Renault Zoe Electric Vehicle Racks Up 1618 Kilometres In 24 Hours

Renault may not be competing in this weekend's Le Mans 24 Hour race, but its baby electric car, the Zoe, has just completed a 24 hour speed test at the Aubevoye speed ring in Normandy, France.

Renault ran two Zoes around the the Aubevoye track, with 15 drivers sharing the load. The Zoe's claimed range on a full charge is 210km, with 145km considered realistic.

The first Zoe lapped the 4.5km circuit 363 times for a total of 1628km, the greatest distance covered by an electric vehicle in that time.

The average speed was a fairly sedate 70km/h but achieved an average of 178km per charge.

If you take out the time spent charging, the first Zoe averaged 81km/h during its record-breaking run.

The second car managed an also creditable 1516km.

Both Zoes were recharged using the standard Chameleon charger fitted to production Zoes, but for the record attempt, they were plugged into a 43kW power supply to allow the batteries to be charged to 80 percent in under half an hour.

The Guinness Book of Records is yet to officially declare the attempt as a record, but this is regarded as a formality.

The previous record-holder was Citroen's AX CEA while Renault's Japanese sister Nissan managed to get a Leaf to cover 1260km/h in 24 hours.

Australia

A local debut for the Zoe is still to be locked in, but speaking with TMR today, Renault Australia's Emily Ambrosy confirmed that the little EV is under consideration.

"We're introducing our first electric vehicle this year, the Fluence Z.E, so we're definitely proceeding with EVs," Ms Ambrosy said.

"Zoe represents the future for Renault, it's a ground-up electric vehicle and it looks fantastic, and we do look forward to being able to offer it as part of our range in the future." 

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