Renault Fluence ZE Review: The Electric Dream comes true

What we like:

Everything that we like about the standard Fluence

plus the thought of never having to entering another petrol station again

absolutely the quietest car sold in Singapore.

What we dislike:

Cabin too ‘normal’

the necessity to own a landed property in order to get a re-charging station

The usual complaint about EVs is that the car’s range on a single charge, especially compared to the range a full tank of fuel affords a convention petrol-powered car.

For the Fluence ZE, Renault claim a range of 185km, which is about half that of a full tank of petrol. This of course varies with the way it is driven and how heavily taxed the batteries are, by the airconditioning, for example. What this doesn’t take into account though is the re-generative aspect of the battery’s range.

Take for example the time I drove the car along the Sheares Bridge towards the East Coast Parkway. On my way up the bridge, the range indicator on the trip computer showed that I had 78km range left. On the way down however, the braking effect of the electric motors, which re-generates power back to the batteries, increased the range by 2km to 80km. This is certainly something I had never seen before on a petrol-driven vehicle! And this also happens every time one brakes or goes down a slope, though not always by as much as 2km.

So certainly, driving and owning the Fluence ZE requires quite a paradigm shift in thinking. Like a mobile phone, re-charging it every two or three days is something one needs to get used to, and one should not equate re-charging with the weekly tanking up with fuel for a conventional car. It takes 6-8 hours to completely re-charge the Fluence ZE’s lithium-ion batteries, and according to Renault, this full-recharge will cost about $6/- at prevailing electricity rates.

So as there are few home-to-work commutes that exceed 20km, the issue of an EV’s limited range does not really apply in the Singapore context, provided one has a re-charging station at home or at work.

Probably the biggest issue preventing wide-scale adoption of the EV as an alternative to petrol-powered cars is that unless you stay in private property, or a condo with an approving resident’s committee, or have a company that has a charging station at work, re-charging is going to be a problem. Currently, there are no publically available charging stations or network of stations, but even if there were, the home or workplace would probably be more ideal place for re-charging.

So if you stay in landed property, or work for (or own) a company that has signed up for the TIDES programme, the Fluence ZE is viable, and extremely comfortable, EV. It is probably too similar to its petrol-powered variant making it less of a statement considering it is such a radical departure from anything else on the road. And not only is nice to drive, not having to ever enter a petrol station ever again brings a simile to my lips.

Credits: Story by Justin Lee Photos by Raymond Lai