LoginRenault’s Retro R4 EV Could Get A Whole Lot More Interesting Soon
- Renault has released a concept hinting at a production dual-motor R4.
- The R4 Savane has an extra motor on the back and 15 mm chassis lift.
- Tough makeover includes shock-absorbing bumpers and a wider track.
Renault’s retro 4 E-Tech crossover has only just hit the streets of Europe, and already the company is teasing us about a major upgrade. The 4 Savane is a rugged, off-road-themed concept that adds an extra motor to the EV’s rear axle, giving the 4 all-wheel drive for the first time.
Borrowing a name from one of the original R4s, the Savane gets a 15 mm (0.6 inches) body lift, and bespoke 18-inch wheels with Goodyear UltraGrip performance tires that increase the track width by 20 mm (0.79 inches) front and rear.
Related: The New Renault 4 E-Tech Makes For A Chic Beach Buggy
Its Jade Green paint is new to the R4 and topped by a printed fabric roof, while the stock bumper overriders are replaced by new 3D-printed parts with shock-absorbing properties. The interior also gets an outdoorsy theme courtesy of seats finished in Deep Brown and featuring houndstooth backrests and bolsters.
We hope you like brown because there’s more mud coloring on the dashboard, but the Savane’s real appeal is that it might also be able to handle some mud on its tires with an extra electric motor boosting traction.
The production 4 E-Tech rides on the same AmpR Small architecture as the award-winning Renault 5 E-Tech and its Alpine A290 brother, and all of those production cars are strictly single-motor, front-wheel drive affairs – the $180k, RWD Renault 5 Turbo 3E rides on a totally different platform.
Single-motor Fours get a choice of 118 hp (120 PS / 88 kW) and 148 hp (150 PS / 110 kW) power units, so adding a second motor to the rear could theoretically push power close to 300 hp (304 PS / 224 kW), which is not far off 10 times as much power as the original Renault 4 had back in 1961. That wouldn’t just be the basis for a rugged Savane production car, but could enable Renault to get into the hot crossover market with an AWD Alpine spinoff.
Renault hasn’t confirmed the Savane, or a bi-motor 4 for production, saying only that it “demonstrates the potential of the AmpR Small platform to create a B-segment electric vehicle with four-wheel drive,” but it tends not to make concepts that don’t have real production intent. What we don’t yet know is whether the Renault 5, running on a shorter version of AmpR Small, could also accommodate a rear motor.
