I think the 22kW limitation is a big step backward. That will be even more obvious if they do double the size of the battery – would anyone really wait for 2 hours at a rapid charger?

Maybe not; though would anyone charge the full 40kwh in one go? The extra range is great for setting off with a full battery, but the capacity doesn’t change the amount of charge needed for your journey, so waiting 2 hours at one rapid just means skipping another 🙂

However, my guess is that by the time they’ve got a double-battery ZOE, they’ll have improved the charging. It seems like the goal here was to shift to a Renault-made motor. They might make bigger changes for the 2017/2018 model (and use CCS?), so maybe it didn’t seem worth adding 43kw charging now?

Hope so! Otherwise, in 2017/2018, ZOE might be less attractive than the competition (especially if the new Leaf looks anything like the Sway that was shown recently!).

So I didn’t get an extra 10miles I got an extra 2.5

Of course, the 10 miles is what you’d get on a full battery, if you’ve only got 20% of the battery left then you would get 2 miles, and so on.

I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have eaked the range much further.

At the risk of being repetitive, you could have: at 20mph you probably had 10-20 miles remaining (at 10mph perhaps 30 miles). I’m not saying it’s fun crawling along the hard shoulder of a motorway – I’ve done it a few times and it’s horrible – but I would personally always prefer it to stopping and getting recovered. I’m not trying to say what you should do in any particular circumstance: I’m just trying to say that as EV owners we always have that choice (which certainly isn’t the case for ICEs).

I have seen it banded around that the 22kwh battery is actually 24kwh, if this is indeed the case I probably had loads of range, but if it was 22kwh

The battery officially has 22kWh capacity, but all EVs keep some in reserve through software to extend their life so the real capacity may well be 24kWh. However, that is not available to the user, the car will stop once 22kWh is used up to avoid that battery damage.

It is unfortunate that the ZOE does not display SOC (state of charge) while driving. When I’ve got into the — situation but needed to eke out the range I’ve pulled over every few miles to check the ZOE equivalent of a SOC, the % reading you get on startup. This way I’ve managed to drive up to about 10 miles with the — indication but still confident I can calculate the remaining range. The bravest I’ve been is to turn into my road with the SOC at 1% and the energy used at 22kWh. I believe if SOC reads 0% the car will stop (I was prepared for that eventuality in my testing as I live at the bottom of the hill and should still have been able to make it home!).

I have seen it banded around that the 22kwh battery is actually 24kwh

It’s possible that extra 2kwh isn’t at the bottom of the range though; it could be 1kwh at the top to avoid charging to 100% too (I’m sure at least some cars are doing this – to improve life of the battery).

Good to know the Zoe battery has hidden depths – I bottled out when I was 2 miles short last weekend and stop to charge back up.

Don’t forget you can always get more range just by decreasing your speed. For example if you had been averaging 60mph, then dropping to 55mph would get you an extra 13 miles, dropping to 50mph would get you an extra 20 miles on top of that, and so on. You can have a play with the range predictor app to get a sense of just how sensitive the range is to speed.

I think the 22kW limitation is a big step backward. That will be even more obvious if they do double the size of the battery – would anyone really wait for 2 hours at a rapid charger?

The Twingo is based on the Smart Forfour, which again is a stretched Smart Fortwo

There won’t be a new Smart Fortwo ELectric Drive until late-ish 2016.

This may coincide that recently Daimler have done a deal with LG Chem and by that time, they may have a denser battery pack, etc.

Once it is ready to go into the new version Smart, there would be no issue slotting it into the Twingo, as the layout is the same

Wife’s was 73 and mine was 72 at pickup with 100% battery.

I just charged up to 99% today and got an estimate of 92. I reset the eco meters, and it dropped to 70 instantly. Previously, I’ve reset that, and only over the next few miles did it change drastically. I really can’t figure out what it’s using to calculate the numbers!