Shouldn't be allowed on the roads legally, its to wide for it's speed and a huge step down from a Twizzy in that it cant achieve 50mph. If something is wider than a pushbike / motorbike it should be able to do at least 50 mph to "keep up with traffic". I give it less than a year before someone is either killed in one in an accident, or causes a head on fatality of cars trying to pass it in frustration.

I assume these new rubbish pedestrian / pushbike passing rules dont apply to this and we can squeeze past it with only a few inches gap between wing mirrors and oncoming traffic?

 

Shouldn't be allowed on the roads legally, its to wide for it's speed and a huge step down from a Twizzy in that it cant achieve 50mph. If something is wider than a pushbike / motorbike it should be able to do at least 50 mph to "keep up with traffic". I give it less than a year before someone is either killed in one in an accident, or causes a head on fatality of cars trying to pass it in frustration.

I assume these new rubbish pedestrian / pushbike passing rules dont apply to this and we can squeeze past it with only a few inches gap between wing mirrors and oncoming traffic?

I suppose there’s always a chance a dozing Tesla driver on Autopilot will slam into one of these things.

But in reality these cars will be used in city centres where you’d struggle to get above 30 mph most days.

 

Anyone remember how popular the totally crap Reva G-Wiz was? At one time, London seemed full of the things. They were tiny and slow, yet for a time people in cities loved them, even though the build quality was absolutely appalling. There's very definitely a market for an affordable city car, and the Ami looks to be ideal, as the build quality will most probably be massively better than the G-Wiz.

 

I can’t believe they’re actually going to supply them with an EU 2 pin plug. What an absolute cop out.

Less inclined to bother with my reservation as each day passes tbh.

 

Very easy and safe to use an adapter, though, as long as the current is no more than 10 A. I have a few locking type adapters for Schuko to BS1363, and they are perfectly safe to use, and not expensive.

 

Either way it’ll be a hoot test driving one.

 

That's the excuse, truth is it's to use whilst the Tesla is waiting for repair.

 

Have to say I agree.
All this "it shouldn't be on the road" is nonsense.
Roads are for everyone.
If you are driving something bigger than another road user, it is your responsibility (as well as theirs) to make sure you don't put them at risk.
If it takes off (I have my doubts although I really hope Ami is a success) people are just going to learn to live with them- hopefully in time there will be a lot of similar vehicles and cars able to drive at 100 plus will be even more pointless than they are now.
Of course, motorways are a different matter, let's just not forget what Ami is designed for.

 

Are we taking bets on the pricing yet? Reasonable would be £4500-5000 IMO, therefore we can safely say they’ll be £10k 🙄

 

Probably well over £10k I suspect. Might still be attractive to city dwellers though.

 

I've previously heard "£6000-ish" mentioned

 

I wonder if the motorbike grant will apply?

 

£6-7k was being talked about when I paid my deposit last year, but then so was estimated delivery of "early 2022" and first deliveries now seem to be scheduled for July.

It's been a real pain to get any info from them and despite having emailed them several times since paying the deposit 6 months ago they only replied once with "we have some exciting news coming soon" and that was in December. If mines not going to be a July delivery I'll probably cancel.

 

Mine is similar. Half of the roads are national speed limit single carriageway but are full of cars wobbling along at 30-35. A few people try overtaking but you end up catching them up again at the next mobile chicane. The only place they go faster are the 30MPH speed limits.

 

We should therefore make it a law that you can only drive an Ami with a standard licence.

If you want to drive anything larger or more powerful you need to re-certify every 6 months with an authorised standards instructor. Also mandatory annual medicals.

 

I agree, but it might be worth looking at some solid evidence first, though. France has allowed quadricycles to be driven by (I think) anyone over 16, without a licence, for years I believe. I have a feeling they were speed limited, and only had small engines, but there is probably a fair bit of data around from France on how safe, or otherwise, they are. Might be possible to use that to do a risk assessment to see just how big a risk something like the Ami might be.

