As you say Fred, purchase makes no sense which is probably why no one’s buying them

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10.5k miles a year is £65 a month at that cost your looking at about 6 1/2 years to pay the £5000 cost of a battery.

This isn’t entirely true unless the battery is worth £0 when you sell/return/trade-in the vehicle.

The battery rental agreement says the value of the battery is around £6k and loses 10% per year (interestingly, it makes no mention of mileage affecting its value).

This means at the end of a 3 yr PCP, your battery is worth approx £6k * 0.9^3 = £4,374. This means your initial finance would be around £6k higher, but your GFV would be around £4.3k higher. This means it’ll cost you around £1,700 + interest on the value of the battery over the three years.

If the interest was 0 (which it’s not, but it simplifies the maths), then that means you’d pay approx £1,700/36 = £47/month for the battery. My guess is that the interest on the battery comes out around (very approximately!) £30/mo (((5000*1.069^3)-5000)/36).

This means it’s not a “no brainer”… It looks like rental probably comes out cheapest unless your battery rental is over £70-80, but there’s definitely a point where ownership will work out cheaper than rental; and it’s not a million miles from the mileage many of us are doing.

I would get quotes on both rental and ownership if taking PCP (and planning to hand the car back anyway) and doing 10k+ miles/year. (Though do bear in mind the 70% vs 75% guaranteed capacity, and I’m not sure if ownership gets the breakdown cover? If Renault ever allow a battery swap for renters, you might miss out there too; but on a 3yr PCP, you’re probably swapping the car shortly after that would happen anyway)

10.5k miles a year is £65 a month at that cost your looking at about 6 1/2 years to pay the £5000 cost of a battery.

(it just occurred to me, I only looked at the depreciation, and didn’t factor in the interest on the remaining value of the battery, so it probably would’ve been less than £13/month saving!)

I did the maths that depreciation on the battery is around £44/month; so suspect we’d actually have been better for me (on 9k/year) buying the “i” with the battery; since our plan is to give it back after 3 years.

So I think I’m paying around £13/month more than I would have; though I don’t know exactly how they’d calculate the GFV for “i” ZOEs, so it might not’ve worked out quite that way (though also, could’ve worked out better!).

Be interesting to see if your battery range improves as the battery ‘wears in’.

Greetings!
I wonder if I’m missing something?
I’m looking at battery rental, starting at £25/month 750 miles/quarter, with a view to moving to £50/month if we find we are going over the allowance, i.e the ZOE becomes the dominant use car. I can’t see how buying the battery for £5,000 would make sense for a private low mileage user. It might be different for business users because of VAT considerations.

Has anybody started on a £25/month rental and
a) exceeded 750 miles/quarter or
b) subsequently switched to £50/month rental?

Test driving a ZOE tomorrow so this could be important if the wife likes it enough to have it for our 40th wedding anniversary. She does an awful lot of short local trips.

Fred

Best guess is its 3 monthly from the first payment for the battery.

You also might not pay your first payment until the date you agreed when setting up the direct debit. So you might pay “extra”, i.e. a 6 week payment rather than a 4 for example. Depends on pickup date and payment date.

I picked up on 23rd but setup my payment date as 15th so I won’t pay until 15th April but I’ll have had a UK me of weeks extra to pay for.