Renault to sell electric vehicles Zoe less than 15,000 euros

Renault group refused to give comment on the report but confirmed that Zoe’s price will be close to similar models running on the road.

As the Zoe, a 21-inch-wheeled mini electric car with four seats, is developed on renovations of diesel-engined supermini car Clio, one of the French carmaker’s best-seller, French media deduced that Clio’s price of 15,000 was likely to be the baseline.

However, the monthly rental of the battery would be charged for a separate price at "approximately 100 euros (130 U.S. dollars)," the newspaper said.

Once fully charged, the rental battery of Zoe can provide a sustained run of 100 kilometers and the lithium-ion battery is enough for the rear-drive Zoe to reach 88 meters per hour, Renault’ s official data said.

Besides Zoe, Renault-Nissan alliance aims to explore the electric car market with other three major models, which are mini van Kangoo and moderate-sized Fluence with four seats to be on sale in mid-2011, and the two-seated car Twity with sales to begin late next year.

Renault has predicted that by 2020, electric vehicles would represent 10 percent of the global market. The French-Japanese alliance has invested 4 billion euros (5.2 billion U.S. dollars) in the emission-free program, according to earlier reports.