Renault have now had my Zoe for about 5 weeks trying to fix the battery charging impossible error, the first part they ordered was on back order for weeks and then when finally arrived at the dealer someone had ordered the wrong part!!
I am now waiting for a charging unit to arrive at the dealer which is also on back order! I am getting really really fed up with Renault now and am not sure what to do next. They have provided me with a 1.4 automatic corsa as a loan car which is horrible and costing me a fortune to run.

The car is on finance, does anyone know how I stand with this. Can I say the car isn’t fit for purpose or they have taken too long to fix it?

Any help appreciated.
thanks

Yes, there is an auxiliary/emergency key built into the remote control card which can be used to unlock the passenger door. According to the manual this can be used if the the remote card will not work because it’s battery is low or flat or if there is radio interference in the area, or if the 12v battery is flat!!
So, as Donald says, it is a nonsense for the car to unlock itself if the 12v is flat. Is that a mistake and can the system be modified to avoid this?
I need a Haynes manual with a wiring schematic!

I think it is daft to set the system to open the doors with a flat battery. It is an outright security risk. Is there no auxiliary key lock on Zoe?

Well Trevor, they did a really good emmission of shares, so for the moment the money is OK. But for the long time it’s depending on the development of electric driving. Are these shareholders people who actually want to support electric driving, or just moneymakers in search of a quick profit. The latter will, to my opinion, quickly discover that this was the wrong bet. For the moment I expect that Fatned has a long way to go and will only be profitable when there is a uge amount of electric cars on the road. Last year in the Netherlands there was a lot of electrical cars sold, but most of them where PHEV like the Mitsubishi Oulander and the Volvo hybrid (v40 or v60). They are mostly business drivers but with there little battery not the one’s who will charge at Fastned; they charge their little battery at home or at work, and driving on highway’s they wil use their ICE. The other large group of EV is Tesla. They might be good customers, while they don’t care about money but care for convieniance. On the other hand, their range is large and they have their own superchargers around Europe. What remains on EV is mainly driving of the highway’s. TheNewMotion is now rolling out their new fastchargers, alike the Fastned chargers, but located in the city’s. Finally; it’s expensive. That’s in fact a wrong description; it’s a lot of money. Taken into account the facility’s, it’s not expensive, however one can wonder who’s willing to pay these amounts for fast charging, when there’s a cheaper (but slower) option? For the moment the use is still for free at Fastned!
Not that positive for Fastned, but their facility’s are good quality, as well as the organisation behind these facility’s. It all depends on enough customers and that will only be the case with as steady an large growth of the EV market now. That growth depends on the strategy of the Government of country’s and the EU. These have to devellop a clear and steady policy with support for this technology.
Now where heading for an other topic. There’s a lot to be said about governance policy, but I think your question is answered 🙂 The future will tell and Fastned deserves support and credit.

I would say a large chunk of the 2hr 20 minutes was taken up by the usual battery cell conditioning and equalisation as Zoe’s charge indicator stayed at 99% for about half an hour before reporting !00% and full charge!

@buzzar thanks for this. So, at 10A the remaining 2kWh will take over 2 hours to deliver? But our usual 32A charging should take in the region of 20 mins shouldn’t it?

So are these losses at 10A typical across all SOC then, or is it just because we’re seeing the end of the charging process and the battery rebalancing?

Update: I think our dealer is making a better fist of our issue this time around than last time – after a bit of silliness to start with!

Their opening gambit was that the 12V battery was flat because we left the side lights on. According to them, the lights were switched to side lights. That’s a mystery to me, as we put them on auto when we bought the car and have never touched the switch since. I can only assume the tow truck driver fiddled with the lights to test that the battery really was flat.

After an animated debate, the guy went out to check and found that a) there is an alarm if you try to leave the car with lights on and b) if you do leave the car the lights turn off anyway. Once we’d established that, it was easier.

They did some battery tests and decided the 12V battery was faulty. They also tested that the 12V battery was being charged from the traction battery. Further, the telemetry unit is faulty and has to be replaced (ZE services have not updated since 26th April).

Finally, they’ve applied all the software patches and updates. Unfortunately it takes 5 days for the parts to arrive from France – so we may have to wait a few days to get the car back.

One point to note; the dealer has a technical bulletin which says, apparently, that if the 12V battery loses charge the doors will unlock. This rings true because both times this has happened to us the car has been found unlocked. My wife has told me on a few other occasions that she’s found the car unlocked, which suggests the 12V has almost been flat, but had enough charge to fire up the HV battery and we were none the wiser really. Worth knowing, though – best not leave anything valuable in the car in case your 12V goes flat!

Cheers,
Mark

That could well be the difference between Fluence and Zoe/Leaf.

I know when the 12V charger is on because there is interference on FM in my car, it reduces the sensitivity to weak stations. It’s on all the time I’m driving, as far as I can tell. Maybe Leaf and Zoe try to be too clever and only recharge the battery during regen, or something like that to save a little range, and that way you might miss out on a ‘proper’ charge.