PSA & Moroccan postal service to adapt Citroën Ami
The French PSA Group and Morocco’s postal service Barid Al-Maghrib signed an agreement to develop an adapted version of all-electric Citroën Ami. A total of 225 electric mail delivery vehicles have been commissioned.
The plan is for Citroën to manufacture the EV at its plant in Kenitra, near Rabat. Following a development process, the fleet will serve Barid Al-Maghrib’s mail-parcel distribution network. Morocco also hopes to leverage the EV development into a larger electric vehicle production body in the northern African nation. As Minister of Industry Moulay Hafid Elalamy puts it: “This agreement reflects government policy, making public procurement a lever for the development of industrial ecosystems creating jobs and developing exports.”
While no time frame is mentioned in the communication, a basic prototype already seems to be standing. When and in what capacity production will take off, should the vehicle be found viable for use beyond Morocco’s mail delivery, is still undecided.
Larger ambitions for Morocco’s EV industry are not unimaginable, considering the cobalt deposits the country sits on. Considering how important the resource remains for EV batteries, and particularly how difficult sourcing it remains, as the industry is still plagued by exploitation in supply chains, Morocco would be wise to benefit further than simply refining the resource for use by others.
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