The new owners of the electric Renault R5, just out on the market, had a unpleasant surprise.
Barely delivered, but already back to the garage! The new electrical Renault R5, under the spotlight since its presentation like its car title of the year 2025, saw its first big hard blow. The French manufacturer Renault thus announced at the end of February a problem which could receive 15,722 Renault R5 E-Tech and Alpine A290, following the identification of a bug preventing the start of vehicles in some cases.
The origin of the problem is at the level of the electronic power case according to the newspaper L’Argus. This central element of the electrical powertrain group brings together many critical systems such as cooling, control electronics and energy converters. Among these components, it is more precisely the inverter which malfunctions on certain Renault 5 and Alpine A290. Its role is essential: it ensures the conversion of the high voltage continuous current of the battery by alternating current necessary to supply the electric motor.
However, the monitoring methods of this inverter are sometimes too strict, causing its untimely passage in fault mode. This safety mode enabled by mistake then blocked purely and simply the start of the vehicle. Concretely, the owners concerned can see a “stop” indicator light accompanied by the “electric motor breakdown”. In some cases, it also becomes impossible to go from drive mode (front on the automatic transmission) to neutral mode, a sort of dead end equivalent.
The impacted vehicles were produced between early September and late December 2024, almost all R5 and A290 delivered to date. Renault quickly reacted by launching a “special technical operation” to solve the problem. The customers concerned are thus warned by mail and via a message on the My Renault application. They are invited to make an appointment in dealerships for a free reprogramming of the inverter calculator, the operation for around thirty minutes according to the manufacturer.
A Renault spokesperson wanted to specify from Caradisiac that it is not an official reminder for security reasons, but a technical operation with simple mail. A few days earlier, some R5 owners had already encountered difficulties with the gearbox selector, preventing them from passing the front or rear walking, according to the newspaper L’Argus. Without a link is established with the concern of the power case now identified by Renault …