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The Citroën Ami and the future of urban transportation
- vdfs 6y agoYou know it's an electric car when it look ugly
- Noos 6y agoI'd say infantile more than anything. It looks like a fisher-price preschool toy. Or like one of the little tikes children's pedal cars. Kind of fitting in a cynical sense, I guess.
- qwerty456127 6y agoAll cars are ugly nowadays.
- jackric 6y agoIt'll become chic, like the cybertruck
- progre 6y agoI'd go with 'distingtive' as it breaks some expectations. "Ugly" is not a usefull description as it's very individual. I wouldn't be surprised though if european sensubilites skew diffrently than, say american.
- arethuza 6y agoThe Tesla Model S was probably the first contemporary US car design that I actually thought looked nice (although my first reaction was "That new model of Ford Mondeo looks really nice").
- vdfs 6y agoYeah, it is distinctive but not in a good way, compare it to next cheapest model[1] it's way better and normal looking. Their other cars design are over top, specially that the parent company own Citroën, Peugeot, DS, Opel and Vauxhall. https://media.citroen.fr/image/28/9/C1ELLE.279289.36.jpg https://media.citroen.fr/image/28/9/C1ELLE.279289.36.jpg
- vidarh 6y agoI'd argue this very firmly meets the expectations of a class of small cars where being distinctive matters (almost) as much as being compact, and certainly more than having it look the way bigger cars are expected to. With the 2CV, Mini Cooper and the Smart cars as the most prominent early examples, but there are a bunch of other cars in this segment pushing down towards the 100"/2.5m length mark now, and a lot of the newer design aesthetics in this segment seems to involve intentionally signalling that it's part of this segment by an exaggerated "compressed" look (compare the Mini Cooper, that just looks like a small but relatively normal car, to e.g. the Smart ForTwo or the Ami, that both looks like they've been squashed). This is intentional signalling to a customer segment that wants that type of car.
- robertlagrant 6y agoI think the conclusion is a bit unbalanced. Plenty of trips are short range and people don't have unlimited cash to replace their bikes with even cheap cars. If it's there, they may well use it a lot of journeys which they'd otherwise have used a car for - popping to the shops, going in to town or going to a nearby friend's house.
- qwerty456127 6y agoIMHO this should be the only kind of personal cars allowed within city boundaries. Perhaps it can be made slightly bigger to accommodate 2 children.
- dfxm12 6y agoOnce you make that tradeoff, you're back at a Citroen C1, though.
- qwerty456127 6y agoWhich doesn't look nearly as cool :-]
- speedgoose 6y agoOr the Citroën C-zero (which is a Mitsubishi i-Miev).
- mrweasel 6y agoI honestly just need it to be fast, 45kph is dangerous on motorways. Plenty of European cities have motorways leading drivers into the city from the suburbs. The range isn’t an issue under normal conditions, but may be a dealbreaker if it’s your second car and backup.
- abeppu 6y agoI would love to live in a city where all the cars are small, quiet, and not too fast. But logistically, how would cars enter or leave the city? If you wanted to travel by car with a few others to visit someone in another city ... do you have to take your small electric car with luggage to the city boundary, and then switch to a different car that can go on the highway (and has a greater range)? When you arrive at the destination city, do you then again switch vehicles to another small city car? So one trip needs 3 vehicles? Would the city boundary then have to be host to a giant concentration of garages where people keep their city-car until they return? Would people own the highway-capable cars, but be obliged to store them possibly very far away from their homes? Or in this story are the highway-capable cars almost all rentals?
- Theodores 6y agoThe author sees this as another car, therefore not helpful for living streets. I share this sentiment however I wonder if streets would become pleasant to be in if all of the vehicles were silent and electric. Most towns have cars with revving engines and the pollution that comes with it. The Ami does not come with these problems and I think it would be interesting to see a large scale trial of a town where only silent true electric vehicles are allowed in town. Would people start using their front gardens and have time for passing neighbours? Did the French get the G-Wiz a decade ago, only for it to fail? That too used the quad bike classification.
- Noos 6y agoI think noise adds safety though. This is why things like electric mobility scooters or forklifts/platform vehicles often have a (sometimes piercing) noise when backing up. True silent vehicles going thirty miles or up might be more dangerous than not.
- Someone 6y agoFTA: “Citroën expects that almost half of the drivers will be younger than 18. They argue that parents will prefer to have their teenage children race around the city in a vehicle that is much safer than scooters or bicycles. […] So What Is The Problem?” The problem is that it will move teenagers out of bicycles, scooters, and public transport, thus making roads busier. That’s not where we should want to go if we want to make city centers more livable.
- burlesona 6y ago^ this is an excellent short summary of the article.
