It’s not the chameleon charger it’s the BCP unit. I’ve done 11k miles and the car is a little nightmare, Renalut have pay just under 5k keeping my car on the road, and I have tried to hand it back no luck, but now I have lots of upgraded parts and a mark 2 BCP unit.the car runs fine but would I hand it back still YES, I do think we are test pilots,but were would I go if i did hand it back? I need 5 seats golf 80mile range no thanks leaf 80miles no thanks tesla modle 3 30k 5seats 200+ miles range, and no battery warranty so it’s no thank you. So I guess I’m stuck for now

I agree with the comments here. You can only charge to 100% if you charge at all with the ZOE. However:

1. It’s true that Lithium Ion batteries don’t like to be fully charged too often nor fully emptied too often. Therefore I would not charge if the battery was still over 90% (e.g. after a short trip) nor I would I run it out unless I had to.

2. We don’t actually know what ‘full’ and ’empty’ are. We have 22kWh of useable energy, but the battery is definitely bigger than that (perhaps 24kWh) – its control system is deliberately preventing us reaching the ‘ends’. So when it says 100% it is perhaps really 95%, and when it says 0% it is perhaps really 5%.

After 15000 miles I’m seeing no battery loss, though I charge to “100%” every work day, and use fast chargers about once per week.

And I take the view that if Renault don’t put the facility in to allow you to programme a cut-off, then it’s simply not needed. After all, it’s their battery!

Hi Karen,

Your leasing the battery rite? so who cares about the battery life! 🙂

to answer your above question – correct. no way to programme a percentage cut off on a charge cycle. the battery does is own “conditioning” on the last few percent during a full charge cycle.

It is bad to run your battery down OR to keep topping up to full.

Your charging strategy for maximum life is to average a SOC of 50%. For example, if you are using 60% battery capacity per day, charge to 80% and discharge to 20% each day.

Salesmen come up with pure twaddle to get you and a car out of the door clear for the next punter. I’ve never understood why people think salesmen know what they are talking about.

Hi all I have had my Zoe about 6 months, we have done 15 thousand miles in it and think it is totally brilliant…why anyone would buy a small car (even though the zoe is not small) is beyond me..

if they could improve the battery over the next couple of years to give us about 150 mile real range, w never get more than 100 miles, mostly 80-90, but that suits our daily usage, we do no more than 75 miles a day…

I am sure that renault need to promote it more…I know we are trail blazers but they are great little cars first and electric second…

I also have a twizy which has not done 12000 miles this too is a cracking little toy…useless as a car or practical vehicle but great fun all the same…

the only issue I have is why can we not get a 3 pin plug 220 volt charger cable for them…it seems totally silly that I cannot plug mine into a normal wall socket, no matter how slow it is…

Had similar problems with them not taking payments, both car and battery. Extremely time consuming process to get this rectified, have been told that a new system was introduced by Renault and that not everyone was moved to the new system. Did not impress with their (lack of) skills and knowledge of the situation as I was able tell them more about the missed payment than they knew!