Tag: automotive

Credit where it’s due, former Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn—the man who was later smuggled out of Japan in a double bass case—was quick to identify electrification as the key paradigm shift in the 21st-century car industry. Cue the cute Renault Zoe, forward-thinking in terms of design and propulsion, but perhaps too aloof to capture hearts and minds.

The new Renault 5 EV is unashamedly nostalgic in look, mining a design trend that’s been around so long that retro is almost retro. Yet when you see it in the flesh for the first time resistance is futile. Here, surely, is the electric car that will demolish any lingering preconceptions, a surprisingly sophisticated conduit for all-round feel-good vibes that’s packed with big-car tech.

Current Renault boss Luca de Meo is certainly bullish. “Some products are magical,” he notes. “You don’t have to hold endless discussions, everybody is always in agreement on what needs to be done. And they do it. There’s no inertia.”

Courtesy of Renault

As one of the masterminds of the noughties Fiat 500 revival, De Meo has solid instincts on this stuff. Even if you’d never driven one, you knew what the classic Cinquecento stood for. The same applies to the Renault 5: It arrived into an early ’70s world in which the Middle East was in convulsions, energy was suddenly scarce, and conspicuous consumption was unfashionable. Context matters, and this one has a distressingly familiar feel.

Design Winks

The new R5 aims to brighten your day via its candy colors, and an exterior and interior design that prompts an expertly executed Proustian rush. The silhouette might be familiar, but the new car has fuller proportions and imaginative postmodern touches galore.

There’s a cheeky little four-corner graphic in the headlights that “winks” as you approach. The fog-lights below mimic that motif, while the vertical taillights are another echo of the original. They’re now designed for a degree of aerodynamic efficiency that would have boggled the minds of Renault’s engineers back in the day.

The chunky wheel arches call to mind the mid-engined R5 rally car, and the new car’s roof can be had in a variety of treatments. It’s a five-door car but the rear door handles are cleverly hidden away. And the old car’s hood vent reappears here as a state-of-charge indicator. Each strip represents 20 percent of the available energy.

Like a list? Here’s a good one for you. The cheapest car sold in the US right now is the Nissan Versa, which costs $16,680. For just $15 more you can have the Mitsubishi Mirage. This Dacia Spring, if it were sold in the US, would come in third at around $19,000.

Why mention the Dacia? Well, the Spring is not an internal-combustion auto, it’s a fully electric car. Yep, a proper road-legal, five-door EV—not a micro-car like the Wueling Mini or Zhidou Rainbow—and one that is about to hit the UK market at a starting price of less than £15,000 new.

If the Spring were available in the US, it would be the cheapest American-sold EV by a country mile, besting the Nissan Leaf by more than $9,000.

Who is Dacia? Good question. Pronounced “Dah-chee-ah,” it is a Romanian automaker that is part of the Renault group and known for cheap and cheerful cars that offer surprisingly good value. What’s more, its star has been on the rise for the last few years in Europe. As proof of this, I know of more than one professional car reviewer who has bought an all-wheel-drive Dacia Duster with—whisper it—their own money.

Now, thanks to an impressive new duo at the design helm, incoming Dacias have looks that belie their price point. Check out the new Duster, arriving in the UK in just a few months; or the possible seven-seat Bigster, landing next year to give the rest of the European SUV market a serious run for their money. The arrival of the all-electric Spring tantalizingly signals what’s to come from Dacia. If it carries on like this, you could be looking at the kind of brand rebirth Hyundai and Kia have enjoyed.

Cute, Capable

The urban-focused Spring embodies the Dacia approach to car making: There are no excessive frills, just the toys you need; the power is sufficient, because no one needs supercar speeds between traffic lights; and the range is acceptable for multiple city trips, not interstate missions.

Courtesy of Dacia

This, of course, is how the Spring manages to cost so little and weigh less than a tonne (984 kilograms), which we should remind you would be applauded for any internal combustion car—but this is an EV. It should be more expensive, and it should have more heft, but it doesn’t.

The weight saving also makes sense of the numbers, which at first glance look laughably small: From October, UK customers can plump for either a 44-bhp model or a 64-bhp one. The battery is just 26.8 kWh, but thanks to the lack of weight it’s good for 140 miles of range on either model. You don’t even need an EV wall box to charge this thing up, just plug it into a regular socket and it will be fully charged overnight (or under 11 hours).

If you do hook it up to a home 7-kW wall box, that fill-up will take around four hours, supposedly. The higher-powered Spring can manage 30 kW, and so with that “modest” battery you can go from 20 to 80 percent in an acceptable 45 minutes.

The Range Rover Evoque changed Land Rover forever. Before its launch in 2012, the 4×4 maker’s SUVs were attractive, but in a functional, boxy sort of way. After it, the British brand was as much about the latest trends and fashion as off-roading and country estates.

