How Europe’s EV makers shrank their product to challenge the bloated SUVs

Jasper Jolly puts the Renault Twingo E-Tech through its paces on the streets of London. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The GuardianView image in fullscreenJasper Jolly puts the Renault Twingo E-Tech through its paces on the streets of London. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The GuardianHow Europe’s EV makers shrank their product to challenge the bloated SUVsSmaller, cheaper cars built for narrow city streets are becoming more stylish – but require careful design decisionsThe winding backstreets of London, Paris and Rome are a large part of their charm.

But they are also a problem for electric carmakers. For a long time, squeezing big batteries into smaller, cheaper cars to fit European streets was too much of a problem, so manufacturers focused on bloated SUVs instead.But that is finally changing.

Battery technology has improved and Europe’s carmakers havecut manufacturing costs enough that they can now sell cars that might have a chance of fitting down a medieval lane or two.The new Renault Twingo E-Tech is a case in point. Driving the city car through London attracts quizzical looks.

Its bulbous headlights live up to the older petrol version’s “frog” nickname, and this particular model has a “mango yellow” paint job.But small, European electric cars like this will be notable for more than their looks if they can slow the trend towards ever-bigger lumps of metal – and help fend off the challenge from Chinese rivals.“The world is not going to be saved by big SUVs that are electric,” says Renault’s chief design officer, Laurens van den Acker, who led development on the Twingo.

“The world is going to be saved by small electric cars. We need more of them and not less. We need them to become as popular as other cars.”

View image in fullscreenThe ‘mango yellow’ paint job may prove to be the least notable thing about the Twingo, if it can see off Chinese rivals. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The GuardianCar companies are probably not the obvious candidates for saving the world, but they do have a part to play in making vehicles that don’t pump several tonnes of planet-heating carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. Road transport currently accounts for about a fifth of EU emissions.

Switching from a small petrol hatchback to an electric SUV represents two steps forward and one step back in environmental terms. The larger car will not produce emissions directly, but more bulk and bigger batteries mean higher emissions associated with manufacturing and more energy needed to move compared to a smaller vehicle – not to mention clogging up streets.Renault’s Twingo (priced from €19,490 in France and probably selling for about £18,000 when it launches in the UK next year) will go up against an increasing number of rivals in the city car and small car segments of the automotive market.

Citroën has the ë-C3 and is planning to revive the venerable 2CV name for a forthcoming small electric model. Peugeot, Citroën’s sister company in the Stellantis group, has the E-208.Renault and van den Acker have already had a hit with the slightly larger Renault 5 E-Tech, the 2025 winner of Europe’s venerable Car of the Year award.

The Mini Cooper Electric and the Fiat 500e have also been on sale for several years, and more are on the way, notably the Volkswagen ID. Polo. There is also the very fun niche of even smaller “quadricycles” such as the Citroën Ami and the Micro Microlino.

Reversing the trendThe blossoming of smaller cars comes after decades of vehicles getting bigger. At 4.41 metres (14ft 5in) on average, cars manufactured in 2024 were 5% longer than in 2016, according to Dutch government statisticians.

They were also nearly 4% wider at 1.82 metres (5ft 10in) – a particular problem for anyone trying to navigate the canal-side streets of Amsterdam.Smaller cars had started to disappear because it became harder for manufacturers to make money on them.

Safety regulations meant extra kit, which was tricky to package into smaller spaces. And when the shift to electric came, batteries were initially too expensive for cars that had traditionally been the most affordable.If any brands can claim to be synonymous with small cars, they are Mini and Smart – the latter particularly for its two-seater model, the Fortwo.

Smart became a joint venture between Germany’s Mercedes-Benz and China’s Geely in 2019, when it turned its attention to larger electric models, and it is now planning an electric version of the Fortwo, called the #2 (pronounced, awkwardly, as “hashtag two”).View image in fullscreenThe Smart #2, an electric concept version of the successful Fortwo model, on display at a motor show in Shenzhen, China, in June. Photograph: Anadolu/GettySmart Europe’s boss, Wolfgang Üfer, told an industry conference last month that the #2 was the model everyone, including his own mother, had been asking for.

But it has taken longer to develop because of the design challenges of packaging everything into a footprint less than three metres long.“Makin