With affordable e-C3 EV, Citroen goes into attack mode

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares has long said that “freedom of mobility” can only be assured if electric vehicles are made available to the masses.

Starting this week, the Citroen new e-C3 does exactly that, when car buyers can pre-order the small full-electric hatchback for 23,300 euros in markets including France and Germany.

The e-C3, with a range of 320 km (199 miles) that is aimed at urban and suburban daily use, is comfortably below the 25,000-euro threshold that Tavares and other auto executives say is needed to fend off the threat from Chinese-made EVs.

Its starting price is putting considerable pressure on rivals such as Renault, which is set to launch the Renault 5 small car next spring in production form, as well as Europe’s best-selling brand, Volkswagen, which expects to debut its own sub-25,000-euro EV, the ID2, in 2025.

At the same time, other Stellantis brands will feel the heat from the e-C3. The Fiat New 500, which is classified as a minicar, starts at 30,400 euros in France and remains Stellantis’ best-selling EV, but it will no longer be the group’s cheapest electric car, at 30 percent more expensive than the e-C3.

The recently unveiled Fiat 600e is slightly bigger than the e-C3 but plays in the same segment. It starts at 35,900 euros in France, or about 54 percent more. 

The gap between the e-C3 and the Peugeot e-208, starting at 35,300 euros, is only marginally narrower, at 51 percent.

At 35,100 euros in France, the soon-to-be discontinued Renault Zoe is also 51 percent more expensive.

Despite its extremely competitive price, the e-C3 is not the cheapest EV in Europe -- yet.

In France, the China-built Dacia Spring, a minicar with a range of 230 km, is offered from 20,800 euros, almost 11 percent less than the e-C3.

The Spring may soon surrender its crown to the e-C3. Citroen CEO Thierry Koskas has announced that an “urban” version of car starting at 19,990 euros will be launched in early 2025, with a range reduced to about 200 km thanks to a smaller and cheaper battery.

Tavares put Stellantis in attack mode by building the e-C3 on the group’s "designed to cost" Smart Car platform, first launched in India and optimized for electric vehicles. It will also generate siblings for the Fiat, Opel/Vauxhall and Peugeot brands. 

Now it is up to the market to demonstrate if it was pricing or lack of offerings that stalled growth of electric models in the small car segment, Europe’s third-largest.

From January to August, small car sales in Europe grew by 8.8 percent to 1,162,094 units, but electric car sales declined by 17 percent to 63,560 units, with a segment share down to 5.5 percent from 7.1 percent in the same period the year before, figures from Dataforce show.

Just three models account for over 97 percent of small electric car sales in Europe: the Peugeot e-208, up 11 percent to 32,621 units, which is ahead of the Opel Corsa-e, up 6.7 percent to 19,274 units, and the Renault Zoe, down by 60 percent to 10,206 units. The electric-only Kia Soul is a distant fourth, with sales down by two thirds to just 1,261 units.

Those are the only mainstream small EVs available in Europe, and no new models were launched to offset the falling sales of the Zoe.

That is set to change by the end of next year, with availability of the Citroen e-C3, the Fiat 600e and a new model for the brand based on the Smart Car, as well as the Renault 5.