Renault 5 Review 2025: Price, specs & boot space
Written by Antony Ingram
- 2024
- Hatchback
- Electric
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Quick overview
Pros
- Fabulous styling
- Well-judged ride and handling
- Good value
Cons
- Limited rear seat space
- Awkward gear selector
- We’re yet to try the cheaper 40kWh car
Overall verdict on the Renault 5
“Renault hasn’t done things by halves in bringing back one of its most beloved shapes and nameplates from the past. The new Renault 5 is one of the best electric superminis out there, with traffic-stopping styling and pricing that seems more than fair for what it offers. The MINI Cooper E finally has a real fight on its hands.”
Forget supercars: 2025’s most eye-catching car is sure to be the new Renault 5 E-Tech. That’s great news, because while an electric vehicle priced between £23,000 and £29,000 can’t exactly be considered “cheap”, it’s certainly within the reach of plenty of normal folks with normal budgets, and at this price, not even the latest MINI Cooper E stands out on the road as much as the Renault.
If you hadn’t guessed from the name and the look, the Renault 5 E-Tech pays homage to the brand’s first supermini, introduced in the 1970s and sold through to the mid-90s. It’s one of Renault’s most beloved models, especially in its home country, and was a bit of a small car revolution in its day – a spirit it’s hoping to capture with the new car.
There’s nothing quite like it. The Renault 5 is conventional in that it’s a small, five-door hatchback, and modern in that it has electric power and all the latest tech, but at this early stage at least, its design is eye-catching like few other cars. It’s full of neat details too, from the detail on the bonnet that shows your state of charge in 20% increments, to the chunky squared-off arches and some truly vivid colour options.
And it gets all the basics right. Rear seat space aside, it has a great interior, is comfortable, has a decent boot, plenty of equipment, and an intuitive infotainment system. It also drives and performs well and offers up to 252 miles of range, while pricing is class-competitive and arguably quite good value given what the Renault 5 offers in terms of range, performance, kit, and style.
Is the Renault 5 right for you?
What’s the best Renault 5 E-Tech model/engine to choose?
What other cars are similar to the Renault 5 E-Tech?
Comfort and design: Renault 5 interior
“The new Renault 5’s interior is only marginally less striking than the outside. It looks and feels great and while it could be more spacious, the materials and quality are both impressive.”
We’ll get to cabin space later, as it’s not all great news, but purely in terms of comfort, the Renault 5 E-Tech scores well. In our top-spec Iconic test car, the seats were frankly fabulous – not just their retro design and colour scheme, a nod to the wild wide-arched Renault 5 Turbos of the early 1980s, but the well-bolstered design and wide range of adjustability make them comfortable for hours behind the wheel and decently supportive in enthusiastic cornering too.
Overall too this might be among our favourite modern cabins. There’s nothing particularly novel about the wide two-screen display in front of you, since many modern cars have a similar layout, but it’s well-implemented and suits the chunky, retro-inspired look that Renault has implemented elsewhere – such as the ridged passenger dash, another tip of the beret to classic Renault 5s.
Then there are the neat little touches everywhere: the grid-style roof lining, the tasteful and smart use of coloured fabrics and stitching (and the feel of those materials), and intelligent use of physical switches where required. The squared-off gear selector is also interesting and can be customised with 3D-printed parts, but ergonomically it’s not perfect, partly because it shares space on the right-hand side of the wheel with both the wiper and audio stalks. More than once we set the wipers to full speed rather than selecting drive…
Quality and finish
Infotainment: Touchscreen, USB, nav and stereo in the Renault 5
Space and practicality: Renault 5 boot space
Handling and ride quality: What is the Renault 5 like to drive?
“The Alpine A290 will serve the proper hot hatchback role for the Renault 5, but the regular car strikes a well-considered balance of ride and handling, comfort and fun, and performance and refinement.”
The Renault 5 delivers the typical modern electric supermini driving experience, with just a few flashes of character here and there to separate it from the marauding silent hordes. It is, naturally, an absolute doddle to drive, once you’ve figured out the steering column mounted gear selector and haven’t mistaken it for the wiper stalk.
