Very interesting take, I can agree with a lot of it. I live in Germany and for a few years now, you can buy a version of the Citroen Ami (there is an Opel Version here which is the exact same ‘car’ but with more marketing in Germany, called the ‘Rocks E’). The car has about 75km or range (prob lably 60 realistically), two seats, is fully enclosed, has a heater - decent little thing if you do mostly short trips. It’s built to be easily repairable, many parts are used multiple times in the vehicle and basically it’s all just plastic trim around a steel frame. I’ve seriously considered it since I live in a rural area but most of my trips are 5-10km, I work from home. It’s not regulated like a car, it does not need car insurance and isn’t taxed, and is therefore significantly cheaper to run. You can charge basically with any wall outlet, it doesn’t fast charge anyway. In Germany, you can legally drive this car at 16 years of age with a license. The downside? Aside from being a less comfortable overall experience, you can’t go faster than 45 km/h. That is just a tad too slow for my taste, since rural streets here allow for either 100 or 70, I’d like to be less of a hindrance all the time. I think in a city, this would be fine, you can’t go faster than 50 most of the time anyway.

The price for one of these to purchase is around 8.000 euros, that’s not huge but you can get very decent used cars for less money, that’s probably why these won’t catch on here. But I do like the concept , just maybe let me go 60 in it