Opel is not so much taking a leaf from its sister brand Citroen's book, so much as borrowing half its library to create this, the Rocks-e. A tiny (just 2.41 metres long) two-seat electric city car, it's basically a Citroen Ami with an Opel badge and name.
Actually, on the name - surely it would have made more sense to call it a Rock-e, and get Sylvester Stallone to do all the ads? It worked for Kia with the Robert 'e-Niro'...
A quadricycle, not a car
Anyway, back to the specs. In fact, the Rocks-e isn't a car at all, but technically a quadricycle, which means it works to slightly different rules. On the Continent, for example, you can legally drive from as young as 15, depending on the market. Given Irish rules on self-propelled vehicles (and more significantly, Irish insurance rip-offs, sorry, costs) it's unlikely that Opel will bring the Rocks-e to Ireland, and even less likely (basically forget about it) that anyone younger than 17 could legally drive one, but I guess we can hope.
If a Rocks-e ever does make it to these shores, it'll be able to go for a claimed 75km on a full charge of its 5.5kWh battery pack. It's a light little thing, the Rocks-e - weighing just 471kg with seats for two and tiny 14-inch wheels that allow it to have an exceptionally tight 7.2-metre turning circle (better than that of a London Taxi...). Its top speed is 45km/h.
Built-in charging cable
That battery takes around three and a half hours to charge from a domestic three-pin socket, and the Rocks-e's charging cable is built-in - its three-metre cable unspools like the one on your vacuum cleaner when you need it.
The whole thing, as with the sister Citroen Ami, is built for simplicity and cheapness. So the doors are exactly the same on both sides - one is front-hinged, and the other is rear-hinged - to save the costs of swapping the hinge points around. The front and rear panels are more or less the same too - it's just one end has headlights and the other has brake lights.
Inside, there are two seats, offset slightly so that you have a little extra elbow room. The passenger seat is fixed, but the driver's one adjusts back and forth. There's no boot as such, but there is 63 litres of stowage space in the passenger footwell, and hooks for big shopping bags.
Simple instruments
The instruments are simple - just a display for speed and range, plus a gear indicator for forwards or backwards - and there's no infotainment screen, but there is a mount for your smartphone. The one concession to luxury is a panoramic glass roof. Opel says it will sell the Rocks-e in three trims - Opel Rocks-e, Opel Rocks-e "Klub" and Opel Rocks-e "TeKno" - but sales to private buyers isn't really the point. This is, as Opel puts is, all about 'SUM' - Sustainable Urban Mobility, and the Rocks-e has really been designed to be bought by instant on-street hire operators.
"Our new Opel Rocks-e is uncompromising in every respect. The design is bold and pure, the dimensions are extremely compact. Our SUM drives purely on electricity and the price is unbeatable. The Rocks-e enables smart and functional electric mobility for everyone and will attract a lot of attention", says Opel's head of sales and marketing, Stephen Norman.