Tom and his friend:

Tom and his son:

Tom and his wife:

Highlights of Twin’Run’s reveal in Monaco

Twin’Run concept car is a powered up version of Twin’Z, unveiled about a month ago at the Milan Design Show. It is powered by a  mid-engine 320-hp V6.

Twin’Run is a true heir to the infamous Renault hot hatches : R5 Turbo & Clio V6.

Blast from the past, R5 Turbo and concept-car Twin’Run racing on the Monaco circuit.

Clio V6 featured in the Twin’Run video below, was driven by French F1 pilot Charles Pic (Caterham F1).

What a team (from left to right) : Laurens van den Acker, Senior VP, Renault Design; Charles Pic, Caterham F1 pilot; Jean-Michel Jalinier, Renault Sport F1 CEO; Carlos Tavares, Renault COO; and drivers Alain Prost & Jean Ragnotti.

On the road

We took to the roads of the Basque country to test-drive Captur. It was a natural choice, because Captur is the volume-produced version of the concept car of the same name designed by Laurens van den Acker (Head of Design, Renault) to illustrate the “exploration” dimension of Renault’s design strategy. With the scene set, Captur likes the city but has the spirit of an adventurer, almost a surfer or a camper, with an Arizona Orange tan.

Captur is a crossover, in other words, a cross between a hatchback, an MPV and an SUV. With a high driving position (10 cm higher than New Clio), if offers a clear view of the traffic, like an MPV, and more space and storage than a small city car: 455 liters (when the rear bench is pushed fully forward), with storage under the floor of the boot, and 27 liters of stowage space in the cabin (including 11 liters in the “Easy life” drawer!). It also borrows from MPVs a sliding, 60/40 split-folding rear bench that offers 215 mm of knee room for rear passengers (75 mm more than New Clio). In terms of length, it’s like a small city car, since at 4.12 meters long, Captur is only 6 cm longer than Clio.

The version we tested was a two-tone Starry Black/Arizona Orange Captur TCe 120 EDC. Captur is also available with an Energy TCe 90, an Energy dCi 90 or a dCi 90 EDC engine (the last kind will be available in the second half of 2013). The Energy engines offer Stop & Start and regenerative brakes, but cannot be mated with automatic EDC gearboxes for technical reasons.

With its EDC gearbox and feather weight, similar to Clio III despite its larger size and more comfort and safety equipment, Captur was an enjoyable travelling companion, sitting firmly on its large wheels with contained roll and little stiffness. The engine is flexible, fairly responsive even at low revs, and offers fuel consumption of 5.4 liters per 100 km and 125 g of CO₂ emission per km.

Devastating looks, practical innovations

Two unique innovations are presented on Captur:

- “Zip Collection” unzippable seat covers, which are easy to remove and replace and are machine washable. This is handy, especially when you have active children or a dog in the back.

- a large stowage drawer called “Easy Life”, the first glove box that the driver can use from his/her seat, which offers 11 liters of storage.

There’s also the R-Link multimedia tablet, with a touchscreen, already seen on ZOE and Clio. It gives access to an offering of around 50 apps via the R-Link Store, including R-Link Tweet to send tweets from the car, a fuel price app, and the Coyote Series®. The tablet includes voice command and Text to Speech, which reads out your emails or the news while you’re busy driving.

The signs of the new Renault Design developed by Laurens van den Acker are there. A proud, vertical front logo on a glossy black background, large wheels, muscular flanks create a racy, Latin look.

Made to explore…but especially to conquer !

Ultra-personalizable, practical and compact, Captur hopes to appeal to new types of customers. Crossovers are a very young market, accounting for 8% of the B segment in Europe. The share of crossovers is expected to almost double to 14% in 2013, which interests carmakers.

When it designed Captur, Renault was looking to appeal to families looking for something more exciting than a purely functional vehicle. This car will also be a “heart throb”, with a young, contemporary image, and will also attract singles and couples without children.

Last but not least, Captur is a product for conquering international markets, as Clio, Fluence, Logan and Duster were in their time. It has already been announced that Captur will be sold in South Korea under the Renault Samsung Motors badge. As well as in Renault’s historical markets, the compact crossover will also be sold in South Africa, Israel, Japan and Singapore.

Vettel @ Boulogne-Billancourt

F1 Redbull Racing driver Sebastian Vettel paid a visit to Renault Z.E. Center & HQ in Boulogne-Billancourt. He got to drive all-electric ZOE, Twizy R.S. F1, old timers like the Type A, and attended a meet & greet with Renault employees.

