I would imagine they’re monitoring charging locations and usage – distance per charge, use profile of the vehicle, charging points being used and so on.

I take you’ve also seen the bit that says they can remotely disable your car’s ability to charge?

I meant it turned off the AC – I haven’t actually checked if it affects the fan speed. Certainly I agree that the AC on auto can be very loud.

Sometimes when I charge the fans come on really loud – related to cooling the battery perhaps – and the noise is tremendous.

Recommend that you try the ‘Green Insurance Company’ https://www.greeninsurancecompany.co.uk/. They’re an intermediary but seem to understand the car and give good prices

I’ve been doing the rounds of insurers to try and get an indicative quote for me and my daughter (learner from October) for a Renault Zoe – as am thinking of ordering one for October

Admiral were helpful but Green Insurance company quoted £500 less (£900 as opposed to £1400 for us both). Direct Line and Renault insurance wouldn’t quote for a learner/inexperienced driver for the Zoe (presumably as they don’t understand/want the risk)

Green Insurance didn’t ask about the battery issue. Admiral said it wasn’t an issue as ‘threshold’ for insurance was £30k anyway. I’m not worrying too much about this (although Renault T&Cs do say (ridiculously in my view) that you need to arrange insurance yourself – but I’m taking the view that if an insurer covers you and they know what car it is, then they are covering it all). Not a show stopper for me

I went on the Renault Insurance website for a quote. I didn’t spot that it was primarily for ICEs, with a special telephone number for EV quotes. Anyway, having filled it in, I got a call back the next day so I explained it was for a ZOE EV, and they were able to access the data I’d typed in anyway and create an EV policy.

Long story short, I have taken out a policy through Renault Insurance at £335+tax (with full no claims). The total value is given as £20,000 and the chap did seem to understand about covering the battery (though it’s not explicitly mentioned in the policy document). Basically I’ve gone with Renault on the assumption they know best how to insure a ZOE, and can’t claim ignorance if there’s a complication with battery cover.

I’m not sure I could give a definitive list, but here’s a go:

1. Paperwork for car, and battery, finance for you to sign
2. SD card – if the satnav is working then this is already accounted for
3. Tax application – though the tax disc comes later
4. Any options you asked for – including teflon protection, GAP insurance, etc.
5. Make sure to ask for your 7 days complimentary insurance – I think my dealer had forgotten it until I asked
6. Charging cable and the bag for it (both of mine came poly wrapped)
7. User’s handbook – mine consists of a wallet with the ZOE user guide, plus a quick guide for the ZOE and R-Link. Oddly, there was no full guide for the R-Link.
8. Check the paintwork – mine had a small blemish that I didn’t notice until later, and other ZOEs have had significant problems.
9. Make sure you ask in advance for it to be fully charged.
10. Activation numbers for any Z.E. Services

[Updated 16/10/13]
I don’t know what the situation is with the SIM and online services generally – mine still aren’t available. My impression from the French forum is that you got an activation number with the car that you used to activate the services online. However, the guys at my dealership are saying that they need to activate it through their computers – but it keeps coming back saying the server is down or something like that. I’ll chase it next week.

I’d also recommend applying for charging point access cards as soon as you get a registration number.

Great graph Nosig! I wanted to make something like that, but I only had the ZOE for six days and was too busy to do it. Really a great way to recalculate if a charger happens to be defect and you’re far away from home, you might be able to crawl to the next charger.
Maybe if someone has the time and patience, there could be a competition for the furthest drive in a ZOE on a single charge?

During our EV race in June, we had a maximum time allowed to complete the race, a few cars were a few minutes over and they were disqualified. And the larger battery in the LEAF didn’t matter since we charged all the cars before the race, then charged and measured the charge needed on all the cars after the race. (if someone enters a race like this, note that the Roadster has two modes of charging, one is only 95% and last year’s race a Roadster won since they charged in the ‘other’ mode.)

I think what matters in these kind of races is the use of airco. The previous model Leaf has an inefficient system, the Zoe should be better in real life. The Zoe also has a better regen system than the Leaf. But in these kind of races everything is of course turned off and speed is as constant as possible which changes the game. What matters then is the battery size, then the Zoe (22 kW) has 2 kW less compared to the Leaf (24 kW).

I have made two graphs with some consumption numbers on the same road with identical circumstances. The absolute numbers are not that important (changes with slope, temp and wind), but it’s just to show the huge relative influence of speed (thus drag) on consumption and there for range (in km and km/h). Theoretically, if you constantly drive at bicycle speed, you should be able to drive from the UK to the Côte d’Azur on one charge :-):

The assumption here is that the road is constant, level, speed is constant, nothing changes and the indication is more or less accurate. I also assume the full 22 kW is used for range. In this case the airco was on, but I hardly see any difference in consumption with the airco off. I actually noticed a constant 1 kW/100km consumption at 30 km/h, which would give a theoretical range of 2200 km, but that would distort the graph too much so I changed that to 2 kW/100km.

The thing to learn is the constant exponential increase in consumption, so best speed is the slowest and the increase in range can be huge then (2200 km in theory) as can the penalty with higher speed. A constant 140 km/h (with tonights indication at least) would drain the battery completely in about 50 km / 30 miles (!).

A gas car might be able to have a range between 700 and 900 km depending on riding style and circumstances, the Zoe can in theory have a range between 50 and 2000 km. It just indicates it’s extremely hard to compare range figures with gas cars, it’s a whole different game.