Ever imagined what would happen if a Renault-powered F1 car and a Renault Twizy were locked in the same garage for the night? Well, the result could look something like this…
It’s the Twizy Renault Sport F1, a fun concept produced to show just how radical the little electric vehicle could become with a little bit of out-of-the-box thinking. Fitted with slick racing tyres from a Formula Renault 2.0 single seater, the racy Twizy has been fitted with F1-inspired features such as side-pods, a carbon splitter and rear wing.
It also has an F1-style steering wheel and a rear rain light ‘borrowed’ from a Formula Renault 3.5 car.
But perhaps the biggest change – one which provides a realistic link to the world of Formula 1 – is the Twizy’s power plant. Supplementing its standard 17hp/13kW electric engine is an F1-style KERS unit which boosts power six fold to 97hp/72kW. This extra injection of power is available for around 14 seconds and can be activated whenever the driver feels like it… just like in a Grand Prix.
This extra blast of power allows the Twizy to accelerate from standstill to 100kph as quickly as a Renault Megane R.S.
Standing for Kinetic Energy Recovery System, the Twizy KERS comprises an electric motor-generator unit directly attached to the driveshaft, its own lithium-ion batteries and a special control unit. It is charged by siphoning power from the car’s main motor.
“I’m not sure we’ll see many of these on our roads, but it does show that the same principles we see on the race track can be filtered down to the road car range – this is just Twizy’s evil elder bother,” said Jean-Michel Jalinier, President and Managing director of Renault Sport F1.