Citroen revives the 2CV for an electric age
- ID
- 34739
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 12 Oct 2026, 8:09 PM
- Fetched
- 13 Oct 2026, 2:21 PM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c620r33plgppo
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 2.0
- Created
- 13 Oct 2026, 2:22 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developers
What happened
Citroen unveiled a retro-styled electric 2CV concept at the Paris Motor Show, with a showroom version targeted for 2028 at an expected price of about £13,000. The original 2CV launched in 1948 and stayed in production for more than 40 years; Citroen is now leaning on that heritage as European brands face mounting competition from Chinese EV makers. The Hacker News thread on the story drew 302 points and 339 comments.
Why it matters
There is no actionable takeaway for developers, AI/ML learners, or SaaS founders here: no tooling, API, infrastructure, pricing, or policy change that affects anything the audience ships. The only transferable signal is a marketing pattern — European automakers (Citroen, Renault with the 5 E-Tech, Fiat with the 500) are using heritage branding to sell EVs in a difficult market, which is a go-to-market playbook rather than a technical one. If you want a reason it appeared here at all, it is that HN's front page rewarded a non-technical nostalgia post with 339 comments, which says more about the forum than the product.
Discussion angle
Retro-branding as a sales tactic when a category gets commoditized — Renault 5 E-Tech, Fiat 500, now the 2CV — does that same playbook apply to software products squeezed by cheaper competitors, and does it ever actually work?