2022 Twingo 3 ZE, efficiency numbers (EV)
After the loss of my beloved Mazda MX-30 I spent a year driving only the Twizy during the week and rentals on the weekends. My rationale was, since the MX-30 got, keyed, a broken mirror, a 2nd broken mirror, rear ended, and finally totaled by a drunk driver. All 4 incidents while parked in front of the house*: I decided to accept the reality and not own a car. After a year of rental, I came to the realization that not having a car "on hand" is quite a pain. So I bought a car I absolutely don't care about, and will park it further away in a safer place. This way it will get damaged, but won't risk being totalled by drunk drivers, and I won't mind.
So June 2026, I bought a 2022 Renault Twingo 3 ZE. It has 15 000km, and a 21.3kWh net battery (23kWh raw). SoH at purchase was 96% so 20.4kWh usable.
I received the car charged at 100% (despite asking repeatedly for it not to be charged above 80%). After the first 100km in perfect summer weather, I drained exactly 50% of the battery. I was driving very carefully as I typically drive EVs and never exceeded 90km.h, mostly city and peri-urban drives.
This gives us a raw 10.2kWh/100km while the onboard computer advertises 10.0kWh/100km for this ride., not far off
To bring back the car from 50% to 80%, it took 3:25 hours, at 10A on a single phase. The wallbox measured 7.3kWh delivered.
This would bring us to a total of 24.3kWh to charge 100% of the battery. So roughly a 16~18% loss in the charger and in the battery chemistry. Not impossible at such low charging power.
The full-cycle efficiency value falls at ~12.1kWh/100km.
Conveniently, it takes 1% of charge every 7 minutes. Considering the target is 20->80%, that's 60%, times 7, gives 420, divided by 60 minutes... 7 hours (yes we could have cancelled out the 60% and the 60min/h).
So 7 hours for the 20->80% at 10A~2.2kW (which is completely covered by my solar panels during a sunny day).
I've very satisfied with these values. The Mazda MX-30 was extremely inefficient and, radically different driving styles wouldn't make much of a difference. Only maximum cruise speed had some impact.
Of course, the Twingo is in another league in terms of comfort, features, finish, etc. But at least, it responds to your driving style, and is capable of very good efficiency numbers in the city or at moderate speeds. It is very bare but I quite like it, driving it makes you realize you don't need any more than what this car offers.
I haven't yet found a way to disable the traction control so no drifting (well I found a guide, but don't have the software required yet). The steering is nice, not too numb. I don't like the ratio very much, but it's alright. The car is pretty punchy at low speeds. It mostly fails on suspension and suspension geometry. When you drive on bumpy roads, the wheels have a mind of their own and sticking to the road is not in the plan. My guess is, it's partly the geometry, partly cheap shock absorbers. Oh, and turning circle is insane due to the RWD not impeding.
I plan on installing decent audio which includes re-designing a subwoofer, repurposing the Visaton driver from the Twizy subwoofer. I'll probably try to plug the wheel caps using transparent covering tape too, to improve range at cruise speed. I replaced the Halogen H4 with OSRAM Night Breaker LED Speed H4 450. A very nice improvement and I'm pleasantly surprised by the optics that manage to deliver a clean beam despite being of very old design. It also aligns color temperature with the built-in LED angel eyes. Otherwise, this car will stay stock.
Notes: the car is on brand new 15" Michelin Primary 4 tires, 165 front and 185 rear. The car doesn't have A/C. A deep search by codex and claude caude surfaced reliability issues with the 400V to 12V DC-DC converter, 22kW chameleon charger and a few other things on this car that can kill its value (up to 7k€ worth of repairs), so I bought it with 3 years of extensive warranty.
*I parked in front of the house because I have CCTV and thought that if anything bad happened, I could rely on the legal system. Turns out it's mostly broken. Having licence plates and video proof doesn't get bad drivers prosecuted. So I might as well park my car away from CCTV but in places less likely to be totaled by drugs and alcohol users.