Renault Zoe

MikeWhite

BeenThroughItAll wrote: »

Aside from the fact that I'd argue a Dacia is nothing more than a crappy old-model Renault re-styled and re-badged and then built to even lower standards, I'd agree with that to a point.


OP - check the financials stack up. For me, the PCP on the Zoe made sense because I was paying a total of £167 for the car on a 10.5K limit, and I could charge it for free at work and several other locations I'd often be at - I never charged it at home except for a couple of occasions.


Compared to the £300+ I was spending on fuel for my Jeep Grand Cherokee at the time, I saved £130 a month straightaway; with no VED to pay on top, cheaper insurance, and far cheaper maintenance.


Sadly, my Zoe turned out to be complete crap, and as a result I make it my life's mission to put people off buying Renaults and save as many people from the Renault ownership experience as I can. Not because the Zoe is fundamentally a bad car - but because Renault, and their dealerships, demonstrated that they do not care in the slightest about looking after their customers.

That is a very good price. The battery rental is what tips a lot of current E.V.s out of contention for us....

almillar

Your figures already include the £4,500 goverment grant I'd imagine. You simply don't pay it at the start, and the dealer will have forms to fill in.

250 mile range? You're talking about the 41kWh battery then, not the 22kWh one. Do check this! There are also two different motors, a Continental one, and Renault's in-house one. Renault's own is slightly more efficient, and can charge at 22kW AC, whereas the Continental one can charge at 43kW. You'll get a home charger installed for free, and it'll be 7kW (that's the best you can do in single-phase AC - most houses). If you're charging at home only then, you can see that the 43 kW motor is no help - indeed, Renault's own is more efficient at the 'slower' speeds.

Cost is surprising easy to work out. You're charged for a unit of electric - 1kWh - how much do you pay? Say 15p? So a completely empty, push it up the driveway 22kWh Zoe will cost 22x15 = £3.30 to charge, and 41x15 = £6.15. What you must take into account is that is from empty. Chargers aren't 100% efficient so it's a bit more than the above, but for calculation purposes, that's fine.

Range - the 22kWh Zoe, I would tell people, does 60 in winter and 80 miles in summer- that's a safe range. 70 on the motorway in sub zero winter will be 50, and I've personally joined the 100 mile club by driving very economically in the warmer weather.

So the 41kWh is a bit new for much experience to have seeped through, but let's call it 110 winter and 150 summer. These are safe range estimates. If you spend a lot of time in traffic, and not a lot flying down the motorway, that REALLY helps with range.

Don't.

This is based on one very bad experience of car, and service, from Renault. I've done 9500 trouble free miles in mine. Take the cautionary tale on board, but if you don't buy a car you hear one bad story about, you'll not buy any car. I think (and I have nothing to back this up) that overall it's a very reliable car, as are the other electrics.

You pay different rental for the battery based on the mileage you agree.

You may or may not want to look at the chargers that are available around you. You may find lots of rapid AC chargers, or you may not, and this would swing your decision on what to buy.
I'm in Northern Ireland, where there are 100+ AC 22kW chargers, 14 ChaDEMo 50kW DC (Leaf) and 8 CCS (i3, eGolf) so that really works in Zoe's favour. If you're only ever going to charge at home, none of the above really matters!

You've got sums to do!

BeenThroughItAll

almillar wrote: »

This is based on one very bad experience of car, and service, from Renault. I've done 9500 trouble free miles in mine. Take the cautionary tale on board, but if you don't buy a car you hear one bad story about, you'll not buy any car. I think (and I have nothing to back this up) that overall it's a very reliable car, as are the other electrics.

I agree that one tale doesn't render the car a bad one generally - and I acknowledged that in my post. The main issue was the dire level of service from Renault and its dealers; and that's not based on just one experience of this car, but is also supported by experience of running a fleet of 12 Renaults previously which cost a fortune in downtime due to unreliability (they were replaced by 12 Skodas but we found we had two permanently kept off the road as we only needed 10 to do the same work as the 12 Renaults due to the amount of time they'd had out of action). Renault's dealerships, UK headquarters and customer services team were all universally awful through both those experiences.


My colleague had a Zoe too. It was reliable enough for the 12000mi he had it (over three years) except for the occasion it wouldn't turn on and needed a new charging control system, and the time it wouldn't charge, and needed a new inverter/charger. And the second time it wouldn't turn on and ended up with a new motor, battery, inverter/charger and battery management system because they couldn't find out which bit was broken.


I've had other poor experiences and know of plenty of others who have too. The big issue for me is that whilst there are doubtless hundreds of happy Renault drivers, they're only happy because nothing's gone wrong - when something does go wrong, Renault's dealership network and Renault UK themselves are unutterably dreadful at providing a decent service and resolution; and that's not a point of view I hold just as a result of one situation, but from a number I've had personally and others I've talked to people about.