Tesla<\/a>-aping homogenised blob look that so many new entrants seem to adopt.<\/p>\nIt also avoids the weirdness that\u00a0many EVs have, where they try to look different almost for the sake of it, and all grace and refinement goes out the window.<\/p>\n
Good morning, Volkswagen ID 4. On first impressions on the road, the driveline refinement stands out as an instant star quality. This is a smooth, easy-going car to pilot. The ride is lumpier than I recall, though. That could well be those 20in wheels.<\/p>\n
The Google system inside the car is another happy memory: it\u2019s simple and easy to use. \u2018Simple and easy to use\u2019 feels like a mantra that could follow the Scenic around.<\/p>\n
It has a lot of bases covered and feels like a car in which you can rack up the miles in a fussfree way, a kind of car you can enjoy driving and using and yet not feel guilty about leaving a crisp packet or two in the footwell because it doesn\u2019t carry any airs or graces about it. Let\u2019s find out…<\/p>\n
Update 2<\/h2>\n
An 800-mile round trip made for quite the rst date with the Scenic. Almost as soon as I was handed the keys, it was off to the continent for the final of the 2025 Car of the Year contest.<\/p>\n
The final tests and judging were done at the Mettet circuit, near Charleroi in the south of Belgium, before heading north to Brussels for the ceremony itself.<\/p>\n
The Scenic felt like fitting transport to take me over to Belgium for the week, given that it was at the time the reigning Car of the Year, having taken the title around this time last year.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t my top pick in the voting, but I had still been a fan of it \u2013 and it quickly rekindled an enjoyment for its ability to just fit in and make mundane journeys pass in comfort.<\/p>\n
I thought the only jeopardy on the trip would be dealing with my own nerves: I was the designated chauffeur to take the 2025 Car of the Year trophy over to Brussels.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
That proved to be the easy part, the trophy even getting the heated front seat to itself as we headed through the Eurotunnel, for what I thought would be the main photo opportunity away from service stations and charging points.<\/p>\n
Yet as 800-mile journeys go, this turned into one of the more eventful ones. Snow hit southern Belgium halfway through the trip, and the country\u2019s roads resembled British ones when there\u2019s a downfall, given the chaos that ensued.<\/p>\n
Like Britain, Belgium does not mandate winter tyres, and its drivers can be found spinning and sliding meekly into grass verges and ditches. I crawled through the chaos on my summer tyres at no more than 20mph, tucked behind one of the army of snow ploughs that clears the roads.<\/p>\n
The only damage done was to the car\u2019s range, which dropped to around 220 miles in the coldest weather \u2013 way down on the claimed 369-mile figure. \u2019Twas ever thus with electric cars, but our road tests have noted there is a particular issue with Renault\u2019s electric cars around highspeed efficiency when compared with rivals, and the Scenic is no exception.<\/p>\n
In milder conditions, I\u2019m still only getting around 245 miles on longer runs. One to watch as the weather improves.<\/p>\n
Update 3<\/h2>\n
“It says.\u201d \u201cIt says.\u201d \u201cIt says.\u201d This phrase was repeated over and over again by the voice of Siri through the Renault Scenic\u2019s Apple CarPlay when I tried to dictate a text in reply to one it had just read out.<\/p>\n
Renault took the car back to try to x the glitch and sent me a Rafale to try for a week for an electric versus hybrid comparison of its family crossovers.<\/p>\n
They share the same otherwise excellent Google-based infotainment system, so I checked if they had another thing in common.<\/p>\n
Sure enough: \u201cIt says.\u201d This points to a wider so ware bug that will no doubt be included in a so ware update if Renault\u2019s engineers are able to replicate it.<\/p>\n
The text dictation worked fine on my partner\u2019s phone in both cars, and given that we have a newish Clio with older so ware and both our phones work just fine on that, I can only conclude there\u2019s a bug in the new Google system somewhere.<\/p>\n
A software update was deployed to my Scenic as part of Renault\u2019s\u00a0attempted fix, and while it didn\u2019t remedy the issue, it has brought an excellent new CarPlay-based feature: Waze mapping for the instrument display, not just the touchscreen.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/renault-scenic-e-tech-long-term-review-is-this-electric-hatchback-still-a-standout-in-a-crowded-market-5.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Waze is my sat-nav of choice for its ability to actively and reliably reroute around traffic and also steer clear of \u2018sat-nav roads\u2019 \u2013 the kind that look like roads on a map but when you get on them are likely to make you the butt of a joke on a local news website.<\/p>\n
