Every so often, I will see a quadricycle parked around town. It is a Citroën Ami, a tiny two-person electric car sold by the French carmaker since 2020, the latest in a line of tiny French cars that its citizens can drive, on a moped licence, from 14 years of age – if they were born before 1988, they don’t even need the licence. To me, it looks like an idea of what future cars could have been, until it was not.
In the UK, the Ami meets the limits allowed under the AM category moped licence: it weighs 425kg before the battery is installed, and its tiny 5.5kW electric motor produces only eight brake horsepower and a top speed of 28mph. No petrol option exists, which would have been restricted to a maximum capacity of 49cc. Presumably, leaving town involves driving the Ami to the nearest bus or train station first.
Similar cars have been available in the UK. Famously, the Reliant Robin, the three-wheeled fiberglass-bodied car that weighed not much more than the Ami, can still be driven under a category A motorcycle licence, often a major selling point. Scutum Logistic’s Silence S04 Nanocar is sold through Nissan in the UK, including a more powerful version that requires at least a full motorcycle licence, while the French tradition of “voitures sans permis” continues under the Aixan brand, and even via the Renault Mobilize Duo and the Twizy, which had no doors. To avoid confusion, the “Invacar”, an infamous 1970s single-seater car leased to disabled drivers through the UK government until 2003, had a similar engine and power to a Reliant Robin, but requires a full category B car driving licence due to its weight.
Meanwhile, the driver’s door of the also-fibreglass Ami – all models are left-hand drive – is a “suicide door”, hinged at the back, making it interchangeable with the front-hinged passenger door – windows flap open, instead of us. To avoid installing any navigation and media controls that could become obsolete over time, you instead dock your smartphone in the middle of the dashboard to use the My Citroën app instead, with an activation button on the steering wheel.
The current price for an Ami in the UK is £7,695. On Citroën's UK website, it says the Ami “epitomises Citroën's legacy of pioneering automotive innovation. Much like the iconic 2CV revolutionised transportation, Ami introduces affordable quadricycle mobility to today's world, making it ideal for modern urban journeys.” However, any model of Citroën 2CV, which was still a regular car, and legislated, insured and taxed as such, will outrun an Ami – even the initial 1948 model could reach 40 mph, but not much further.
It would be simple to bundle the Ami with previous “microcars” like the Messerschmitt, Bond Bug, Peel P50 and Isetta, the latter famously licensed by BMW, but the introductions of those cars were motivated by post-war demands for a personal transport more substantial than a motorcycle, and threats on fuel supply, which subsided with the likes of “superminis” like the Citroën 2CV, Renault 4 and the Mini.
Aside from the Ami being a perfect first car for someone, albeit one to graduate from if you want to safely travel long distance – the range of its battery is only forty-seven miles – looking at it gives me a feeling of what a car of a far-off future could have been, like a personal transportation module that would then attach to a guiding rail – this would have been after the introduction of the People Mover at Walt Disney World, but before the realities of trying to make a self-driving car on a regular road.
For me, the Ami is still too much like a car for me to consider, as I can’t drive a car – I could get a moped licence, but being forced away from the sides of the road, into the way of cars, isn’t desirable. If it was more like a cycle, and I could drive it on a cycle track, then perhaps I would be happier.
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