Renault Twizy Review (2013-2021)

The Renault Twizy is an electric vehicle that's like nothing else on the road. And that isn’t just road tester’s hyperbole; it really is completely unique.

Is it even a car? After all, it has four wheels, and one more with which to steer, but otherwise it’s unrecognisable from the family saloons and SUVs with which it shares space. It's got no doors (they’re an optional extra), no boot, two seats arranged one behind the other, and wheels that stick out like a go kart’s.

Of the two seats, the front is by far the more capacious; the rear seat is more for occasional than regular use. The boot is tiny too; just a little lockable compartment behind the rear seat.

So if you want to carry anything larger than a shopping bag, you’ll have to forgo carrying a passenger – or ask them to hold your luggage on their lap.

Mind you, the Twizy is simplicity itself to drive, because it’s all electric. Hop in, turn the key, press the ‘D’ button on the dashboard, and you’re ready to go. There are no gears to worry about, and your speed is displayed in front of you on a digital read-out.

Acceleration is brisk at first, but soon tails off; it’s ideal around town, as there’s enough punch to nip into gaps, but as soon as you get it out on the open road the Twizy feels considerably out of its depth. The top speed is just 53mph, which is no surprise given the electric motor produces just 17bhp.

It rides quite firmly, too, and because there’s very little padding in the seat, most of those bumps get transmitted through to your posterior with very little damping.

That does mean the Twizy feels quite nippy to drive, though, despite its narrow, tall shape. It doesn’t really lean over in corners and there’s lots of grip, so while the steering feels quite numb, you can have a bit of fun flinging it around the odd roundabout. It's certainly more stable than a motorbike or scooter, not to mention safer; you get a seatbelt and an airbag in the steering wheel, for starters.

Frankly, though, the Twizy’s main appeal is simply the amusement of driving something so wilfully odd, and the smiles it brings to the faces of pedestrians, not to mention your fellow road users.

Mod cons? There aren’t any. No radio, no air conditioning – there isn’t even a heater, so you’ll have to be prepared to wrap up warm in winter.

You can add a pair of fairly flimsy plastic doors for a bit of extra weather protection if you want to, but even these aren’t particularly weather-tight, so it makes sense to consider the Twizy an al-fresco motoring experience – and to dress accordingly. As you might expect, the Twizy’s interior is designed to be weatherproof, so expect hard, rugged plastics rather than plush fabrics.

Charging is carried out via an integrated cable, which plugs into a standard three-pin household socket. The battery is just 6.1kWh, so it only takes three-and-a-half hours to charge the Twizy up from empty, which gives you a range of around 40 miles in mild weather, although that will drop to around 30 miles when it’s cold.

The tiny battery means the Twizy costs peanuts to charge up, and running one will certainly cost you less than any of its electric rivals, let alone a petrol or diesel car. And because it's a zero-emissions vehicle, there's no VED (AKA road tax) to pay. What's more, if you live in London, the Twizy is ULEZ compliant as well as free of the congestion charge (until 2025). There are no tailpipe emissions at all, and indeed no tailpipe.

Servicing is as cheap as chips, too – a three-year service plan will cost you £100 from Renault – and because there are so few moving parts and barely any equipment, there’s very little to go wrong, and as such, running costs are minimal.

One thing you will need to keep in mind if you’re buying an older Twizy is the possible extra cost of leasing the battery. Prices start at £45 a month, although they increase depending on how many miles you do each year. You can also opt to buy out the battery, which turns your battery-leased Twizy into a battery-owned example; the cost to do this is often quite high, though, so make sure it makes sense financially given the amount of time you intend to keep the car.

Frankly, we haven’t a clue how reliable the Twizy will be, simply because there's no data. The Twizy hasn’t been the subject of any reliability surveys, which makes it difficult to draw hard-and-fast conclusions about its dependability, although it’s worth pointing out that Renault as a manufacturer finished very poorly in the 2020 What Car? Reliability Survey: it placed 30th out of the 31 companies that were featured.

The usual advice for any test drives applies; watch out for bumps and scrapes from urban use, and check everything works properly. But as electric vehicles have far fewer moving parts than internal combustion engines, the risk of something major going wrong tends to be lower.

All Twizys registered from December 2019 onwards came with a five-year warranty; before that, the warranty was only four years, until February 2018, when it was reduced to three.