► Citroen’s tiny city EV from £7695
► 46-mile range, 28mph top speed
► New beach buggy joins the range
The beach-ready Citroen My Ami Buggy II will be offered in the UK this summer – providing what the French car maker hopes will be suitably silent and chic beachside transport.
It follows 2022’s original My Ami Buggy, a limited edition available only in France. Just 50 were made and they sold out in minutes. This time round, 1000 Ami beach buggies will be offered, sold in nine countries including the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Morocco and Turkey.
However, you’ll have to be quick: just 40 have been allocated to the UK. Sales start on 20 June at 2pm. You’ll also need deep pockets – this stripped-out Citroen Ami beach buggy somehow costs £10,495!
Buyers will be getting a stripped-out beachside Citroen Ami, shorn of its doors and roof and given a distinctive olive paint scheme. The khaki colour is accented by dark matt wheelarches, bumpers and wheel covers with orange accents, while transparent door covers are provided for weather protection.
Citroen Ami: the background
The pure-electric Citroen Ami city car has been on sale in the UK since June 2022, scoring more than 2000 orders for the car in Britain alone.
Citroen’s new, range-topping My Ami Tonic model is the latest addition to the EV’s range. It joins the dinky My Ami Cargo van and replaces the old My Ami Vibe as the most expensive option in the EV’s line-up.
The Tonic features a few quirky styling tweaks over the previous version of the Ami, such as khaki paint, roof rails, some fresh yellow decals and model-specific wheel trims. There are new headlamp surrounds, too, which Citroen says were inspired by sunglasses.
Citroen also added some electric yellow accents to the Ami’s interior, as well as plus and minus stickers for the inside of it’s A-pillars as a nod to the car’s electric powertrain. You know, like the positive and negative terminal signs on a battery.
Aside from the new trim pieces, little else has changed in the Ami’s cabin. You get the same number of storage bins, door nets in place of conventional door bins, a funky organiser tray on the top of the dashboard and a smartphone mount in place of a built-in infotainment system.
What’s powering the Citroen Ami?
The Ami is powered by a 5.5kWh battery pack and an 8bhp electric motor. Citroen says it can reach a top speed of 28mph and that it’ll cover 46 miles before needing to be recharged. That doesn’t sound like much, but Citroen reckons that’s double the required mileage for most urban motorists.
Because the battery is so small, it can be completely recharged from a three-pin socket in around three hours. If you’re out and about, the Ami can also be connected to a wallbox charger or a public charge point using a Type 2 cable, although that won’t make the battery charge any faster.
Tell us more about the design
Even though it has four wheels and two doors, the Ami technically isn’t a car. Like the Renault Twizy, it’s a pure-electric quadricycle, which means it’s closer to a moped than a car in the eyes of the law. In France, for example, children as young as 14 can drive one without a full licence.
It’s tiny, measuring a mere 2.41 metres long. It also has a London cab-like 7.2-metre turning circle, meaning it should be a doddle to park. More than 50% of its upper body it glazed, too, which will make it easy to see kamikaze moped riders and rogue cyclists when zipping around crowded cities.
Citroen says the Ami was designed as a safer urban transport solution than a scooter or a bicycle, and that it was priced to compete with public transport. To hit that low price-point, Citroen made the car as symmetrical as possible to save money on making lots of moulds.
Like the Ami One Concept, the production car’s driver and passenger doors are identical – the driver’s one is hinged on the rear edge, while the passenger’s one is hinged at the front – which means Citroen only had to design and manufacture one panel. The left and right side windows, front and rear bumpers and front and rear underbody panels are all symmetrical for the same reason.
We’re not getting a right-hand drive version in the UK, but Citroen UK’s managing director Eurig Druce reckons that won’t be an issue. He said: “Is it really a problem? When you sit in the Ami, you’re not far away from the right side in any case. If we moved the steering wheel, you’re talking about maybe a 30cm shift in position.”
What about the Ami Cargo?
Citroen saw a gap in the market for a tiny urban courier van, so it re-engineered the Ami to suit the market. The company ditched the EV’s passenger seat and replaced it with a big plastic storage box with a 260-litre capacity and a maximum payload of 140kg.
This tiny storage capacity means it probably won’t find much use with the likes of DHL and Amazon, but it could easily serve as a delivery vehicle for your local pizza restaurant. Citroen also added a lockable storage bin in the Ami Cargo’s cabin, which it says was designed to keep valuables like smartphones and wallets out of sight.
Citroen reckons the Ami Cargo will be popular in big cities, partly thanks to its compact dimensions and low running costs, but mostly due to its eye-catching looks. The Ami turns heads and can be liveried up to become a distinctive rolling billboard.
Check out our Citroen Ami review and video (below) – in which we take it to some unusual places on a road test with a difference…