Bad news I think as on only our second day of ownership the
“Battery charge impossible” warning has progressed on to
“Stop, Electric Failure, Danger”
and our beautiful Zoe has left home on a flat bed truck bound for Renault Birmingham (our nearest Renault EV service centre at 20 miles away).
Ian from Renault Cannock tested our all box with their demo Zoe and all is fine.

Renault assist where not that useful as they initially sent the breakdown truck to High Wickam about 100 miles from our home as the breakdown truck driver rang asking “Where in High Wickam is Cannock” LOL.
Car was finally collected some three and a half hours later.
Even though a replacement car is promised in the Renault assist contract Renault assist told us “it’s up to the dealer to supply” and Renault Birmingham told us “it’s up to Renault assist to supply” so here we are all car-less, bored and very unhappy

Will keep you posted as to the fault details 🙁

http://s1361.photobucket.com/user/Buzzar/slideshow/

• This reply was modified 12 years, 10 months ago by  Trevor Larkum. Reason: Tweaked picture url

On handover our Zoe had 76% charge and in all of my 39 years of motoring this baby has to be one of the best drives!

We had teething troubles getting Zoe to charge from our wall box as initially the car reported “Battery charge impossible” something you don’t need to see with an EV I think but she is taking a charge now but I would not like to see this happen again 70 miles from home, will keep you updated.

Our 20 year old son Jason rushed home from work to take her out and he was “Amazed”, she is soooo responsive and he kept complaining about the ICE cars that kept getting in the way along the A5 duel carriageway lol.

She is a beauty and I just hope that the charging glitch settles down 🙂 🙂 🙂

@perlyngemark – I thought I was cutting things a bit fine on my drive home this evening! I arrived back at the dealership with 8 miles left on the display and the orange low battery light on. Checking the battery percentage it said 12%.

I think, having spoken to friends at work, the change in range when you return to the car is most likely because predicting battery charge level when the battery is in use is really tricky. When you first ‘start the engine’ the Zoe has a chance to adjust its predictions. Alternatively, something had been left on but I can’t think what – I turned off the car and it locked as I walked away, turning off both displays. I did check and the aircon was not set to come on at all.

To complete my test drive story, I drove home a slightly different route round Droitwich and onto the M5 a junction later than on my morning drive. The roads around Droitwich are a mix of single and dual carrageways with a couple of big hills and 3 roundabouts. I then took my normal M5 -> M42 route and off at junction 3 then straight through south birmingham into the city centre to drop the car back.

When I left work the prediction was 39 miles remaining (again the drop in capacity) and I had a 32 mile drive. I specifically took things very easy – Eco mode all the way, controlled acceleration and trying hard to anticipate and make good use of the regenerative braking. On the a-roads I stuck to 50, on the dual-carriageways and motorway I used the cruise control at 55. In the city I used the limiter at 33 and 42mph depending on the road speed.

With all this careful driving I arrived, as I said, with 8 miles left so overall I appear to have gained about 1 mile against the prediction in 32 miles! Not very good going for all that effort.

Anyhow, analysing the numbers I’ve collected, urban driving is averaging out at about 3.34 mpkwh. The mix of urban, suburban and motorway driving is coming out at around 3.78mpkwh. This means a range of about 83 miles for this type of drive (and about 73 miles urban). The stated ’90 miles’ suburban range would require a mpkwh of about 4 while the 130 mile NEDC number would require 5.99mpkwh (which I consider impossible!).

Comparing the drive to work – a mix of speeds, some hard acceleration, less care for efficiency, a shorter urban section and more motorway – with the drive home – more care, limited speed, more urban, less motorway – they actually come out pretty similar. The first was 3.79mpkwh and the second was 3.77mpkwh. This suggests to me that something like 50mph on a motorway with very little urban driving would be the best efficiency for range.

Overall I drive 68.1 miles on 18.9kwh at an average of 3.6mpkwh and had about 8 miles predicted left. The battery stated 12% left which would put the battery at 100% charge with a capacity of ~ 21.1kwh.

Do any of you feel a mpkwh of around 4 would even be achievable on my kind of drive at ‘safe’ speeds (e.g. not less than 55 on the motorway)?

I’m still concerned about winter driving and with a daily commute of ~ 78% the capacity I’ve measured from a new battery (3.6mpkwh and between 21 and 22kwh capacity) I’m worried unless I can get that 3.6mpkwh up then I’m not going to be able to do my commute as the battery degrades. I might end up having to stop every evening at the service station for a quick-charge! – I’m still working to get a charger at work but I can’t rely on that.

@farblue – good points! I’ll be monitoring my combined 6.9kWp system over the next few weeks to see how well it would cope with the immersion heater load.

@nosig – interesting links. I’m very keen on getting battery storage at home, as soon as it becomes affordable.

Ok, so, I started out this morning with 95% battery and an estimated 71 miles (I assume because I had the aircon on) and 30 miles of mixed urban, suburban and motorway driving later I am at work with an estimated 44 miles remaining 🙂

Couple of things I’ve learnt:
* Eco mode will not let you go above 60mph – and if you switch on Eco mode while doing 70 on the motorway it will immediately slow you down. Not good!
* Eco mode takes a few seconds to engage and dis-engage.

I’ve made voice notes I’ll type up this evening regarding the energy usage in different conditions and at different speeds but the trip computer tells me that I’ve used 9KWh since the last reset which would match with the ~ half empty battery icon.

Given I have 44 miles estimates range left that would suggest my mix of roads including 20 miles on the motorway at an average speed of around 60 due to traffic would equate to 90 miles on a charge.

I’ll take things a little easier on the way home (I was testing hard accelerating etc. on the way in) and see what the difference is.