Renault Group CEO, Luca De Meo, has confirmed the return of the Twingo as a new small electric city car with a price tag that will start at under €20,000 (around £17k). De Meo announced the return of another legendary Renault nameplate at the first Ampere Capital Markets Day.Renault is targeting some serious specs for the new baby city car, which he says will ‘go from concept to production in around two years.’

The new European-built Twingo, according to De Meo, is ‘a fit-for-purpose urban vehicle with no compromise,’ according to the brand, promising efficiency figures of around 10kWh/100km and will clock in around 75 per cent lower CO2 emissions ‘than the average European ICE car sold in 2023 over its life cycle.’ Theon Design ITA001 | The dream Porsche 911?‘We’ve done it with the Dacia Spring, now it’s time for Renault,’ adds De Meo during the press conference.

The new Twingo will sit below the upcoming the 5 EV in terms of size, performance and, most crucially, price. The 5 EV has an expected entry price of €25,000 by comparison.

The car shown at the Capital Markets Day press conference is just a concept for now, but De Meo says: ‘we will develop it now in the record time of two years – from concept to start the production – matching the speed of the Chinese OEMs.’ That means we could see a production version of the new Twingo towards the end of 2025, or early 2026.

News of the Twingo comes as Renault gives its Ampere sub-division a little more teeth than it had before. To jog your memory, Renault announced some time ago that its electrification and technology division would be spun off into a separate subsidiary named Ampere.Ampere says it is responsible for the future rollout of the Renault Group’s future EVs, including the Renault 5 that’ll launch in the first few months of 2024. Ampere says it’s also taking the lead on producing the new Nissan Micra (which is heavily based off the 5 EV) and produce another car for Mitsubishi.

To do that, Renault’s CMF-BEV and CMF-EV platforms are being renamed to AMPR-Small and AMPR-Medium in order to directly compete with Stellantis and VW Group.

There is also more of a focus on software than ever before, with Renault Group developing its own software architecture using Google and Qualcomm technologies. The brand promises, for example, to introduce an AI-augmented assistant called Reno.