New Renault 5: price, specs, launch date and interview with design director Gilles Vidal
The Renault 5 is set to bring some retro flair to the electric supermini segment
Revealed way back in February at the 2024 Geneva Motor Show, the new Renault 5’s official UK arrival is imminent. This retro electric supermini is an important car for the French brand, too, as it’s the latest stage of its ‘Renaulution’ plans.
We already know that fans of the Renault 5’s distinctively retro styling can breathe a sigh of relief, because early images have confirmed that nothing has changed from the car unveiled in Geneva. Indeed, the production-ready model looks almost identical to the concept car that had us all swooning when it was unveiled in 2021.
The Renault 5 represents the start of a new era for Renault, as it taps into its vast heritage to create what it hopes will become future classics, starting with the production version of the internet-breaking show car.
The ‘Renaulution’ involves bringing electric power to some of Renault’s biggest names, such as the forthcoming Renault 4, plus the Megane, Scenic and Twingo.
The Renault 5 shares the concept’s chunky proportions and compact five-door body, with only a few small changes to the profile. Its 18-inch wheels and short wheelbase help to keep this production version as good-looking as the concept car.
There are some changes, such as the headlights. They’re designed to give the production car a more appealing face and reference Manga comic characters. They can even ‘wink’ at you as you approach the car, using the LEDs inside.
The retro looks continue with something that looks like an air intake on the bonnet, but with this being an electric car there’s no use for one of those. Usefully, here it’s a small screen that displays charging information - so it has a real function as well as adding to the car’s design.
The front doors use normal door handles, but the rear door handles are hidden in the pillar. It’s nothing special as many cars do this, but it certainly helps to keep the car looking more like the original three-door Renault 5 while still offering a practical five-door body style. At the rear, there’s no Renault badge; it’s just a ‘5’ logo set to the right-hand side, which gives it a really unique look.
The 18-inch wheels come in different styles and there will even be further customisation options for buyers to choose.
The 5 will use technology from the Renault Clio and Renault Captur, although this car uses a platform called AmpR Small that’s made for electric cars only - so it’s not just a Clio with a retro-styled body. It’s only 3.92m long, which is shorter than many of the conventional electric superminis that it will compete with.
There will be two battery options in the Renault 5, yielding versions with 121bhp and 148bhp motor outputs for UK buyers, the latter able to get from 0-62mph in under eight seconds. Range is likely to be from 186 to 249 miles depending on the battery size; read on below to see more details on the technical specifications.
Ahead of the reveal, Renault announced the ‘R5 R Pass’ for £150. It’s something like a paid pre-order, which allows you to spec your car 10 days before orders open to the general public and have a priority build slot. You also get a die-cast model of the car and some other benefits.
Renault 5 price and release date
Renault has yet to officially announce UK pricing for the new 5, but the smaller-battery variant should see a base price of somewhere around £23,000. This will make it barely £1,000 more than the much smaller Fiat 500e, and a massive £7,000 chunk under the base-spec MINI Cooper Electric.
There are due to be three trims, spread across the two battery options, with increments of around £2,000 per step likely. Do the maths and a top-spec Renault 5 should still squeak in at under £30,000 – still less than the base MINI. Customer cars should reach UK customers in early 2025.
Renault bosses have also hinted that the Renault 5 is destined for a long lifespan of up to 15 years and will get regular updates each year rather than being the same for a few years then getting a big ‘facelift’. The model will follow the lead of models like the Fiat 500, which remained almost the same for many years before a significant update. When the design is right from the start, there’s less reason to make huge changes and more incentive to continually improve the car.
What about the interior?
The inside of the new Renault 5 model is much more conventional than the outside. There are some motifs that reference the original Renault 5 plus modern touches such as a denim material made from recycled PET bottles and an eye-catching yellow recycled fabric on the seats as well.
There’s a seven-inch digital instrument panel in entry-level cars, or a 10-inch one on higher-spec versions, while all get a 10-inch central infotainment system. Trim levels are called Evolution, Techno and Iconic Cinq, and standard kit includes keyless entry and start, 18-inch alloys, wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, and LED headlights.
Higher-spec Techno models come with Google integration in the infotainment system, a reversing camera and wireless smartphone charging. Top-spec Iconic Cinq adds heated seats and steering wheel plus front and rear parking sensors.