To have it even better integrated as part of CarPlay (it\u2019s also a stand-alone app in the Renault system, but I keep forgetting my password) is a real boon in the Scenic.<\/p>\n
My time in the Rafale reminded me how well electric power is suited to a car of this type and how the baseline quality for electric powertrains is much higher. The Rafale\u2019s hybrid drivetrain was jerky and felt poorly integrated, becoming a bit of a distraction from any wider enjoyment there might be in the car.<\/p>\n
An electric drivetrain like the Scenic\u2019s has significantly better performance and refinement and allows you to get off on the right foot with it.<\/p>\n
Taking away cost and range considerations for the moment, for a mainstream hatchback from a mainstream brand, electric power feels a better starting point for making a better car.<\/p>\n
Update 4<\/h2>\n
Recently, I got talking to a software engineer whose job it was to pore over the data showing how many features and options customers actually use within their cars.<\/p>\n
It won\u2019t surprise you to learn that most people don\u2019t use most things and, beyond an early exploration of some key functions and preference settings, a lot of things stay hidden away undiscovered.<\/p>\n
The life of a motoring journalist involves exploration of all these different menus and features, yet even weeks and months into a test like this, things can come as a surprise.<\/p>\n
In the Scenic, I went hunting for a creep function for the transmission and came away with a cure for my hay fever. Regarding the former, I had found low-speed manoeuvring, particularly parallel parking, very tricky to do, as the surge of torque jolts you forward and backwards without any finesse.<\/p>\n
I thought this was because the car was being held by an auto-hold function, so I went hunting for an\u00a0off switch, but instead, because the regenerative braking was set to maximum, it held the car in a similar way.<\/p>\n
Pulling the steering wheel paddles that control this to turn the regen down at stationary had the car creeping forward in a much more controllable manner. Problem solved.<\/p>\n
The Scenic is unusual in keeping the regen setting how you left it when you last got out of the car, rather than resetting, like in Volkswagen Group and Hyundai Group EVs.<\/p>\n
To be fair, the Renault way is the more desirable way of doing it, as in those other brands\u2019 cars you typically only notice the absence of regen slowing you down as you approach your\u00a0first corner.<\/p>\n
If an auto hold function was in the system somewhere, I couldn\u2019t find it amid all those menus. Google solved the problem for me anyway, pointing me to a post on the Scenic owners\u2019 page \u2013 and at the very top of that was a post about hay fever.<\/p>\n
Someone had highlighted the \u2018air purifier\u2019 function in the car as the pollen count skyrocketed during the early-April heatwave.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/renault-scenic-e-tech-long-term-review-is-this-electric-hatchback-still-a-standout-in-a-crowded-market-6.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
I\u2019d already noticed how surprisingly unaffected I\u2019d been by hay fever at this time in the morning, when it normally ares up. It turned out the Scenic\u2019s cabin air\u00a0filter is always on, although you can run a five-minute cleaning cycle through one of the\u00a0menus (\u2018Air quality\u2019).<\/p>\n
It clearly works, because on the mornings when I\u2019ve commuted in other cars, my hay fever has returned.<\/p>\n
In the recent one-year service that was done by Renault UK when the Scenic went back home to have its software glitches looked at (the service intervals are one year or 18,000 miles, but our Scenic was registered a year ago and used for other purposes for the first couple of months of its life), the air filter was the only thing to be replaced.<\/p>\n
Renault UK serviced the car as it was with them anyway, otherwise my local dealer, Martin\u2019s Renault in Reading, would have got a visit.<\/p>\n
They look after the Clio I bought new from there in 2023, and the first service I took it in for in December was as smooth and easy a process as buying the car itself. Friendly, helpful people. I have no reason to believe a visit with the Scenic would have had a different outcome.<\/p>\n
Update 5\u00a0<\/h2>\n
It\u2019s great, but\u2026\u201d seems to be a prevailing theme of my time in the Renault Scenic. It does so much so well, and then, just at the point of us reaching a blissful equilibrium together, something happens just to set it back a bit.<\/p>\n
In this warmer weather I\u2019ve been winding down the window a lot, as you do. Yet when the driver\u2019s window goes down and settles \u2013 or rather doesn\u2019t \u2013 it then spends the next few seconds making a rattle in the bowels of the door.<\/p>\n
It goes away soon enough, but it\u2019s irritating. More so ware bugs have materialised, too. The Apple CarPlay issues reported previously haven\u2019t got any better, and now the traffic sign recognition system has gone permanently blank.<\/p>\n
