Citroen Ami launches in U.K.🇬🇧 4000km honest review. Should you buy?

hi welcome back to the channel and as i'm sure many of you are aware the citroen of me has in the last couple of weeks launched in the uk you can actually order this thing but the question is should you firstly a little bit of context we uh got this quadricycle about seven months ago you may remember the video we did at the end of the beach here when we took delivery and it was a super exciting moment not least because of course neither of us had a driving license or had ever driven any other car and we should put i you know you should put this um this 4 000 kilometer review into that context that i am not talking about other cars because i have never driven one um and of course the amazing thing is that here in france you don't actually need a driving license to uh to drive a citroenaby uh in fact you can after a few lessons uh drive it age 14 upwards so how long have you had your car uh well i've got it for one year since last april are we and and uh come be under the the kilometer uh approximately 7500 wow that's a lot well number one top of the list has just got to be sheer fun it has given us just an incredible amount of pleasure it's the sort of thing that wherever you take it it brings a smile on people's faces people complete strangers wave at you in the street uh kids particularly just love it do you see their little faces being a chihuahua she quite likes it uh and she doesn't normally like cars so it's a super fun simple utilitarian vehicle another good point is the cost to run this thing is so small even with electricity prices having gone up you can fully charge this thing for i think around one pound 30 something like that um and of course there are many places where you can get a free charge so if you're talking about saving money on fuel then investing in a citroen me will save you a lot of money we managed to go to italy and back uh for our great italian adventure and i think we did about 200 kilometers in total and i think it cost us about five pounds in charges you know so really really super cheap [Music] to me one of the other great points about it is the simplicity of this vehicle it is incredibly easy to use there are two pedals there is a brake and there is a throttle there are three buttons down here you press one to go forward you press one for neutral and you press one to go in reverse is a very simple light system in fact the light system is so simple that basically there isn't a switch for it in other words the minute you turn on the throttle the lights are on let's talk a little bit about the design well as many people have pointed out this car is a bit of a marmite thing it is you know it is symmetrical the front is exactly the same as the back you can buy the front piece or you can buy the back piece they are the same the doors are the same etc etc brief interruption for drama um and you know i i think it's the sort of design that you either love this level of functionalism this this it's got a wit about it that's what i love it's it doesn't take itself seriously so many cars seem to take themselves super seriously with their fenders and their lights and their speedos and this gizmo and that gizmo and this is not that car this is something for getting you to a to b uh in in in a very fun simple way the other thing i love about this car is the amount of light that comes into it i mean despite the fact that its range is only 75 kilometers it is in many ways the perfect touring car because you can see absolutely everything it is glass to the side of you glass to the front of your glass to the rear of you and of course glass above you and which makes it a wonderful car to drive in in places where you want to see stuff [Music] now this sounds absolutely crazy but this car has more legroom i think than the the um ferrari 812 that we did a video with about i don't know three or four months ago when we sort of raced it to the mayborne hotel uh when i got in the ferrari i simply couldn't believe just how little leg room there was um there is absolutely tons of leg room here there's plenty of room for a suitcase there's plenty of room for shopping and it is way more pleasant and comfortable to be inside than you would expect [Music] it is such a relief that you can plug this in to a domestic socket you don't need any special charger at home all you need is an extension cable and you plug it into your domestic socket and away you go that means that you can charge at home it means wherever you are as long as there are some houses you always think in the back of your mind well i could knock on somebody's door if i got really stuck and say could i you know give you a few quid and have a free charge um and it means that in many places certainly in nice here we can just plug into the electric charging points and we get completely free charging for the first two hours and we get completely free parking uh not surprisingly some of those um parking spots are um a a bit coveted shall we say um now that's not always true if you go over the border into italy we've been having to use a type 2 adapter with the two pin but uh that element works and of course in the uk when you get yours you're gonna have an adapter from the the continental two pin to the uh to the british three pin but it will i am almost certain charging your domestic socket you certainly will not need to have a 1500 pound charger installed in your garage and to be honest if you do install that it won't charge it any quicker so there's not really any great advantage [Music] this thing is incredibly easy to park it may not have power steering but it more than makes up for in having a really tiny turning circle and the fact that the thing is just so tidgy you can sometimes park it and on in a very small gap our other sort of smart car it's a head turner and i know quite a lot of people here like we have have logoed up the car or the quadricycle uh and i can see that in in the uk where these are going to be even more rare uh that it's a great opportunity to do a