The Zoe brochure reads thus;

We will offer you a free domestic Wall-box, fitted at your
home, as part of your purchase. Its 7kW capacity means that your
ZOE’s battery can be recharged from completely flat to 100% in just
3 to 4 hours, and Z.E.

Which matches the info that the dealer in Portsmouth gave me (that said, he was probably secretly reading it off a brochure hidden under his desk).

I’ve been having a heck of a time trying to get some answers on the charging point. No-one seems to know anything – kinda odd, considering it’s a pretty major part of the package!

I’m simply trying to find out two things:

• How long is the tethered cable?
• Is there a socket-only option?

Although we have a driveway directly in front of our front door, we always reverse into the drive (it’s not safe to reverse out onto the road from our driveway). From what I can see (and the other posts here) it seems that the tethered cable would be too short to reach the front of the car, in which case I’d need a socket-only charger so I can use a longer cable.

Renault (dealer and customer service) no nothing about the charger, they said to speak to British Gas. British Gas said it’s nothing to do with them, speak to Polar. Polar said they have no idea, I’d need to wait for an engineer to come out as they’re the ones that know that sort of thing…

I know I’m not the only person who reverses into their driveway, but it seems it’s something they haven’t considered.

At the moment, I’m very tempted to ignore the British Gas offer and go with Charging Solutions; they’ve been very helpful and can also make up a longer cable so I’ve got a bit of slack. I gather that British Gas are also backed up with orders, so it might just be easier to go elsewhere anyway. Plus their charger is definitely a 32k one, and I’m tempted by one with RFID instead of a key to lock it – an RFID sticker on the back of the handsfree key should work fine. I’ll end up paying about £400 plus the cost of the longer cable, but I’d rather do that and have something that’s definitely suitable than pay nothing but get something that’s not really what we need.

Having spoken to Renault about the chance of getting a socketed rather than tethered point from British Gas (turns out you can’t, at least not without losing the Renault contribution), I’ve decided to skip British Gas altogether and get a unit from Charging Solutions instead. It means I’ll have to pay the extra over the £1000 grant, but I’ll get exactly the unit I want – socketed and with an RFID reader instead of a physical key to lock it.

I’m also getting them to make me a longer cable – the Zoe’s 6m cable is just a bit too short for our driveway, so they’re going to make me a 9m cable instead. That should leave plenty of slack so it doesn’t become a trip hazard or put any strain on either end.

I managed to speak to the person at British Gas today responsible for organising the install of charge points for Zoe customers.

He (Adam) says that he gets a list of details from Renault for Zoe customers about once a week and he then calls them and organises for a survey etc. to be done. The process has only just started with him receiving about 60 sets of details last monday – some of which were for customers expecting delivery of their Zoes next monday. He’s told me he doesn’t expect to receive so many each week in future 🙂

Because of the long list they are mostly booked up for the next 2 or 3 weeks but after that things slack off a bit. Looking on the list he did tell me that the Renault Dealership in Leicester had apparently correctly completed all the paperwork so suggested (as I’m not on the list) I get Renault Birmingham to talk to Renault Leicester to see how they did it. He was very clear that the only way he receives the list for Zoe customer installs is via Renault directly.

Last I checked, Renault customer relations were still recommending we use the Polar signup form so there’s obviously a lack of communication going on there!

I also have had info from Chargemaster – if you wanted to buy a charger straight off it would cost you £810 – seems very expensive to me!

Interesting that, having just started the process, Adam has had 60 customer orders (and not all of them will want a charge point or be eligible). I guess a few have been handled ad-hoc previously but suggests at least 60 Zoes are due for UK delivery in the next couple of weeks 🙂

I also have had info from Chargemaster – if you wanted to buy a charger straight off it would cost you £810 – seems very expensive to me!

They are being greedy. Most companies have priced their charges to take maximum advantage of the current government grant scheme.

Zero Carbon World sells a 32Amp type 2 charging station for £418.80 including VAT and delivery.