- lm28469 6y agoThis is always the same rebound/stacking problem with tech. Look at 5G, supposedly it uses less energy per byte than 4g, but we'll have 2 problems: - rebound: faster bandwidth = people will consume more bytes = need more energy - stack: 5G will be deployed on top of 4g which is deployed on top of 3g which is deployed on top of 2g which is still operational in many places. It goes the same for transportation. If an electric car replaces a ICE car it's a net positive (or maybe not, you'd have to study the whole cycle from lithium mining to end of life disposal). If an electric car replaces a pedestrian or a bicycle it's a net negative no matter how you look at it.
- extropy 6y agoTo be fair 2g is being turned down already with 3g to follow around 2022. They are wasteful in terms of needed frequency/power vs bandwidth.
- mrpopo 6y ago> or maybe not, you'd have to study the whole cycle from lithium mining to end of life disposal It also depends on the electric mix, but an electric car will almost always be a net positive over its lifetime, due to its much better power-to-wheels efficiency (70-80% instead of 20-40% for ICE). That's 2 to 4 times energy saved! (depending on model) But overall efficiency needs to take into account the weight too. A Tesla Model X is 2.5t. If your car is 2 times the weight of your old car, say good bye to your efficiency gains. That's where a Citroën AMI has potential, IMO. A really light-weight, really efficient electric car that does the job. Hope they start advertising it like that.
- progre 6y agoIsn't this space ripe for a 3d-printer-like revolution? I mean, lots of the parts can probably be had off the shelf, someone might come up with a system for securing standard aluminium tubing togeather at a few set angles for a frame. Outer and inner panels can be vacum formed plastic or glassfiber and made by practically anyone with the space and the inclination to bang togeather the molds.
- cdepman 6y ago100% agree with the article - cars, even in this petite form factor, are not the future of urban transportation. Cycling, electric cycling, scooting, walking and better mass transit will make our cities quieter, safer and more livable. Sure, there is a niche for these cute cars for those unable to use these other forms.
- zdragnar 6y ago...in warm climates. Nobody wants to walk to or from a bus stop in -30 degree winds if they can get an alternative, and most won't scooter or bike in freezing conditions either.
- baq 6y agoexactly. ideally there would be no need to get to the bus stop - if most of your needs could be satisfied within walking distance.
- ghaff 6y agoEven if you live in the urban core of a dense city like Boston, NY, or Paris, you can't realistically walk most places you would want to go.
- slykar 6y agoWhere do you want to go? Living in a city center right now. It's hard for me to find a thing I DON'T have in a radius of 4km, which is a reasonable walking distance.
- ed312 6y agoUh, citation please? Have lived in and around Boston, you certainly can get everything you need with either walking or a couple T stops.
- ghaff 6y ago
- petra 6y agoIs there a technical reason why the speed of this car is limited to 45km/hr ?
- bryanlarsen 6y agoIt's a legal reason: > It is classified as a quadricycle, not a car, so anyone over 14 can legally drive the car in France without a license. I imagine that also allows it to escape the rigorous crash testing that cars are subject to. This is why experimental vehicles in the United States usually have 3 wheels instead of 4.
- seszett 6y agoIt allows it to have lower safety requirements because of the lower speeds involved in an accident. And since speed is limited to 50 km/h in cities and soon to 30 km/h, a faster speed should not be needed.
- namdnay 6y agoIt's a specific type of vehicle in France, "car without licence". It's basically a moped engine inside. They have difficulty going above 20kmh up a slope
- athenot 6y agoIt's a legal reason. But it probably allowed this vehicle to not undergo the same kind of crash testing as highway-capable vehicles.
- JackFr 6y agoThe author's main argument seems to be that the Citroen Ami is successful along many dimensions, but it is not a bicycle. While large scale adoption would encourage some helpful trends with respect to emissions and safety, it might crowd further adoption of cycling out, so should adoption of the Ami is to be avoided. I understand the the arguments favoring bicycle transport, but I think it's odd to hinge them on a the review of a model of car.
- jbob2000 6y agoI really like the idea about using a smartphone and bluetooth speaker for the dash system. I'm wondering how big of a cost savings it could be for other budget cars, where you just have an app for climate control and Bring-Your-Own-Speakers.
- Ichthypresbyter 6y agoThe Volkswagen Up has a smartphone cradle for navigation (which will also charge your phone, and let you play music from it via Bluetooth), though it has a built-in radio.
- me_me_me 6y agoThat's one ugly car. But at the end of the article I am starting to warm up to it. Maybe its not that ugly.
- kergonath 6y agoIt is definitely quirky. I am not sure I like it, but it is different. I was thinking the same of the Twizy, and they seem to be quite common now.
- astrobe_ 6y agoDo you like her grandma better ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_Ami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_Ami
- skocznymroczny 6y agoI still find it ugly. Citroen C1 looks much much better in comparison.