Edité par Renault· Tue, May 14 2013 03:35:28

A huge hulk of a Twizy

Twizy RSF1 is a powerhouse, adopting F1 technologies and codes, all in a very small space: 2,60m long, 1,49m wide and 1,45m high ! Just picture it: an electri Twizy, with front splitter, side-pods, a rear wing and a diffuser complete with an F1-style rain light, as well as a Formula One-type steering wheel. Add to that, F1 tyres, and KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System), that you can find on F1 engines (Redbull racing, Williams, Caterham, Lotus), which instantly Twizy’s power output six-fold to reach almost 100hp ! From standstill to 100kph, Twizy RSF1 is catapulted to Mégane R.S. speed, Renault’s highest-performing road car. Picture all that, and you get this pimped hulky concept-car, that will make everyone smile !

What a funny idea !

How did Renault come up with this project? The idea came from Renault Sport F1, who wanted to communicate to a wider audience the savoir-faire it has built up in the realm of electric power thanks to KERS which became a part of the sport in 2009. Let’s not forget that the FIA is implemeting new engine regulations for the 2014 F1 season, to link high-level racing to cars built for the road, by including electric technologies for instance.

But in the end…why not?

Remember in 1994, when we released an Espace F1, a prototype equiped with a 820hp RS5 V10 3,500cc 40-valve engine? It was designed by Renault and Matra, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Espace’s launch.

Calendar

If you want to see this unusual car for yourself, here are the next dates of the Twizy Renault Sport F1 “tour”.

27-28 April : WSR Aragon, Motorland

11-19 May: Barcelona motor show

The result is the 154^th win for a Renault engine in F1 and the 36^th for the Red Bull Racing Renault partnership.

Sebastian Vettel used the opportunity to thank the men of Viry-Châtillon (Renault Sport F1) where the RS27-2013 engine is conceived and tested.

Ranking after Bahrain GP:

Find out more on the birth of Twin’Z, thanks to Laurens van den Acker and Ross Lovegrove :

We could go on forever about Renault’s new supermini. But let’s start with its look. The interior is uncluttered, with a propeller blade-shaped trim on the dashboard, fluid lines, materials that are soft to the touch and soothing colors (like this white interior in the LIFE and ZEN versions) that are not usually found in a Renault. No efforts have been spared to make the atmosphere on board ZOE both calm and resolutely ecological, even before switching on the relaxing and purifying air ionizer or the fragrance dispenser. ZOE is a real little “spa car”!

The R-Link multimedia tablet, which we already saw in Clio, sits proudly in the middle of the dashboard, but now features applications dedicated to electric vehicles and blue back-lit surrounds on the heating control buttons, replacing the chrome used in Clio.

But we will come back to R-Link and its functions later on, because we have much more to say about ZOE!

In terms of comfort, ZOE feels just the same as an internal combustion vehicle. The cabin is roomy, the front seats, which are unique to ZOE (made in Flins!), are unusually shaped, but identify the ZOE family at first sight. The upholstery is decorated with the famous “Z.E.” logo and pattern, and is treated with Teflon, which is strong and easy to maintain.

The blue chrome finishing touches, which are specific to Renault’s Z.E. range, can be found in several places in the cab (dashboard, steering wheel and gear lever) and on the exterior of the car (logo, ZOE badge, headlights). The boot is spacious and even bigger than in New Clio, measuring 338 liters, mainly because ZOE’s battery is positioned under the floor of the car, rather than behind the rear seats where it would take up some of the boot space, like on other electric cars.

The TFT screen displaying the speed on the dashboard changes color depending on the speed of the vehicle, which is a very nice touch. If you drive too fast, the screen turns purple to show that ZOE is not happy because you’re consuming too much energy. If you drive ecologically, the screen stays green and is blue when your driving style is neutral.

As on Clio, the rear door handles are concealed in the door uprights. They are even marked with a fingerprint of ZOE’s designer, Jean Semeriva. The trick makes ZOE look more compact, with the exterior appearance of a 3-door model.

We also discovered ZOE’s new colors, which we had never seen before. ZOE is not available in only the good old White, Black and Energy Blue colors! We especially liked the opaque Azure Blue, which creates quite an effect.

