I got a call the other day from a customer services manager who has been dealing with my complaint about non advising and branch staff not being interested in dealing with me.  he advised that we should get emails in the next week or two to book a test drive at this point your order is gone over again and placed with the factory at which point you get updates at the different stages(allegedly), what I don’t get is that as others have said, what was the point of the pre-reservation or order at launch nights, they’ve meant nothing.

He also advised that there is no finance prices set, now if you take what Deejay said

“The finance is extremely flexible, with a much smaller deposit of £1000 this would be £252.99×48 with a final payment of £6008.00. This is based on the minimum 5,000 per annum on the finance. With an increased deposit to £3000 the payments would reduce down to £202.99.”

You would pay £12143.52 in payments, plus £1000 deposit and final payment of £6008 makes a grand total of £19151.52 for a car that is probably about £15000 that is car and a couple of extra’s is pretty shocking considering you’ve still got four years of £70 as well thats another £3360, you could get a new Leaf for that on a better deal and no battery lease to pay, in fact with the £22500 I wouldn’t be surprised if you could get an Ampera or a Volt, so to me there is no basis to buy a Zoe if those are the figures.  I was given worse figures from my dealer a few months ago, but I compared their four year deal on a new Clio diesel, think it was mid spec level, couple of extra’s and it was only about £250 per month, and that was same price £15k as the Zoe.  Surely if you’re tied to the battery lease, the car should be worth more than £6k at the end of it, as the shell should be pretty perfect. Of course these will be purchase prices, so it will be interesting to see what PCP deals come out, and if the chap I spoke to was correct then the prices still aren’t out yet.

After saying all that though, I still love the Zoe, and when I go for my test drive I’ll go in my Leaf, see what they will offer for it against the Zoe and depending on the prices for a pure Lease on the Zoe rather than a purchase and battery lease.

I had a call yesterday afternoon from my local dealer saying they expected a test vehicle to be available in the third week of may but, as they don’t currently have a charge point, this might be delayed and I might need to get the test drive from their sister branch. Given I am only a short distance from both branches this isn’t a problem for me but interesting that the plans to equip dealers with chargers appears to be running behind. The dealer seemed un-phased by my request to have the car for long enough to do a round-trip to my workplace (60miles) to test the car’s capabilities and see how the battery performs.

He also checked the systems and was unable to find any information on finance or any offers so I don’t know whether Motorline have their own finance options but nothing was showing up from Renault themselves (or, at least, not for Birmingham).

I’ve also had it confirmed by another Renault bod that you don’t incur any disadvantage if you go over your inclusive mileage. I was concerned that they might refuse roadside assistance or something.

I’ve requested a call from one of their ‘finance specialists’ so I can ask them questions regarding the terms of the battery lease and any finance options on the car itself 🙂 The normal support/sales guys were unable to find a published version of the Zoe battery lease terms and conditions on the website.

£1000 down £252.99 x 48 + £70/month for the battery? I could get a Nissan Leaf for much less.

There are still a few unsold 2012’s Leafs left at  £18,000.     By the time we are ready to buy those will be gone.    But the improved 2013 Leaf on a 4-year PCP will cost less than a Zoe.

Haven’t decided  but Zoe could loose out on price.   The brake failure issue has put me off getting a Kangoo Z.E.  for now.

Silence from Renault.  I expect an invitation for a test drive to show up any day now.   I’ll post somewhere (RenaultZEforum or Leaftalk) when I hear something from Renault.

Hi all,

An update after talking lots with my rather helpful and on-the-ball dealer.

WRT battery lease, £45/4,500mpa is not available on the Zoe. It’s Twizy-only, and the fact it appears on the Zoe section of thew website is a mistake on the part of the people doing the website banners.

They’re expecting test drive demo cars in late May.

The odour neutralizer/scent diffuser is still on the UK Zen, apparently. It took him a few days to turn this information up, so I expect he checked another source.

I got given these figures for an Intens, not taking battery lease into consideration:

“The finance is extremely flexible, with a much smaller deposit of £1000 this would be £252.99×48 with a final payment of £6008.00.  This is based on the minimum 5,000 per annum on the finance.  With an increased deposit to £3000 the payments would reduce down to £202.99.”

