What the Nissan Leaf is in the U.S.--the highest-volume battery electric vehicle on the market--the Renault Zoe hopes to be in Europe.
French carmaker Renault has a wide-ranging alliance with Nissan that includes electric cars.
Together, the two carmakers have delivered more than 70,000 electric cars since Leaf production began in late 2010.
The subcompact Zoe five-door hatchback is a size smaller than the compact Leaf, but like the Leaf, it's still the carmaker's only purpose-built four-seat plug-in electric car.
The first Zoe was delivered last December, and cars are now entering dealerships in France.
The video above, from French site Technologic Vehicles, has only a few captions, both in French and English.
The relatively unrelated audio track is bass-heavy but otherwise pleasant English-language vocal pop.
So you can enjoy the three-and-a-half-minute Zoe road test without having to know a word of French.
The test includes a variety of roads, field tracks, weather conditions, urban and rural scenery, and more.
As the reviewers learned, the Zoe electric car does essentially everything that any other car does.
That includes, as it turns out, behaving exactly the same way when driven onto some particularly challenging terrain.
Enjoy the video and watch for the segment that ends with those immortal words uttered by many French drivers in distress:
Et grâce à l'aide d'un bon vieux tracteur!
[hat tip: Brian Henderson]
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