Renault 4 - long-term review

To Shropshire for a beautiful walking weekend in the hills between Craven Arms and Clun. Here's a picture of the R4 en route, up Clee Hill.

It was a good drive, both ways. The R4 isn't big or fast or supercar wide, so you can exercise it properly even on these B-roads. It swallows bumps nicely, is well damped against big lumps, and steers neatly.

I arrived after dark, and this is territory without streetlamps, or indeed moonlight that night. The Renault has bright LED headlamps, so that's fine. But even when the touchscreen brightness is turned as low as it'll go, it still glares a bit. Maybe it's illusory, but I felt it was compromising my view of the road. Luckily the system is flexible enough that you can turn it off, and still port the navigation arrows over to the driver's screen.

Having set off from London without a full charge, I stopped in Kidderminster. That was its second time on a rapid charger and as before it didn't quite match the target time. I got 17-66 per cent in 19 minutes to give me a buffer for the rest of the outbound and partway home. Mind you this was an MFG charger and the small print says at 400V they are capped at 100kW, not the higher powers they say in big numbers on the front. Never mind, by the time I'd had the obligatory personal liquid out/liquid in I'd got all the charge I needed.

Actually I could have put far less in. I was staying with my friend Nick who's recently moved in to a house with a wallbox. He'd never tried it, but it turned out to be fully alive, so I charged right up for an uninterrupted journey back to London: 166 miles with eight per cent remaining, giving a real range of 180.

I've driven some new rivals this month. The Ioniq 3 is very well sorted and stylish, but doesn't have the R4's power and feels more relaxed in all it does. It goes 50 miles further by WLTP, for less money than the R4. But it's slower; the big-battery Ioniq 3 takes nearly a second and a half longer to 62mph. I also really enjoyed the VW ID. Polo, which pretty much splits the difference in dynamic character.

Oh, another comparison, one that no actual consumer will ever make. I drove the Porsche Cayenne electric. There were four of us in the Renault to collect the Porsche. The R4's boot was full, but when we transferred it to the Cayenne the giant SUV's boot was full too. Mind you the Porsche does have a bit of a froot, plus a whole lot more rear legroom. And general lux and power, duh.