In general, even when more amps are available a device will only consume what it needs. For instance, you plug a 100w (0.4A) lightbulb into a 5Amp lighting circuit or a 0.2Amp tv into a 13Amp ringmain. However, battery chargers are slightly different because batteries generally just try to take as many amps as possible when charging and limiting circuits are needed to control the charging process. In order to make this control circuitry efficient (and not produce vast amounts of heat) EV chargers have communication electronics that allow the charge control circuits in the cars to tell the charger what current it needs (which mode it is in). This communication happens via the cable. Furthermore, the cable itself needs some limited electronics to prevent a car requesting more current that it can handle.

I’m going to guess that the cable you have is not an ‘intelligent’ one in that it has no electronics of its own (e.g. a bulge) other than the safety components and so the iON should correctly inform a higher-capacity charger station to scale down on the supplied amps for efficiency so everything should work fine. This is by far the most likely situation 🙂

I did a test drive last Saturday at the Renault main office at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. Also took a Twizy for a spin, just for fun. It was as expected, very nice (I drove a Leaf previously which I also liked a lot, the Leaf seems to have a bit more performance of the line but the Zoe is still impressive). I went to my local Renault ZE dealer (just a mile away from my house), but the ZE rep (Renault tries to use women mostly for that) had a day off. I did understand that the day before someone did order a Zoe already, apparently without ever having seen one in real life. I went back to the dealer on monday afternoon. All my remaining questions were cleared up, so I order my Zoe right away. Apparently there had been someone in the morning who also ordered a Zoe. And while I was there, there had been someone waiting to ask questions about the Zoe as well. So three (all black) Zoe’s sold in 3 working days, impressive. The two other buyers ordered Zoe’s that were already in stock (black with the 17″ wheels), they will get them around May 16th. I could have ordered an identical one which also was in stock, but I wanted the EV tires. Plus it will take time to get the wallbox installed (a few weeks at least) and I still want to wait for my June salary to help pay for the car. So I ordered one not in stock, which should be delivered first half of June.

It does seem that it makes absolutely no difference whether you have a pre-reservation or not. They have cars in stock, if you want to buy one that is in stock you’ll get it very quickly, period. Reservation or not. So I was a bit disappointed at that (I’m nr 105), but perhaps in this case I’ll get it quicker anyway. It is clear that they have already made a huge amount of Zoe’s and are able to produce a lot very quickly as well.

Unfortunately in Holland no subsidies for EV’s, except if you live in Amsterdam, Utrecht or The Hague (I live very near Amsterdam, but not close enough). I’m paying the full 24K in euros. Also no free wallbox, I have to budget for another 1000 euro. At least I don’t have to pay any road tax (600 euro per year) until at least 2015. I’ll be going for the cheapest battery lease, plus the compulsory insurance and I’ll be looking for the central arm rest accessory. Still doubting whether to already order the granny charger from the Italian guy (liability / warranty issues) or wait until Renault comes to their senses (because we all know they did have such a charger initially). Or, instead of paying 500 euros for that charger, perhaps pay another 500 to have a wallbox at my parent’s place (less flexible, but 8 hours does beat 18). There are fast chargers on the way to my parents, but probably DC and so not compatible with the Zoe (yet). Not having any, even a slow, granny cable just sucks. Zoe drivers are perhaps even more early adapters than early Leaf riders, at least they can plug in anywhere at anytime, domestic or DC fast charger. Still want the Zoe, it is future proof. But the future isn’t quite there yet.

Just a brief on the Fleet World show at Silverstone, I decided I would give it a visit today and see if I could get a drive in Zoe. To my joy on arriving they had 2 black Intens on demonstrations and 1 black Intens in the upstairs hall. I booked a drive in the Zoe and also one in the Clio. The driving position in the Zoe is excellent and the keyless card is brill. The one I drove had a very good quality build with all doors and boot lid being solid and flush with the bodywork. The drive on the road was better than I expected, very quiet apart from the ZE voice which I will be tempted to switch off when mine arrives. The handling on corners is great with the battery weight making the car feel very stable. The acceleration was better than the Leaf I tried probably due to the car being lighter. The Reno guy I was talking to in the upstairs hall let me have 5 minutes on the Zoe R-link which was straight forward to operate with a home button on the front allowing you to come out of each app with ease. It was a really good day out, now I have to wait for my dealer demo which has been booked for May 24th.

An interesting article linked there 🙂 Consideration does need to be made, however, of the fuel mix in China for the electricity used in manufacture as well as the transportation costs in terms of CO2 because the vast majority of panels are currently made in China.

