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In reply to: Any potential Zoe buyers waiting for the new engine?
Living in London which generally has the highest winter temperatures 70-80 miles seems to be the sort of range that I am averaging. Most of my journeys are short and so the car is heating up from cold each time. You soon notice that the heater consumption drops so the range reduction from heater use is smaller on longer trips. My 10 mile round trip commute takes an average 2kwh for traction and 0.3kwh for heating, my commute in the morning is going west on the A40 so is close to 50mph, against the prevailing wind and slightly uphill and consumption averages 1.2kwh for traction. The homeward journey is slower, about 35-40mph and 0.8kwh is consumed.
I’ve yet to have a day driving purely in London where I’ve had to charge during the day.I just don’t do those sort of distances. I suspect if you’re only doing 3000 miles a year that you are not doing those sort of long trips either. Longer journeys on motorways have not been an issue as the rapid chargers are effective. It’s remarkable how many car parks in London now have charging points. Even a 7kW charger gives you about 25 miles range in an hour.
There have not been lots of reports of loss of range due to age on this forum and some of the early cars are now approaching 2 years old. At 3000 miles per year, assuming you charge on average when you have used 50 miles of your range you will be charging 60 times a year. The battery should be good for 1000 charges. You loose a bit of battery capacity due to chemical ageing per year. Phone batteries have a similar chemistry and last about 4 years, owned by a bloke they are abused compared to a car as they are charged to 100% each night then kept in a warm pocket at body temperature all day. They still they manage 1500 charge cycles.
In reply to: Any potential Zoe buyers waiting for the new engine?
Indi – curious about your point about range being reduced in cold weather.
What sort of range is typically showing after a 100% charge when we are in the middle of a British winter?
I’m also thinking that since Renault guarantee the battery to 75% performance, might I find that my 65 mile round trip commute is feasible in the first winter, but starts to get increasingly infeasible in subsequent years?
In reply to: Any potential Zoe buyers waiting for the new engine?
Thanks for your input Samsam. Really is valued, but I’m quite confident the Zoe won’t become the primary car in our household. The main car is a Civic that does 70 to 80 mpg, and it taken by my partner on a 100 mile round trip commute most days (i.e. 50 mile each way, almost all motorway). Without a charger at work, there really is no feasibility of doing this daily journey in a Zoe.
The Zoe would replace an old gas guzzler and be used for local journeys when we both need a car, plus an occasional 65 mile min / 75 mile max (depending which route I take) round trip commute that I do once or twice a month. The outgoing car currently does 3000 miles per year, but I’m considering the 7500 mile/year battery option since we’ll likely reduce some of the local journeys we previously would have done in the Civic in favour of using the Zoe.
Hence I really don’t foresee many occasions when it’s likely to be in a motorway services trying to get a fast 43kW charge, unless that 65 mile occasional round trip is just that little bit too far (maybe pushing my luck in winter?).
The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that extra 8% range is really worth waiting for. Even typing this reply is helping me decide.
However, Samsam, I still value your opinions as someone who has one and knows what it’s like. Having read a bit more about my situation and requirements, do you now still think it not worth waiting for the extra range with the new engine in my case?
In reply to: Battery Lease Agreement
There’s some strange stuff in the agreement; 15.2 is quite entertaining and can be paraphrased as ‘we will break into your house using force to get our battery back’.
Some of it reads that you could return the battery, or at least tell Renault where to find it and have Zoe sans battery. Which I guess means you could in theory put a third party one in. In reality, I think they are trying to cover the situation where the car gets written off although the battery has survived.
In reply to: Battery Lease Agreement
Under the olev agreement for the funding, the battery must have a 5yr warranty anyway. I won’t be paying them to swap the battery.
Topic: Battery Lease Agreement
Anyone got any views on the battery agreement. I am just about to sign mine. If the battery goes in for replacement due to failure below its 75%. They make you pay for the Cost of the job and couriering the batteries to and from the factory. Ouch that could be expensive.
noggy
In reply to: Feeling Deflated! :(
I would be interested in the Dashcam as well, I wonder though how much of a drain on the battery this would be if its in constant use?
In reply to: Battery hire with second hand ZOE
Just to clarify the battery rental on a second hand Zoe. The new owner will always get to choose whichever battery rental term they like. The old owner will have to ensure a battery rental transfer is done (simple form to fill in) and there is a chance if they have exceed the mileage on a pro-rate basis they will need to pay an excess mileage fee.
If you trade your Zoe into a dealer (any kind of dealer Renault or otherwise) then that dealer would need to setup a battery rental agreement.
Until a battery rental transfer is done RCI will continue to charge the initial customer.
With regards to a dealer’s demo they do need to have a battery rental agreement on them. In fact if a dealer registers a new Zoe (either to a customer or as a demo) and there isn’t a live battery rental agreement within 4 weeks then the dealer is charged for the battery and does not receive a refund until the battery rental is setup.
There will never be an option to purchase the battery on a Zoe that has previously had a battery rental. Although you can now purchase a Brand New Zoe with no battery rental for circa £5000 more than the standard Zoe.
Topic: Feeling Deflated! :(
I need someone to shake me and say ‘JUST ENJOY YOUR NEW CAR’ …. Im struggling..
I picked up my new Zoe just before Christmas, silly me left it until the last minute to order my charging cards, so I stupidly relied on the Polar phone app, BIG mistake, I hooked up, it seemed to be charging so I went off shopping, I returned 2 hrs later, went onto the app to disconnect there was no ‘disconnect’ button, infact it was still showing the charging post as available even though it was charging the car, I called customer service but then my phone battery died, eventually I managed to borrow someones phone and call them so they could disconnect me remotely, which they did immediatly. Fast forward 1 week, I nip to M&S in my lunch break, park in an EV bay, I was only gone 15 mins, returned to my car and found out tht someone had drove into it scratching and denting the whole right hand side of the car then drove off, fortuantly there was a witness! Ok, if that wasnt enough, I dropped my son off at school on Monday, went around a tight corner but caught the tyre on the kirb, PUNCTURE, I got a mile down the road and had to pull over and call breakdown, I wasnt aware that the Zoe came without a spare, I am now :(, I was taken to my renault garage and had the tyre replaced for £125! To top this off I took 2 days off work last week to wait in for Brisith gas to come and fit my home charger, but both occassions they didnt turn up, booked back in for this weekend but just found out I need an isolator switch on my elec meter, why didnt they tell me this when I made the original appointment? So all in all not the Zoe’s fault, more like bad planning on my part and bad driving on the person who drove into my car! I LOVE the car, its like driving on fluffy clouds, but Im finding it hard to enjoy the experience due to worrying that something else is going to happen!!In reply to: Battery hire with second hand ZOE
I’m with Elephant (Admiral group).
My Zoe was an ex demo from Evans Halshaw.
They had no clue how they sell a second hand Zoe. It took nearly 4 weeks to get the battery contract fixed.
The other issue was to get the code you need for online services. I got that finally from Renault UK after 7 weeks and lots of fuss.
