Renault group refused to give comment on the report but confirmed that Zoe’s price will be close to similar models running on the road.
As the Zoe, a 21-inch-wheeled mini electric car with four seats, is developed on renovations of diesel-engined supermini car Clio, one of the French carmaker’s best-seller, French media deduced that Clio’s price of 15,000 was likely to be the baseline.
However, the monthly rental of the battery would be charged for a separate price at "approximately 100 euros (130 U.S. dollars)," the newspaper said.
Once fully charged, the rental battery of Zoe can provide a sustained run of 100 kilometers and the lithium-ion battery is enough for the rear-drive Zoe to reach 88 meters per hour, Renault’ s official data said.
Besides Zoe, Renault-Nissan alliance aims to explore the electric car market with other three major models, which are mini van Kangoo and moderate-sized Fluence with four seats to be on sale in mid-2011, and the two-seated car Twity with sales to begin late next year.
Renault has predicted that by 2020, electric vehicles would represent 10 percent of the global market. The French-Japanese alliance has invested 4 billion euros (5.2 billion U.S. dollars) in the emission-free program, according to earlier reports.