bit of business advertising get the right decals get them on the outside and you're away [Music] the other thing that i think is great fun is that the ability to personalize this vehicle and you see it here in france all the time people have put all kinds of sticker sets and wraps on them uh some more pleasant than others i have to say but um it's something that you can totally make your own you can quite literally commission the stickers from say sticker mules and just stick them on [Music] the range we've been getting from the battery is almost uh exactly what the dial promises uh the regeneration works which means when you're coming back downhill with less than 65 kilometers in the battery you will get some regeneration it means that if you go up a very steep and you think oh god i've used loads and loads of power you'll find that you can come back quite easily often by gaining one or two kilometers check out one of our um videos about that so it does what it says on the tin now you're thinking there must be some negatives oh there are there definitely are here they come [Music] now this may not be as bigger issue in the uk for much of the year but it will certainly be an issue at times and particularly if you have to park in the sunshine because this car is glass glass glass glass it gets incredibly hot this morning when i got in the car it was 50 degrees um and you know this is of course caused by the fact that there is all this glass it just turns it in to a greenhouse now we've tried all kinds of heat mitigation measures we've tried using the fan that they supply it has a bit of an effect we've tried using these two usb fans which do work well but don't reduce the temperature they obviously just move it round we've put the shield on the sunroof which has helped a little bit but in the end i have to be honest and say we are still baking in this thing but we are in the south of france uh and the temperature is by day at the minute about 30 degrees and it's not really dropping below 21 at night so those are extreme conditions for the uk but do bear in mind that um you will need the sort of silver foil to try and keep the sun out as you do with a normal car and do bear in mind this thing does not have any proper air conditioning um and i have yet to come across an in-car air conditioning system that can do the job if anybody knows of one please let me know please send us one we'd gladly review it because it is a problem we would absolutely love to solve [Music] how cold is this car in winter well we took it through a south of france winter and you think well we don't get cold weather here it's largely true but we do get nights where it's sort of two or three degrees and there were days when you would get in the car and you would feel the wind the cold air blowing up through the vehicle because the insulation on it is very basic i'll be honest and and you could feel your legs getting quite cold now put this car in a uk context in a uk winter and you will if you come down to your car on a winter's morning and it's not been garaged and it's been parked on the street you'll need a fair bit of clothing there's no question about that you may buy a i guess a usb sort of heater there is a heater with the car which does work but obviously there is a battery drain to it but it certainly does work um but it's very very basic and it's quite noisy it's a bit like a bit like your mother's old air dryer um so bear in mind if you're gonna get this for the uk and you're going to drive it in uk winters and perhaps you're going to be outside of the city context where it's a bit warmer you'll need to wrap up this is not going to be the sort of car that you're getting and is instantly toasty [Music] the seats now they're very simple they're very utilitarian i like the way they look i just have to be honest that my 55 year old bottom cannot cope with the basicness of the of the cushioning and i was getting an awful lot of backaches and leg pains and god knows what and eventually i got some cushions from ikea and i got a sort of back thing here which has solved a lot of my problems um but i think you will if if you are um a little bit older or you've got a bony bottom like i have you might find you'll have to spend a few quid on making the seats just that little bit more comfortable particularly if you're doing longer drives and of course we've done quite a lot of long drives in this car uh we've certainly not just driven around the center of nice or on the promenade des anglais like we're doing today [Music] now the other issue is something we made a video about road rage speed the speed this goes of course the top speed is 45 kilometers an hour that's 28 miles per hour um he jumps up orange line probably gets shot um is that an issue well we've made a video about that for us around here this man is more of an issue no for us around here it really isn't an issue certainly in the center of nice in the center of uh the cities of the south of france 28 miles per hour is absolutely quick enough nobody else is going any quicker anyway it makes no odds nobody bats an eyelid when we get onto the 50 kilometer an hour limit roads sometimes you're aware that you're slightly holding people up but again it's not a massive difference between your 45 top speed and the 50 they're meant to be doing but it is when you get on the 70 roads and and people are trying to overtake that it becomes a little bit more of an issue and you are aware of sort of holding traffic up behind you similarly if you're going up hills uh you know we've discovered this car is brilliant at climbing hills it just doesn't do it very quickly but we've made lots of videos about going up insanely steep hills and we we've got all of them and the car is still working the quadricycle is still working um now the difference is in france they are used to cars that only go at 45 kilometers an hour there has been the voice on palmy since time immemorial there are probably 50 60 70 000 of these things in france um so when people see them they may secretly curse under their breath