New Renault 5 Coming Soon: Specs, price and release info

Renault has officially revealed the Renault 5 electric car at the Geneva Motor Show, and confirmed it’ll hit the roads in the UK at the start of 2025. Speaking at the show, Renault CEO Luca De Mao said the company has “tried to invent the best small EV in the world,” and that it’s “a product that anybody will want but also that anybody can buy.”
We don’t know exactly how much it’ll be yet – prices and spec will be confirmed “in due course” – but £25,000 is the word on the street. That’s cheaper than a Renault Zoe… it’s cheaper than everything this side of a Dacia Spring, in fact. So, a good start. And in a move straight out of the Taylor Swift ticket playbook, anyone keen to be among the first to get one can pay £150 for a priority ‘R5 R Pass’ and jump the queue when the order books open. This 'cop it when it drops' approach seems fitting for a car that Renault is adamant will “resonate with younger generations”. Here are the highlights… • First cars due in the UK by the start of 2025 • Priced from £25,000 (we expect) rising to around £30,000 depending on spec, motor and battery choice • Two battery options: 40kWh or 52kWh. Claimed range 186 and 248 miles respectively • Two motor options: 120 or 150-horsepower. The latter will hit 62mph in less than eight seconds – faster than the original Renault 5 Turbo. • 11kW AC charging and zero to 80 per cent charging in about 30 mins using 100kW rapid charging station. • Interior and exterior design play on original 1972 Renault 5, with a modern twist.

We’ve already had an exclusive look around the new Renault 5 – you can watch that video above – and found that it’s every bit as impressive in real life as it looks in the pictures you see here. The retro-future theme appears all over the exterior. The flared rear arches are reminiscent of the Renault 5 Turbo, as are the squared LED fog lamps. The headlights (also squared LEDs) “wink” when the car is switched on. The illuminated ‘5’ on the bonnet acts as a charge level indicator, too. Nice touch.
We don’t expect a top-of-the range Renault 5 to exceed the £30,000 price point – particularly as Renault is so adamant that this is built for the youth. Or more specifically, built to do the same job in 2025 that the original Renault 5 did in 1972. That car launched in a time of high inflation and oil prices (sound familiar?) but became Renault’s best-seller for 10 years, with nine million sold. That success was because it was “frugal, smart, innovative, eccentric and joyful.” More words from Luca De Mao there. The 5 EV is designed to basically do the same thing.

It’s fair to call the new 5 an "eccentric and joyful" place to be. Cool interior touches include H-shaped sports seats, a twin-pinstriped dashboard, and a standard-fit dual digital display. Loads of the interior fabrics are recycled, and they’re finished in bright colours to mimic the exterior paint job; Renault calls this a ‘pop car’. Pop as in “popular”, but also “it pops with colour and design,” according to the person from Renault who designed it. Stop rolling your eyes. As you can see, though, the colour choices are bold, inside and out.
The tech underpinning the 5 is brand new – this is not a re-skinned Zoe. It features bi-directional charging, meaning you can use it to charge household items (for whatever reason) and even put charge back into the grid. Other funky interior innovations include an ‘e-pop shifter’ (there’s that word again), which is basically a customisable gear selector designed to look like a lipstick case (again, for whatever reason). Oh, and you can even fit a basket onto the centre console that’s designed specifically for a baguette. True story.

Buyers will get a choice of two electric motors, with 120 or 150 horsepower, and two batteries, 40kWh or 52kWh. The former battery offers a 186-mile range, officially, and the latter 248 miles. Both batteries use nickel manganese cobalt tech for maximum energy density, and although the 5 is a heavy car – 1.5 tonnes from a footprint about the size of a three-door MINI – it uses aluminium for the roof and the centre of gravity is low. Should handle nicely, then.
The 150 horsepower version cracks 0-62mph in less than eight seconds, though that’s all the performance data we have for the time being.

Again, no confirmation yet, but all the talk from Renault about this being a game-changer in the segment suggests £25,000 will be the maximum starting price. For that, buyers will get twin digital screens – either 2x 10-inch units or a seven-inch plus a 10-inch in the base cars. They all run the same software though, using Google apps and designed with… you’ve guessed it… a ‘pop art’ vibe. There’s also an always-connected AI Assistant called Reno that you can ask stuff. Where the nearest baguette shop is, for instance.
Renault says the first UK cars will be delivered in the first quarter of 2025.

Renault launched the 5 literally minutes after picking up the 2024 World Car Of The Year award for the new Scenic at the Geneva show. The Scenic, which will be on sale in the UK within months, is all-electric now, boasts a massive interior and a 379-mile quoted range.

The new MINI, mainly. The 5 is likely to undercut the MINI’s starting price by a few thousand pounds, but it remains to be seen whether that’s enough to sway folk from the cultural behemoth that is the BMW-built MINI.