Citroen Ami Review 2023

It's easy to assume the Citroen Ami will only suit city-dwelling millenials. But perhaps you're an older driver, living in a village and wanting transport to the shop down the road. Or maybe you're a cyclist who commutes by bike but occasionally wants a car with a bit of weather protection or capable of carrying the weekly shop.

If you rarely leave 30mph zones, can charge a car at home and want a zero-emission vehicle for pottering about, the Citroen Ami is a great choice. Sure, something like the Renault Zoe would be a more useable choice, but even a used Zoe is a chunk more expensive than the Ami.

There isn't a great deal of choice in the Citroen Ami line-up. Some of the special editions (like the Ami Pop and the Ami Tonic) bring with them some desirable extra kit, while the Citroen Ami Cargo should be on your radar if you're happy to sacrifice a passenger space for luggage-carrying abilities.

There's nothing else quite like the Citroen Ami but, if you're looking for a budget city runaround, you might want to read our guide to the cheapest electric cars on sale today. A Smart EQ Fortwo could be a good alternative, or a Renault Zoe. Both are actual cars, rather than quadricycles, but they're highly suited to whizzing around town. The MINI Electric is another good choice, as well as the Peugeot e-208 and Vauxhall Corsa-e.

If urban mobility is your thing, the Renault Twizy is perhaps even odder than the Citroen Ami. Otherwise, you might want to consider a bicycle or electric scooter.

If we were to review the Citroen Ami as a car, we'd say it was considerably below-par in terms of interior quality. The cabin has fewer frills than a 30-year-old Skoda Favorit.

But it's not a car, it's a quadricycle. A budget form of urban mobility that you'd take rather than jumping on a push bike or catching a tram. And for that purpose, it's OK: the harsh plastic finishes (of which there are plenty) don't feel particularly flimsy, and we're sure they'll stand the test of time.

Citroen says you bring the tech with you in the Ami... and that's not such a bad thing. We all carry around very intelligent mini computers in the form of smartphones, so why bother going to the expense of fitting such technology to the Ami when it'll be dated within a few years?

As such, you can get the Ami with a flimsy phone holder and a USB output for charging. Citroen will also sell you a 'DAT@AMI' box which plugs into the Ami's on-board diagnostics port. Connect this to your phone via Bluetooth, download the official Citroen My Ami Play app and you can access things like the Ami's current charge status and an estimated remaining range. There's also a get a Citroen Switch button which mounts on the steering wheel and acts as a shortcut to opening the Citroen app on your phone.

There aren't any speakers fitted to the Citroen Ami, although you can buy a Bluetooth speaker that fits neatly into a cup holder on the dashboard.

Much like a Smart EQ Fortwo or Renault Twizy, the Citroen Ami is a strict two seater. Unlike the Twizy, though, you actually sit side-by-side with your passenger rather than one-behind-the-other. The passenger seat is fixed into place but the driver's seat will slide backwards and forwards to help you find a comfortable seating position.

There isn't a glovebox in the Citroen Ami, although the optional colour packs add a number of handy stowage areas. These include a phone holder on the Ami's dashboard shelf, and some useful dashboard storage boxes and nets on the doors. 

The Citroen Ami doesn't have a boot. This might seem like a bit of an oversight, but it's not completely impractical. You can fit a bit of luggage behind the two seats (depending how far you slide the driver's seat back), while the passenger seat footwell is relatively cavernous. You can certainly squeeze more luggage into the Ami than you would in the top box of a motorcycle.

If you do need more space, the Citroen Ami is also available with the passenger seat removed. Sold as the Citroen Ami Cargo and intended to appeal to buyers looking for a tiny electric van, the Ami Cargo can carry up to 400 litres of luggage and has an overall payload of 140kg. It even comes with a cargo shelf which sits above the luggage area on (what would be) the passenger side of the car, capable of carrying an additional 40kg.

The Citroen Ami measures 2410mm in length, 1390mm in width and 1525mm in height - meaning it'll fit in roughly half a conventional parking space.

The Citroen Ami's 8PS electric motor isn't going to set the world alight. It has a top speed of 28mph which, actually, is plenty if you regularly drive through congested city centres. It'll accelerate from a standstill to flat out in around 10 seconds, so it feels peppy enough when you're pulling away from the traffic lights. We'd love to see a faster Citroen Ami but EU legislation dictates that quadricycles must be limited to 28mph - so that's unlikely to happen any time soon.

Driving the Citroen Ami is an easy process that'll feel familiar to anyone who's driven an automatic car. You have to turn the key in the ignition (no fancy start button here) then press one of three buttons on the left-hand side of the driver's seat to engage drive, neutral or reverse. There's a manual handbrake to stop the car rolling backwards, while there isn't a 'creep' function built into the gearbox - so you won't start crawling forwards the second you lift your foot off the accelerator.

Citroen quotes a 47-mile range for the Citroen Ami. That's not a lot. But that will get you surprisingly far if you're mainly travelling across town. Our drive of the Citroen Ami was in central London, where it'll take you several hours to cover that kind of distance (by which time the hard seats and even harsher suspension will be encouraging you to take a break, anyway).

There's very little in the way of noise insulation inside the Citroen Ami, so it's not quite the refined experience we're used to from electric cars. Road noise thunders through the cabin while there's a distinct whine from the electric motor - it's unfair to say you won't be able to hear your passenger but, in many ways, we're quite glad it can't exceed 28mph.

The Citroen Ami doesn't come with airbags, crumple zones or anything in the way of driver-assistance tech. It doesn't even have ABS brakes or traction control. Being a quadricycle, it's exempt from Euro NCAP's crash tests - which is a good job, as we doubt it'd stack up very well.

That said, would you prefer your 16-year-old child to be driving this or a moped? At least, with four wheels, it ought to be fairly stable. With a top speed of 28mph, you're not going to hit anything too dramatically, either.

If you've got younger kids, it's worth noting that the Citroen Ami doesn't come with Isofix mounting points, while Citroen 'strongly advises' against fitting a child seat.

Citroen may not have been a byword for reliability in the past, but it seems to have improved its game in recent years. The Citroen Ami is very simple so there's not a lot to go wrong - batteries and electric motors have less moving parts and complexity than modern petrol or diesel engines, anyway. Citroen guarantees the Ami's battery pack for three years or 25,000 miles.

The Citroen Ami hasn't been placed in an insurance group. It shouldn't cost a lot to insure (it's not going to do a lot of damage while body panels are easily replaced), but you might need to shop around for a specialist insurance company willing to provide a quote.

Like all electric vehicles, the Citroen Ami is exempt from road tax so you won't have to pay a penny to the treasury in VED.

Standard equipment on the Citroen Ami includes two seats with soft-touch padding and integrated head restraints, longitudinal adjustment for the driver's seat, a digital speedometer, a USB charging port and a ventilation fan with heater. There's a panoramic sunroof as standard, folding side windows and two manually-adjustable door mirrors. The Citroen Ami also comes with LED front headlights and rear lights, LED indicators, a front windscreen wash/wipe and a type 2 charging cable.

The Citroen Ami Pop adds the orange colour pack, black front bumper trim, black rear light surrounds, a black rear roof spoiler and two decals surrounding the door capsules.

The Citroen Ami Tonic features an exclusive Khaki colour pack with yellow highlights, black trim at the top of the front bumper with yellow decals, black light surrounds, two decorative roof rails and two decals surrounding the door capsules in khaki and yellow.

The Citroen Ami Vibe comes with the grey colour pack, black exterior trim, two decorative roof rails, 'contour' decals on the side doors and front wings and black wheel arches.