Citroen New e-C3 cracks the sub-25,000 euro EV barrier

PARIS -- Citroen has launched the sub-25,000 euro full-electric New e-C3 hatchback, as Europe’s automakers brace for the threat of low-cost Chinese EVs.

The New e-C3 will be built in Stellantis’ factory in Trnava, Slovakia. It features a lower-priced 44-kilowatt-hour lithium-iron-phosphate battery with a range of 320 km, and has been carefully engineered to be designed to cost to meet the price target, Citroen executives said.

Prices will start at 23,300 euros, Citroen said. An urban-focused version with a 200 km range will be launched in early 2025 at a price of 19,990 euros.

Deliveries for the New e-C3 will open at the start of the second quarter of 2024, with production starting in the first quarter. Pre-orders start Wednesday.

Citroen will also sell internal-combustion versions of the car (to be called New C3), especially in countries where EV market penetration is low. 

The New C3 will be key to help Citroen achieve its sales goals of 5 percent market share in Europe and 1 million units a year, CEO Thierry Koskas said. "The C3 is a very, very important car. It's 40 percent of what we sell," he said. "Renewing it and having an EV version will probably help us increase market share."

Citroen had a 3.8 percent share in Europe in September, according to figures from lobby group ACEA.

The New e-C3 is built on the Smart Car platform that was developed for India and other emerging markets, partly engineered by Tata Consulting as a modification of the CMP platform first developed by PSA Group and Dongfeng in the mid-2010s.

The Smart Car platform has been optimized to accept a flat battery, Koskas said, and was designed from the beginning to be fully electric. "It's not a Christmas tree in terms of technology, but it has everything you need in the B segment (small cars)," he said.

An Indian version of the New C3 was launched in 2022, with a full-electric powertrain offered from the start of 2023, but the New C3 for Europe is different in a number of ways, said Thierry Blanchard, B Segment (small cars) product manager at Citroen.

Among them are all-new body panels, although the basic "morphology" is the same, Blanchard said. The European model has different front- and rear-end treatments and interior, as well as larger wheels. From a technical standpoint, it meets European crash and safety regulations, and has a larger battery and different electric motor.

European models have a 44-kilowatt-hour battery from SVolt imported from China, as well as an electric motor designed and built by a joint venture with Nidec in Tremery, France. Charging time from 20 to 80 percent is 25 minutes.

The 25,000-euro barrier is seen as crucial to mass adoption of electric vehicles in Europe -- as well as the viability of building mass-market EVs in Europe -- ahead of a 2035 EU regulation limiting sales of new cars to zero-emission models. 

The current market penetration of EVs is about 15 percent in Western Europe, which accounts for 90 percent of sales, as many countries in eastern and southern Europe, where incomes are lower, have EV market shares in the low- to mid-single digits.

Europe’s lowest-priced EV, the Dacia Spring minicar, which starts at 20,800 euros in France, is imported from China. 

Chinese automakers’ ability to build cars domestically, especially electric vehicles, at lower cost than in Europe has become a political issue. The EU competition authorities have just opened an investigation into state support for Chinese automakers, and France has announced a plan to tie EV incentives to carbon-neutral manufacturing – a proposal that is widely seen as targeting cars built in China, which is heavily dependent on coal-fired power plants.

Koskas said Citroen needs to be able to fight against the Chinese EV offensive without relying on incentives, because by 2030 it's likely that most countries will have ended them. "We need to fight with the same weapons, which are cost and technology," he said.

Blanchard said the New e-C3’s combination of range, price and high level of standard equipment is unique on the market. Standard features include a backup camera, Citroen’s hydraulic damper suspension, electric windows and an induction charger for smartphones. 

"There are no other models on the market at this price with this range," he said. He would not give a specific sales target, but the current C3 has been a best-seller for Citroen since it was launched in 2016, ranking sixth overall in the small car segment with more than 88,000 sales through August, according to figures from Dataforce.

Citroen has greatly simplified the New C3 trim levels, moving to three (You, Plus and Max) from the current five, Blanchard said, partly an effort to simplify online sales. Each trim level will cost an additional 1,100 euros, he said, so even the highest-spec New e-C3 should be less than 30,000 euros. 

Blanchard would not reveal prices for the internal combustion engine versions, but he said there would be both 48-volt mild hybrid and nonhybrid powertrains, with no difference in interior space from electric models. The current C3 starts at about 16,500 euros.