For singles and newly-wed couples, a car with just two doors would be enough, but if you have a wife and three kids and want to be as green as possible, you may as well buy an electric car, but a 4-doors one… just like the Renault Fluence ZE, whose concept has been presented at this year’s Paris Motor Show.
The Fluence ZE is designed as a nice family car and it’s electric, too. Its range is not something you will brag about (160 km, or 100 miles), but with the perspective of battery technology that gets more efficient every year, it may be a wise investment.
It’s only a concept right now, but when it will come to the market, the specs will probably be better. The Renault Fluence ZE also features a solar panel for those times when every drop of energy matters and you’re stranded in the middle of nowhere with nothing more than sunlight as a power source (still, you wouldn’t like that, because the car would probably need a day of full sunshine to go for another mile). Anyway, the solar panel helps for the car’s air conditioning systems, like it does in the Prius. Let’s hope its weight won’t increase the energy usage like it does in Toyota’s hybrid, from 4.8 to 4.9 L/100km.
Renault has sacrifived trunk space for the battery, so you won’t be able to carry much in the space left, maybe some handbags and what you bought from the local “boulangerie” on your way home.
Anyway, it’s a nice car. Let’s hope it will be as affordable as it is nice. Renault already has plans to implement a battery swap program, so you will probably be able to swap the battery in just three minutes, practically on the go, throughout the entire France and Europe, later on.
I now realize I didn’t take any shot of the car from the front side, sorry for that. I’ll attach a picture that I didn’t actually take myself, for completeness, but the gallery below is made of my own views.
