Renault Scenic review: Presenting a better view of EVs

Eagle-eyed readers may have spotted last week that not only was the new Renault Scenic EV selected as the Irish Car of the Year, but that we promised to review it this week. Well, take it that the promise is being kept.

For reasons to complicated to go into here, Examiner Motoring does not participate in the selection process, preferring instead to select our own Cars of the Year through various categories and which you will be able to read before the turn of the year.

In any event we tested the new Renault Scenic EV a couple of weeks ago and, like the new Rafale, we liked it a lot. The Rafale, which was reviewed here a couple of weeks ago, was notable for the fact that not only was it an SUV Coupe which we actually liked, but it also demonstrated the new design language from the company.

We noted that in the past Renault was often guilty of designing cars which were extremely fashionable for ten minutes and whose glory faded quicker than a one-hit-wonder pop star. We felt, rightly or wrongly, that the Rafale was set to crack that trend and become a car that had lasting design qualities.

It was also a hybrid, which has become the default for so many manufacturers now running scared of the public’s seeming avoidance of pure electrics as being the answer to the greening of the motor industry.

If anything, the Scenic underlines the point about Renault’s new design language and is as sharply dressed as anything on the market right now and points to an era where Renault will match anything out there in its head-turning abilities.

And, with the exciting new Renault 5 coming on stream soon and the revived R4 also hooving into view, it seems the company is on the cusp of a new era where it makes excellent cars that look good and don’t appear shabby just months after they’ve been unveiled.

Another factor to remember too that the Scenic is a pure EV and a damned good one too. That is not something we’ve been able to say about many family electrics in the past couple of years as a tsunami of them engulfed us. Most of them are moderate at best and, for the most part, awful.

We have, in the past broken down the EV segment into generations; the first gen, mostly, were simply terrible; the second, most of which we have just seen the back of, were better, but not much. The range, the batteries, the residuals and the appalling depreciation were the things which put people off buying them.

I believe we are now into Gen. 3 of the EV revolution and while there are still issues, the latest cars are eventually beginning to show signs there is life in the electric market yet. The Scenic is in the vanguard of that generation of electrics.

Sure, time will tell how it fares when time comes to replace it, but the initial pointers indicate this is a car that will perform much better than anything – from any manufacturer – we have yet seen.

Now an SUV, instead of the MPV it was initially conceived as, the Scenic is not just good-looking car, but it is an excellent electric. Important to note here is that it’s not just a great electric but a very fine car in its own right.

Worth noting too is that not only is it the Irish Car of the Year, but it also snaffled the far more prestigious European Car of the Year title back in March and that’s what makes you sit up and take note.

The car comes with two battery choices, one with 60 kWh and one – the tester – that comes with 87 kWh, which gives it the equivalent of 200 bhp. Renault also tells us that the new Nickel Manganese Cobalt cell chemistry not only boosts energy density by 6%, but it is also serviceable to a point.

This battery is made up of twelve modules and should any of them fail, they can be individually replaced. That’s something of a landmark for EVs of any description.

It also provides the car with just over 600 km of range and that puts it in a whole different league to most of the mid-size EVs out there. The figure is a WTLP one and, as such, it performs better than either the Tesla Model Y or the excellent Skoda Enyaq.

There are other innovations too: the excitingly named electric excited synchronous motor (EESM) does not utilise a permanent magnet to create the magnetic field to spin and this negates the need to use rare earth metals. On top of that, this design improves efficiency when cruising on a motorway, for example.

We had the top spec ‘iconic’ (STET lower case) and a very comfortable beast it was too with faux leather upholstery and interior trim, which is made from recycled bottles, which sounds naff, but it actually excellent. The door cards and most of the other interior surfaces are also made from sustainable sources and the wooden inserts here are actually wood, but from sustainable forests.

There are other neat touches too – the rear-view mirror can be turned into a camera, which is useful if you’re loaded to the ceiling with stuff in the boot and can’t see out the back window. There is also a rear-view camera that comes up on the infotainment screen when you’re reversing.

It also has a ‘Solarbay’ panoramic roof which has adaptable opacity which acts like a blind and does not take away from the headroom, which is excellent as is the knee and shoulders space, particularly for those in the rear seats. The rear armrest is also a thing of beauty and practicality.

Unlike a lot of electrics, there’s no one-pedal driving mode, but the adjustable regen (done with a flick of the steering wheel paddle) gives you four different modes which adjust the level of braking when you ease off the loud pedal.

Acceleration is not as quick as some electrics at 7.9 seconds for the 0-100 km/h dash but is perfectly acceptable for the keener driver and so to is the excellent handling and the ride is not bad either, making this a very comfortable thing which is helped by nicely weighted steering.

This is one of a new and very impressive range of cars from the Regie; it looks sharp, is loaded is safety kit which is not determinedly annoying, drives well and is very thoughtfully packaged to the benefit of the driver and passengers.

Only one or two small niggling things annoy, but the bottom line here is that this car fully deserves the gongs it has already amassed and that’s why it gets a rare five-star rating here. Renault has adapted to the electric era so much better than so many others and this is proof positive.