The Citroën Oli is strange, but smart: ‘This way cars can remain affordable’ | Car

According to the French car brand, the Oli builds on the idea with which the brand developed the Ami a few years ago. With that small electric city car (which is sold to us as Rocks-e by Citroën’s group brother Opel), the brand wants to offer the most affordable form of personal mobility. Thanks to clever inventions such as an identical nose and back – because that saves production costs – the Ami costs less than 8,000 euros. For that you get a microcar that is not allowed to drive faster than 45 kilometers per hour, but its price is low. Especially at a time when ‘real’ small cars are disappearing and models such as a Toyota Aygo X quickly cost double.

The new Oli should translate that idea behind the two-seater Ami into a larger model that you can use with your family, Citroën promises. The compact SUV-like is 4.20 meters long, 1.65 meters high and 1.90 meters wide. The car, whose name is by the way a corruption of the English ‘All’ , or ‘everyone electric’, would weigh a maximum of 1000 kilos due to the use of all kinds of innovative materials. Thanks to that lower weight, according to its creators, it can travel about 400 kilometers on a relatively small (ie cheap) battery pack. In order to keep energy consumption low, the top speed is also limited to 110 kilometers per hour.

The French brand says it wants to break a trend with this approach. “Instead of a ‘palace on wheels’ weighing 2,500 kilograms and covered with screens and gadgets – which is the current trend in the car industry – the Oli is a concept that proves that with only the things that customers really need have and want to, society’s need for cheap, emission-free mobility can be met.”

Citroën therefore calls the Oli an ‘optimistic driving laboratory’, with which the brand investigates which technologies and ideas can become reality in future production cars that actually appear on the road. Some of these are already very realistic: for example, upcoming Citroëns will have so-called V2G and V2L options, with which you can return the power in the battery pack to the energy grid (Vehicle-to-Grid) or other electrical devices (Vehicle-to-Load) respectively. ).

The French group is also looking at how the production costs of a modern car can be further reduced. After all, money that Citroën does not have to spend does not have to be passed on to buyers of the cars. As with the Ami, the brand is exploring the use of identical front doors, bumpers and other protective elements. The more identical parts a car has, the fewer molds and presses need to be developed. Another interesting find is a windshield that is almost completely upright. This minimizes the distance from the roof to the bonnet, reducing the need for heavy, expensive and inefficient glass. According to the brand, the trend towards ‘more’ has thus been exchanged for the constructive ‘enough’ – or as the Grote Van Dale describes it: ‘as much as is necessary’.

Citroën’s developers are also focusing more on the use of recycled materials, which should reduce a car’s CO2 footprint. For example, the flat hood, the body panels and the roof (on which you can stand) are made of recycled corrugated cardboard in a honeycomb structure, and you can see various details that have been produced with a 3D printer. The chairs, in turn, are made of a greatly simplified frame and covered with open woven fabric that has also been given a second life.

With the Oli, Citroën is also looking at ways to replace cars less often. Instead, future models should be easier to repair, refurbish and upgrade with recycled parts. You should be able to use a car for much longer without having to produce a new one. According to Citroën (and also according to various independent studies), this makes a huge difference in CO2 emissions from the car industry.

The most tangible example of this way of thinking is the advent of special tires that can only be retreaded. This technology is already widely used in trucks, but tire manufacturer Goodyear has developed passenger car tires especially for the Oli where this is also possible. According to the inventors, it is possible to retread the tires up to three times, so that they can last up to 500,000 kilometers without having to replace the tires completely. “The tread compound is made almost exclusively from sustainable and recycled materials, including sunflower oil and rice husk silica, pine resin and all-natural rubber. These materials replace synthetic, petroleum-based rubber,” the brand continues.

Which discoveries and new techniques of the Oli we will actually encounter in the Citroëns of the future, remains a mystery for the time being. It is clear, however, that the ‘new’ logo that you see on the car is here to stay: from now on the ‘double chevrons‘ again in an oval, as was once the case with the first models of the French brand.