Comment by Lio
11 hours ago
With all the hype around the nostalgia it seems to be slipping by people that this 2CV also has a class leading weight at under a tonne.
Lighter weight means better range for a smaller battery, more efficient tyres and lower road wear. It's one of the reasons why the target price is going to be so low.
It's a really cheap car but I think to do that they still have to have some good engineering in it.
Lighter weight does improve range a bit in stop and go city driving, but not really on longer trips. Once the weight of the car is up to speed, most of the energy is spent fighting aerodynamic drag. Lower weight would probably reduce rolling resistance and has other benefits to vehicle handling and costs.
I doubt a sub-1 tonne car is going to be pleasant to drive at highway speeds (thinking about the noise insulation here) and especially if there's even a little bit of wind. This is clearly designed for localized city driving. I suspect that it's also more (though not totally) pedestrian friendly in that the kinetic energy stored will be far less given any kind of impact.
I personally love that it is running counter to the trend of car masses and sizes increasing across the world [0]. There's a reason why there's a small, very fun and niche community of Kei car enthusiasts - the case against pavement princesses and absurdist masculine performativity is a strong one.
[0] https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/global-car-economy
My first car was a Twingo 1, it was around 800kg, I traversed France highways from south to north mutiple times, never had any problem, very comfortable. It was even better than Lada 4x4 on snow (traversed plateau du Larzac fully covered in snow, no problem, without chains or winter tyres, saw some (french) Lada on the road side). Perfect car, but maybe you need to be French or Italian to appreciate it.
> I doubt a sub-1 tonne car is going to be pleasant to drive at highway speeds
My car is 945kg and the biggest issue with longer trips is that the chairs aren’t that comfortable. Although at higher speeds it feels a bit dodgy. It does 170 no problem and that feels quite fast already. Top speed is 190 which I only tried once on the autobahn but that’s quite scary. At about 170 acceleration drops significantly and it takes a few minutes to go from 170 to 190. Won’t ever try that again. Cruising at around 150 for several hours is perfectly fine.
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> I doubt a sub-1 tonne car is going to be pleasant to drive at highway speeds
Why would you think that? Well, you sort of explain it, but you don’t have any evidence or experience to back it up, so I’m still not sure why you think it?
Back in the day (think 1990s) plenty of small European hatchbacks weighed less than or around 1000kg, and noise at highway speeds was not a problem: Peugeot, Citroen, Renault, VW, Fiat, and others all had small hatchbacks that were absolutely fine, and perfectly comfortable, at motorway speeds for long distances.
My first car was a used 1998 Renault Clio: depending on which engine and trim level you bought they either weighed a bit less than 1000kg, or a bit more. I looked mine up and it weighed 1050kg.
I did about 50,000 miles in that car, including lots of long journeys. Back then I had a far too heavy right foot - which eventually got me a speeding fine - and even then noise wasn’t an issue on the motorway.
There’s so much more to how noisy a car is inside than merely sound insulation. Aerodynamics are a huge component, but so are shut lines, seals, and panel gaps. Materials and surface finishes also matter. Even things like the shape of the wing mirrors, or how the shape of the front corners and headlights direct air around and past the wing mirrors[0], can have a massive impact on whether or not a car is noisy at speed within the cabin.
This is Hacker News. We all to a greater or lesser extent work or dabble in incredibly detail oriented disciplines. Why would you assume disciplines outside those in majority representation here aren’t equally, or even more, detailed?
[0] I want to say either the Nissan Note or the Nissan Leaf had nobbly protrusions on its headlights specifically to reduce cabin noise by changing the way air flowed around the wing mirrors.
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I did lots of highway driving in my 2010 Yaris (weighs about a tonne) this weekend and I was perfectly comfortable. Though I guess the more used you get to larger, heavier cars the more you would find such a small car uncomfortable.
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It will also have less drag than your typical electric brick of a SUV.
Also, at least here highway driving is quite a bit of slowing down and speeding up, rarely it is just one speed whole way (that unless you're sitting on right lane behind the trucks)
The original was only a bit over half a tonne at 600 kg.
This one looks about as much like the original 2CV as a BMW Mini looks like an Austin Mini, that is, not very much.
I don't think that really matters.
If it was just about the looks it would be boring as hell but if you ignore the cosmetics, it's still light weight and low cost by the standards of other modern electric cars.
Remember this is the very bottom segment of market and a very competitive space to be in.
This is not a car aimed at me but I still think it's interesting.
Its in a competitive space with Dacia Spring, Renault Zoe and maybe Nissan Leaf, all of which are there or thereabouts for the announced price and weight here and actually being sold now. This is still a concept and 2 years away. So none of those specs are amazing.
Its a nice design though good to see from Citroen who have spend too long oscilating between no personality and just weirdly quirky (citroen cactus anyone?)
