A MAJOR car manufacturer designed an electric compact supermini back in 1992 – but there’s a big catch.
French car company Renault first got to grips with an electric vehicle some 30 years ago, way before the Toyota Prius hit the roads.
GettyWith its rear wheels retracted it was on 90.5 inches long[/caption]
GettyThe Renault Zoom weighed just 1,764 pounds[/caption]
Many motorists may see the launch of the gas-electric hybrid from Toyota in 1997 as marking the move to EVs.
The first commercial plug-in hybrid, the Chevy Volt and the mass-market all-electric vehicle, the Nissan Leaf, both hit the road in 2010.
Renault’s Zoom though was ahead of the curve though and while it wasn’t wholly electric the compact concept car was unveiled at the 1992 Paris Motor Show.
The lightweight motor was seen as a nippy city roundaround with the ability to slip through heavy traffic and due to its tiny size, it was able to fit into tiny parking spaces.
Unfortunately, for environmentally-conscious drivers Renault never actually commercially produced the car.
The two-seater Zoom was designed by Matra and had an egg shape and its influence can be seen in the two-door multipurpose minivan Avantime, as well as its own quirky three-seat Murena coupe.
To help with the Zoom’s ability to squeeze into tiny spaces, it came with scissor doors, opening upwards rather than out.
While its standard wheelbase was just more than 104 inches, it was fitted with an innovative modular retractable wheelbase that shrank the car by an extra 14 inches – to just 90,5 inches – also helping it to park up in the smallest of spaces.
Thanks to its plastic body it was remarkably lightweight, weighing in at just 1,764 pounds.
It’s nickel-cadmium batteries, which were said to be 90 per cent recyclable, accounted for nearly 772 pounds of the car’s overall weight.
The car’s performance wasn’t exactly breath-taking though.
It took six seconds to go from zero to the giddy heights of 31mph and had a top speed of 75mph.
Renault is said to have claimed it had a range of 160 miles but other reports put this closer to just 93 miles.
The EV though did come with some nifty gadgets for the time.
There was a Carminat sat nav embedded in the seat that opened like a flip phone while a display screen popped up on the dashboard.
It was also equipped with an integrated hands-free telephone and the controls for the CD player were built into the steering wheel.
All flash electronics, bearing in mind this was 1992.
It’s unfortunate the car never made it to being commercially produced.
GettyThe car was designed by French engineering company Matra[/caption]
GettyWhile the car was debuted at the Paris Motor Show it never made it to being mass produced[/caption]