Are you looking at actual ranges, or estimated? We don’t have ours yet, so can’t really comment on what’s normal; but the cold weather will definitely affect the range (I’ve seen people say range is 60-90, 60 in bad/cold conditions and 90 in good/warm conditions).

but that stop start traffic should be better as the battery can recharge itself

This isn’t entirely true; but a lot of people seem confused by it. Regen braking gives you back energy that would otherwise be wasted in a conventional car; but it can only ever reclaim *less* than the energy spent “over”-accelerating. Although you’ll see the battery recharging during braking (which leads people to believe stop/start is increasing range) you’d actually get better range if you didn’t brake at all (eg. you used the accelerator the minimum to get there, without having to brake; obviously this isn’t really practical!).

This is further confused by the fact that you get better range at lower speeds (due to the way air resistance increases exponentially as your speed increases). So, you will get better range around town; but it’s not because of regen braking 🙂

I would be very interested to hear of others experience as although I love the car, I am a bit peeved that we have been misled regarding the range.

I saw in some other posts here, people were getting in the high 90s this week; so I definitely think that range is possible. That said; they’ve been driving the ZOE for some time; so are probably very practised at driving economically!

One thing to check is the score on your Eco Report thing… If that’s quite low, then there’s probably lots of room for increasing your range 🙂

so it’s possible that you check your phone app or the web site and your car battery level is showing a lower % than for real

Does it show you in the app what time the data is from, so you at least know it’s stale?

Samsam – The ZOE can take up to 24 hours to send charging information to the Renault servers so it’s possible that you check your phone app or the web site and your car battery level is showing a lower % than for real. This often happens to me, the car is fully charged but the information from ZE services is not up to date.

This 24 hours is part of the design spec I have been told by R-Link support. Renault really need to improve this as it make the ZE services and R-Link very poor for my use.

I managed a 98 this morning. Now I am hoping that the summer weather will break the 100 barrier. I got my Zoe just in time for the coldest of winter weather, so these kind of figures are most welcome.
Dr Steel, have you practiced the 80% charge to look after your battery all this time. I have been following your advice in earlier threads about this as it makes a lot of sense. It even seems to work on my phone batter well, which is also lithium iron.

Hey Sandy – Yes i think so …although the document calls it a Hire Purchase Agreement. I paid £1200 up front I think and I pay a monthly fee of £189 + battery hire. This allows me to pay a small deposit and drive away a brand new car that right now I could otherwise not do. Also servicing etc. all included.

I’m on the side of DanTup, anyone using the battery powered part of their PHEV is to be commended. It’s all reducing oil consumption and reducing carbon emissions. I would hope that they would only stay connected to the charger while their car is still charging, perhaps a charging structure that charges higher rates once the charge has completed would be a way controlling behaviour. Perhaps the need to charge so frequently will influence them to buy a car with a bigger battery the next time.

I’ve also seen negative comments about the BYD taxi’s using chargers for too long with their large battery packs. I guess some folk think that their choice is best and everyone is wrong.

It is a security feature often sold (eg. here), along with realtime tracking. Though it’s not “turning the battery off”, so it works with conventional cars too.

I actually think via R-Link app/website we should be able to track our own cars in the same way we can our mobile phones! Having this as standard could help cut car theft.