RETURNOFLEBUBBLE
SHRINKING violets may not enjoy Citroen’s quirky new AMI electric cube car. For in this cute zeroemissions city car, you get stared at — a lot. It is a 21st-century battery-powered incarnation of the same Citroen spirit that produced the original 1948 2CV. And priced at around £5,000, it is arguably just as revolutionary. And legally as it’s classed as a ‘light quadricycle’ it can be driven at the age of 16 across most of Europe and 14 in France.
I drove it in Coventry, where PSA Peugeot- Citroen has its British headquarters.
Its compact cubic styling also echoes the equally eye-catching tiny fuel-saving ‘bubble cars’ of the late 1950s and early 1960s, It’s just 2.41 metres long, 1.39-metres wide and 1.52m high.
Its sculpted plastic on a metal frame may be basic, but it is clever and well executed.
Available only in left- hand drive, in France, it is bought entirely online and can be used as a car- share rented by the minute, leased for four years, or purchased outright.
To save costs, the two wide doors are identical but are hinged differently — the driver’s at the rear, the passenger’s at the front — so open in opposite directions. The front and rear bumpers are interchangeable.
It is remarkably light and airy inside with great visibility thanks to the profusion of glass from a huge windscreen, generous side windows and a large fixed sun roof. Side windows open manually and tilt upwards outside — just like the original 2CV’s.
A tiny dashboard screen gives speed, battery level, range, and drive mode, but little else.
To the right of the steering wheel is a small holder for your smartphone which, via an app, will provide satnav and radio.
The two moulded plastic seats are surprisingly comfortable. There’s a storage recess in front of the passenger’s feet where you might squeeze in a bag but no boot. I turned my key in the manual ignition, put the gear selector into drive mode, and I was off with a whizz. At lower speeds around town it fair zips along the city roads for which it has been designed primarily as an ‘ urban mobility’ alternative to cars and bicycles. Power comes from a 5.5kWh lithium-ion battery that provides a range of up to 44 miles and a top speed of 28 mph. It has a turning circle of just 7.2m. Ride and handling is not its strong suit. Rough as old guts, in fact.
The suspension has all the subtly of a Challenger tank riding over a cratered Salisbury Plain. If you get really cold, the heater makes so much racket it is best to wrap up warm instead.
Yet, for all of that, it really is a hoot to drive.
Charging from a domestic plug takes three hours.