Frogs. Frogs everywhere. Renault’s launch film for the new Twingo is crawling with them – hopping, croaking, and generally doing whatever frogs do when a marketing team’s run out of metaphors.
It’s deliberate, of course. Most cars are quite serious and named after things that can trample or eat you - Mustangs, Vipers, Cobras, Barracudas and such.
The new Twingo, on the other hand, is green, small, and, in typical French fashion, appears to have been designed with an amphibian on the easel.
A European small car for 2026
This is the Twingo E-Tech Electric, Renault’s latest attempt at keeping the small car alive. Renault says it’s due in 2026, will be built in Slovenia, priced at under €20,000, and powered by a 60 kW (82 hp) motor with a 27.5 kWh LFP battery supposedly good for about 263 km WLTP.
Nothing showy, nothing excessive, nothing bourgeois - just a proper French city car doing what a proper French city car should.
According to the company, it was developed in 100 weeks, flat out, under a project called Leap 100, which the PR team claims halves the usual development time.
Engineering was split between Ampere, Renault’s EV arm in France, and a Shanghai team called ACDC - yes, really.
Final assembly will take place at Novo Mesto, the same factory that’s been turning out Renault superminis for a couple decades.
Renault also claims the Twingo’s lifecycle CO₂ emissions are 60 per cent lower than its petrol equivalent, thanks to lithium-iron-phosphate battery chemistry and simplified production - though, as ever, that depends entirely on how you do the maths.
Packaging and practicality
When it arrives, it’ll be roughly the same size as the 1993 original - at 3.79 metres long - but much better equipped and more thought-out.
Features will include individually sliding rear seats, a fold-flat front passenger seat, and 360 litres of boot space plus another 19 litres of cubby storage scattered around the cabin.
It’s all very Renault: practical, unfussy, and just eccentric enough to be interesting.
Charging is 6.6 kW AC as standard, or 11 kW AC / 50 kW DC if you opt for the Advanced Charge pack, which also adds V2L and V2G capability.
Renault says those features allow the car to power small appliances or feed electricity back to the grid - perfect, apparently, for brewing an espresso to accompany your cigarette on the morning commute.
Familiar shape, familiar charm
The styling’s exactly what you’d expect - the familiar one-box silhouette, the big googly eyes, and a proper grin.
It still looks like a Twingo, just one that’s spent a bit more time in the wind tunnel. The launch colour, Absolute Green, looks faintly radioactive in photos but rather good in the metal.
Inside, it’s neat and airy: with a 7-inch driver screen, a 10-inch touchscreen running “OpenR Link” with Google built in, and a big red hazard button right in the middle, just like the old one.
The start-up sound, Renault says, was composed by Jean-Michel Jarre, which is some French bloke.
Renault’s stance on small cars
Renault’s been quite clear that this isn’t about revolution - no guillotines here - it’s about sense. According to the company, the new Twingo has been designed around “use-case reality” rather than headline range numbers, with the average customer expected to drive around 35 km a day - which will last you a smidge over a week on a full charge.
It’ll be a likeable little runabout that’s cheap, simple and easy to park. That’s the pitch, at least.
The A-segment has been all but strangled by cost and regulation, yet Renault’s decided not to walk away quietly.
Like them or not, this is the sort of car that suits battery power better than most - short range, light weight, and incredibly cheap to run.
