here is the answer if we can buy the battery… 🙁

Will we early adopters (28-05-2013) be offered the reduced battery rental or is it business as usual for us?

I’m unsure. I don’t think I will encounter any degradation soon, but Renault has also stated that an upgrade to a bigger pack will be possible in the future and I would think that would be easier with the leasing scheme.

I have contacted my dealer to ask what the options are for existing owners. I have no idea what I will do when I get the option to buy the battery.

mgjackson – I think you’re over complicating it. You’re charged by how much your meter clicks up, and its calibrated in kWh – it has no idea what the voltage is of the ZOE battery. Of course saying the battery takes 21kWh to fill up, or takes 7kW for 3 hours, is the same thing.

13A used to be the standard for EVs before the Type 2 came along, so many old charge points (all around Milton Keynes for example) are 13A. Even now most non-ZOE EVs like the Leaf come with a 13A charger so they could still get used (albeit painfully slowly).

I’ve just joined the e-car club and I may get to use it this weekend so I’ll report back if I do. It’s £5 per hour or £50 per day so it’s pretty good value. For example, I recently took my ZOE on a 300 mile business trip for which I paid £30 in battery hire, but got £120 back in mileage from my employer. It’s tempting next time to take a Leaf – it would cost me £50, I’d still get £120 back, and I wouldn’t put 300 miles on my car.

Isn’t watts volts x current, and the battery is 400 volts, not 250v mains, so the cost is the rate of charge of your box x time. ie, if you have a 7kw that takes 3 hours to charge then at 10p per kilowatt, its 3x7x0.1= £2.10.

I went for Glacier white, I didn’t particularly like any of the available colours so thought I might as well go for the cheapest. I think that light coloured cars are easier to see at night. Black cars can get hot in summer so the aircon will consume a bit less cooling the car down and maybe the battery won’t bake quite as much if I park the car in the sun. The down side is they show up dirt so more washing required. White is also the hardest colour to match if you’re un-lucky enough to need some body work.

It’s a shame they don’t do some bold colours like the metallic red the Clio comes in. I kept on looking at the Renault web site in the hope that they had added some other colours. My Glacier white handover is tomorrow.