Renault 5 - long-term review

Although it stung slightly given how strongly I’ve bonded with the 5 in the past six months or so, Ollie Kew’s hunt for things to criticise did twig a slightly painful memory. You see, there’s one thing about the little Renault that really does grind my gears, and I’ve been meaning to write about it ever since the first couple of weeks of ‘ownership’.

It is this: the AI-powered voice assistant is useless. And not just useless because it regularly fluffs up even the simplest tasks or because it can barely understand an accent. It’s worse than that. Like a smart speaker, your phone or a dictatorial regime, ‘Reno’ is always listening. That’s fine if he’s only waiting for the classic “Hey Reno” prompt, but he isn’t. He constantly butts in to your conversations with passengers or interrupts the radio while wanting to re-introduce himself every five minutes.

We get it, you can open the windows or change the climate control temperature. I can also manage that myself because thankfully Renault saw fit to retain actual buttons in the interior. And no, I don’t want you to tell me a joke.

His name also bugs me, because he pronounces it Ree-no, but we won’t get bogged down with that.

Now, thankfully I’d forgotten to write about this up until now because you can actually turn the thing off completely, and once you’ve done this the infotainment system on the 5 becomes a bit of a joy to use. A rare feat these days, I know.

The 10in touchscreen itself is bright, responsive to the touch and loads quickly. There aren’t too many sub-menus or needless features either. Well, other than Reno.

The infotainment uses the Google built-in system, so you’ve got familiar Google Maps but with the addition of battery and range info baked in. That means routes will include charging stops if required, and so far those have worked extremely well for me on longer trips. You can also stick the nav up on the dial display screen.

Having this system means you get access to the Google Play Store, so you can download apps like Spotify, Prime Video and Chrome to pass the time while charging. Impressive tech for a mid-spec £25k city car. Although it’s worth noting here that the access is only standard for five years, after which there will be a charge to use the Google built-in functions. Unfortunately, it’s seemingly impossible to find out from Renault how much this will actually cost. Annoying, because it really does work.

Oh, and it also gives you access to Google’s own Voice Assistant. This is leaps and bounds better than Reno, chiefly because it stays in the background and then gets things done with far more haste when you actually do decide to use it. Plus, you can call it up via the microphone button on the steering wheel, and because Google can access all of the car’s functions it’s able to change radio stations or alter the climate control. Surely if Renault trusted Reno, he’d be given that prime spot on the wheel?

Anyway, final bit of tech chat involves the My Renault app. I hadn’t actually set this up initially, chiefly because I couldn’t get it to work. Turns out it was because I’d created a second profile on the car to save all of my personal preferences, but the app can only connect to the Driver Admin profile. I hope this helps at least one other R5 driver in a pickle. Anyway, once it’s paired with the car you can switch back to your own profile and still benefit from the usual EV app functions. That means charging info and schedules, preconditioning, control of the lights etc.

It also tells you when your next service is due (soon for us!) and allows you to delve deep into plenty of technical data on the car. I can’t charge at home so an app isn’t essential when driving an EV, but I’ve found My Renault to be fairly useful for keeping track of the battery percentage and range. No real need to use it for route planning though, because the aforementioned Google system just does it on the fly and I can trust that the R5 will charge reliably and reasonably quickly.

It's probably quite a good sign if a voice assistant is the biggest bugbear in a car these days. And yes, he’ll remain switched off for the forseeable.