New electric Citroen C4 hatch to target VW I.D 3

New Citroen hatchback will be revealed in 2020, with electric drive to be offered alongside petrol and diesel

Citroen will take a “bold step” with its replacement for the C4 when the car arrives next year, the company’s product strategy boss has promised.

As revealed by Auto Express earlier this year, the Ford Focus and VW Golf rival is being replaced by an all-new model. However, it won’t sit on the PSA Group’s EMP2 platform, like the Peugeot 308, but rather on the smaller CMP architecture, seen on the forthcoming Peugeot 208 and Vauxhall Corsa. This means that the C4 will be offered with petrol and diesel power, but also as an electric vehicle – in effect, a rival for the likes of the Volkswagen ID.3 hatch.

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Citroen product strategy boss Xavier Peugeot declined to confirm that the C4 replacement will be arriving in 2020, but he admitted a “significant car” was coming that would be offered with the aforementioned choice of powertrains. He also promised that it would be a bolder design than the old C4 – a model derided for its anonymous looks.

“The car that is coming next year is a true Citroen,” Peugeot said. “And it will be a successful product. It has to be bold, but in a modern way. It’s not as bold as an AMI 8 was 60 years ago. It will shake the market; it will not be classical. It will not be conservative. This is forbidden.”

Peugeot also insisted that Citroen’s place as the last of the PSA brands to deliver a pure-electric car is down to model cycles and nothing else. “You have to look at our product plan,” he said. “There is no overall decision about this; we will have electrified products coming in the next 18 months.”

Citroen introduced the C3 in 2016 and the C3 Aircross in 2017. Both use the older PF1 platform, which cannot be electrified, so they will be among the last models to offer plug-in functionality, perhaps as late as 2024.

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