Renault 5 vs VW e-Up!

The Renault 5 is £200 cheaper to buy. Running costs are almost identical - about £144 a year either way, at 8,000 miles on an off-peak home tariff. Add 5 years of charging and the two land within £280 of each other - effectively the same to own. These figures cover list price and home charging only - insurance, servicing, tyres and depreciation will move the real total.

EVcarsguide estimates a real-world motorway range of about 160 miles for the Renault 5 and 116 miles for the VW e-Up! - both below their WLTP figures, because sustained high speed is the hardest case for an EV. The Renault 5 goes roughly 43 miles further between charging stops. A rapid charge to 80% takes around 31 minutes in the Renault 5 and 49 in the VW e-Up!, so the Renault 5 loses less time at each stop. That makes the Renault 5 the stronger long-distance car.

The VW e-Up! is the easier car for tight UK car parks: it is 163 mm narrower than the Renault 5. In a standard 2,400 mm bay that leaves about 755 mm of total clearance for the VW e-Up! and about 592 mm of total clearance for the Renault 5. The VW e-Up! also turns in a 0.5 m tighter circle, which helps with U-turns and multi-storey ramps.

Over a 8-year ownership window EVcarsguide's degradation model projects roughly 84% battery health for the Renault 5 and 84% for the VW e-Up!. That is close enough that capacity loss should not decide between them. Both use NMC-type cells, so for daily use keep the charge limit near 80% to slow degradation. Both batteries carry a 8-year manufacturer warranty.