Why the ZOE e‑Sport is showing us EVs can be cool at FOS

Throw all the electric supercars at us that you want. The bottom line is that for the 90% of enthusiasts that don’t have first-person access to the upper echelons of automotive exotica, the noise and drama of a traditional fire-spitting supercar will always win out. Show us something that we might just get our hands on, can get us from A to B without the range anxiety, is a proper thing to look at and a proper thing to drive, and you might just have a win.

Though the ZOE e-Sport is just a concept, it’s running and it’s running hard at FOS 2017, and impressing many EV naysayers. Never mind that it’s electric, it looks damn cool and it goes damn fast! It apes the very greatest Renaults with attitude from across the decades, from R5 Turbo, through Clio Williams, V6 and beyond.

Manufacturers, rivals, take note: That’s how you get us on board. We don’t have to be martyrs. Zero-emission doesn’t have to mean zero-style, zero-fun, or, on the other end of the spectrum, zero-attainability. To Renault, we say this: Build it, before someone else does. A well set-up ZOE with 200bhp (the concept’s dizzying 400+ might be overkill), arches, attitude and so on.

Make it appeal to traditional hot hatch staples of fun and chuckability, while taking us into a new era of sustainable motoring. We promise it’ll go down a storm.

Photography by Tom Shaxson and Dominic James