Living with a Citroën Ami: can it replace your car?

The Citroen Ami is a favourite of the Move Electric team. Why? Because it offers an innovative and interesting solution for affordable electric transportation. 

But what is it like to live with a tiny electric quadricycle, and can they work as a daily driver? To find out, we spent a few months with our very own Citroën Ami – complete with full-on Move Electric livery – to find out what it’s really like to live with. 

Meet the Citroen Ami

Hitting the road in 2022, the ever-so-cute Ami was a far-cry from the mainstream EVs that are being launched almost daily. The Ami measures just 2410mm long, 1390mm wide and 1520mm tall, and is therefore a much smaller alternative to a supermini.

Because of its smaller proportions you get just two seats, and in a bid to keep costs down, the Ami comes in left-hand-drive only – but we’ll talk about this more later. 

How far can the Ami go on a single charge?

The Ami uses a tiny 5.5kWh battery and 6kW electric motor, helping it along to a top speed that is limited to 28 mph – that’s so it falls into line with quadricycle regulations. 

On a single charge the Ami can travel up to 46 miles; plug it into a 2kW Type 2 charger and the battery will be replenished in three to four hours.

Anything else I should know about the tiny Citroen

Pitched as an alternative to scooters and moped, the Ami majors on affordability. Take the doors as an example; one of them is rear-hinged, so that the panels are identical on both sides of the car. The front and rear panels are also the same to save money. 

Prices for the Ami start from £7695, with the range-topping (and very cool) Tonic version costing £8695. You can also get a cargo variant which swaps the passenger seat for a small load carrier. 

How well does the Ami handle the morning commute?

Thanks to its smaller proportions and ample range, the Ami was the ideal choice for our drive to work. The six-mile drive from home to Move Electric Towers normally takes 20-30 minutes (because of London traffic), but as the journey is entirely within the Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames, the Ami’s 28mph top speed isn’t an issue due to the blanket 20mph speed limit. 

While we have to share the office car park with Autocar, What Car? and other colleagues at Haymarket, it’s easy to find a corner to cram the Ami into thanks to its tiny footprint. In fact we’re pretty confident we could’ve squeezed it through the doors of our storage cupboard. 

Its size has other benefits, too. Some roads in and around the borough are pretty tight for modern cars and you often have to stop to allow buses and lorries to squeeze past. But in the Ami, things were far more relaxing and it was easy to thread the car through tight gaps.

And the left-hand-drive setup didn’t cause any major issue either, because despite its smaller size, you have a great view out at all angles. 

Of course the Ami wasn’t without its drawbacks. It’s not the most luxury commuter; the motor whines when you zip along and the seats feel rather firm. The heater fan is also a bit lacklustre and it's rather noisy, too. Still, these are small niggles which you only have to put up with for short periods of journeys.

What about longer journeys? 

Driving to this year’s What Car? Awards at the The Grosvenor House Hotel in London allowed us to see how the Ami would perform on a longer journey into the centre of the capital. Overall the Ami handled the 11.7-mile trip well, despite the cold weather and heavy traffic. 

In central London, the Ami was at its prime, with its lightweight accurate steering and short-wheelbase tailored to the narrow backstreets. The only real bugbear was the range: we started with 44 miles but once we reached the venue this had dropped to 24 miles.

In fairness to the Ami, it was around -1 degrees celsius when we arrived (it was January) - that is far from suitable conditions for a quadricycle with a 5.5kWh battery. It’s also worth mentioning that we were sat in a traffic jam for around 20-30 minutes reducing the Ami’s range further.

Despite the impact on range, the Ami did prove it was capable of longer journeys, and still handles the cold weather conditions well. 

Is the Ami actually too big to be useful?

As we’ve mentioned so far, the Ami is unapologetically small, so it might seem hard to fathom why someone would question if it was too big, or more specifically, not small enough. 

Check out the Ami parked next to a Range Rover that our sister mag What Car? is running – just look at the difference. 

But while the Ami can squeeze through gaps that most hatchbacks and SUVs can’t, it still isn’t small enough to use cycle lanes and thread through traffic, which means you sit in traffic like everyone else. 

Citroën Ami

Naysayers might assume the Ami isn’t as useful as a bike, scooter or motorbike, but there were several commutes during our time with the car that highlighted its benefits, like when were were able to scythe past a line of parked cars and a bus while the cars behind had to stop and wait. If we’d been in anything bigger we would have had to slow down. 

And because the Ami has a wider setup – rather than the rear seat behind the driver like in a Renault Twizy – there's more room inside. In fact there is loads of head and leg room; we even did several weekly shops in our Ami. 

Of course, if you’re going to buy a new vehicle, you’ll want it to handle all the elements from cold weather to heavy rain showers. During our time with the Ami – which happened to be during the winter months – we were pleased to have the extra warmth of a thick coat rather than relying solely on the car’s heater.

It’s ok but just doesn't have much oomph to clear all the fogged-up windows, and also impacts the range of the vehicle, albeit only marginally. 

Speaking of range, when we used the Ami during a cold snap when temperatures were around -4 in the morning, the quadricycle wasn't particularly efficient, using around 10 miles of range to do a 5-mile trip. That’s not terrible for shorter journeys, but for longer trips you will want to make sure the Ami is fully charged. 

Despite these criticisms, the Ami does an admirable job in cold and wet weather. Of course it isn’t as pleasant or refined as an actual car, but then the Ami is not a car. 

And it's not just an alternative to a car, too: it’s also an alternative to bikes, e-bikes, e-scooters, motorbikes and scooters. And on a cold, wet day, when the choice is between cycling or a four-wheeled machine with a roof, the Ami is very appealing. 

So can it replace your car?

It might not be able to replace your car completely, but the Ami does have a very clear use case as a little run-around for shorter trips. Its brilliant proportions make it ideal for commuting in town; there is more than enough range for shorter trips; the two-seat configuration is handy for dropping your offspring at school; and it’s also good value for money. 

Adding one to your driveway as a second or third car for urban use makes total sense because it is a simple, easy-to-use and charming alternative to a bike or motorbike.