► Strong electric car sales set to continue
► What’s next for current Renault EVs?
► Will there be more Plein Sud models?
It’s easy to understand why the current issues with the Strait of Hormuz and the impact of that on petrol prices might be driving more people to seriously consider an electric car. After all, when the cost of living crunches, you start looking around for obvious ways to save money – and right now everything is pointing towards running an EV as an attractive option.
For Renault, it’s apparent that people aren’t just looking but actually doing. According to figures presented during the launch of the new Renault 4 Plein Sud, there’s been – as UK managing director Adam Wood puts it – ‘a seismic uptick in interest in electric cars’ of 49 per cent since 28 February 2026. The date conflict officially broke out between USA-Israel and Iran.
What’s more significant about Wood’s perspective, however, is that he believes this increased interest in EVs is ‘not a blip’ for Renault. But rather something that will continue even once this conflict eventually dies down.
Going electric just makes sense?
‘People are starting to see that electric cars make sense,’ Wood explains, referring to a growing understanding of the importance of what he terms ‘energy independence’. Cars that run on electricity no longer need to be held hostage to geopolitical events, because the source of their power is no longer reliant on fossil-fuel producing regions and the tensions that seem likely to continue to surround them.
In Renault’s case, it presumably helps that the firm has what is clearly the right product portfolio at the right time. Combined sales of the Renault 5 E-Tech and the Renault 4 E-Tech positions the brand as the leading small EV maker in the UK, and these products are also holding strong positions throughout Europe.
‘Two years ago, the EV mix was 12 per cent’ says Wood, speaking again of the UK market, ‘now it’s at 38 per cent. The current order mix is now constantly above 50 per cent – and that’s before the Twingo and the R4 Plein Sud have arrived.’
Underlining just how strongly Renault’s electric cars – which also includes the exceptional Scenic E-Tech and soon-to-be-facelifted Megane E-Tech, don’t forget – are performing here, year-on-year EV sales are up a staggering 74 per cent.
Conquest success
There’s no doubt that the R5 and R4 are doing the business, though. Wood refers to them as ‘trojan horses’ for electric car adoption, attracting new customers to EV ownership – and the Renault brand. More than 13,000 R5s have found homes already, and its only just celebrated its first-year anniversary of going on sale in the UK.
What’s more, no less than 80 per cent of Renault 5 sales are to conquest customers – meaning they weren’t previously driving a Renault. These cars are ‘taping into a new audience,’ says Wood, such is the appeal of the retro but deeply satisfying design.
There’s apparently ‘no pattern to the part exchanges’ either, as this new generation of electric Renaults brings in buyers from a wide range of previous vehicles.
What does this mean for legacy models, like the Clio?
The UK is late to introduce the latest generation of Clio, which still isn’t on sale here despite becoming available in Europe in 2025. As a result, you might start to wonder if there will be any customers left for that car by the time it finally arrives – it’s not exactly a looker in comparison to its newly minted electric siblings, after all.
But Wood is bullish, reminding us that the Clio has a huge following in the UK, and represents a different kind of customer – those still not ready to go for an EV. The latest version is still performing well in European markets, too, suggesting Renault’s strategy of splitting platforms and models between petrol – or rather, increasingly, hybrid – and pure electric is working out so far.
There are no immediate plans for an electric Clio, for example – no sense that Renault feels the need to do what Volkswagen has done by introducing the ID. Polo. The strength of the design of Renault’s dedicated EV models has done wonders for the brand, but the firm also got the companion technology right from the start.
Introducing the OpenR Link infotainment system with Google built-in as part of the Megane E-Tech in 2022 delivered a state-of-the-art infotainment system that has continued to evolve. Soon this will not only offer over 100 available apps but voice control upgraded to Google’s Gemini AI for more intuitive and conversational control. In the Renault 4 Plein Sud you can even talk to the car to get the roof open.
Will there be Plein Sud versions of the Renault 5 and Twingo?
Response to the very idea of an open-top version of the Renault 4 has been so overwhelmingly positive that it’s hard not to wonder if Renault might try to replicate this success with its other modern-retro models. The question didn’t garner a flat no in the R4 Plein Sud press conference. In fact, the Renault personnel almost sounded flustered…
‘We cannot tell you anything about this,’ says Renault 4 revenue lead, Benjamin Manceau. ‘For Renault 4, this [the fold-back convertible roof] is related to the legacy of the car’ – which makes sense, as there were many open-top variants of the original 4 that utilised a similar arrangement. ‘For R5 or Twingo, I cannot say.’
If there’s not at least one styling model of each with exactly this treatment sitting in a Renault design studio somewhere, we’ll eat out notebook…
Any other upgrades coming for the Renault 4 in the future?
The Renault 4 already has the one-pedal driving mode recently added to the Renault 5, along with an upgraded suite of active safety technology. And Google Gemini is on the way – as is a new My RNLT smartphone app to replace the current My Renault effort (rated a rather lame 1.5 stars in the Google Play store at present).
But there is still more to come. Of particular note is the news that LFP battery technology will be available ‘within the lifecycle of the Renault 4’ – perhaps even as early as Autumn 2026. These lithium-ion phosphate batteries have the advantage of not relying on rare-earth metals in the same way that Renault’s current NMC (that’s nickel, manganese and cobalt) batteries do.
LFP is cheaper to produce, but can be trickier to charge, less energy efficient and heavier – though developments in battery design may overcome some of these issues. We’re told Renault will continue with both types of battery chemistry in the future, even after LFP starts to be more widely introduced.
