Renault Opened the Roof and Stopped Pretending EVs Don't Have a Soul Problem

Due South

There's a version of this story where Renault's new open-top 4 E-Tech is a clever marketing move, a summer limited run, a way to shift units by invoking a folding-roof option that apparently existed on the original 4 back in the 1960s. That version is boring. The more interesting version is what it quietly admits: that electric cars, for all their engineering elegance, have been missing something you can feel on your face.

The variant is called Plein Sud — Due South — and it costs from £27,445 in the UK after the government's electric car grant is applied. That's a £1,500 premium over the standard model. One cloth roof, one summer's worth of justification, fifteen hundred pounds. It launched almost a year after the standard electric crossover went on sale, which is its own kind of statement — not rushed out as a launch gimmick, but introduced once the base car had earned its footing.

It's worth being precise about what this is and isn't. Autocar was careful to note it's not a true convertible. The soft top operates more like a traditional glass sunroof than a full drop-top. But Renault claims the opening — 80 by 92 centimetres — is wider than anything comparable in its segment, which is either a genuine point of difference or a very specific way of winning an argument nobody else knew they were having. Either way, they're not pretending the thing is a Cabriolet. They're saying: this is what open air looks like on a car like this.

The Engineering Confession

Here's what both sources, in their own ways, circle around without quite landing on: the decision to build this at all is the interesting part.

Folding roofs on electric vehicles add weight, complexity, potential leak points, structural considerations — none of which make the engineering team's life easier. You don't do that for a footnote variant. You do it because someone inside the building made an argument that open-air driving matters enough to justify the work. That someone won.

And they tied it to the original 4's history deliberately. The callback to the 1960s open-top option isn't nostalgia for nostalgia's sake — it's a reframe. It says: this car was always meant to be experienced this way, and we're returning to something true about it, not inventing a gimmick. Whether you find that compelling or calculated probably says more about you than about Renault.

What I keep coming back to is the price. £27,445 is not a luxury number. After the grant, it's a real-world figure for a real-world car that happens to have a cloth roof you can open on a decent afternoon. The Plein Sud is currently available to Renault R Pass customers first, according to Motoring Research — a soft launch before broader availability, the kind of move that makes the car feel like a reward rather than a clearance item.

There's something refreshing about an EV that wants to get out of its own way — that says the best version of driving this thing involves warm air and no ceiling, not a bigger screen or a faster charge curve. The soul problem with electric cars has never been the motor or the range. It's been the sensation of complete environmental isolation, the hermetic seal of modern cabin design mistaken for progress.

Renault cut a hole in the roof and called it Due South. That's not ironic anymore.