The next generation of the Renault Clio – the sixth – will most likely become a reality in 2026, a model that will debut many new features in terms of design and at a technical level.
Renault continues to take important and firm steps toward its nearest future. Within its new vehicle line-up, one of the key models will be the return of the new pure electric R5, a car scheduled to hit the market in autumn 2024. Well, a little later, in 2026, the French firm has just confirmed the launch of the sixth and new generation of the Clio, one of the most popular cars in Europe in the B segment of utility vehicles.
What will become of the Renault Clio after the confirmation of the return of the R5? This has been one of the questions that both car enthusiasts and the business network of the automotive industry have been asking themselves in recent months. However, with the official announcement made by the diamond firm itself, doubts have been dispelled and at least for a few years the R5 of the 21st century and the next sixth-generation Clio will coexist.
With the staging of the new purely electric R5, Renault intends to launch a vehicle on the market with which the French company would lay the foundations for the new and desirable “democratization of the electric car”, that is, vehicles with a more affordable price and in a figure “assumable” by a large part of the public (in the case of the next R5, fees of between 22,000 and 24,000 euros, approximately, are anticipated). However, the complete transition of the industry and the market to purely electrical technology is not going to be as fast as some somewhat uninformed and unrealistic leaders and politicians intended, since there are still many challenges to overcome.
One of them is, without a doubt, the still insufficient charging infrastructure throughout Europe, although it is true that some countries do have a good number of charging stations for purely electric vehicles. However, countries such as Spain, Italy, or France itself are still very far from leading countries in this field, as is the surprising case of Norway. For this reason and due to the continuity of the current chip/semiconductor shortage crisis, everything indicates that the true democratization of the battery-powered electric vehicle will still take a few more years, so hybrid cars and some versions with combustion should still have some validity in the coming years.
For all these reasons, the promise that some made of the price of an electric car compared to one with a thermal engine is, for the moment, unaffordable and unrealistic in the current context (and, at least, in the short-term context). Sources close to Renault itself have already predicted that the level of sales of the next R5 may not reach the numbers recorded by the Clio, hence the need for both models to coexist for a certain period.
RENAULT CLIO 2026: FIRST DATA
The current fifth-generation Clio will receive a small aesthetic and equipment update throughout 2023 and it will be in 2026, as we have previously anticipated, the moment of the premiere of the sixth new generation.
At a technical and structural level, everything indicates that the Clio VI will not present major developments, except for a more than likely natural evolution of its current technology platform. Thanks to the adoption of the update of said architecture, the Clio 6 should benefit from a new version of the E-Tech hybrid system, where the gasoline engine will increase its displacement to 1.8 liters (instead of the current 1 .6 liters), while the electric motor itself will be completely new. In addition to this new 1.8 E-Tech hybrid version, it is more than likely that the French firm’s utility vehicle’s mechanical range will extend the mild-hybrid technology for light hybridization with a 48V system associated with a 1.2-liter petrol engine.
As far as the interior is concerned, digitization will be even more of a protagonist and the cabin configuration could have certain similarities to those currently offered by the Mégane E-Tech Electric.
