America loves small cars... When gas prices are way up. Remember the VW beetle? I remember during the great recession when gas was up to $4 a gallon, suddenly everyone wanted a small, fuel efficient car.

Just some thoughts:

I've owned a first gen Leaf for about 6 years and it's my daily. I bought it for very cheap. My commute is about 25 miles total on surface streets and I've put about 40k miles on it. The usable range is probably 40 miles if you want to take care of this style battery, which I do because a new one is the value of the car.

It's been a good experience but I need to have a 2nd car or a rental if I want to leave town. It's worked for me, but there's no way anyone else I know would accept this.

IMO, the experience of "refilling" the car will need to be much quicker for wide adoption in the US, especially for those who are not able to charge at home. You'd also have to convince people that going electric is better for some reason, be it a feeling that you're saving the earth(which is debatable depending on all kinds of factors) or that the performance of some models is pretty awesome.

To be honest I don’t see much use for this vehicle in the US. Even in most cities, you will likely need to drive on the highway sometimes, which this can’t do. And if I’m not on high speed roads, why wouldn’t I just use a bicycle? Particularly as e-bikes are now widely available and far more affordable than this thing.

What a cool little car!

The issue with the Ami is that it is closer to a fast golf buggy than a standard car (even a "city car" in the standard sense can keep up at highway speeds, like Japans Kei class) if it were available in a country like the US, it could really only be targeted at the few small communities where NEVs are encouraged. Technically they can be legal in most of the country to drive on roads up to a certain speed, but only a few areas have specific incentives and laws for them.

If more US states incentivised small, low to mid speed short range EVs as second cars for short local trips, made them the budget option for the many, many families that don't need multiple full sized cars would take one on as their first EV.

I mean the real way forward would be walkable towns, mixed zoning in suburbs, disincentivize large vehicles, hell disincentivize driving in general, expand bike lanes, dedicated bus lanes, invest in other options like light rail, remove "stroads", shut down the false narratives that every car needs 1000miles of range, every house needs a multi car garage, every shop needs a theme park sized car park, etc etc etc...