Regarding the FIT I’m actually opposed to it because I believe the money could have had a much greater impact if used in other ways. I think the RHI (same as FITs but for thermal generation) is a better idea because it directly targets replacing gas with renewables. Unfortunately its been delayed 🙁 In the mean time, Good Energy have extended their ‘HotROC’ payments which do basically the same thing, paying you for every KWh of solar thermal you generate 🙂

An odd twist to the whole solar panel debate comes from thin film panels. While they are only about 10% efficient they are about 20% of the price and only about 10% of the CO2 footprint so, by area, they are actually better than the mono- and poly-silicon options (if you have lots of space for them!). Even better, they are made using techniques similar to screen printing and so can be made locally in countries and as they weigh much less and can be rolled up they are easier to transport.

Trying to reduce the gas consumption of an average UK home is a real challenge. Insulation is the obvious starting point, stopping those drafts and keeping in the heat – don’t forget letter boxes and well-fitted front doors. Next you might consider a programmable thermostat rather than the traditional timer and manual thermostat. Programmable stats allow you to set different temperatures throughout the day and can compensate for outside temperature while preventing huge temperature fluctuations. If you let your house completely cool down then when you want it to warm up again the ‘mass’ (bricks, concrete etc.) will re-absorb a lot of the heat resulting in more energy required. If you have a wooden framed (light and air-tight) rather than a brick, concrete and glass (mass and glass) house this doesn’t apply.

Next up is tackling hot water (about 25% or so of normal household gas usage) which you could use solar thermal for. If you want to be more radical, you might consider Micro-CHP (combined heat and power) (Flow Energy are planning to release a ‘free’ MCHP boiler this year if you have an interest there) or ‘biomass’ (wood pellet) burner instead of a normal boiler.

A Thermal Store is also a good idea as it is better than a traditional water tank both because it is better insulated but also because the water in the tank is not used directly for hot water but used as a heat ‘battery’. Water doesn’t need to be heated to 60degrees because legionella isn’t a problem and you don’t need to store mains-pressure water to have mains-pressure hot water for taps and showers etc. You can also ‘oversize’ the store to allow your boiler to work more efficiently and the water will stay hot for a good couple of days because of the extra insulation. I was very surprised to learn that ‘scolding hot’ water is only 40degrees C.

Given how much gas we use for central heating you might want to go further and replace the radiators. Underfloor heating is much more efficient and uses lower temperatures so us better suited to Solar Thermal or Ground or Air source heat pumps. You might also want to consider ‘active ventilation’ where you first make the house as air-tight as possible and then you ventilate by drawing air out of rooms and through a heat exchanger before expelling it. The extracted heat is used to pre-heat the incoming air so you get fresh air but about 80% heat recovery 🙂

While retro-fitting these technologies is quite a lot of work (and sometimes costly) they are all possible. If you are building a new house, however, they are all much cheaper to install and other options such as rainwater harvesting become possible as well. I very much hope to build my own place one day 🙂

Hello everyone 🙂

Having posted a couple of times I thought it best I give an introduction! My real name is Robert, I’m 34 and I live with my wife and daughter in Birmingham. I’m a software developer, commute to Worcester every day (60 mile round trip 50/50 A-roads and motorway) and have a strong interest in reducing waste and our dependence on fossil fuels.

I’ve been keeping an eye on electric vehicles for over 12 years and was very disappointed when I had to buy a car for a previous job about 8 years ago and nothing was suitable – after all, we were all promised them at the new millennium 😉 Anyhow, my Toyota Aygo (least polluting I could get my hands on at the time) is now old enough and with enough miles to be up for replacement and the Zoe looks to be the perfect fit for my needs.

I know a lot of people consider solar panels to help make their electric cars less polluting but as my focus is reducing fossil fuel use and not necessarily home generation (although we do have solar thermal to reduce gas use for heating) I’ve decided to go with Good Energy and I am very much hoping to be part of their Smart Meter trial as they have been very interested in how Smart Meters could allow them to offer EV tariffs 🙂 I’m just waiting for their head of new product development to let me know when the trial is starting…

Oh, and I’ve not placed a pre-order for my Zoe as I am going to have to do a little negotiating on things like part exchange for my car and the battery lease (given the miles I do). It just feels wrong to walk into a dealership and not negotiate on the price of something so expensive 😉

30.000 km with a Leaf, first service (owner good wait for it to be done), no maintenance needed (not even a light bulb), battery still operating at 100%. EV’s rule:

http://translate.google.nl/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fe-carmarket.nl%2Fweblog%2Feerste-onderhoudsbeurt-van-de-nissan-leaf&act=url