While the cabin is a little small - not a surprise given the short wheelbase and compact dimensions - the Renault 5 boot is a decent 326 litres, around 60 litres less than in the roomy Clio supermini.
What do we know about the Renault 5's platform, batteries and range?
The new Renault 5 will be the first vehicle to launch based on the AmpR Small platform, previously called CMF-BEV. It’s a bespoke electric car architecture, and has been specifically designed for smaller EVs. This platform will also serve as the underpinnings for the new Renault 4 – a retro-inspired small SUV – the new Nissan Micra, and potentially the new Renault Twingo, too.
When the new Renault 5 launches it will only be available with a 52kWh battery that will offer a range of up to 249 miles on a single charge. However, in time the Renault 5 will also be available with a smaller 40kWh battery, which is likely to provide closer to 186 miles of range but will be more affordable.
Expect 80kW DC charging for the smaller battery model and 100kW for the 52kWh version. A 15-80 per cent top-up will take just under half an hour, and it’s likely that UK cars will all come with a heat pump as standard, which should keep the car’s range more consistent.
The new R5 will be the first all-electric Renault to feature vehicle-to-grid (V2G) compatibility, which will be able to intelligently feed electricity back into your home when electricity tariffs are high, or even into the grid itself if demand requires it.
There’s no negative effect on battery life according to Renault, with the service being available through a home-installed wallbox terminal designed by Mobilize and accompanied by a special electricity contract. The V2G system will be available in 2024 in France and Germany, before arriving in the UK in 2025. Some electricity suppliers will offer discounts if your car has this.
The Renault 5 will be built in Douai, France by Ampere – a separate company within the Renault Group that’s focused solely on designing, engineering and manufacturing electric vehicles.
What kind of performance and drive can we expect?
There will be an entry-level 94bhp motor in some markets, but in the UK we’ll only get the more powerful 121bhp and 148bhp motors. These have 225Nm and 245Nm of torque respectively, and the latter is able to take the R5 from 0 62mph in under eight seconds. That’s for the larger-battery model, which is around 1,500kg. According to Renault, 50-75mph is possible in less than seven seconds and the car will reach a top speed of 93mph.
We’ve already driven a Clio-bodied Renault 5 prototype ahead of the production car’s arrival and, although it was far from a finished product, this has helped give some insight into what this electric supermini will be like to drive. Direct steering, a stable chassis and an impressive braking system were all highlights of the prototype R5’s performance. The motor also feels like it produces a plentiful amount of torque but, due to the traction control system still undergoing development, the car struggled to maintain tyre grip in the snowy test conditions.
The R5 is fitted with a brake-by-wire system, but this offered reasonable pedal feedback even though it is not directly connected to the brakes. Every Renault 5 will also feature high-spec, multi-link rear suspension as standard, and there’s a performance-oriented version called the Alpine A290 to take care of the electric hot hatch segment.
Renault won’t fall into the same upsizing trap as many manufacturers. At the 2021 Munich Motor Show, Renault's Chief Technology Officer, Gilles Le Borgne told us: “This will be a small car at 3.92m. Today, most of the big cars – Clio included – are between 4m and 4.05m. We have decided to go to 3.9 to be agile and be fit for downtown in the city.”
What’s the secret behind the Renault 5’s design?
Can you imagine yourself lusting after an electric car? Feeling the sort of hardened desire that persuades you to stretch the deposit a little, work out ways for the monthly payments to stack up, study your usage patterns to see how a mix of rapid and home charging could fit into your life? Could a pure-electric car ever give you that small thrill when you look at it on your driveway every morning?
If any of these are to happen, it will almost certainly have been achieved with significant help from design. Gilles Vidal is convinced of this – and he spends all day, every day, working with his team to nurture an emotional connection between customers, or potential customers, and the new generation of Renaults.
One of the top car designers of his generation, Vidal moved to lead Renault’s design division in 2020, after a successful overhaul of Peugeot’s product portfolio. But working on the Renaulution has been a completely different ball game, with greater scope for electrified and pure-electric platforms that can present as many opportunities as they do challenges.
Harnessing those chances, exploiting them, is, Vidal believes, one of the keys to the next wave of EV buyers. “Early adopters have already gone EV a long time ago,” he says. “But beyond them, you have to reach all of the people who have doubts about it; they might have range anxiety, they might worry about the ability to recharge somewhere. So we need to make the cars attractive and convincing – maybe even a little reassuring, in terms of design.
