I was one of the first to adopt Zoe in the UK taking delivery 28th May 2013 and by the end of 2013 we had loss our Zoe no less than 3 Months to Renault ZE Birmingham in which time we had to pay Battery rental and pay to extend a lease on an ICE car, no fun at all.

The car left my wife stranded in a busy road after a system close down etc just take a look at my forum posts!

The facts are after a competent repair by Renault ZE Birmingham and the swap out of the awful charger master wall box for a ROLEC unit our Zoe has worked as intended throughout 2014.

It is one of the best cars that we have ever driven and feel privileged to drive her, period.

Now the problem with owning the Zoe are..

Abysmal Renault support whom where less than useless, really.
Rather than taking onboard our comments and suggestions they declared war on us and blamed everyone apart from themselves for the cars faults, really.
As a professional electronics engineer I found myself having to educate some of the Renault service staff, not ideal.

We knew that we where pioneers of the science and technology but as we circled our wagons after the long dusty journey we found ourselves being attacked by the Renault HQ Indians instead of combining forces with the Renault HQ Cavalry! not fun at all.

Zoe IS a great car it’s just a shame that it’s a Renault now if we could go back in time would we still have purchased her then it’s a BIG YES,

But we hate having to go near any Renault establishment so when we are done with Zoe we intend swapping her for a Tesla Model 3 at the earliest possible opportunity, we can’t wait 🙂 :).

I don’t believe $100/kWh will ever be seen with Li battery tech. Li cells have been manufactured in their billions and are no where near that as cells, let alone as managed battery packs. It’s a mature product. I don’t see such a possibility for huge price reductions.

What will Renault do? They will make you another offer contract on the battery you have got. That means, you take it or you don’t take it. If the latter, you hand over your car for the battery to be removed, and you then have an ornament for the driveway.

It is one of those unknown things. Renault might let you have the battery for a ‘peppercorn’ rental, i.e. too cheap for you to worry about it. They might give you a new tech battery. They might charge you more. This is simply one of the reasons that battery rentals have been given a poor write-up.

Presuming that a 6 year old battery has 85% of its original capacity = 20.9KWh and that the Tesla Gigafactory drives down the price of batteries to Tesla’s target price of $100/kWh that means that the second hand value of the battery pack would be worth about 20.9 x 100 / 1.60 (Dollars / pound) = £1306. Take off the cost of removing the battery and it will be worth even less to Renault.

I like to dream that Renault will offer the battery to us for a nominal fee as it’s not much use to them
but then I wake up! 🙂

There is NOTHING in the battery lease agreement to suggest that Renault will extend the lease beyond the mentioned
72 months total.

From the battery lease agreement…

4.2.1 No amendment may extend the Maximum Contractual Mileage beyond 120,000 miles.
4.2.2 No amendment may extend the Period of Hire beyond 72 months.

Renault will tell you what you want to hear and then do differently, been there many times in my fight to get my Zoe
repaired to usable quality 😉

All Zoe trip computers are set to 80 – 90 miles max at delivery but if you wish to set a datum that reflects the cars true capability then.

1, Charge battery to 100%

2, Zero odometer

3, disconnect charger plug

3, leave drivers door open sit, press and hold the brake and accelerator pedals at the same time with ignition off

4, Still holding both pedals Select Eco drive on R-Link and then press “RESET” on bottom centre of trip computer screen

5, The range meter will then reset to a more realistic 120 miles + – 3 miles

The driving range indicator will then adjust itself to your real driving behaviour

I have just completed one year and called them about my mileage just under 9,000 I asked the question they informed me that the lease was for as long as I kept the car and so on as the battery if some thing was to go wrong would cost around £11.000 to replace so for £20..00 a week peace of mind I though that was cool

Dr Steel

I managed it in Lincoln over the space of 2 days with speeds between 30mph-50mph, I fully charged Zoe then did what alloam suggested and reset the battery which showed a range of 127 miles