and go god i'm stuck behind a i've watched you or some pair me but there is that little bit more tolerance and understanding that this is the game these things are legal that is why they are limited to that speed because people don't need to pass a driving license to drive them um now that is not true of britain it is not true that you won't need a driving license you will need a driving licence and there is no tradition of cars that going super slowly so i think you have to think about where you live and the context in which you're going to use this thing if you're going to use it for your daily commute um if you're going to use it for your daily commute then you have to ask yourself on what road do i use this thing to get into say the city is it a 70 road is it a 50 road you can of course use these on motorways you can't use them on english motorways either so you've got to ask yourself is that going to be an embarrassment to you is it going to be a danger to you because the only time you feel that this thing poses a threat to your safety is if you've got a driver behind you is getting very angry and just is determined to get past you at all costs and does a sort of dodgy overtaking uh move and that inevitably puts them at risk and it puts you at risk um so ask yourself about where you are going to use it if you are largely going to use it in the city center if you're in the central leads the center of bath the center of brighton whatever you know i see no issue with this whatsoever you're getting a very reasonable repriced mode of urban transport [Music] brings me neatly on to another issue which is an issue even here in the south of france and i think will without doubt be an issue in the uk is the fact that the windows steam up like crazy when the temperature outside the temperature inside are very different and there are ways of mitigating it putting what the french call anti buoy spray on the uh on the windscreen and on the side windows helps um you can open the windows that helps a lot you can try the fan that helps a bit but bear in mind that if it's a very cold wet uk day and you need to open these side windows to de-steam the car in order to see where you're driving then you're not in a great scenario and there have been times in the winter even here when we were driving with the windows open uh getting a bit chilly but it was the only way we could clear the fog [Music] to bear in mind this is a quad recital and not a car and if you somebody has big safety concerns in terms of how much protection you get whether there's an airbag what the bumpers are like how much crash protection you have well you can look up the statistics on quad recycles and they are clearly not as safe as a standard car so if that is a big issue for you uh then it's something that you should bear in mind [Music] there is only one windscreen wiper and it it's just a bit odd because you will be driving in rain and you will look to the right hand side see what's coming over there and you you know you literally can't see because it is so covered in raindrops so the one windscreen wiper i don't think there's room to install a second one i'm sure somebody will come up with some phenomenal mod that does it with a mini one or something um but bear in mind you have only one windscreen wiper the other thing to bear in mind is that when you get the car and i'm gonna do a video about this about what you actually get and what you need to buy is is that it doesn't have um a rear view mirror incredible fact but it doesn't so you will certainly need to buy a rear view mirror [Music] so should you buy this thing for the uk well as i say you've got to weigh up what you're going to use it for how you're going to use it where you're going to charge it where you're going to store it you're going to save money if you can charge it up you're going to save money if you can charge it up at home you're going to find it much easier to park if you've got a scooter you're going to find it a much more pleasant way of commuting in the winter even if it's a bit cold you won't be as cold as you will be on the scooter even if it's a bit wet you won't be as wet as you are on the scooter um if you've not really driven very much if you're not a super confident driver if you're not you don't feel yourself a super car person well the simplest of it will appeal to you if you're somebody who likes something that stands out from the crowd that is fun uh that brings a smile to people's faces then i would say this is the quadricycle for you it is um it's it's a smile machine on wheels um so way up whether it's gonna work for your use cases and you know if you're somebody who thinks well i might want to occasionally go 150 miles in it or 150 kilometers can it work for that yes it can we've done lots of long journeys but you have to plan you have to work out where you're going to stop you have to have a bit of patience about finding the charges you have to have a bit of patience about whether the charges are working um so work out what your lifestyle is work out what your usage for this thing is and then make the decision personally i i've not regretted it for a second we've had an incredible outfit in fact the only thing i do regret is that it's kept me off my electric bike more than i would have liked and i've put on a few kilos but that's cars for you anyway i hope this has been of some use in trying to help you make that big decision about whether to buy this thing don't forget to subscribe don't forget you can buy us a coffee if you want to support the channel and we'll see you well i'll see you on the next one bye [Music] bye

Channel: Me and Mon Ami

Views: 171,969

Keywords: 2022 citroen ami, Fern weston bennett youtube, Honest review 4000km, Meandmonami, Promenade des anglais nice, Villefranche sur mer, citroen ami, citroen ami review, electric car, electric car review, french, french riviera, nice, villefranche sur mer youtube video, vlog, weekly vlog

Id: 1IgKw9DM-II

Length: 21min 51sec (1311 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 24 2022