“We can also help with range, of course, through aerodynamic efficiency,” he continues, “but that's not everything. It is possible, with an EV skateboard platform, to be extremely radical and get better aero – but you end up with a car that looks like a slug. The struggle for us, as designers, is to create something that helps with efficiency, while still having visual appeal, being something that people want to drive around and be seen in, more than just slug-like aerodynamic perfection. It’s a complicated alchemy.”
This, Vidal believes, is where emotion comes in. “If you have something with emotional appeal,” he says, “people will go for it and then find the rational justification afterwards for their choices. But if you only have the rational appeal, it’s very difficult, because you’re just being compared with everybody else who only has rational appeal.”
There’s a message here; Vidal, like many European designers, is watching the wave of new entries into the market from Asia, particularly China. He’s noticed how the plethora of fresh arrivals have been scrabbling to define brand identities; his job is to tap into Renault’s heritage and legacy, make it all relevant for modern vehicles and, in so doing, create cars
you feel you want to own, rather than treat as an anonymous appliance.
“It’s fine tuning, actually,” Vidal says. “I think these days, more than ever, in car design or the wider industry, it’s about fine tuning everything so that in the context of today’s society, you end up with something that works better than what others are offering.”
The reborn 5 is a case in point – although Vidal is quick to admit that the original concept for Renault’s über-cool supermini, due in showrooms early in 2025, wasn’t even created on his watch. “Collectively at design, we always try to differ and find ideas that would be relevant for the company – regardless of what brand you’re working for,” he says.
“I did this before in other companies, and it was done here before I came. And of course the designers, they always think, ‘What can be recreated from the past? What kind of icons do we have that could be cool? Or not?’ Some brands hit a brick wall at this point because they soon realise that they have nothing – not in history, anyway.
“So in the studio here, some designers started to do an R5, because they were convinced that maybe it’s the right time for a return. ‘This little, popular car was so cool,’ they thought, ‘and it’s now old enough so that it can be cool again and [we can] explore it again.’ They went all the way to producing a full-scale model of this, but for a while it just sat there, because the management didn’t want it on the list of potential projects.
“Then ‘Captain Luca’ [Renault Group boss Luca de Meo] joined the company and of course, he went around the studios because he wanted to explore everything that was going on. And he saw that concept – or maybe [Renault Group’s Chief Design Officer] Laurens van den Acker placed it cleverly, to catch his attention.
“Either way, Luca had a quick look over this and he’s such a strong product guy that he just said, ‘We’re doing this straight away.’”
The project vehicle in question (complete with an orange paint job, by all accounts) is still tucked away in the nether regions of the design studio in Renault’s vast Technocentre campus on the outskirts of Versailles. But once de Meo had latched onto the vision, Vidal’s job was to work hand in glove with Renault’s engineering division to turn it into a production-previewing concept, let alone a vehicle that could be sold to the public.
“The orange car was not so far from what we did in the end,” he recalls. “It was maybe a bit naïve, because it really was the first draft, and it had been done very quickly. But the spirit was there. We had to take that and make the yellow show car, a realistic show car, in around three months. It was a super effort from everyone.”
It’s here where cooperation between design and engineering can make a huge difference. The 5 introduces the AmpR Small platform, which is designed to be cheap to make and use lots of proven components. Yet as Vidal says, there were also tough discussions on how AmpR Small needed to support something as funky as the 5.
“The yellow show car that was revealed was really a prototype,” he says, “because we were working on it and the production car in parallel. The key moment was when everyone agreed that the 5 needed to have great proportions; the original car had tiny little wheels tucked inboard, but we agreed with the new version that for it to be as cool as we all hoped, it had to be like a Hot Wheels [diecast model car].
“Engineering worked so hard and ultimately cracked the equation of having big wheels on such a tiny car. In a way, it helped that it was being created at the same time as the platform, because it meant that we could break some stuff or move things around, without the implications of massive costs. And we ended up, ultimately, with something that has even better proportions than I thought we would achieve. It’s a vehicle that’s just 3.92 metres long but which has 67cm-diameter tyres – incredible.”
The result, Renault hopes, is a car that sells to the soul – with customers (there are more than 8,000 expressions of interest in the UK so far) drawn to the car, and the brand, instead of the likes of MINI and Fiat. This, in turn, will allow Vidal and his team to keep the likes of the next-gen Clio more focused on pure usability – but you can bet that they’ll have emotional appeal rolled in as well.
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