The point is that's sold with an adaptor - the implication in the letter posted is that they only supply a Schuko and a type 2 adapter, but no 13A adaptor - that is potentially risky as there are so many terrible adapters out there

Yes, I think it would need to be supplied with a proper adapter. Certainly both the water pumps I bought were supplied with adapters (although I cut the plugs off and wired them to a 13 A plug). I have a feeling there's still an obligation on suppliers/retailers to fit a 13 A plug on request. It's some time ago now, but I remember this being offered by a German kitchen appliance retailer. The stuff they were selling was supplied with a Schuko, but they rewired it and did a PAT test before handing it over on purchase.

 

Only North of the border apparently. And of course not recommended.

 

It’s just so stupid tho, just a tiny increase in speed and range and it would be brilliant!

 

Maybe the Dacia Spring will come to the UK. Roughly double the price for double the speed, seats, air conditioning etc. If a vehicle goes above 30mph I'd want it to have been crash tested which the Ami wasn't.

 

There was mention earlier of a safe adapter to allow a charge point fitted with a Schuko plug to be used with a UK BS1363 outlet safely. Just dug out one of the ones I have to show what they look like. They attach permanently to the Schuko, with two screws on the underside, plus a fuse to comply with UK regs:

These screws can be removed to fit the plug into the adapter, then the lid hinged down to lock it in place, with the screws holding it all together:

Once fitted the whole thing isn't much larger than some 13 A plugs, and it can easily be left fitted all the time. These adapters are made by this company: Homepage - PowerConnections

 

I wonder if that’ll fit in the hole the cable goes in

 

Which hole?

These things fit the majority of standard 13 A outlets OK, only ones I know that they won't fit are the weatherproof outdoor ones, as the adapter is too large to allow the lid to close.

 

On the topic of charging, I wonder if it'd be safe to use a smart plug with the Ami to make use of time of use tariffs. There's no built in timer so if the Ami charger pulls full current immediately we could fry the relays of smart plugs when they switch on.

Current during charge should be fine as it peaks at 8A iirc and end of charge should be fine as flat to full takes less time than octopus go's cheap period.

 

On the topic of charging, I wonder if it'd be safe to use a smart plug with the Ami to make use of time of use tariffs. There's no built in timer so if the Ami charger pulls full current immediately we could fry the relays of smart plugs when they switch on.

Current during charge should be fine as it peaks at 8A iirc and end of charge should be fine as flat to full takes less time than octopus go's cheap period.

To be sure would need measurements, but the vast majority of on board chargers ramp up the current fairly slowly, and if I had to guess, I would say the Ami has probably been designed to be used with outlets that don't have switches, so will almost certainly be the same. Be very easy to check before buying, if anyone gets one for an extended test drive.

 

28mph isn't likely to cause any issues for city dwellers. In some cities you'd be hard pressed to ever get up to 28mph I think. Same in some rural areas. There are few stretches of lane around here where anything over 30mph is safe or practical, so for a cheap runabout to get to the local shop, out to the pub, etc an Ami would be fine.

 

This is wrong. There are lots of roads in London with 40, and 50mph limits, in my patch, the A40 has speed limits of 50 mph to the Target roundabout and then 40 inwards to Shepherds bush where it's temporarily reduced to 30 as there are structural problems with the elevated West way. Similarly on the M4 / A4, the North circular has speed limits of 40 mph and 50mph. As these roads are major arterial routes around west London avoiding them isn't really possible. I'm sure it's the same in other parts of London and other cities. Yes there are roads where 28mph would be way over the speed of the traffic at times but that's not always the case.

 

Let's not get too excited- we don't know the price yet.
Anywhere even close to 10k it won't sell.
That's where I'm pricing it- shall we start a poll?

 

I believe Citroen said they were "targeting" 6k

 

The going rate for the better value cars is about £135/mile range (MG5 LR for example), so with a range of 46 miles that is a price of £6,210 which is close to Citroen's ambition.

To me the issue is that cities have transport alternatives - buses, Ubers etc., whereas rural areas that don't might have an issue with the range.

 

To me the issue is that cities have transport alternatives - buses, Ubers etc., whereas rural areas that don't might have an issue with the range.