In some ways that\u2019s actually a blessing, because it isn\u2019t the most accurate operator when supposedly in full working order. And another thing\u2026 the memory function of the seats has a very selective memory.<\/p>\n
Yet I still like so much about this car. The light fabric trim is great at keeping the seats cool in the sunny weather, and it looks so much better than any leather could.<\/p>\n
The range has turbocharged itself now, too: I\u2019m getting close to 340 miles on a full charge on mixed roads \u2013 a good 100 miles or so more than in the depths of winter.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great, but\u2026\u201d is how a lot of your correspondence on this car\u00a0has gone. Reader John Warlow reported CarPlay connectivity issues, a problem with the reversing camera and issues with the driver display freezing when displaying the navigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cYet even with all these issues we love the car,\u201d says John. He likes the range in particular, and says he will definitely be considering another one when the lease expires. David Ellis also offered an excellent summary of his Scenic, although this time with fewer\u00a0buts\u2019 than John and myself.<\/p>\n
His is in white with a black roof: it\u2019s a combination I have yet to see, but it does sound like a good one. David says he\u2019s now \u201cofficially a convert\u201d to EVs from diesel; 8p per kWh overnight charging will do that to you with mileages like David\u2019s on journeys rarely longer than 120 miles or so.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s a big fan of preconditioning \u2013 an electric car boon that makes de-icing redundant \u2013 and has adapted his driving style to allow for the extra weight of an EV.<\/p>\n
His niggle list is less problems, more suggested improvements: an illuminated charging port and interior door handles to help at night, the adoption of steering wheel buttons for the stereo rather than the archaic steering wheel column-mounted controller and better stability for the My Renault app to control some of the car\u2019s features remotely.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m with David on the last point in particular. Ian Briscoe wrote to say he was mostly enjoying his Scenic so far, but he asked me this: \u201cIn your normal seating position can you\u00a0easily see the right-hand indicator light on the instrument panel?\u201d Ian couldn\u2019t, and for the\u00a0first time he lef an indicator on after overtaking.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s right, too. The \u201cit\u2019s great, but\u2026\u201d line could be applied to so many of the Scenic\u2019s rivals. Every brand now has an electric hatchback that\u2019s raised up slightly to allow for a battery pack of around 80kWh, and which is about four and a half metres long and has a range in excess of 300 miles.<\/p>\n
They all do some things well and others not so well. This was obvious recently when I tried a Skoda Elroq as part of an early test for 2026 Car of the Year shortlisting (the Scenic, of course, won that crown in 2024).<\/p>\n
The Elroq was better to drive than the Scenic. Its drivetrain was smoother and more responsive, the handling balance better and refinement comfortably ahead of the Scenic. It\u2019s great, but\u2026 it was a bit dull in other places.<\/p>\n
The interior lacks soul or inspiration \u2013 things the Scenic has in spades. The drivetrain of the Skoda with the styling inside and out of the Scenic would be a real winner. As it stands, the choice is yours to make.<\/p>\n
Final update<\/h2>\n
From its days as an MPV, to a trendy crossover with big wheels, and now to its current evolution as a large hatchback, there is always more of a story attached to the Renault Scenic and less predictability about it than you would expect from the familiarity of its name.<\/p>\n
This fifth-generation Scenic outwardly seemed the least remarkable Scenic yet launched. It is now effectively a bigger version of the Megane hatchback, with five seats and a boot and no interior MPV trickery at all.<\/p>\n
Other than being electric, it was hard to pin down what this new Scenic\u2019s \u2018thing\u2019 was. And given the volume of new EVs entering the market, being electric is no longer a point of difference.<\/p>\n
To succeed without the trickery, this Scenic needed to be a very good car to\u00a0drive, and to live with, in a very competitive class. Its 2024 Car of the Year title was a good omen.<\/p>\n
As one of the COTY jurors, I got to sit through many presentations on it and followed its latter stage of development closely. My first impressions of the car from those early encounters in 2023 have stuck with me and I\u2019d still say the same thing now: it feels like a nice, relaxing car to drive every day, and the interior is a real standout feature.<\/p>\n