- burlesona 6y agoTLDR; the author likes this tiny city car, but doesn’t like that it fundamentally competes not with other cars, but with biking and transit. For the sake of climate and city life, society should be moving the other direction (away from cars towards bikes and transit). I don’t disagree with the authors take on where we want cities to go. However I do not share the concern that this tiny car makes the problem worse. My reasoning is, the battle to reduce the role of cars in cities is fundamentally cultural, at least in democratic societies. I think the rising number of “in-between” mobility options like this is a huge asset in the culture shift. Forget about the weather, the infrastructure, etc. The bigger problem is ability and laziness. Modern cities are simply too big for walking across in a time-efficient manner. But as most people have noticed, assuming one can safely bike, the bicycle enormously improves the radius that a person can conveniently access without the space consumption of a car. But what I think idealists, especially young idealists, really have a hard time relating to, is what a small percentage of humans can really get around by bike as their primary mode. Adults over 30 represent the bulk of the population, and a very large percentage of these folks (including myself) are physically limited either by health condition, by age, by injury, or even just by being very out of shape. A person in that condition may smile at the bike lanes and think they look like fun, but also sadly think to themselves “I could never do that.” As long as this large and politically dominant chunk of the population feels excluded, going bike-first isn’t going to happen. But this is where e-bikes, scooters, and “quadricycles” like the Ami are so valuable. Anyone who depends on driving could drive one of those. And shifting to smaller, lighter, slower vehicles improves safety for everyone else. It also reduces the demand for things like giant parking lots that so wreck the urban fabric. I think anything that creates more options in the middle make the transition easier to accept and embrace. And anything that makes more people feel welcome and included in the shift away from car-centric cities helps reduce opposition and make the next increment of change politically feasible. I know it isn’t as exciting or glamorous as jumping all the way to the final destination in one go, but incremental steps like this are generally how true progress happens. So I, for one, am excited about the Ami, and the general rise in micro-mobility options it represents.
- wenc 6y ago> Modern cities are simply too big for walking across in a time-efficient manner. I'm a big proponent of transit, but I realize that transit has one downside -- time. The time dimension is oft forgotten aspect of accessibility. You may be able to get somewhere, but if it takes several connections and a transit time of over 1 hr, you're not likely to do it frequently. There are invisible barriers to connectivity that are time-related (or more broadly, friction-related). As a younger person my time was worth less so I thought nothing of trading off time. But I'm older now, and I realize in order to get more done, I need to get to more places quicker. (Anecdotally I hear people forgoing dates because they don't think they can sustain a relationship with someone who lives one borough too far away. Almost no one owns a car in NYC, so the MTA is generally the only option, and getting from Queens to Columbia University say can take an hour.)
- preslavrachev 6y agoCheers for the awesome blog! It's rare to see one these days, which is dedicated to a niche topic like automotive UX design and is not trying to sell you consulting services (like mine, lol).
- ghaff 6y agoI have to wonder a bit about the use case for an urban-only car. Most of the people I know who live in cities, even cities with good public transit, own cars but they mostly own cars to get out of the city on weekends and so forth. Even if it's relatively cheap it still has many of the downsides of owning a car in a dense city but you can't actually use it for many of the purposes you'd want a car in the first place. I guess if it's aimed at teenagers maybe? But that seems even more niche.
- Tade0 6y agoI don't enjoy displaying Amsterdam as an example of how cycling would take over if only given the chance, because this city is an outlier as it's essentially flat. Elevation map of Amsterdam: https://www.floodmap.net/Elevation/ElevationMap/?gi=2759794 https://www.floodmap.net/Elevation/ElevationMap/?gi=2759794 Paris: https://www.floodmap.net/Elevation/ElevationMap/?gi=2988507 https://www.floodmap.net/Elevation/ElevationMap/?gi=2988507 Note the difference in scale. You need a lot more sustained power for climbing in comparison to just cruising along. Also the Netherlands have a high population density of 500 people per square kilometer, so they simply can't really rely on cars.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoE-Bikes solve that problem.
- chrisin2d 6y agoI live in Amsterdam. Your point is valid that the flat topography makes cycling easy. But electric bicycles solve the issue of climbing slopes and are extremely cheap. For the price of an entry-level car you can buy 6 good e-bikes or 2–3 top-of-the-line models. Making cities more bike-friendly would be a boon to the working class who could then enjoy mobility cheaply.
- Tade0 6y agoI agree that they are a good alternative, but to me they're also a very bad combination of being somewhat expensive and, at the same time, easy to steal. Personally if I were to invest in an e-bike, it would have to be the folding variant which I could take with me.