Mmm, it's a thing for the suburbs. I've used uber for short trips about 20 times in the last month to take my cat to the vets and back. It's only 3 miles so lots of drivers refuse to pick up, or they don't want a cat in carrier in their car, or it's rush hour and there aren't any spare drivers. In short Uber has been unreliable and we're only 6 or 7 miles out of Manchester. A private car would be great but I can't fool myself into buying something expensive that'll sit unused for days at a time.

 

I have to wonder about the environmental impact of such a car? With such a small battery that’s going to be cycled a lot from full to empty, i would think in 2-3 years degradation is going to bite, leading to the purchase of the next fad.
This car almost seems built to be disposable.

Maybe small batteries will be cheap or 3rd party alternatives available but look at everyone still waiting for that for the leaf.

I think people would be better served with a tricycle and decent coat!

 

Plenty of Twizys still running around.

The mileage on these things won't be huge.

I'd argue that there are plenty of Zoes with too large a battery pack, that is a waste of resources.

 

The grant in France is much higher, capped at 27% no?
So there's around 1k difference.
We can argue this all day long, let's just wait and see if and when it arrives here.

 

The price I quoted is without any grant applied.

 

Of all the Tesla vehicles in the UK now, only a very tiny number of them use 18650 cells, and they are all older Model S and X cars. The vast majority of UK Teslas use either 2170s or CATL prismatic cells. There are no Model S Plaid cars in the UK AFAIK, they don't get here until later this year I beleive.

 

So invoking doing a @donald , you were wrong, i was right, Tesla have done the smarter thing than Nissan and have used 18650 cells in the past and present, i really dont give a rats arse what models, or how many are or are not in the UK.

 

The roads with the higher speed limits tend to be the trunk roads that are 2 or 3 lane dual carriage way, or wide roads. They carry a lot of traffic. I agree that there are less of them than the slower roads, they do carry a lot of traffic though. Try planning a to b routes in a city and the likelihood is that it will take you on those faster roads. City centres tend to have smaller roads and more congestion but at some time you're likely to want to use the faster roads.

 

Yeah that's fair. This is why I'd like a route planner that could prefer slower roads. I put an example trip into Google maps from North to South Manchester and it recommends joining the motorway for 90% of the trip or alternatively I could take 1 minute longer but travel exclusively on 20/30mph roads. "Avoid motorways" sorts that example but I'm sure there'll be others where it prefers a 50 or 60mph road.

 

Locally there seems to have been an increase in the number of "weather proof" mobility scooters around, the ones with a sort of zip up tent affair to keep the worst of the weather off. Not unusual to see these being driven along the lane to the village, one lady does it every day. Something like an Ami would be a significant improvement, a lot safer, faster and probably more convenient to use. As far as being slow and an obstruction is concerned, surely this applies to loads of other road users already, doesn't it?

Commonplace to see people on horseback on the lanes around here, the local riding school went past a couple of hours ago, around half a dozen of them. The local gardener here doesn't drive, so walks from job to job with a wheelbarrow full of tools, so is likewise an obstruction to the impatient. Same goes for those pushing prams and pushchairs along the lane.

I really find it hard to understand those that feel that something that can do 28 mph is going to be any worse than any of the above road users, many of whom have been using roads since long before the motor car came along.

 

Locally there seems to have been an increase in the number of "weather proof" mobility scooters around, the ones with a sort of zip up tent affair to keep the worst of the weather off. Not unusual to see these being driven along the lane to the village, one lady does it every day. Something like an Ami would be a significant improvement, a lot safer, faster and probably more convenient to use. As far as being slow and an obstruction is concerned, surely this applies to loads of other road users already, doesn't it?

Commonplace to see people on horseback on the lanes around here, the local riding school went past a couple of hours ago, around half a dozen of them. The local gardener here doesn't drive, so walks from job to job with a wheelbarrow full of tools, so is likewise an obstruction to the impatient. Same goes for those pushing prams and pushchairs along the lane.

I really find it hard to understand those that feel that something that can do 28 mph is going to be any worse than any of the above road users, many of whom have been using roads since long before the motor car came along.

When I’m too old to drive I’ll still have an EV…..

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Uh, did Citroen just send out an Ami update email that was a copy of its last update email? Silly marketing department.