asserts that the Ami is, relatively speaking, safe. “Relative” is Citroën’s way of saying safer than alternative forms of urban transport with fewer than four wheels and less or no bodywork around you, such as scooters and bikes. The Ami comes with seatbelts but no airbags.

So it's safer than a bike, but crucially much less safe than a proper car. You want something small, there's the very safe Smart. You want electric, there's no end of them these days. Buying a quad bike with a roof has never been a great idea.

 

[DownwardDog]

So it's a stylish G-Wizz, with all the same problems. Mainly safety-related.

So it's safer than a bike, but crucially much less safe than a proper car. You want something small, there's the very safe Smart. You want electric, there's no end of them these days. Buying a quad bike with a roof has never been a great idea.

It's a quarter of a price of a Smart. They will sell loads in France on the 20 EUR/Month plan.

 

[Chz]

Of course it's a quarter the price. It's not a car! I still look at it and all its ilk as rolling deathtraps. At least a bike has a good chance of avoiding being in a collision. You're just fucked if you get hit in one of these, even at 30mph. Never in a million years would I get one.
Did the French not have a G-Wizz equivalent back in the day?

Edit: Had a look around in France. An proper electric Aixam is ~€15k. I don't want to know about the shortcuts involved in knocking nearly €10k off the price.