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The original had a top speed of 40 mph and its only security feature was prayers.
I have done at least 70mph with a friend's 2CV on the Autobahn downhill. Doing 170 with a Porsche felt way safer.
It worked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLOI5rPVols
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Ahem. Having driven a 2CV, that top speed literally only applies to the first revision. (So, yes, technically "the original")
Later versions could do 65mph. 75mph downhill with the wind at your back.
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I disagree, speaking as a former 2CV owner. Rolled cloth roof, door closing straps, whiplash inducing bench seating — removable for picnics! — round plunger pedals, and dish wheel hubs (though upgraded with four nuts per wheel!) A lot of this felt giddily familiar.
Disappointed to not see flap windows. How am I supposed to get a blood blister from pinching my finger in a regular window?! No apparent hole in the front to hand crank the transmission either. Would’ve been a nice nod to the original if you had been able to hand crank some regen charge back into the battery. (The original crank was so you could start the engine if^Wwhen the battery was flat.)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DjFuvlwGvq0
I’m slightly ashamed to admit this too but it was always a bit fun to get a bump of the petrol tank vent, a tiny pin aperture in the chrome tank cap.
https://www.franzose.de/en/Citroen-2CV/2CV6/fuel-system/ANR1...
Maybe the EV version could come with a chrome truffle holder in the same position, for a similar olfactory kick start before the school run. Please don’t send help. We all turned out fine despite it being 4-star leaded.
Also another commenter here says this is clearly for city driving. What?! This is clearly for taking a shortcut across the lower field to buy a bottle of wine and a pack of Gitanes before the village shop shuts for lunch!
This machine was a tool car and the kind of design icon that earned its place because it interfaced man with machine, not because it looked pretty.
new one is actually smaller than the original (3760 mm long vs 3830 mm). but batteries and modern safety makes it heavier
The marketing text says it is a tribute. Not sure where your basing it as a replica look-a-like is coming from
It didn't have an EV battery either.
If you see an old car next to a modern car, the size difference is extreme!
It's ridiculous: Put a modern SUV next to a WW2 M4 Sherman and you will be surprised, the SUV is the same size. Some a bigger.
All that weight needs power to get into motion. It is incredibly wasteful from a money and resource perspective.
But because the person next to you drives a big car and you don't want to get crushed, you also need a big car..
> If you see an old car next to a modern car, the size difference is extreme!
Apparently modern BMW 3-series are as big (on the outside?) as their 5-series from the 1980/90s.
> It's ridiculous: Put a modern SUV next to a WW2 M4 Sherman and you will be surprised, the SUV is the same size. Some a bigger.
Bit of a meme/trope that main battle tanks have better forward visibility than pickup trucks:
* https://carbuzz.com/news/the-abrams-m1-tank-has-better-visib...
The original was - no joke - absolutely mind-blowing off-road. The dumb places we could go in a 2CV when I had abandoned my car way way back...
It will be interesting to see how serviceable it is. The 2CV was pretty famous for being easy to disassemble.
The announced range of this car is 250km / 150 miles
Gives me hope for an inevitable electric Mazda mx-5 to not suck.
Mazda famously built the worst EV, almost on purpose it seems
https://electrek.co/2023/11/27/ceo-of-mazda-which-makes-one-...
Its been a decade of sandbagging. Fuck them https://electrek.co/2016/11/17/madza-electric-cars/
They now have the Mazda 6e, built on a Chinese platform.
Where do I sign up?
>Lighter weight means better range for a smaller battery
Sadly the way it works with EVs in practice is lighter weight = tiny battery = smaller range.
well, 1983 peugeot 205 was let's say a rocket. under 800kg and ~70hp (or 120, but that's was just scary)
you just don't get a car like that today.
Ahhhh the 205 XS sweet spot. Twin carb 1.4 litre was indeed plenty enough to experience the horror of understeer on a wet road. Similar body kit to the GTI without, as the kids say today, being quite as much of a ditch magnet.
Which "class" is that? A class of concept cars? Because there is exactly zero point zero percent chance that any "wondrous" 2.0CV will survive to production. It won't look like that outside, it won't look like that inside, it won't weigh that much and most certainly it won't cost so low.
It we are being realistic, the real 2.0CV would be much closer to some Citroen C3 with a token styling element outside (maybe a bit arching roof) and a few minimal token styling elements inside, it would be on a standard EV platform and weigh as much as co-platform "brothers" and it would cost 30k+.
Well the Renault Twingo is slated to be under 20K and the Dacia Spring is already around 12K. Both have similar specs so it doesn't sound that far fetched to me.
Huh, interesting. What I see now, Dacia Spring new is between 15.5-17k EUR, but that's surprisingly low too. I thought new EVs under 30k doesn't exist.
The twingo is for sale and on the road already.