Ever since we bought our new, super-cute, deep yellow R5 six months ago, I’ve wanted to find out how far it can actually go. You can read about how we ended up buying it here.
I’m pretty busy at work, and my weekends tend to be filled with life admin, family, trying to relax and … occasionally, more work. This is why I didn’t get around to doing this hypermiling exercise until early October 2026.
I really want to know how far I can drive on a single charge. But the part I’m most interested in (and probably the most terrifying for anyone new to EVs) is what happens when the battery gauge hits 0%.
As always, before attempting something like this, I spend some time preparing.
First, I already know that I can get consumption down to somewhere between 10 and 11 kWh/100 km. With the R5’s advertised 52 kWh battery capacity, that should translate into roughly 470-520 km, depending on how much of that capacity is actually usable. If I can do better than 10 kWh/100 km, things get even more interesting.
Then there are temperatures and auxiliary consumption to consider. I’ll have to start driving before dawn, when it is still cold enough for battery conditioning to potentially kick in. Any energy used to heat the battery or the cabin is energy that won’t be available to move the car.
Here we encounter the first of several conflicting objectives. I want to charge as slowly as possible. Charging at just 1.8 kW should allow me to get a little more energy into the battery than a conventional 11 kW AC charge, as charging losses and battery behaviour can differ with charging power. At the same time, I suspect that battery conditioning may not work as expected at such a low charging rate, even with a charging timer that normally prepares the battery for departure. This could have a significant impact on range, regardless of how carefully I drive.
In any case, I configure everything the afternoon before and plug the car in. Since we normally limit charging to 60% for everyday use, this will be a rather unusual, very long charging session.
I get up at 5 am and am in the car by 5:15. It greets me with an estimated range of 401 km. Outside temperature: 6°C.
Let’s see whether the car managed to condition the battery while charging.
I start driving at around 5:20 am on a Sunday. The roads are predictably empty, which allows me to get into the hypermiling flow. This is the kind of driving that can be super-annoying to anyone stuck behind you: very gentle, continuous acceleration, carefully optimised cornering, and using descents to gain speed, sometimes even going slightly above the speed limit where appropriate, so that the kinetic energy can carry me up the next slope without having to accelerate again. And so on.
I really enjoy hypermiling. It’s a bit like fly-fishing: it keeps the brain occupied while leaving plenty of room for your thoughts. I deliberately leave the music off and let my mind wander. This is going to be a good day.
Since I’m not going to use the heating, I’m wearing several layers of pullovers and a jacket. I should be fine until the sun comes out in a couple of hours. Comfort is clearly not the primary objective today!
I’m surprised by how far I can drive while the gauge still reads 100%. In the end, it takes 31 km before it drops to 99%. That’s the little bonus from charging slowly to 100%: the displayed percentage doesn’t necessarily represent a perfectly linear measurement of the energy available, and the charging process may leave a little extra room at the top. Exactly how much is available is difficult to establish from the gauge alone.
The consumption figures are looking really good, too. At 9.1 kWh/100 km, I’m doing much better than anticipated. Battery conditioning seems to have worked, and the only obvious energy consumer apart from propulsion is the lighting, which has to stay on in the dark. Of course, there may be other small auxiliary loads that aren’t immediately visible.
If this continues, the numbers get rather exciting. At 9.1 kWh/100 km, a usable 52 kWh would theoretically give me 571 km. That’s a calculation, not a prediction, but it’s a nice target to have in mind.
Having reached Basel, I use the car’s route planner to map out a route that avoids motorways and larger settlements. This is not a race, and keeping a reasonably steady pace on smaller roads is much more interesting than crawling along a motorway for hours.
The route takes me through Germany first, then into France’s Alsace region, following the Rhine towards Strasbourg. From there, I’ll cross back into Germany and retrace my route to Basel. After that, I’ll stay on the German, northern side of the Rhine towards Schaffhausen and decide where to go next based on the remaining charge.
The low consumption seems to be confusing the car’s range estimator. I’m managing to go further than the car thinks is possible. Take that, range anxiety! 😉
At one point, average consumption dips as low as 8.7 kWh/100 km. Very, very satisfying.
Overall, the drive is wonderfully relaxing. At 9 am on a Sunday, there is virtually nobody on the road in this part of France. Exactly the sort of conditions that make this exercise enjoyable.
I arrive in Strasbourg with 7% more battery than the car had predicted. However, over the last 50 km, consumption has jumped from 8.7 to 10 kWh/100 km. I suspect that some battery heating may have started, although I can’t confirm this from the figures alone. If that is what happened, it is a useful reminder that low consumption on the road doesn’t tell the whole story: the battery itself may need energy to stay within its preferred operating temperature range.
Time to cross back into Germany.
Driving in Germany turns out to be considerably less fluid than in France. It feels as though every village has been converted into a 30 km/h zone. The villages are long, stretched out along the road, and have very little depth to them. You crawl through one after another, with little opportunity to build up a steady rhythm. Not ideal for my carefully planned hypermiling exercise.
