The Citroen Ami Cargo is a van for teenagers

What if we told you the cutest car you’ll see today is also – quite probably – the cheapest? And that it’s not even a car? This is the Citroen Ami Cargo, and it’s an electric van that costs 25 euros per month. Most phone contracts are more. Most phones won’t transport you and 140 kilos of your favourite possessions up to 47 miles, either…

Suffice to say it’s the van transformation (you do the portmanteau) of the cutesy Ami, Citroen’s weeny car-that’s-not. Its 2.4 by 1.4 metres and 30mph top speed allow it to be driven without a full driving licence and by those as young as 14 in its native France (where most sales will be).

So while Citroen calls it a “zero emissions solution for last-mile delivery drivers and business operators in urban areas”, we translate that as “way to make your pre-school paper round even quicker”.

Helping get Matilde’s Le Figaro to her letterbox in one piece are a number of storage solutions. The passenger seat has been ditched in favour of storage space – how else would 140 kilos/400 litres of storage space have been squeezed inside Citroen’s tiny cuboid? Then there’s the adjustable floor height and a storage shelf that doubles as a desk operable from the driver’s (well, the only) seat. One for the young entrepreneurs merely feeding the start-up fund by delivering Mathias his Le Monde every day.

It’s otherwise as per the regular, two-seat Ami – which means a 5.5kWh li-ion battery yielding those modest range and mph figures. You actually need to hear its horsepower figure? Eight. Yes, 8bhp, or precisely 818 fewer chevaux than the new Ferrari.

But it’s also considerably cheaper. It starts at €6,490 euros in France, or that tantalising €24.18 monthly payment if you lay down a thick enough deposit. Sweet huh?