First Look At The Citroen Oli

Citroen is a brand known for its quirkiness. Some of attempts are successful in the case of the C5X, which has also made it into my buyers guide. Others, in the case of the Citroen C3 plurial are less so. In this article, I’m going to tell you about yet another quirky city car concept from Citroen. It is dubbed the Oli, and unlike the Ami, which has a pitiful manufacturer’s range of 46 miles and more like 25 miles in the real world; this new Oli has a manufacturers range of 248 miles. By doing the maths, we can expect a real world range of around 135 miles from this cars 40kwh battery. Not bad for a car that aims to deliver on the dimensions the Ami has.

As you can see, the styling is a bit like what Toyota has done to the small Aygo, to make it the Aygo X. We have some body cladding, squared off wing mirrors, angular body panels, and some metal handles, as well as a raised ride height over the Ami, which gives it quite a rough and ready stance. However, this isn’t your average ‘off-road’ city car, as you can quite easily see with features such as a flat windscreen, which apparently is used to use minimise glass, reducing weight. In fact, this whole car weighs A lot of the materials involved are also 100% recycled and certain parts can be recycled.

Another technology on board in called V2G. In short, this gives you the ability to store and sell energy back to the grid. If you’re doing the opposite process and taking it from the grid, rapid charging from 20% to 80% takes 23 minutes. As with quite a few electric cars, the Oli can also supply electricity to appliances. That should be enough to run a fridge freezer for 12 hours. Pretty cool.

Inside, it’s a bit different. I’m not so keen on the orange, which is all over the cabin, but they have taken a lot of effort to minimise parts on board. For example, the dashboard has just 34 parts to it, compared to the typical 75 parts in a family hatchback. They use a ‘beam’ which houses the steering column, a smartphone dock, toggle switches for things such as the air conditioning and USB ports. What looks like a bluetooth speaker stuck to the dashboard is docked into place (and can be removed) to save 250g over a standard audio system. That might not sound like much, but all the weight saving techniques, mean this car weighs just 1000kg. A featherweight in the electric car world, compared to a VW ID3 which weighs over 1,800Kg.

Overall, this shows us an exiting future to what Citroens will become. Citroen themselves say the electric future should be ‘affordable, sustainable and enjoyable’. All of which I think are a step in the right direction. So far, electric cars have been too expensive, made of very unsustainable materials and a bit plain. Take the Tesla Model 3. How many do you see with the same white paint finish, same interior, same spec and same alloys. Lots. This new Oli allows you to swap major parts of the interior whenever you feel like it, such as the seats, and even interior panels. This certainly delivers on the enjoyable front. I’m excited to see where Citroen is going.