Renault Twingo E-Tech Priced from €19,490 as EU Tariffs on Chinese EVs Remain in Place

The Renault Twingo E-Tech is priced from €19,490 in France and is expected to sell for about £18,000 in the UK when it launches next year. 5 kWh battery and a range of 163 miles. A test drive from London to Oxford required a 20-minute charging stop.

Laurens van den Acker, Renault’s chief design officer, led development on the Twingo. He said the world would be saved by small electric cars rather than big electric SUVs. The Twingo features bulbous headlights, a “mango yellow” paint option, and sliding rear seats that increase either legroom or boot space.

82 metres in width, nearly 4% wider than in 2016, according to Dutch government statisticians. The Guardian reported that smaller cars had become less common because safety rules and expensive early batteries made them unprofitable. Renault cut the Twingo’s development time to two years and reduced the number of parts to 750.

Some engineering work was done in China. The company previously won Europe’s Car of the Year award in 2025 with the slightly larger Renault 5 E-Tech. Smart became a joint venture between Mercedes-Benz and Geely in 2019.

The company is planning an electric version of the Fortwo called the #2. Wolfgang Üfer, Smart Europe’s boss, said the model was the one everyone, including his mother, had been asking for. Xuan-Zheng Goh, Smart Europe’s director for product, marketing and communication, said making a small car remains a real challenge.

The Smart #2 was displayed at a motor show in Shenzhen, China, in June. The Cupra Raval, another new small electric model, starts at £23,785. Markus Haupt, chief executive of Cupra and Seat, called the Raval a gamechanger and said production costs should reach parity with petrol cars by the end of this decade or the beginning of the next.