Another thing catches my attention, and I start taking pictures: queues at petrol stations. Cars are lining up to fill their tanks, sometimes in rather chaotic-looking situations around the pumps. If fuel really is becoming scarce, this is quite a worrying sight. Below are three examples from different petrol stations.
The rest of the drive is fairly uneventful. Temperatures climb to 24°C, and average consumption drops back below 10 kWh/100 km. Things are looking good again.
At 15% state of charge, the car gives me a friendly chime and the battery gauge turns yellow. No other notification appears.
At this point, I start thinking more carefully about the final kilometres. My plan is to reach my village at around 0% and see what happens from there. I’m not heading into the wilderness: I’m staying close enough to home that I can manage the experiment sensibly.
At 5%, the car chimes again and the gauge turns red. Still no additional message.
When the estimated range reaches 40 km, the dashboard stops showing a numerical prediction and switches to three dashes. That’s an interesting design decision. I suppose Renault would rather avoid displaying an increasingly unreliable number, but from the driver’s perspective, this is precisely the point at which a useful range estimate would be most welcome.
Another 25 km later, the gauge reaches 0%. I had expected some sort of message along the lines of, “Moron, get to a charging station NOW!” Instead, the car does absolutely nothing. No chime, no warning message, nothing.
It’s almost as if the car assumes that its owner knows what he’s doing and that no further distractions are necessary. I rather like that assumption.
For me, though, this is where things start to get interesting.
How much further can I go? Has Renault built in a reserve below the displayed 0%, as many EV manufacturers do? And what happens when the car actually runs out of usable energy? Does it stop immediately, or does it gradually reduce power to give me a chance to get somewhere safe?
I manage another 25 km without any noticeable impact on performance. Impressive! That’s enough to get most drivers to a charging station, provided they haven’t spent the last few kilometres on a motorway.
At 527 km, I finally get another friendly chime and an information banner telling me that vehicle performance is limited.
And limited it certainly is! Acceleration is severely restricted. Top speed, however, is not immediately limited in the same way: I can still get the car up to 80 km/h, but it takes forever to get there. This is no longer normal driving. The car is clearly telling me that it wants to stop, even if it hasn’t quite stopped me yet.
With every additional kilometre, the available power is reduced further. Eventually, I can barely get above 30 km/h. Getting home becomes a rather slow affair, and I’m relieved that I’m already close enough to make it.
In the end, the car manages 535.3 km on a single charge. After almost 11 hours on the road, I’m quite happy to get out of the car. That’s a long day, even if the driving itself has been surprisingly relaxing.
The final figures are impressive. Average consumption is just 9.7 kWh/100 km, and the car awards me an Eco score of 99%. Not bad for a little car with a 52 kWh battery!
I’ll repeat the test next year, when daytime temperatures are more favourable. If I subtract the 0.7 kWh/100 km of auxiliary consumption recorded during today’s drive, I’m left with around 9.0 kWh/100 km for comparison. That’s close to the 9.1 kWh/100 km I was achieving before the apparent increase in battery conditioning consumption earlier in the day.
At 9.0 kWh/100 km, 52 kWh would theoretically give me 577 km. That’s not a promise of real-world range, of course: usable battery capacity, temperature, the route and the way the car manages its battery all matter. But it gives me something to aim for next year. Let’s see whether I can get below 9 kWh/100 km!
After the test, I plug the car in for a full charge. I’m curious about two things: how long it will take, and how much energy will actually have to come from the socket to get the battery back to 100%.
To measure the energy drawn from the grid, I’m using our rather precise portable charger. This is a useful distinction: the energy measured at the socket includes charging losses and any energy consumed by the car while charging. It isn’t the same thing as the energy stored in the battery.
So, how much energy will it take to charge from the car’s displayed 0% back to 100%?
The next morning, the results are in.
59 kWh! Given that the battery’s actual capacity may differ from the advertised figure, and that AC charging involves losses, this looks entirely plausible. The measurement alone doesn’t tell us how much energy was stored in the battery, but it does give us a useful real-world figure for the electricity required to recharge it from this state.
Another interesting observation: after this exceptionally efficient day, the estimated range displayed the following morning is a full 49 km higher than it was before the test. The range estimator is clearly learning from the recent driving history. It is not measuring the remaining kilometres directly; it is making an educated guess based on expected consumption.
As usual, let’s have a look at the statistics.
I’ve seriously upped my stats game this time. 😉
Overall, this was a very enjoyable drive. I’m still impressed by the long-distance comfort this little car offers. I felt comfortable throughout the day, and the driving itself was fun. The R5 is small enough to feel agile on the back roads, yet perfectly happy to spend an entire day covering hundreds of kilometres.
Next year, I’ll give this another go, ideally with warmer temperatures and a little more daylight. I’d love to get below 9 kWh/100 km and see whether 550 km, or perhaps even more, is possible!