Renault Clio Expression Eco: A perfect commuter car

Renault has launched the £250 Eco Pack for the Clio, making the Renault Clio Expression Eco the cheapest sub 100g/km supermini in the UK

We hear so much about how electric cars make the perfect commuter car. They can manage to do a fifty or sixty mile round trip a day, don’t need a tax disc and – for those going in to London every day – there’s no congestion charge to pay.

There’s also the negligible cost of electricity to charge the car (for now, at least) and the zero emissions at the point of use. Which is why we agree that electric cars have their place as commuter cars in congested cities (particularly something like the Renault Twizy, which would be a hoot to boot). But there’s a price to pay for all this. Literally.

Electric cars cost an arm and a leg. The Nissan LEAF is £30k and even the pocket-sized Mitsubishi i-MiEV is £29k. Opt to lease – for you have no choice with Peugeot’s electric offering – and the Peugeot iOn will set you back £500 a month. Very big ouches all round.

The obvious answer, for those whose pockets can’t – or won’t – stretch to paying a fortune for a second-rate electric car as a second car, is an eco diesel. Ford has a very good offering in the Fieseta ECOnetic and VW’s Polo BlueMotion is a good option. And now Renault wade in with the cheapest sub 100g/km Supermini in the UK – the Renault Clio Expression Eco.

Very sensibly, Renault has made the ‘Eco’ bit a bolt-on pack for the Clio Expression. Add the £250 Eco Pack to the 1.5 litre dCi 88 Clio Expression and you end up with a car that can do 78.4mpg, has CO2 levels of a measly 94g/km, pays no road tax and no congestion charge. It’ll also do 950 miles on a tank of fuel. Try that in your electric car.

Yes, we concede that the Clio Expression Eco is not zero emission at the point of use. But that’s it’s only downside. Not the Co2, of course, but the NoX and Particulates. Still, this is the real world and not some eco-mentalist paradise where we shift the emissions from the city to the countryside.

So a few emissions at the point of use (and ONLY at the point of use) is as nothing compared to the near £17,000 you’ll save if you buy this Eco-Clio instead of a Mitsubishi i-MiEV. At just £12,450 for the 3-door Clio Expression with the Eco pack you can pay for the first 200,000 miles of fuel with the saving over an i-MiEV, and get from London to Edinburgh and back without refuelling. Makes the i-Miev – or any electric car – look like an expensive joke.

For those who have no wish to polish their green halo – and who don’t have money to waste on an electric toy car – this is a no-brainer.