- herbstein 6y agoMy daily commute takes me from sea level (well, 1 meter above) to 66 meters above sea level. It's not uncommon that I have obligations at around 79 meters above sea level. Both of those climbs are single hills that don't let up, and are on major commuting routes in my city - a city in which biking is almost at an Amsterdam-level of bike usage. Sure, it's tougher than a flat road. But if you're in any kind of shape it shouldn't take too big of a toll out of you. During lockdown I spent months without going on that commute, and without keeping myself in shape by other means, and when starting back up again I didn't miss a beat. A small hill (which I consider ~60-80 meter differences) shouldn't scare people much. EDIT: I should also add that I ride on a heavy mountain bike. The intention was to use it as a commuter and to ride trails, but it's almost exclusively been used as a commuter.
- hoseja 6y agoThey made the Simpsons electric car!
- Animats 6y agoThere are dozens of little electric cars like that available from China.[1] [1] https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/city-car.html https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/city-car.html
- Joeri 6y agoIn france there is a brand of these four-wheeled motorcycles called ligier which has been around for decades. They’ve been getting more popular, and it seems traditional car companies are taking notice. https://www.ligier.fr/ https://www.ligier.fr/
- bborud 6y agoI'm afraid this car will create more problems than it solves. It is a disappointingly short sighted effort. To make a difference in a city it needs to shrink down the area occupied by cars today as well as reduce the absolute numbers. Since this car cannot travel at even modest highway speeds it does not replace anyone's primary car. The result is that people will end up owning more cars. If they can afford it. The second problem is that it puts a new demographic on the road: teenagers. In this segment it would (again, for those who can afford it) replace public transport, bicycling and walking. I live in a city. I have a small car. What I really want is an even smaller car built around the fact that most of the time I am transporting just myself. But I need to be able to drive at highway speeds in order to not cause traffic problems. This is an embarrassingly poor design effort. Europeans used to be great at designing nation changing, important small cars. The french had the 2CV and the Renault 4. The Italians gave us the (original) Fiat 500.
- s0rce 6y agoIts so hard to buy a small car these days in the US. The offerings are pretty poor. Mitsubishi Mirage, Fiat 500, Chevy Spark. And then if you want AWD there are basically no options (I drive a discontinued Suzuki SX4 because everything else is bigger). Not to mention the lack of practical small city cars but everything else keeps getting bigger. The small Rav4 is now much larger and there isn't a little crossover replacing it.
- nsriv 6y agoHad the same issue, and ended up settling on an HR-V AWD.
- analog31 6y agoI don't know if your use of AWD is for winter driving, but I've learned that snow tires make more of a difference during the winter than AWD. You can get a set of snow tires, mounted on rims, balanced, and inflated, delivered to your doorstep by TireRack for what seems like a reasonable price.
- 6y ago
- neaanopri 6y agoThis article is so smug. It reminds me of Communist arguments AGAINST worker's rights. These communist arguments boil down to: "we should not try to make workers' lives better, because in order to have The Revolution, workers need to be angry and dissatisfied." Just take a good thing where you can get it!
- greatgib 6y agoHere you have a pseudo article of someone ready to say with confidence anything to support his own agenda. Being it true or false... Here it looks like that this one wants to promote bicycling so will say anything to support that. But it is like going back to the dark age. Do you remember when we couldn't go very far from home? Transport things? He pretends that Paris was better and a paradise before the 'evil work' of Haussmann. It is so untrue! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Paris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa... << In the middle of the nineteenth century, the center of Paris was viewed as overcrowded, dark, dangerous, and unhealthy. In 1845, the French social reformer Victor Considerant wrote: "Paris is an immense workshop of putrefaction, where misery, pestilence and sickness work in concert, where sunlight and air rarely penetrate. Paris is a terrible place where plants shrivel and perish, and where, of seven small infants, four die during the course of the year." >> Also some interesting photo of that time: https://www.messynessychic.com/2013/10/11/lost-paris-documenting-the-disappearance-of-a-medieval-city/ https://www.messynessychic.com/2013/10/11/lost-paris-documen...
- francis_t_catte 6y agohave you ever heard of... trains?
- greatgib 6y agoIn France, you are not allowed to transport 'packages' in trains. Just luggages. But more closely related to cities, imagine your life if there was just bicycles lanes and there was no car/truck for the plumber, ambulances, deliveries and supplying, old and handicap people, ...
- gumby 6y agoThere's a straightforward use case: In Paris we never had a car because public transport was so good and having a car was such a pain. But we had no kids. Once we had a kid suddenly there were many new issues such as trying to carry the baby seat to/from the metro. Suddenly a car was more inviting and this wold be great for that application. When the kid is older things can change; we later lived in a city with plentiful bike lanes and it was great...except in the snow.
- presentation 6y agoIn Japan a lot of people seem to use e-bikes with two baby seats attached to them - despite the fact that that's actually not legal.
- llampx 6y agoYes it is actually crazy how much stuff people with babies and toddlers need to carry. Of course the amount of stuff also expands to fill the available space. My niece requires like 5 different toys for a single outing, let alone a weekend out of town.