EV Car Issue

winkfir

Apologies for the length of this one but I have attempted to make it shorter for ease of reading.

Around 6 weeks ago we purchased an Electric Vehicle from a car dealership around 180 miles away. The car was delivered, and everything seemed ok. However, one week after driving the car displayed a suspension failure warning a couple of times and when this happen the car handling is badly affected. The warning light went off after a few minutes but would intermittently reoccur. A further week later the warning sign came up again and this time it didn’t go off, at which point we contacted the car dealer and reported the fault.

So far the car dealer has been reasonable and agreed that we could take the car to a local garage so they could diagnose and fix the problem – waiting for a main dealer to look at it would have taken over 2 months.

The fault was diagnosed as costing £2k plus to fix which the car dealer agreed to pay. The local garage realised as they were fixing the problem it was more complex than first diagnosed and so it was agreed between them and the car dealer they would source a specialist mechanic to attend and fix the problem. After taking one look at the car the specialist mechanic refused to even entertain trying to the fix the problem as in his view there so many possible problems he wouldn’t know where to start and his advice was to return the car as it was not fit for purpose. The car has now been at the garage for two weeks and is no nearer being fixed.

We’ve now had enough as not having a car for two weeks has been a nightmare and it has also meant we have incurred additional costs such as taxi’s, buses etc, not to mention the inconvenience of being without a car. We’ve decided we want to return the car and look for something different.

A few questions:

• Where do we stand in terms of a refund and what can we claim back?
• We paid both a delivery fee and also paid for paint protection – are we entitled to any of this back?
• Given it is faulty is the dealer liable for the cost to get the car back to them (it’s 180 miles away) as I don’t see why we should incur even more costs when they have sold us a faulty vehicle? It may require a trailer as I’m not sure the car should be driven.
• Can the car dealer deduct an amount for the mileage driven? Because of the fault we’ve actually only driven around 600 miles so this doesn’t seem fair.
• Does the dealer have any right to refuse the refund?

Thanks in advance!

Jenni_D

How much did you pay? (More or less than £30k?)
How did you pay?

Answers to the above will determine whether you have Section 75 protection you can invoke.

With a rejection ... and given that it appears that a repair attempt has been made and the goods still don't conform to contract then you should be able to exercise your Final Right to Reject per the CRA 2015 ... the goods must return to the seller. The CCR 2013 say that where goods are delivered then the seller is liable for their recovery, so the dealer should collect the car given that they delivered it. You should get a full refund, less a small reduction for mileage covered since purchase.

Grumpy_chap

Has the specialist mechanic given a report?
That will support your case for rejecting the vehicle.

winkfir

Thanks for the responses - In answer to the questions so far.

We paid £23k which was part exchange and the balance via bank transfer.

We don' have a report from the specialist but we are pretty sure our garage would confirm if neeeded.

TadleyBaggie

winkfir said:

Thanks for the responses - In answer to the questions so far.

We paid £23k which was part exchange and the balance via bank transfer.

We don' have a report from the specialist but we are pretty sure our garage would confirm if neeeded.

So no section 75 protection I'm afraid.

Jenni_D

winkfir said:

Thanks for the responses - In answer to the questions so far.

We paid £23k which was part exchange and the balance via bank transfer.

We don' have a report from the specialist but we are pretty sure our garage would confirm if neeeded.

As per @TadleyBaggie that means you have no S75 protection.

Too late now, but one to remember in future ... make sure you pay even a small amount of the transaction by credit card. Even £10 or less counts, although I try to pay £100+ on credit card in such situations just to prevent the CC company trying to say S75 doesn't apply due to the minimum £100 limit. (S75 is based on the sales transaction value, not how much of it you paid via CC, but I wouldn't put it past first line customer services being poorly advised and trying to reject a S75 claim).

born_again

winkfir said:

Apologies for the length of this one but I have attempted to make it shorter for ease of reading.

Around 6 weeks ago we purchased an Electric Vehicle from a car dealership around 180 miles away. The car was delivered, and everything seemed ok. However, one week after driving the car displayed a suspension failure warning a couple of times and when this happen the car handling is badly affected. The warning light went off after a few minutes but would intermittently reoccur. A further week later the warning sign came up again and this time it didn’t go off, at which point we contacted the car dealer and reported the fault.

So far the car dealer has been reasonable and agreed that we could take the car to a local garage so they could diagnose and fix the problem – waiting for a main dealer to look at it would have taken over 2 months.

The fault was diagnosed as costing £2k plus to fix which the car dealer agreed to pay. The local garage realised as they were fixing the problem it was more complex than first diagnosed and so it was agreed between them and the car dealer they would source a specialist mechanic to attend and fix the problem. After taking one look at the car the specialist mechanic refused to even entertain trying to the fix the problem as in his view there so many possible problems he wouldn’t know where to start and his advice was to return the car as it was not fit for purpose. The car has now been at the garage for two weeks and is no nearer being fixed.

We’ve now had enough as not having a car for two weeks has been a nightmare and it has also meant we have incurred additional costs such as taxi’s, buses etc, not to mention the inconvenience of being without a car. We’ve decided we want to return the car and look for something different.

A few questions:

• Where do we stand in terms of a refund and what can we claim back?
• We paid both a delivery fee and also paid for paint protection – are we entitled to any of this back?
• Given it is faulty is the dealer liable for the cost to get the car back to them (it’s 180 miles away) as I don’t see why we should incur even more costs when they have sold us a faulty vehicle? It may require a trailer as I’m not sure the car should be driven.
• Can the car dealer deduct an amount for the mileage driven? Because of the fault we’ve actually only driven around 600 miles so this doesn’t seem fair.
• Does the dealer have any right to refuse the refund?

Thanks in advance!

Aside from the point this is not a EV issue, as all cars have suspension.

How old is the car, mileage & which make. 
Never seen a suspension failure warning on a car before?

MikeWhite

I could only find this on an I-Pace forum.

Grumpy_chap

MikeWhite said:

I could only find this on an I-Pace forum.

If the issue is of a type as indicated by the screen shot shared (and the OP ay not have an i-Pace so the screen shot may only be an indication of the type of message not the exact message), that may not be grounds for vehicle rejection.

Any "caution" message that the car allows you to carry on driving rather than recommending to stop as soon as possible is not of the catastrophic level of severity.

A "suspension fault" could also be quite broad in what it might cover so could be the result of kerbing the wheels, pot-hole impact or any number of things that are not the vehicle being at fault.

We really need to know from the OP what the root cause that is reported now actually is.

winkfir

To answer the additional questions:

Car is 3 years old, an Audi e-tron and has done under 20k miles. Initial fault message was similar to the above with a yellow warning but has now changed to a red 'pull over and stop driving the vehicle'.

Definitely not been kerbed or hit a pot hole whilst we have been driving.

Keep_pedalling

Did the car come with manufactures warranty. I would expect it would have done if you purchased from a main dealer.