It feels fresh and modern inside and out, and switching to mass-market appeal seems to have paid off for the Scenic.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/renault-scenic-e-tech-long-term-review-is-this-electric-hatchback-still-a-standout-in-a-crowded-market-7.jpg\")
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Our version of the Scenic E-Tech no longer exists, the Iconic having morphed into the Iconic Esprit Alpine. This has given the Scenic some sportier trim and a lower list price. Our plush test car was previously the best-specced Scenic not called Esprit Alpine \u2013 a standalone trim \u2013 and was equipped with the bigger, 87kWh battery (a 60kWh pack is also offered).<\/p>\n
It came with bigger 20in wheels than the standard 19in wheels of the entry-level Techno model, and the ride did have a habit of kicking you every now and then. Throughout all our experiences with the Scenic, it has been a quieter, more comfortable and more fluent car to drive on smaller wheels, and up there with the class best in this form.<\/p>\n
In our flavour, it is beaten by a Skoda Elroq for driving fluency, yet the Scenic hits back with that interior and greater desirability. We told you it was a competitive class.<\/p>\n
The Scenic\u2019s range was hugely varied. It dropped to around 220 miles in the coldest weather but surpassed 350 miles on warm days. Weather and driving conditions do affect the range of electric cars but the\u00a0gap between best and worst in the Scenic was disconcertingly vast.<\/p>\n
Usefully, the car did indicate its maximum and minimum range expectations based on the current charge on the driver display. Charging speeds were reliably up near the 150kW maximum, too, and the car still comfortably conquered some big-mileage trips from its London base, to North Yorkshire in one direction and southern Belgium in the other, without its driver suffering any range or charging anxiety.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/renault-scenic-e-tech-long-term-review-is-this-electric-hatchback-still-a-standout-in-a-crowded-market-8.jpg\")
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The volume of correspondence we receive about a car on our eet shows what people not only like but also care about. A recent report (11 June) covered some reader messages that followed a \u2018it\u2019s good, but\u2026\u2019 theme, as that\u2019s how most conversations go about the Scenic.<\/p>\n
More emails have since landed suggesting more improvements, all from a position that it is liked and a good car to begin with.<\/p>\n
Those \u2018buts\u2019 include so ware issues, ranging from problems with the memory seat to the Apple CarPlay voice control not ever working, and glaring omissions: there doesn\u2019t seem to be a warning\u00a0that the windscreen washer fluid is running low, which I thought might just have been me until reader Ian Briscoe got back in touch to say the same about his Scenic.<\/p>\n
The build quality was also a bit iffy in places, the driver\u2019s side window being a rattler. Do I miss the Scenic now that it\u2019s gone, and following an extended period of time running it? Not really, but not because of those gremlins and not because the Scenic is a bad car \u2013 it\u2019s far from it.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/renault-scenic-e-tech-long-term-review-is-this-electric-hatchback-still-a-standout-in-a-crowded-market-9.jpg\")
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It\u2019s more a reflection of electric car development in general, and how quickly the segment moves. It\u2019s easy to be a magpie in this game and be drawn to the shiniest new thing, even more so when you\u2019re dealing with a class in which every single brand is launching a car of the Scenic\u2019s exact size and type.<\/p>\n
Most are competent, too, and a cop-out piece of advice would be to buy one of the class\u2019s strongest contenders (Scenic, Elroq, Kia EV3, Ford Explorer, Hyundai Ioniq 5) you can get the best deal on or from a local dealer you know you can trust.<\/p>\n
To the Scenic\u2019s credit, 18 months after launch (a surprisingly long time in the world of mainstream EVs), it still feels a very credible option, and has a real freshness to it. Its styling hasn\u2019t aged at all and the interior remains at the sharp end of the class.<\/p>\n
I imagine a faceliftin around 18 months\u2019 time will iron out many of the wrinkles and help the Scenic raise the bar again.<\/p>\n
Despite the sheer number of entrants in the mainstream family hatchback EV market, the class still awaits its standout option, but the Scenic remains one of the best of the breed, depending on your preferences.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66583,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-66582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-featured"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Renault](\"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/renault-scenic-e-tech-long-term-review-is-this-electric-hatchback-still-a-standout-in-a-crowded-market.jpg\" "\\"Renault")
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