But there’s more to ZOE than just a pretty face. While ZOE behaves like a real tourer on the open road, it prefers the city, where the regenerative braking system comes into play. With an 88 hp / 65 kW motor that outputs 220 Nm instantly, it leaves all the other sedans and sports cars way behind when the lights turn green, without emitting any polluting gases when the driver pushes the pedal to the floor.

ZOE a pleasure to drive, because it is so quiet and punchy, it is also a genuine concentrate of innovations. More than 60 patents were filed in ZOE’s design phase. The most significant is the Range OptimiZEr, which enables ZOE to offer the longest range of any volume-production electric vehicle (210 km in the NEDC cycle and 150 km in standardized urban and peri-urban driving). ZOE is also fitted with a regenerative braking system that recovers almost all of the energy that is lost when the brakes are applied. When the system is working, the little battery on the dashboard lights up brightly to show that the battery is being recharged. And the system also comes into play when the accelerator is released. The motor recovers the vehicle’s kinetic energy and converts it into electric current that recharges the battery. In our test drive, we drove 40 km on enough power to cover a range of 32 km in ECO mode. ZOE is also fitted with Michelin Energy E-V tires with low rolling resistance and a heat pump that consumes between two and three times less than a conventional system, which means that you can use the air conditioning and heating as often as you like.

ZOE accelerates sharply and smoothly, thanks to its silent automatic gearbox and a noise- and vibration-free motor. And you will soon get used to the quiet drive! It is quite surprising when you press the “Start/Stop” button and there is no noise. You will inevitably hesitate the first time. Surprisingly enough, we felt at one with nature and the environment, and had the impression that our drive was more enjoyable. But we are straying off the point…

So let’s talk about the ECO mode. We were advised to use this function, which is switched on using a button next to the gear lever, when driving in towns. In this mode, the speed is limited to 95 km/h and the air conditioning and heating systems are restricted in order to optimize ZOE’s range, if necessary. There is no need to press the button again to switch off the ECO mode. Simply accelerate sharply, a feature that is very useful when, for example, you want to overtake another car.

So what about R-Link? Every version of ZOE is equipped with this tablet with a touch-sensitive screen. R-Link features all the usual functionality of a conventional Carminat TomTom®: radio, navigation, telephone, music and connections with MP3 players by Bluetooth® or USB cables. In addition to the usual functions, a selection of applications specific to electric vehicles is also available. The TomTom® Z.E. LIVE navigation function permanently displays a circle representing the range of the vehicle. It is also possible to view a list of the nearest charging stations. R-Link’s Z.E. functions gave us advice on how to drive economically, plus an analysis of our driving style, with the “Driving eco2″ application, which analyses the distance covered and energy consumption.

In ECO mode, we achieved an encouraging 92/100 (OK on speed, not so good in terms of anticipation) by applying a few eco-driving principles. In this mode, the range can be increased by up to 10%. Other applications that we tested include R-Tweet, which can be used to tweet when parked (some of the applications are disabled when in motion for safety reasons), and Elle Astro, which reads today’s horoscope! We did not test the “Text to Speech” function, which we will look at in a more comprehensive test of R-Link.

How is ZOE recharged? Mainly on a Wall-Box (minimum 3 kW), between 6 to 9 hours. The charging cable that comes with ZOE (in a bag in the boot), can be plugged on the said Wall-Box, or public charging stations (standard and accelerated charge). The recharging socket on the car is concealed under ZOE front logo. Public quick-charge stations (43 kW) have their own built-in cable that can be connected to the car and charge its battery to 80% of its capacity in 30 minutes. If you’re scared you won’t be able to recharge anywhere around you, relax! Renault has partnerships all over Europe. In France for instance, ZOE can be charged at Autolib’ stations, in supermarkets, and at Renault dealerships. You can find a list on your R-Link while driving ZOE. We had the chance to experience an accelerated charge during our lunch time, where ZOE, at 22 kW, recovered 80% of battery autonomy in 1 hour. Very convenient when you’ve got miles to cover.

We came to a very positive conclusion after our test drive. Renault ZOE is a car with a strong personality and its own specific functionality, a point well worth mentioning. It is attractive, easy to recognize at a glance and ecologically friendly, because it does not emit any polluting gases at all. We know that ZOE is still not suited to all types of usage, but it offers a good comprise as a first car (and not as a second car, which you may have read elsewhere), for your everyday commute to work, with a second family car at home for holidays and other long trips. With a low price tag, thanks to government subsidies, it’s definitely the first mass-production electric car that is affordable. And all we can recommend is for you to test drive it and see for yourself! You’ll love it too!