Before designer Boris Reinmöller pulls back the curtain on the hall near Paris, he takes out a picture from the early days of the legendary duck. Some of this duck, which was actually called 2CV, had to go into the new electric Citroën that he is about to show here. “There is still something iconic to be found in it,” explains Reinmöller, who designed the car. No, the new ë-C3 wasn’t allowed to look retro; the boss had forbidden that. Carlos Tavares, patron of the car company Stellantis, doesn’t want nostalgia or round cars.
Renault R5 The remake will be presented soon and will be sold in the fall for less than 25,000 euros. 40 or 52 kWh battery, up to 400 km range
BYD Seagull is available in China from around 10,000 euros. With 30 kWh battery 305 km range. Which car BYD builds in Europe: unclear
Tesla Model Q/2, the name is not yet fixed. Tesla promises a range of over 400 km with a 53 kWh battery from 2026 for 25,000 euros
VW ID.2 is expected to come from Spain from 2026 at a starting price of 25,000 euros, it should travel 350 km and charge in 20 minutes
Those responsible mean something different when they refer to the 2CV: after the war, the car made driving affordable for the masses. The construction of the wobbly car had reduced the use of precious steel to the essentials so much that it was replaced from the windshield frame to the rear end with a rollable textile cover that generations of drivers appreciated as a cool air conditioning system. The car was created for large-scale industrial production. And despite its cheap price, it was ahead of its time in terms of comfort, space and reliability. What the duck was for the mobilization of the masses, the ë-C3 should do for the e-mobilization of the masses. That’s the promise.
Because it needs to start urgently if Europe’s auto industry doesn’t want to tear down the legal CO2 limits and if it wants to protect its chances on the markets of the future. If transport should finally do something about the climate crisis.
There is this ë-C3 standing in the dazzling light of a hall where the designers usually show prototypes to the CEO. The new model, which the French brand plans to deliver to customers for the first time in the spring, is actually the first affordable electric car from a European manufacturer. It is listed at 23,300 euros. Not long ago, even company boss Tavares declared a European-made electric car at such a price (the ë-C3 is made in Slovakia) to be impossible. For comparison: a combustion engine Polo is available from VW for just under 22,000 euros. But according to ADAC, the average electric car in Germany cost almost 53,000 euros last year. It was difficult to find anything useful under 40,000 – if so, then from China. VW, for example, has just reduced the prices of its electric models by several thousand, but the German company can hardly afford this in the long term because production is too expensive. Stellantis, on the other hand, assures you that you will make a lot of money with the new car.
According to surveys, private buyers in Europe are looking for a car between 20,000 and 30,000 euros. That’s why most electric cars have so far bypassed the broader market. Experts claim that the real battle for the future of classic car manufacturers in Europe will take place in this field. “The market is now spreading out to a certain extent,” says Daniel Arand, auto expert at the consulting firm AlixPartners. “The manufacturers have to hurry up if they want to gain a standing in the market.” Because the competition is at the start. Relative newcomers like Tesla want to challenge traditional car manufacturers for their position in the e-business. The market for electric cars is growing rapidly in China, and manufacturers there are often ahead in terms of technology and costs. They could soon start their export wave.
This is the difference from the days of the duck: mass mobilization is no longer necessarily a growth engine for the European auto industry. The industry is in a fight for survival. Tesla boss Elon Musk has already challenged the old car world with expensive models. Now he is preparing the attack on the Volks-Wagen. “We want to start production at the end of 2025,” Musk said at the end of January. The new car will be called Model Q or Model 2 and will cost less than 25,000 euros. With him, Musk wants to “revolutionize” the car world again and penetrate the core business of companies such as VW, Stellantis, GM and Toyota. Tesla is planning a new production process in which the vehicle is no longer assembled step by step on the assembly line, but at the same time in one place.
Announcements are always huge for Musk, and at the moment he is particularly struggling to create growth ideas because of the mediocre stock market price. If it were successful, Tesla would no longer only produce 30 percent cheaper using this method compared to the old car manufacturers, but 40 to 50 percent, experts estimate. “It will be by far better than any production technology that exists in the world,” said Musk. Development in Texas is already underway. He estimates sales potential at five million cars per year. Musk had already announced in the fall that he also wanted to build the car in his German factory in Grünheide.
