I recently enjoyed a 30 minute, unsupervised test drive around Romford in a new Renault 5 E-Tech and it was very impressive in every aspect as you might expect with its 110kW (150ps) engine and its 52kWh battery. With careful driving and the regenerative braking provided by the e-pedal I could see the 'range to empty' initially increase from 198 miles to 201 miles but brisker driving of course showed a slow reduction in the range to empty. Clearly the car was not fully charged but its high efficiency was very evident. My concern is that we are being persuaded that running a BEV is the way to go to reduce our individual carbon footprint and clean up the air in town centres etc however I think that there is serious flaw with this wonderfully exciting technology.The 52kWh battery, gives a range of UP TO 250 miles and has a mass of some 250kg and still has a mass of 250 kg when close to fully discharged, whereas my similarly sized small family hatchback has a 50 litre fuel tank and had a range of AT LEAST 500 miles on regular unleaded petrol and UP TO 600 miles between fill ups on longer runs in spring, summer and autumn. When the petrol tank is nearly empty the whole car is some 40kg lighter but the electric car is still carrying 3 invisible passengers even when empty! Sadly my mpg is now about 10% lower running on regular unleaded E10 fuel, but that is another gripe.

Broadly speaking the Renault is around 250 kg heavier than my ICE car and has less than half the useful driving range. I was hoping to take advantage of the V2G technology already built into the Renault (already up and running in France) but fear it would take many years to breakeven and actually get a positive return on my investment from my energy supplier, even if the BEV was plugged in day and night whenever I did not need it. I can see that a 5 to 6 year old Nissan Leaf can be purchased for less than 25% of the new Renault and that the Leaf supports V2G using the CHAdeMo (Japanese) connection standard but this is being phased out in favour of the new EU CCS 2 connection standard. What do HJ readers think of all this?

Edited by Firmbutfair on 16/06/2025 at 23:09