With two seats, a tiny price tag, and the capacity for hijinks, the Citroën Ami is the kind of EV we need here in the United States. You may want it even more now, too, because Citroën is massively expanding production of the “buggy” version with no doors, a retracting roof, and a price that makes a Jeep Wrangler look aristocratic.
The Citroën My Ami Buggy II (as its birth certificate reads) is a revival of the original Ami buggy production run that sold out in a heartbeat last year. It takes the itty-bitty Ami—with its 5.5-kilowatt-hour battery allowing some 43 miles of range at up to 28 mph—and knocks off its doors and peels back its roof. Instead, they’re replaced by door bars, zipping transparent covers, and a rainproof canopy. They can peel back when the weather’s good or be removed entirely on the most idyllic days.
The Ami buggy gets reinforced bumpers and skid plates to handle light off-road cruising, plus a ton of features to make it a solid beach day companion. It has storage bins, straps, bag hooks to hang up your belongings, and a removable zipper pouch in the steering wheel. (It’s legally a quad bike, so there’s probably no airbag.) It also has a Bluetooth speaker that docks in the dashboard, and offers 15 hours of battery life.
Citroën only made 50 Ami buggies for its initial production run, but they clearly sold well enough to justify expanding this series to 1,000 units. They’ll be sold across nine European countries, including the U.K., at a price equivalent to $11,290. That’s well under a quarter of the average price of a new car here in the States.
Sure, there’s only so much you can do with a two-seater that does 28 mph, but it could still easily replace many Americans’ commuters and recreational vehicles in one fell swoop. Now we need someone to try importing one as a neighborhood EV and see if the DMV goes apeshit like it did over kei cars.
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