The second major attack comes from BYD. The Chinese company is already the largest electric car manufacturer in the world. At the end of the year he announced that he would build a factory in Hungary, which could perhaps be ready in 2026. It is not yet clear which car the Chinese will produce there. At home they offer the “Seagull” model, a modern small car that can travel 305 kilometers and is sometimes sold for less than 10,000 euros. “Made in Europe” wouldn’t be that cheap, but even with a surcharge it would still be a tempting offer.
The defenders do not remain idle. Renault will present the new R5 at the end of February, which will be sold from 25,000 euros from autumn onwards. This electric remake of the classic can be retro, is “Fabriqué en France” and, like the ë-C3, comes in time for new subsidies that the governments in France and Italy have announced for electric car buyers.
The VW ID.2 is scheduled to go to customers in Spain in 2026, and it too costs less than 25,000 euros. Chief developer Kai Grünitz recently revealed that this would be difficult to achieve. VW promises a range of 350 km for the starting price, and the battery should be able to be charged in 20 minutes (from 10 to 80 percent). A lot will depend on whether the group manages to compensate for the cost advantages of its competitors this time.
Nevertheless, 25,000 euros should not remain the lower limit at VW either. The manufacturer has announced an entry-level electric model under 20,000 euros for the end of the decade. In order to realize this, the Wolfsburg-based company is currently negotiating a cooperation with Renault. The French have experience with low-budget development and production thanks to their sister brand Dacia.
Some skeptics have predicted in the past that the electric age would mean the end of driving for little people. Such warnings were apparently premature. The fact that cheaper cars are becoming possible is thanks to advances in battery technology. Batteries are becoming cheaper through mass production. In addition, lithium iron phosphate batteries, known as LFP for short, are increasingly available. Although these batteries are not ahead of the previously dominant nickel-manganese-cobalt batteries (NMC) in terms of charging and storage performance, they do have a few unbeatable advantages: They do not contain problematic substances such as cobalt and rare earths and have little risk of overheating, which is why they have to be used cannot be secured with such great effort. This makes them significantly cheaper. The LFP batteries should also be more durable.
It doesn’t work without China either: Stellantis was the first European manufacturer to secure the supply of LFP batteries from SVolt, a subsidiary of Chinese competitor Great Wall, for the ë-C3.
The car is now here, in the hall near Paris: with a full 44 kWh battery, it should travel 320 kilometers and be able to charge in 26 minutes (from 20 to 80 percent). A bit of duck nostalgia is allowed: the soft light blue in which one of the three models is painted was also inspired by the pale blue-gray of the first 2CV, those responsible claim. The new brand logo, which is trapped in an oval like before, also represents a reminiscence. But the ë-C3 doesn’t look as revolutionary as the 2CV once did. It offers space in a small footprint (which pleases those looking for a parking space), and its design shows a few SUV echoes. Its height is also due to the fact that the battery has to fit under the subfloor.
Unlike the electric cars from Tesla and VW, the new Stellantis model is still a compromise between the old and new car worlds. You can see this when you look into the engine compartment. A silver box is screwed into the middle, from which numerous high-voltage cables come, but there is unused space on all sides. If necessary, an internal combustion engine can fit in here. That’s exactly what Stellantis wants to install in a few months. This means that the new C3 without ë should be perhaps another 8,000 euros cheaper. That’s the principle at Stellantis. The same vehicle architectures for all drives, the cars come from the same production line – this allows flexibility. What’s new: Citroën and its sister brands Peugeot, Opel, Fiat and Jeep have previously used combustion engine platforms under which, with some reservations, a battery could also be screwed. The C3 is the first to have a battery platform that can also accommodate a combustion engine if necessary.
Citroën wants to be “disruptive,” says brand design chief Pierre Leclercq, who is now positioned in front of the car. The construction does not mark a technical break. But the price, how could it be so low? Leclercq points into the cockpit: One would have liked to have had a head-up display that reflected speedometer or navigation data on the windshield. That was too expensive. So they came up with this elegant display bar directly under the window, which horizontally takes up the width of the vehicle. Or, says Leclercq, another example: certain plastic parts for the body no longer need to be painted; the plastic comes out of the injection molding machine in the original color. “This brings enormous savings,” he says. There are only five colors left on offer. There is a bit of the pragmatism of the Citroën ancestor in the new model.
