We have the car 🙂
And checked the charging point at our parents house.

Was impressed on first drive stats.
Battery life on start 72 miles, Traveled 23 miles used 15 miles of charge. This included about 10 mile motorway journey 🙂

First impressions very quiet, comfy and responsive. I cannot wait to get the few things sorted on the car.
Need the username and password for ze service (even though the we asked regards it before)

Also sure it’s a button somewhere, But we can only open the back windows via the front drivers panel. (Anyone know the answer?)

First impressions are very good and now we’re off out for a proper drive now we know we can successfully charge at 1 location 2 miles from our house.

We have a picture and shall upload it once on a pc and not mobile device.

Hi Trevor – I’m no good with these photo uploads but will send you a photo to your e-mail if you can let me have it and I will take a pic when my wife gets back (after she has given rides to all her work colleagues that is!)

We got our Zoe from Bristol Street Motors in Exeter. We were their first Zoe sale (although they had sold a twizzy too before). It may reflect our rather rural area but then again the electrician who installed our charger said they had been very busy in Cornwall!

I paid the £49 reservation fee (not refunded!) and then got bored waiting, then got interested in it again which coincided with the dealer having the Black Intens with 17″ alloys in the showroom. This was the spec I wanted so I kind of wonder whether Renault just delivered one in case! So my only wait was for the charger due to the 2 week wait for the survey and then a further two week wait for the installation! B Gas -marvellous to have two visits all the way from their Bristol base to Devon – and they weren’t driving an electric kangoo either! Anyhow, I suppose that means I “ordered” the car at the end of July…. Sorry if the story was dull!

Any views on charge stations? Polar seem to have some good links – e.g. with Asda and Ecotricity are doing well with motorway services and now Ikea. These seem to be the ones with the sensibly placed charge points (i.e. not in town centre paying car parks a long way from main long journey routes!). I think sainsburys are using Pod Point and I also saw an “Electromotive” charger at a sensible location (forgot now where!). It is a real pity that these networks are not shown on one comprehensive live map. I guess it is because each firm is still competing for potential market share to a degree. Renault say they are using the “Zap Map” for the on-line R-link/Tom Tom system but, whatever this is, it doesn’t seem to be that comprehensive from what I am hearing. The above is all fairly academic as I will probably only need a public charge station when they have moved on to e-cars that can tow caravans…by which time I expect the battery range will be in excess of 200 miles minimum (or 400 miles minimum without a caravan on tow!)..about another 7-8 years is my guess.

Well, they have advertised the Zoe quite a bit in London with billboards and the Zoe is also placed centrally in the ‘new lineup’ at the end of the current Captur ads on TV. However, Renault have a balance to maintain across their range and manufacturing.

Personally I don’t think we will see the Zoe advertised (relatively) heavily until the spring. My reasons being:

1) The cost of the Flinns plant refit was massive and the big money maker for the plant atm. is the Clio. It’s been very successful and still has long lead times. Selling more Clio’s pays for the refit and also the development work on the new-gen platform shared with the Captur and the Zoe. More Zoe production means less Clio production.

2) The Captur is being launched into a market that didn’t exist until the Juke arrived and a lot of companies are racing for market share. Time pressure is greater so Renault are, sensibly, pushing the Captur at the moment. This effectively closes the advertising for other models until christmas and car sales are slow over christmas (except for the luxury brands). In contrast, there is little real competition in the Zoe’s market space – even the Leaf is considered in the next size class up and so not a direct threat.

3) Renault haven’t got their battery production facilities up to speed yet – they are still having to buy in their battery packs. This is almost certainly resulting in higher costs and lower volume availability.

4) This is all very new technology and it benefits Renault to sell a few thousand then see what problems turn up. Not just with the car but with sales, training, manufacturing, logistics, after-sales, interactions with other companies (e.g. BG) and the government etc. Furthermore, waiting a bit will give Ecotricity, Polar, the local government schemes and the big chains like Asda and Ikea the time to put in more chargers.

5) At the moment, BMW, Nissan, Volvo, Porsche, Audi, VW, Smart, Toyota and others are kind of doing the general EV word-spreading for Renault. The motoring press has lots of articles about high-end, high-priced concept cars and once this general idea that EV is desirable has spread and the old Top-Gear influence has faded a bit consumers will be more tuned to the Zoe. A good example of this is going to be the Geneva motor show next week which will generate loads of EV coverage.

Still looking like collection this sat.
Just confirming with the dealership as they need to go collect the car from a nearby branch. I wanted to confirm battery stuff is activated, otherwise there won’t be enough mileage to drive home.

Fingers crossed everything is still on track and no last minute glitches.

@appmacguy Thanks for the tips a couple of days ago. I’m pleased to say that my Zoe arrived on the promised flatbed at 9am this morning. Unlike yours mine had only c40 miles range available, so I was keen to charge before I ventured too far….
Following the advice here, I had to chase my dealer up about the battery contract, and I’m glad I did. Although this had been overlooked, the dealer did pull out the stops to get the paperwork sorted this morning. The process was completed at 1130 this morning, when the activation codes were sent to my Zoe and it would then charge.

I did try charging earlier, though as expected, it didn’t work until the battery hire folk activated things.

Spent the rest of the day touring Teeside charging points to discover how many weren’t working….

Having done a few calculations this is what I’m seeing:

a 16″ (0.4064m) diameter wheel has a circumference of 1.2767m

100km/h = 1.6666km/min = 1666.66 meters/min

Therefore, at 100km/h the 16″ wheel would need to rotate at 1305 rpm.

I found this from the renault site about the reduction gear ratio in the Fluence:
http://www.renault.com/en/innovation/gamme-mecanique/pages/moteur-electrique-5a.aspx

and, for general interest, this related image for the power/torque behaviour of the Zoe:

anyhow, I don’t think the Zoe does have the 9.32 ratio reduction gear of the Fluence but even if it did then:

at 100km/h, the wheel is rotating at 1305rpm so the motor would be rotating at ~ 12,000 rpm.

I’d guess the Zoe reduction gear is closer to 6.0 giving a motor speed of ~ 7800rpm at 100km/h

For reference, the reduction gear ratio on the original Leaf is aprox. 7.9 but the 2013 leaf looks like it has a lower ratio as they’ve tweaked things to give faster 0-60 and longer battery life *but* lower torque.

• This reply was modified 12 years, 7 months ago by  Trevor Larkum. Reason: Tweaked picture url

Thanks, Nosig

I made a chart

from this data.

You can see the amount of power to compensate air drag constantly rising till 80 km/h. At 100 km/h the graph shows bending and at 120 and higher the percentage of power to compensate air drag remains stable.

So given the readings from the Zoe dash board are correct (unfortunately experience shows that dash board data can’t always be trusted) something in the Zoe drive train happens at about 100 km/h that kill efficiency (Eletrical engineers in front, what could this be?).

So for using your battery to maximise range one should avoid speeds above 100 km/h.

And now we all know why in Eco mode the Zoe goes max. 96 km/h…Renault seems to know about this behaviour….

Regards
Umbi

• This reply was modified 12 years, 7 months ago by  Trevor Larkum. Reason: Updated chart