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The only viable place for something like Ami is car sharing in my opinion. The thing is, car manufacturers have been doing this since long before Tesla. They ma

The only viable place for something like Ami is car sharing in my opinion. The thing is, car manufacturers have been doing this since long before Tesla. They make something that screams 'look, I'm a weird thing that resembles a car, because I'm electric'. And the general population just wouldn't buy them. And then Tesla came along and showed that you can actually make a car that is electric and that people would want to own. In my opinion the market really has spoken. And what it says is loud and clear: "We want electric cars that look like cars and can be used accordingly." I mean, if there was a huge market for small, slow, weird looking things on four wheels, there's no reason why ICE power-train driven devices couldn't have filled that niche a long time ago.

eloisant 6y ago
In Europe the Smart for 2 managed to fill a nice niche despite being as expensive as a regular, 5 people car. The AMI is much cheaper and can be driven by teenagers at 14, so I suspect it can really find its place between the regular car and the electric bike for city. Typically this can be the 2nd car for a family, instead of having the family car + Twingo, you can get this one which is cheaper, easier to park and can be used by your teenager. But yeah, Americans tend to associate their personality with their cars and drive a car as big as their garage can accomodate so it's probably not for them.
- jgilias 6y ago
  I'm not American, so can't speak for them. Pretty much all kids in my relatively small town have scooters. The girls have Vespas or some Vespa lookalikes, whereas the guys do wheelies on theirs. Some seem to like a Mad-Max style where they get an old scooter, and strip it almost naked, some have nifty ones that look very sports-bike like. Bigger kids have 125cc motorbikes. Some look like dirt-bikes, some look like sports-bikes. You could say that Ami would resist the elements better. But it doesn't seem like the kids mind rain much, or that Ami was particularly well suited for winter months. If I was 15, you'd see me dead in one of them Amis. I'd take a 'naked' scooter I can do wheelies on any day. This seems to be a general problem with these small EVs, people always believe there's someone else that will surely buy them. As long as it's not them.
  - TacticalCoder 6y ago
    > If I was 15, you'd see me dead in one of them Amis. Yes, at least the Smart looks ok. But that Citroen thing is totally ugly: it reminds me of the car that the billionaire was using in one scene in Silicon Valley when leaving the restaurant, where it's actually only half a car. But Silicon Valley is satire. It's weird that a country like France so well known for its luxury brands and "savoir faire" can come up with such an ugly car. I'm not 15 and yet there's no way I'll ever use something as fugly as an Ami. A Tesla Model S or a Porsche Taycan looks good though (and also looks like something that as a higher probability to save your life in case of a frontal crash). But then... As the (french) saying goes: to everyone's bad tastes. My bad tastes are Model S and Taycan, pick yours!
    - jgilias 6y ago
      I have a conspiracy theory that the established car manufacturers wouldn't make normal looking EVs as they couldn't justify spending so much on R&D that would yield something that would cannibalize sales of their other models. So they'd try hard to come up with a new niche for EVs. So it literally took an outsider to come in and start eating their lunch to hit them out of the cozy equilibrium they found themselves in. Looks like Citroen didn't get the memo though.
    - ulfw 6y ago
      The Ami costs 6,000EUR to buy, a Porsche Taycan or Tesla S depending on spec easily 100,000EUR. Why you even compare those? They're not even in the same world.
    - llampx 6y ago
      Somehow the French have never made pretty cars. On the other hand, you have the Twingo.
rjsw 6y ago
The Ami seems fine to me as a replacement for the only thing I'm using my ICE car for right now, going food shopping once a week, it would probably still work out cheaper to just get food delivered and never leave the house at all though.

eloisant 6y ago

In Europe the Smart for 2 managed to fill a nice niche despite being as expensive as a regular, 5 people car. The AMI is much cheaper and can be driven by teenagers at 14, so I suspect it can really find its place between the regular car and the electric bike for city. Typically this can be the 2nd car for a family, instead of having the family car + Twingo, you can get this one which is cheaper, easier to park and can be used by your teenager. But yeah, Americans tend to associate their personality with their cars and drive a car as big as their garage can accomodate so it's probably not for them.

jgilias 6y ago
I'm not American, so can't speak for them. Pretty much all kids in my relatively small town have scooters. The girls have Vespas or some Vespa lookalikes, whereas the guys do wheelies on theirs. Some seem to like a Mad-Max style where they get an old scooter, and strip it almost naked, some have nifty ones that look very sports-bike like. Bigger kids have 125cc motorbikes. Some look like dirt-bikes, some look like sports-bikes. You could say that Ami would resist the elements better. But it doesn't seem like the kids mind rain much, or that Ami was particularly well suited for winter months. If I was 15, you'd see me dead in one of them Amis. I'd take a 'naked' scooter I can do wheelies on any day. This seems to be a general problem with these small EVs, people always believe there's someone else that will surely buy them. As long as it's not them.
- TacticalCoder 6y ago
  > If I was 15, you'd see me dead in one of them Amis. Yes, at least the Smart looks ok. But that Citroen thing is totally ugly: it reminds me of the car that the billionaire was using in one scene in Silicon Valley when leaving the restaurant, where it's actually only half a car. But Silicon Valley is satire. It's weird that a country like France so well known for its luxury brands and "savoir faire" can come up with such an ugly car. I'm not 15 and yet there's no way I'll ever use something as fugly as an Ami. A Tesla Model S or a Porsche Taycan looks good though (and also looks like something that as a higher probability to save your life in case of a frontal crash). But then... As the (french) saying goes: to everyone's bad tastes. My bad tastes are Model S and Taycan, pick yours!
  - jgilias 6y ago
    I have a conspiracy theory that the established car manufacturers wouldn't make normal looking EVs as they couldn't justify spending so much on R&D that would yield something that would cannibalize sales of their other models. So they'd try hard to come up with a new niche for EVs. So it literally took an outsider to come in and start eating their lunch to hit them out of the cozy equilibrium they found themselves in. Looks like Citroen didn't get the memo though.
  - ulfw 6y ago
    The Ami costs 6,000EUR to buy, a Porsche Taycan or Tesla S depending on spec easily 100,000EUR. Why you even compare those? They're not even in the same world.
  - llampx 6y ago
    Somehow the French have never made pretty cars. On the other hand, you have the Twingo.

rjsw 6y ago

The Ami seems fine to me as a replacement for the only thing I'm using my ICE car for right now, going food shopping once a week, it would probably still work out cheaper to just get food delivered and never leave the house at all though.