The current TV advert for the Citroen e-C3 – which looks as though it was directed by the same team as set up the synchronised singing decapitated Marie Antoinette heads at the Olympic opening ceremony this summer- is a funny, elegant French finger gesture to Tesla and Elon Musk.

With David Bowie’s “Suffragette City” pounding in the background, a pair of “artisan” looking young men drive a column of four e-C3s (in a possibly conscious genuflection to the Italian Job) over and through a banquet being held in a chateau by caricatured ancien regime types – all giant bouffant wigs, beauty spots, silk frock coats and enormous dresses – disrupting it and causing operatic shock horror to the assembled aristos. Big, blunt letters announce THE REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN…ELECTRIC IS NO LONGER FOR THE ELITE before the two drivers go racing away looking perplexed at each other as one of the aristo women appears in the back seat, while other artisan styled “revolutionaries” run aongside with a red flares, red flags and – just to be politically broad church and incorporate that little bit of French bourgeois revolutionary tradition -a tricolour.

This is one in the eye not only for Tesla’s model of high cost, high end, high profit EVs that can only be afforded by the wealthy – which explains why Elon Musk can be so comfortable with Donald Trump, as EVs for him are not for everyone, the poor can be left to drive old bangers, so the Chinese are guilty of “overcapacity” in wanting electric people’s cars – but also neatly skewers his political posture of being the richest man in the world and also “anti elite”.

The e -C3 is one of several cheaper EVs put on the market this year by European car manufacturers, in an attempt not to be overwhelmed by the competition from China. It is notable that the EUs negotiating position on tariffs against potential Chinese imports demands technology transfer as part of the price not to impose them. This concedes that the Chinese companies have more advanced technology and the Europeans are playing catch up. Whether this succeeds in rescuing these companies in the short term, which it may not because it is still a struggle for them to produce EVs profitably, this is projected to reverse the downward tick in EV purchases peculiar to Europe last year, which in turn will have a knock on effect on oil demand in the way that the EV boom in China already has.