Insurance is so dependent on things like age, no claims on previous cars, post code status, off road parking etc that it’s hard to see what is an average deal.
We live in a moderately rated part of Sheffield re car security, have full no claims, and are both (my wife and I) in our sixties. With Renault insurance it’s £230 a year which is pretty good (and the battery is covered so we understand).
As my other posts have shown the Sat-Nav failed but fixed in a day without demur by our Sheffield dealership who also found that the red rectangle Danger notice was false but noted that the control unit fitted is the same as for the Ice cars.
The senior electrician seemed clued up about the Zoe and the dealer who sold me the car went on the national training day re the Zoe and has been consistently enthusiastic about it and went out of his way to speed up the paper work and the installation of the wall charger.
Was out in the Zoe today (an Intens model) and had to cover part of the Tour de France route on silky smooth roads, including the steep Jawbone Hill near Oughtibridge. I glided along with a silence you normally only get when driving on fresh snow.
Like Dr Steele I love the car and am now on 4,500 miles.
Richard of Sheffield.

I would have thought that it is far more likely that the battery isn’t being charged. The 12V battery has quite a high capacity and you need moderately high discharge current for an extended period to flatten the battery. The dealership should be able to check a charging / discharging problem easily with just a volt meter. You don’t need to measure the current as the voltage when charging a nearly full battery should be around 13.4V and a fully charged 12V battery at rest measures about 12.8V, any less than this and the battery is partially charged.

Lead acid batteries don’t like a deep discharge (it drastically reduces their life) and they take a long time to fully charge so it would make sense for them to be constantly charged from the traction batteries when the car is in use. The 12V systems can take quite a lot of current and it would be impossible to charge them fully from a 43Kw charge in half an hour. The reduced range in winter when you have the lights on, wipers etc. would tend to support this.

When they have repaired your car I would insist on a new battery as discharging it completely twice will have damaged it.

4 months ago my our ZOE unexpectedly suffered from a flat 12V battery – and it’s happened again today! I was last to drive the car (yesterday), parked on the drive with 60+ miles range remaining. Everything was ‘normal’. Today, the car is a brick. Totally unresponsive. I tried putting an optimate charger on for a couple of hours, but it’s still dead.

Last time Renault said ‘no fault found’ but would investigate further if it happened again. When the 12V battery goes it’s completely debilitating for the car; you can’t get the steering lock off or the charge port open. Nothing. The only way to recover the car is to put it on skates and manhandle it around, which isn’t a pretty sight.

I think I should disconnect the 12V battery and try charging again, but my wife is in favour of letting Renault sort it out in case I end up invalidating the warranty.

Ho-hum. It would help if it was better understood how the 12V battery was charged and used. Did it go flat because R-Link didn’t shut down, or because the 12V battery is not being charged. I have no idea, but the sad thing is, neither does Renault.

Cheers,
Mark

AFAIK, with the Fluence it will only charge when the main battery is activated. I’ve left my car for 3 weeks at a time and have seen no effect at all on any functionality. Never heard from any of the Fluence ‘gang’ of any 12V battery issues.

The Leaf, however, apparently activates the HV battery by itself and recharges the 12V battery off it. According to the manual, the pre- to post-2013 models do it slightly differently, or that might just be the wording. Leafs have a habit of flattening their 12V batteries. Go figure!

Maybe Fluence has a bigger battery? Or maybe it is something to do with the Fluence being congenitally incapable of picking up ‘ZE services’, and thus does not try whilst it is idle?

When charging at 7kW our Zoe makes little or no noise.
When we use our dealer’s 22kW charger the fan seems to run most of the time.
We’ve haven’t used a 43kW unit yet, but I guess the fan would run for that. I presume that there is the fan for the inverter that you can hear and not the aircon system fan.

I see, taminatortom, that you seem to be getting a 100 mile range per charge at the moment,a bonus for being in beautiful Bournemouth maybe! Can anyone beat that?
Here in Ipswich our range is only around 80/85 miles at present which I think is poor and not what I expected. Our best range was 94 miles achieved once around two months ago when the weather was much cooler!
How and when might I qualify for a replacement battery under the 80% charge rule? I’ve had the car since Jan ’14 and done around 2.6k miles.

“The guys at the dealership hadn’t heard of this problem previously (shocking I know)”

I can assure you that they HAVE heard of this problem just trawl though these forums and you will be enlightened as we owners whom have suffered BCI state are in the majority.

We took delivery of our ZOE on 28th May 2013 and where plagued by the BCI and EFD states and lost ZOE to Birmingham ZE service for some 3 months for investigation.

They did conclude that the battery charge computer had corrupt software and after a software update that duly fixed the problem (sort off) as 1 in 10 charge events ended in the dreaded BCI state still.

To completely fix the problem we have now had the Chargermaster wall box replaced (5th time!) for a nice little ROLEC unit and haven’t had a BCI state at all in 2 weeks now (touching much wood!) 🙂 🙂

So I bought a renault zoe Tuesday and up until yesterday was very impressed with it. I had previously used a 7kw charge point outside a supermarket twice successfully, but yesterday (after a massive storm in Essex) I plugged it as usual and got the BCI message on my dash and the wrench and battery icon were also highlighted on the dash along with the ZE at the front of the zoe flashing red.

I then tried several of the remedies on the thread but to no avail, so I drove to another 7kw point that I had also used successfully but again the message remained, so then took it back the dealer and tried their charger but no change.

So it is currently in with the dealer until the services team can look at it Monday, in the meantime I have a nissan micra 14 plate which has done 900 miles but feels like it has done 900000 miles compared to the zoe.

This has left a bad taste in the mouth (not referring to micra annoyance) because I’am now doubting my purchase which I have the option to cancel within the 14 days cooling off period and I’m thinking unless renault give me a reassuring explanation as to why this is happening and what I can do to quickly fix it at the road side I may have to return the zoe.

I understand there will be teething problems as there is with any new technology but this isn’t a new technology you are simply charging a battery which powers a car, it should be a simple process.

Has anyone had anymore new on this issue? The guys at the dealership hadn’t heard of this problem previously (shocking I know).

Same way you’d store it for a day…

Just make sure you don’t leave it fully charged, but you shouldn’t leave it fully charged for days at a time anyway. Very Bad for the battery.

Leave a half-charge in it and it will be fine. I left mine for 3 weeks and did not notice any change in the SOC at all. Everything was just fine.

I’m aware some Insurers don’t or won’t offer cover here in NI,but working with the online price comparison sites,I found a few quotes for My Zoe..I ended up with my second cheapest option,as the best quote online couldn’t find the Zoe Intens
(I’ve now had it for 3 weeks!)
on their system when I phoned to nail down the Battery cover issue.. (but they could find the other 2 trim levels??)
I could not even get quoted by the company listed on the Renault UK website..what they told me was (quote) “We do not at this time offer cover for EV’s..” I tried pointing out the absurdity of the situation…(At no time did they mention NI cover was out of the question..Just the Zoe..)
I made the mistake of using the “Regular” insurance number for my first inquiry,then realised there was a second number “For EV cover” also on the Renault site..I called that one after being rebuffed on the first,and said that I hadn’t previously had a quote from them (not realising it was still the same company!) and was surprised when they checked my details against the earlier attempt,giving me the same “Nope” response..
Anyway..now covered,and 3 happy Zoe driving weeks later…