Speaking at the launch event in 2012, Victoria Beckham spoke about her hand in creating it. “I’ve designed a car that I want to drive,” she said at the time. Since then, however, chief creative officer Gerry McGovern has corrected matters somewhat, stating that Posh Spice exaggerated her role in the creation of the Evoque.

Still, by 2016, more than half a million Evoques have been sold globally in more than 180 countries, with Land Rover describing it as its “greatest sales success story.”

It’s hardly surprising, then, considering the model’s history, that the designers of the latest Evoque opted to take an evolutionary approach in terms of technology to the urban-orientated SUV.

This iteration comes in four different models; Range Rover Evoque S, Dynamic SE, Dynamic HSE, and finally Autobiography, all of which have a plug-in hybrid option. WIRED got its hands on the top-end Autobiography model on a brand-hosted drive in the Champagne wine region in the northeast of France. But will it be a vintage year for JLR?

On the surface the changes are subtle; inside is where the overhaul has really happened. That said, the Evoque’s exterior presence is enhanced by a new grille and revised super-slim Pixel LED headlights with signature DRL (daytime running lights), which deliver a technical, jewel-like appearance. New exterior accents also complement the characteristic “floating roof” that defines Range Rover’s design DNA.

The new super-slim Pixel LED headlights aren’t just for show, either—they house JLR’s new advanced headlight tech. Each light has 26 individual LED segments, which switch on or off automatically to supposedly provide the most effective forward beam at all times. These segments are also home to sensors, which scan the roads ahead and at each side. When another vehicle is in sight, the LEDs within the section it’s covering shut off, ensuring that you are not blinding any oncoming vehicle.

Speed-capturing cameras placed within the headlights pick up speed warning signs, instantly letting you know what speed you should be going on any given road. However, when driving down the freeway, the cameras would occasionally pick up side road signs, and in doing so show an incorrect reading on the dash.

All About the Inside

Photograph: Land Rover

The interior is where we see the big changes. The Evoque does channel its big brother, the flagship Range Rover to good effect inside, with comfortable seats, high-end materials, and a slick touchscreen infotainment system that’s consumed all the tech around it from previous examples. More on that in a bit.

BYD also isn’t chasing straight-line performance goals, with the Atto 3 accelerating to 62 mph (100 km/h) in 7.2 seconds. Leisurely by today’s EV standards, but perfectly quick enough for a car like this. Remember, it’s supposed to be a good-value family car designed to slot into your everyday life; too many EVs have the sort of rocketship performance that your passengers, dog, and groceries simply won’t stand for. The Atto 3’s acceleration is adequate, and we’re here for it.

Range, of course, is far more important. BYD’s claim of 260 miles (WLTP) is 25 short of the Kia Niro EV and 23 behind the £45,000/$44,000 Tesla Model Y, but 11 ahead of the similarly-priced Škoda Enyaq. Take driving style and temperature into account, and you should expect a real-world range closer to 220 miles. Not bad, but you’ll still long for faster charging every time you plug in.

The brakes are fine, although the pedal is spongy, and the switch from regenerative braking to using the discs and pads is nicely judged. There are two strengths of regeneration to pick from, via a toggle switch on the center console or by diving into the touchscreen, but neither is particularly strong and, sadly, one-pedal driving isn’t an option.

This being a new car built to comply with Europe’s latest safety standards means the usual frustrations are all present and correct. You are told off every time you exceed the speed limit, even by just 2 mph, and because the road sign recognition system makes mistakes, you’ll sometimes be scolded by the car’s voice assistant when it has misread a sign. Bafflingly, sometimes the navigation screen and the driver display disagree on what the speed limit is; other times they don’t show a limit at all.

There’s no Tesla Autopilot-style hands-off driving, but the Atto 3 still has lane-keep assist among other driver assistance systems. It usually issues a bit of gentle feedback if you stray over a lane marking, but on two occasions during our 90-minute drive the car grabbed the wheel like a panicked driving instructor. The first time it happened was a real shock, as the steering wheel was tugged at for no obvious reason, and, as with these systems on almost all new cars, the first intervention plants a seed of doubt that never really goes away. As ever, it’s best to turn these systems down to their least invasive setting.

Taste of Things to Come

What to make of the BYD Atto 3? The question could equally be, what to make of the approaching flood of electric cars built by Chinese firms who are giants at home but unheard of in the West?

This is not a car for driving enthusiasts, clearly. And while also not groundbreaking, the Atto 3 is perfectly good at being an electric car. It has a fun, spacious, and nicely designed interior that’s packed as standard with kit often hiding in the options lists of pricier German cars.

The touchscreen software needs some work, and permanent climate controls are a must in our book. Performance and range are both fine, and ride quality is decent, but we wish all that battery expertise had resulted in faster charging.

Ultimately, the Atto 3 does little to stand out from what is quickly becoming a crowded segment of the EV market. It feels well made and represents good value, but while that glittering Mayfair showroom promises a lot, the unknown badge asks buyers to take a leap of faith.