Ami One concept car to debut in Geneva next month featuring a cost-effective package and all-electric drivetrain for two.
It’s perfect for the streets of Bangkok!
Welcome to the Citroen Ami One, a concept car that’s expected to be one of the highlights at the Geneva motor show early next month.
Designed primarily for experimental purposes, the two-seat Ami One is a highly cost-effective car featuring a symmetrical body, all-electric drivetrain and the latest in digital assistance systems.
Designed to lower production costs, the boxy-looking city car has identical doors on both sides as well as cloned bumpers on the front and rear ends.
Measuring just 2.5m, the Ami One weighs less than 500 kilos and has a turning radius of just 4m. To put that into perspective, it can make U-turns nearly as tightly as those three-wheeled tuk tuks.
The French carmaker is also touting the Ami One as a potential candidate for car-sharing schemes in which it can also offer passengers with various digital services. Citroen says it’s possible that no driver’s license is required when using the Ami One in some countries due to its width not exceeding 1.5m.
Tch! What’s powering it?
Citroen hasn’t delved into the details but has provided some vitals. The lithium ion battery pack is located beneath the cabin floor and can be recharged in two hours.
As well, Citroen says the Ami One can also be plugged into a standard socket at home via an extension cable (once blamed for a fire inferno of a plug-in Porsche Panamera in Thailand).
The Ami One has a driving range of 100km and reaches a top speed of 45kph. This truly makes it a city car as the way Citroen intends to pitch it as.
In theory, it could be a comparable match for not only the Smart ForTwo but also the now-defunct Toyota iQ. The Smart, for one, already has an all-electric drivetrain to choose from in world markets.
Whether the Ami One could form as an indirect replacement for the A-segment C1 (jointly developed with Peugeot and Toyota) or bring back the glory days of the 2CV remains to be seen.
But from a Thai point of view, the Ami One has too far-fetched implications because Citroen is virtually dormant here and two-seat four-wheel cars are still expensive to make (not to mention the notoriously high import duties in Thailand).
