Can we still launch bad electric cars?

Le Jamais Content – ​​New features unveiled this week are sure to make our chief complainer react.

How so. What am I hearing? Astonishment overcomes me. We didn’t see it coming. The electric Renault 5 was voted car of the year. She was the arch favorite in the 2025 election.

So the surprise was that there was no surprise, even though the Kia EV3 defended well, not finishing that far behind in points. Enough to annoy a colleague who believes that an electric car with such poor consumption should not be distinguished.

It is true that among the faults of the R5, there is a big appetite, a point where Renault clearly struggles, the electric Scénic not being an example in its segment either. Rather unfortunate when we see that Renault likes to highlight its experience, and therefore its expertise, in electric vehicles, with a Zoé launched 12 years ago now.

But, as I have written in the past, the perfect car does not exist, whether thermal or electric. The appetite of the R5 will not prevent it from having a real autonomy of 250 to 300 km, more than sufficient for daily use for which this small city car is intended, shorter than a Clio… and which therefore has no vocation to cross France regularly.

I will have more difficulty with this figure for the “4L”, which already has a slightly more family vocation. So don’t tell me about the 376 km approved for the electric Ford Puma, which will be launched in a few weeks… Ford has the good taste to keep the price reasonable given the autonomy, limit in 2025, especially when it goes with a DC 100 recharge kW max. But a price isn’t everything either.

For Car of the Year, the R5 earned the points for other reasons, such as exciting driving. And then let’s not hide our faces, it is also the result of a favorite, an aesthetic success which is almost unanimous. The look of the car alone can convince buyers to go electric.

Design is a very important element of the R5 recipe. But good design is never enough. In a similar vein, Honda launched the e city car in 2020, with a cute look that nods to the past. But the car was a dismal failure. In question: a meager autonomy and a crazy price.

We can say that it was born at a time when many other models had these faults, consequences of incomplete technologies, and that brands progress from year to year. But these days, there is no more forgiveness. If the perfect car does not exist, seeing electric cars arrive on the market with crippling defects in use is crazy, as the young people say. Whether it is the price, the autonomy or even the charging power, always putting this into perspective with the category and uses.

This week, at the Brussels Motor Show, Mazda lifted the veil on the 6e electric sedan. This car will be launched in September 2025 in France with a long-range version which announces a charging power of 95 kW. That’s not a typo, 95 kW. City car value! We must still dare to offer this to customers in 2025! Okay, I have to be honest and say that the base version with the smaller LFP battery has 200 kW charging. What logic!

Mazda has a knack for putting together poorly designed products on the electric market. Its first of its kind, the MX-30, launched in 2020, is a curious model with impractical opposing rear doors, which announces a range of 200 km. The benefits of a small city car in a compact SUV silhouette… What can we say about seeing Mazda return to the charge (slowly) with a large sedan, a genre that is almost dead in Europe.

Earlier in the week, at CES in Las Vegas, we discovered Sony’s electric car for the umpteenth time. This promises a range of just under 500 km and a charging power of around 150 kW. Problem: the car is priced at almost $100,000! But frankly, when we look at what is happening across the way, who wants that? And already, who is going to watch this, the design is so insipid…

In terms of design, we had the two extremes in Las Vegas, with the presentation of two Honda concepts, close to the series. To relaunch on the electric market, Honda will start from scratch. And there, we have a bit of the opposite recipe to e.

The brand seems to pull out all the stops to have technically accomplished products. But for the packaging, the manufacturer decided to surprise. The concepts announce models with a daring look. Who said ugly at the back of the room?

We have the impression of going back 20 years with these machines, when an ecological vehicle had to be strange. It was a way to distinguish them and give them a futuristic side. A technique for attracting avant-garde customers.

But with the democratization of electric vehicles, we had to return to more normal looks. Some who have tried originality, like Mercedes or Volkswagen, are in the process of remaking the classic as evidenced by their next big new electric models, the CLA and ID.2.

After having tried its luck again on electric without convincing more, with an SUV e:Ny1 with not great autonomy and a poor charging curve in hot weather, which must therefore be sold off, Honda prefers to take risks again. Obviously, style is a question of taste, that’s not what makes a car bad. But a car that is too original never sells well, it must remain at the concept stage. The history of Honda has already proven it, and other cars prove it again. Example: the Hyundai Ioniq 6, on track to be a big flop.

While Honda absolutely needs to get its electric sales off the ground, I’m not sure that taking such a risk is a good idea.