Getting under the skin of the new Renault 5

Until now, I’d only enjoyed a few short drives in the Renault 5, and it was clear the reborn R5 drove just like a small car should. Tight turning circle, easy to see out of, darty enough around town. But this drive would reveal if it amounts to more than just a fashionable trinket.

The 5 really is sparking life back into Renault; it’s the EV everyone is talking about and comes from a brand that’s had its fair share of ups and downs over the past 15 years. So, to understand a little more about the car and how Renault is plugging into EVs, I decided to drive an R5 back to where it was made and learn more about Renault’s electric car revolution.

France has a pretty well-developed EV charging infrastructure, and, as is the case in the UK, it’s growing all the time. But the focus of the expansion across the Channel is on the motorway network, with many parts of provincial France having few or no charging points whatsoever.

For this trip, I wanted to experience more rural roads, pass through some typically French villages, and in the early stages, enjoy a relaxed journey to my overnight stop. So, a quick charge near Folkestone meant I had a full battery as I hit Calais and those famous French ‘D roads’.

It took a little over three hours to drive the 211 kilometres to my overnight stopover in Valenciennes, a town deep in Northern France. It had been a largely uneventful journey, only serving to show just how comfortable and refined the Renault 5 is.

It was supple enough over some jagged surfaces in a few villages, and yet when the narrow roads gave way to free-flowing, tree-lined straights and meandering S-bends, it proved it had a decent turn of speed and felt pretty involving to drive.

One stop in a charming market town saw a quick break to stretch the proverbial legs and the purchase of two baguettes – both of which were to reside on the R5’s parcel shelf, just for cliched photographic purposes, you understand – before a blast along a motorway, a quick top-up at an ultra-rapid charger, and then to Valenciennes.

The next morning, it was an early drive to the Douai factory, some 40 minutes away. Even though the R5 is rapidly becoming a common sight on French roads, my Pop Green car still turns the heads of passers-by busying themselves in getting to work. The R5’s newness is one reason why it still draws glances, but I fancy it’s mostly because the French aren’t all that keen on the 5’s vibrant colour palette. While in the UK, Pop Yellow is the most sought-after colour, the French prefer more subtle shades such as the smart Midnight Blue with gold detailing, which has more than a passing resemblance to the Renault Clio Williams of the nineties.

At the factory and with the inevitable safety gear donned, it’s time to see how a Renault 5 is built. The Douai facility is steeped in history and stretches back to 1974 when, rather fittingly, it began building the original Renault 5. Over the intervening years, it has produced models like the Renault 9, Fuego and Megane. But its modern transformation began in earnest in 2019 when Renault announced Douai would become its first all-electric plant.

Once a vast site, practically the size of a small European country, Douai has been trimmed back over the years. But it still stands at an impressive 118 hectares, and builds not only the R5 but also its sisters, the Alpine A290 and Nissan Micra; the larger Megane and Scenic E-Tech SUVs; and soon a Mitsubishi-branded version of the Scenic. It also houses Ampère, Renault’s EV-focused division formed in 2023 to lead the company’s electric revolution, dubbed the ‘Renaulution’.

Constant improvements mean the Douai factory doesn’t look like it’s a product of the seventies. I try to follow a Pop Green car from start to finish, and when walking from Body in White, down the line where the electric platform is mated to the car, and along Final Trim, I notice that there’s still a remarkable balance between automation, AI guidance and manual working – the era of the pure-robot car factory isn’t here just yet.

In reality, Douai is just like most of Renault Group’s cutting-edge production plants, and indeed like those of its competitors. But there is one crucial difference from any factory I’ve been to before – and that’s batteries.

The former car yard has been transformed into a highly sophisticated battery plant. Here, the packs for the Renault 4, 5 and Alpine A290 are made in their entirety, while the batteries for Megane and Scenic are assembled with cells from Poland and casings from Renault’s nearby Ruitz factory. All of this places Douai at the heart of Renault’s EV strategy, and it’s a strategy that the French brand is rapidly trying to streamline.

One of the biggest cost challenges for any EV is the battery, which accounts for up to 50% of total production costs. Ampère is working on various ways to reduce this, including transitioning to cell-to-pack construction by 2026 and embracing cell-to-chassis technology, already pioneered by Chinese brands like BYD, by 2028. A switch to LFP batteries, with their cobalt-free construction and sub-15-minute charging times, is in the pipeline, too.

But that’s the future. In the here and now, the factory is churning out 700 EVs a day with a Renault 5 taking less than 10 hours to build from start to finish. It would seem Renault is back to being at the cutting edge of the car industry; the fact that it’s also producing ultra desirable cars like the 5 also shows that the French brand has rediscovered its mojo, too.

Heading back for my train home to Blighty, I’m able to take things a little more slowly – and it dawns on me that the Renault 5 is an important piece of automotive history, brought nicely up to date in its latest incarnation. More treasure than trinket, you could say.