Tesla Roadster Fans Are Ripping On The New Electric Citroën 2CV And I Won’t Stand For It

Over this past week, there have been, as I see it, two significant concept car reveals that seem to have captured the attention of the public even beyond the usual gearhead communities: the new electric Citroën 2CV and Tesla’s cold-gas thruster-equipped Roadster (that’s not actually a roadster). Both of these novel machines have garnered a lot of media and social media coverage, and seem to have captured the imaginations of many people, for some dramatically different reasons, which makes sense, as they represent the two polar opposite extremes of the concept car spectrum.

What’s puzzling and disheartening is a strange trend that our co-founder David noticed, where there seem to be an unusual number of people posting comparisons between the Tesla Roadster and the Citroën 2CV, where they maintain that the Roadster is somehow this incredible thing that makes the 2CV look like some embarrassing toy, and from there they extrapolate that into some sort of America vs. Europe or Capitalism vs. Socialism or some other charged and ultimately deeply inane comparison.

There does seem to be an agenda to these comparisons, and people can believe whatever kind of political sense or nonsense they want, but one thing I will not stand for is drooling simpletons who don’t know Jacqueline Feces about cars maligning a small, affordable, fun-seeming car with a genuinely engaging and iconic historic pedigree in order to aggrandize some stunt car that will only be available for extremely rich and possibly deeply insecure people to buy.

Here, take a look at some of these to see what I mean:

Meanwhile in Europe… At what point did Europeans turn into complete idiots? pic.twitter.com/8E5Nd0EJZE

— Roberto Von Klathstone (@RKlathstone) October 16, 2026

How does this car make Europeans look like idiots? An appealing and non-boring EV that is targeted to sell for €15,000 ($16,500 or so) is anything but idiotic. One might even argue that “complete idiots” is a term that could be better applied to people who have dropped $50,000 deposits for a car that was announced almost a decade ago and is now best known for being able to do barrel rolls and flips in ways that are about as likely to be approved for use on public roads as would be a car that sprays Salmonella mist at passing pedestrians.

I mean, think about it: you plunk down $50 grand back in 2017 thinking you’re going to be getting a fun, quick, EV sports car, and then the thing you’re shown is a sports car that does things that you’ll never need or even really want to do, at least not more than once. It’s like commissioning an artist to do a family portrait, and when you check in with them years later, they show you a kinetic sculpture that whizzes around like a banshee on a leash and shoots sparks. Cool, sure, but absolutely not what you asked for, nor something you can put in your living room.

Here’s another numbnuts who doesn’t know squat about cars:

Capitalism vs. Socialism pic.twitter.com/h67YXai9dI

— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) October 16, 2026

How is this capitalism vs. socialism, exactly? Both of these are cars being presented by companies who wish to make money. Does he think that Stellantis is going to be giving these cars away? Hell no. They’re for sale, they fully intend to make a profit, because, yes, capitalism. In fact, if we’re talking capitalism, the 2CV is far more likely to kick some capitalist ass because it will sell in much higher volumes than the Roadster, which, remember, is likely to start at $250,000, and I would suspect the one with the gas thrusters will be a lot more.

How many Roadsters do they think they’re going to sell, should this thing even come to market at all? It’s been nine years since it was announced. It was supposed to go into production six years ago. I suspect it will end up in production, in some form, but there’s no way it can sell in the volumes that the new 2CV can, just based on the price point. One is a toy for rich people, the other a mass-market electric city car for commuters. A big part of capitalism is moving product, and there’s a pretty clear advantage here, and it’s not for the Roadster.

Dr.Chockfull Dampdiapers up there has no idea what he’s talking about.

Pendant que la France applaudit une citadine électrique, Tesla et SpaceX font voler une voiture au-dessus d'un semi-remorque.

0 à 96 km/h en 0,59 s. Des propulseurs à air comprimé. Un salto en direct.

Nous, on va surtout se demander comment l'encadrer.

On ne joue… pic.twitter.com/URyqPqmcVQ

— David Saez (@saezdavid) October 16, 2026

Here’s another one; translating from the French into Freedom-talk, it says:

“While France applauds an electric city car, Tesla and SpaceX make a car fly over a semi-trailer. 0 to 96 km/h in 0.59 s. Compressed air thrusters. A live salto. We, on the other hand, are mainly going to wonder how to regulate it. We’re definitely not playing in the same league anymore.”

What the hell is this guy’s point, really? Comparing these cars like that is idiotic. They’re intended for two entirely different markets: one is a mass-market car for commuters, the other is an extremely expensive technological marvel marketed to people who masturbate furiously to CG women in Cyberpunk 2077 to try and push away the bad memories of how much money they lost on NFTs.

Also, there’s that AI image of Emmanuel Macron, President of France, in front of the 2CV and Elon Musk in front of the hovering Roadster, but you have to look at how Elon is depicted there:

Okay, buddy. You have fun with that.

All of these tweets and posts demonstrate a deep and powerful ignorance when it comes to cars. There’s no comparing these two cars, they’re for entirely different things. So when you see a tweet like this:

Hope you don't mind… pic.twitter.com/QCd3Tzlh2N

— Curtis. ???????? (@Curtisl131) October 16, 2026

…you have to wonder what the actual agenda here is, because this is some deep, rich idiocy. Which way? So, one way is, what, affordable electric cars that many people can buy, and the other is really expensive cars that are only for the 1% and they can blast off 25 feet into the air so they can snag a parking spot from somebody? That’s the choice?

There are so many more of these:

https://t.co/ivoR0VXryA

— KOOL (@RennT38) October 16, 2026

Honestly, it takes as much if not more “science and talent” to develop a good, affordable car for the people as it does to develop a car that does cool stunts on a stage.

It’s also worth remembering that the version with the cold-gas thrusters requires a large pressurized tank in the car, which is not exactly small. According to an extremely pro-Tesla account’s own notes, Tesla’s goal for that tank is to be able to be refilled in under half an hour, which will get you all of five seconds of thruster time. So you can do a hop once, then wait a fucking half hour to do it again, which is probably fine, because you may want to use that time to clean up whatever spilled from your cupholder or change your pants if you peed yourself a little bit again.

So, let’s be clear about what kind of a flying car this Roadster is, even if somehow ends up getting made and getting approved for “flying” on public roads. You can fly for five seconds. Have fun getting to Catalina from LA with that.

Also, that huge tank in the car means there’s only room for one seat, which really isn’t a problem, because, including the driver, that leaves plenty of seats open for all the friends someone who buys one of these is likely to have.

Many of these Roadster vs. 2CV posts are likely pushing an anti-Macron agenda, since the French elections are coming up, and many of the accounts posting these seem to have a stake in that contest.

Look, the Tesla demo of this Roadster was definitely fun. It was a fun stunt, it was fun to watch, and I bet it would be pretty fun to have been in that car. That said, all of that stuff is really just good for stunts, and as a car you’d actually want to use, enjoy, and live with, it’s inane. No one was asking for a car that can do one backflip per half hour. Nobody actually wants that. People who say they do want that likely have as much experience driving cars as your average hoagie, except most people would rather spend time with the hoagie.

For what it’s worth, Citroën appears happily unbothered by the whole thing, only responding to the Roadster hype at all with this post involving one of their tiny Ami electric city cars:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Citroën (@citroen)

Of all the social media posts on this page, this is the only one that doesn’t make the poster seem like an insufferable dipshit that you’d never want to be trapped in any car with, whether it could do backflips or not.

Top graphic images: Tesla; Citroën