Renault Symbioz review

Largely pretty pleasant. It steers accurately, it’s very composed and any bumps and ruts (including speedbumps) in the road are dealt with efficiently. It all feels eminently sensible, like a more grown up, more mature Clio.

Indeed, there’s similarities to the way it goes round corners too, with its assured manners and tidy body control. But it’s arguably at its best in town – where most of these will spend the majority of their time – where the light controls go hand in hand with the comfortable ride to make this a tidy car to pootle around in.

Zero to 62mph takes 10.6 secs, but there’s a second of hesitation when you put your foot down as the transmission makes its mind up and works out whether you require the electric motor or engine. Fair amount of wind noise at higher speeds, too.

What's the hybrid system like?

Renault says that it taps into its F1 hybrid expertise, and while that’s mostly just marketing guff it’s actually a pretty clever system.

It pairs a 94bhp 1.6-litre four-cylinder petrol engine with two electric motors (one of which starts the car and gets you going, the other starts up the engine and smooths out the gear changes), a six-speed clutchless gearbox and a 1.2kWh battery.

So, you always start in electric mode, and there’s a surprising amount of electric running to be had in town too despite the teeny tiny battery. The transmission has a tendency to hold onto gears for too long as the revs climb, but the engine itself is pleasingly quiet, and largely unnoticeable when it kicks in.

An ‘E-Save’ button on the dashboard maintains a battery charge of at least 40 per cent, handy when driving on the motorway and you want to save some juice.

Anything else we should know?

Well, the Symbioz gets a handy ‘My Safety’ switch which allows you to quickly and easily turn off any and every driver assist feature you don’t want. It’s fully customisable too – we had it set up to turn off the speed limit warning and lane keep assist – and saves the pain of delving into the touchscreen like on so many rivals.

At the end of every journey, a driving summary gives you an eco and safety score on a scale of zero to 100, plus advice on how to improve. Will this get irritating after, let's say, a week? Probably.

FYI, we saw 51mpg on our first go in the Symbioz and 58mpg on the second. Hmm, maybe those eco tips do help. Versus Renault’s claimed 60mpg, that’s not bad going.

As ever, you get Renault’s full suite of safety driver aids (we’re told there’s a total of 24), including level 2 autonomous driving, which combines adaptive cruise control with lane centring assist and traffic sign recognition.