Renault was making good non luxury electric cars, that are still on the road today, in 2012. Their engineering is so good, and they are so simple, that they just do not stop. Their aftermarket prices show how much the market prefers EVs.
Sadly Renault is in financial struggles, deep. Zoe's were the first EV car to be seen regularly on roads. But I'm starting to see Tesla's more and more often now.
Also Citroen released the Ami, a minuscule box with wheels, limited to 30mph or something and accessible to teens without a license. It's apparently being received well.
He was probably thinking of Renault, not Peugeot. The Renault Zoe is one of the most popular EVs in Europe. (Why? It looks cool, drives well, and it's cheap!)
I don't think Peugeot have done anything much notable in EVs recently.
The Renault Zoe, a twenty year old design, much cheaper than the Model 3, built on the first real production electric car platform, which was finally discontinued two weeks ago, is an... odd point of comparison.
Renault have been at this for quite some time - they've had the Zoe and the Dacia Spring low cost short(-ish) range EV models for years now. Both look cheap though, while the R5 looks genuinely cool and does resemble its namesake.
One car maker that doesn't seem too terrible so far with this is Renault. I drive a Zoe and looked at an electic Twingo and those cars are basic but in a nice way. You get physical buttons, a small screen you can run AndroidAuto/CarPlay on and no "smartass" features. There is a companion app that tells you the state of charge and that's it.
I also did a GDPR request to Renault and either they are lying or they don't collect any telemetry. The drivetrain components are all simple parts and fixable in most repair shops. The battery and motor are another thing of course (needs a trained electrician), but that's probably inherent to EVs. Never had any software issues or updates preventing me from driving.
Regarding the points in the article:
* Critical cuttons are all there
* Buttons are located where you'd expect and can be operated without looking
* Lights are bright AF, sorry oncoming traffic :(
* Basic tires and lots of standard Clio parts all over
* App with a subscription you can ignore without major loss of functionality (remote heating)
* All smartphones i plugged in via USB work
* Paintwork: Everybody seems to get the white Zoe, good luck finding your car in a parking lot. Interior is black and white recycled plastic.
Long story short: Renault Zoe is actually a terrible car. As it was the previous versions of the Nissan Leaf.
The reason why they sold quite a few number of cars is because they were the only ones in the market within their price range.
Why are they terrible? Mandatory battery rental, low range, expensive when compared to their ICE counterparts and no active cooling of their batteries which made them degrade a lot over a short time.
Those electric offerings were just some lazy attempts of expanding their product range to electric and they weren't true attempts to make a good electric product.
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