There’s a slightly firm feel to the ride quality but not an uncomfortable one – more a well-judged tautness that doesn’t try to completely smother bumps but does take them in its stride, and rounds off their edges so you don’t get any uncomfortable thumps or bangs. Ordinarily we’d suggest going for a smaller wheel option if you really want to take the edge off but 18-inch wheels are the only option here – though perhaps because of this single wheel choice, Renault has been able to really tune the suspension to work with them, rather than compromising for umpteen different sizes.
The steering has a light, direct feel and is responsive without being twitchy – pretty much perfect for a car like this, since it works in town, on country roads, and on the motorway equally well. And when you start lobbing the 5 into corners in true small-car fashion, that taut ride comes into its own, since there’s little body lean and neat, tidy handling that doesn’t fall apart as the speeds rise. You can feel the weight in the car’s responses, and over undulations there’s a little more movement than you’d find in a lighter car, but generally Renault has judged the balance between ride and handling pretty well.
It’s quite good fun in fact, and feels pretty foolproof - there are safety systems in place to reduce the chance of trouble of course, but on dry roads it rarely calls them into action even if you’re being a little silly. The Renault 5 has one other ace up its sleeve too: an excellent turning circle. Those front wheels cut quite an angle, so low-speed driving, and parking, is an absolute breeze.
What motors and batteries are available in the Renault 5?
Maximum electric range in the Renault 5
Refinement and noise levels
Safety equipment: How safe is the Renault 5 E-Tech
Charging times: How much does it cost to charge the Renault 5?
“Decent efficiency and 100kW charging mean topping up the Renault 5 E-Tech shouldn’t be too much hassle.”
We’ll concentrate on the 52kWh model here as that’s the one we’ve driven. Overall running costs will depend, as they do with combustion cars, on your efficiency, and here we’ll use a realistic figure of 4 miles per kilowatt hour, which is well within what the Renault 5 E-Tech is capable of.
Charge at home on a favourable overnight tariff of 11p/kWh and a full zero to 100% charge will cost you £5.72. Out and about, our 4mi/kWh estimate means you’ll get about 208 miles from a full charge, and if you run that down to 20% (just under 42 miles of range remaining), then a 20-80% charge (60% of the battery’s capacity, or a 31.2kWh top-up) will cost you £23.40 at the typical 75p/kWh rate.
Peak charging rate is 100kW, which is on par with others in the Renault’s class, such as the MINI Cooper E – and perfectly adequate for a car this size. That same 20-80% top up mentioned before should be done and dusted in under half an hour, while with Renault’s 11kW home wall box, 10-100% takes about 4.5 hours.
Renault 5 reliability and warranty
Renault 5 insurance groups and costs
VED car tax: What is the annual road tax on a Renault 5?
Renault 5 price
“New pricing for the Renault 5 ranges between £22,995 and £28,995, which is similar to most cars in this class. We’re yet to see how depreciation will bring that down.”
At the time of writing the first customers haven’t yet received their Renault 5s, so you won’t find used models for a while longer.
The Evolution model, with the smallest battery, will start from £22,995. Techno adds another £2000 and Iconic is another £2000 on top of that. The more powerful, larger battery models meanwhile add another £2000 to the cost of Techno and Iconic, so you’re looking at £26,995 for a 52kWh Techno, and £28,995 for a 52kWh Iconic.
That’s pretty good value compared with the Renault’s closest rival, the MINI Cooper E, which starts at £30,000, while the five-door Aceman is nearly £32,000. A larger, 281-mile MG4 SE Long Range starts at £29,495 if you want more than what the top-spec 5 can offer in terms of space and ability.
Trim levels and standard equipment
Ask the heycar experts: common questions
How much does the Renault 5 E-Tech cost?
What’s the best Renault 5 E-Tech model to choose?
Is there a hot hatch version of the Renault 5 E-Tech?
Renault 5 Alternatives
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