Zoe electric driving one month in: Motoring Motoring Discussion forum

Motoring Discussion > Zoe electric driving one month in	Miscellaneous
Thread Author: Crankcase	Replies: 20

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New Mon 29 Feb 16 10:46

Zoe electric driving one month in - Crankcase

Bit of an essay, sorry. However, unless it all goes wrong probably not much point in posting about it again unless I'm asked something specific, so this might be your lot on the subject. Get a coffee if you're really planning on trawling though this stuff.

So, I've had the Renault Zoe a month. What's the scores on the doors? Well, actually, there are no scores on the doors, as there haven't been any supermarket dings yet, so that's all good.

Driving:

It's smooth smooth smooth. It pulls well from nothing upwards, certainly well enough for me not to be concerned about an overtake, even at reasonably high speeds. I had the impression it was going to be gutless after 40mph - not entirely so. Although I don't naturally whizz about at 80 anyway, a motorway overtake taking it from mid fifties up to 75 and down again, perhaps getting past the lorries is just fine - you don't feel any slower than other supermini cars, for example. On a par with our old Aygo I would say.

It has three colours on the dash - green when you're being all sensible, yellow when you are pushing on a bit, or perhaps going up a steep hill (not many of those round here) and purple when you are motoring. I've not seen or used purple yet, even on a couple of brisk overtakes, nor have I spun the wheels, which apparently is easy to do if you floor it from nothing.

Having said that, for range optimization there's no getting away from the fact that you're better off in the sixties than the seventies. If your journey is such that you don't need to range optimize then you can bumble along at 70 ish just fine if you want. It actually doesn't make a HUGE difference anyway, just a bit.

Similarly, the scare stories about putting on wipers, lights, heating and radio reducing your range by tens of miles - all hooey. Sub zero journeys with all of that on reduces the range estimation on my known commute by about a mile. There is a screen that tells you about energy recovered, which you accrue as you slow down, and also the energy used by the heating, and for me, they tend to cancel each other out pretty much exactly. So my heating is "free", if you like.

All of that applies to the Zoe - other EVs may vary of course.

Ease of charging - just plug it in and don't worry about it, really. Having the charger at home makes it easy enough. If required, plug in when you get home, forget about it, it's fully charged next morning. For me, also if required, plug it in when I get to work, and at the end of the day (actually probably long before before that) it's fully charged. When visiting somewhere with a standard three pin socket I can use, I take the (optional) granny cable, plug it in on arrival, when I leave, it's got at least some charge and can be fully charged. All simple stuff. Offer to pay the visitees 50p if feeling generous, not yet accepted by anyone.

Plugging in at public chargers is a bit more fiddly, as you have to negotiate the games with having the right rfid card for the network you are using, so you do need to put in a bit of homework first. But that's only a one-off. I now have four cards, and that covers all the posts near me and on all my regular journeys, should I need them, none of which I have, yet.

I've tried the rapid charger (the fastest available to me) at Cambridge Services, just to see how it all worked. I plugged it in, pressed the buttons it told me to on the screen, it started charging. We went inside, walked around once and didn't spend anything on burgers, picked up a few tourist information leaflets, went back to car and unplugged, just to get the mechanics of the process clear. You get emails telling you about times of charging and state of charge. From those, it was actually charging for a whole four minutes and put on 12 miles of range in that time. Which seems faster than possible or expected, but that's what the emails and car said, so I guess it was right.

By contrast, the granny cable is the slowest possible way of charging (and the home charger is much faster). The granny cable charges at about 6 to 7 miles range an hour, the home charger at about 20 miles range an hour. So the motorway rapid chargers are belting out the electrons at a pleasingly fast rate - my Zoe should fully charge there (80 odd miles) in under an hour, time and circumstance permitting. Of course I know that doesn't begin to compare with 600 miles of diesel in two minutes flat.

Range anxiety - you go through a mental shift. With liquid fuel, you tend to think "I won't let the tank get below a third" or some such, and that in your head is "about a hundred miles" or whatever you are comfortable with. So when you first get in an EV and it says you are full and have 80 miles, you are already in "is that all?" mode.

However, you quickly change, and you think instead "I have a 65 mile journey. The car is telling me 80 miles. Even if it all goes wrong and there's a ten mile diversion, which is pretty unlikely, I still have a margin. No problem! Like chill, man."

Certainly for commuting, when I know it's a 25 miles roundtrip, leaving home with anything more than 40 miles on the range estimate gives me no qualms at all. I've found I tend to top it up in the week every other day ish, therefore, and that's probably more than I really need to.

When I first had it it offered me a range of about 75 miles. Within a day or so that was 80, then it crept up as it learned my driving habits I guess. It now offers 82 to 85, even though the temperatures of zero more or less have remained all month. Minus four on the drive this morning for example, 82 on the range at 100% charge. So you can get a further ten miles by being a sympathetic driver I suppose. I fully expect those numbers, therefore, to translate to "a minimum of 80 miles in winter" for me, which I'm very happy with. Summer - we'll have to wait and see but I'm hoping for something over 100.

Equipment - I already mentioned the lack of internal storage space - it's just about adequate but not generous. Things like the rear camera, bluetooth and radio work just fine. Quite happy with those, although switching between audio sources is a bit slow. And it INSISTS on turning on the last audio source (and sometimes a random one) EVERY time you start the car. You get used to hitting the mute button pretty darned quick.

Heating is a bit odd. You set it and forget it, but it seems the car sometimes forgets it too. I can never predict whether its going to dribble out luke warm air from the top vent alone or put out a real whooshy roar of hot air by my feet. We're never actually cold, so I suppose it's keeping everything at 20 degrees as asked, but it seems to change its mind about how it's going to do it from journey to journey.

Seats are fine. Not Volvo comfy, but no issues at all for tiddly journeys, which is all we've done, and probably all we will. I wouldn't be fazed by taking on a longer journey though. I didn't plump for the optional expensive armrest, thought I would regret it, but oddly don't miss it at all. Boot space is better than the Volvo, and much better than the Aygo we once had, but not of course up with a Mondeo or anything. But four heaving great shopping bags is no issue at all. Suitcases - space for two or three and room left over. Golf clubs would be fine too - but not all these things at the same time. Back seats drop too, so am planning on trying a bike in the back when it warms a bit - I think it will probably fit; removing the front wheel should be enough.

Issues:

Nothing major, although I thought there was going to be one. There is an SD card in the car, containing system software. It gets updated every so often - you have to take the card from the car, whack it in a PC to get the latest software, put it back in the car. I did that once and the TomTom live traffic fell over and stopped working. Took a day or two of me asking about in various places (not including a dealer of any sort) and getting up the courage to press the "factory reset" button on the Zoe screen, but after doing that and watching EVERYTHING fall over, followed by it all coming back again slowly, it all worked again properly and has done since.

I think the point here is that it's a car with apps, both in car and on computer/smart device and if you are not a natural computery tablety gadgety appy chappy then you either won't get the most out of it or you will be baffled and grumpy if/when it has the usual computery hiccups.

You can of course just drive the darned thing and ignore all that if you want, but who wouldn't want to watch a video, see some photos, get the weather for your destination, see all your trip report numbers grouped by leisure/work/holiday or whatever and read your email, all on the in-car screen, if it's offered?

Silliness:

I went for the cheapest option on a PCP, and hence chose just 7500 miles per year. Oops. I've done 900 miles this month, cos I like driving it so much. At that rate I'm going to end up paying a big mileage penalty (15.5p per mile) at the end, even if I manage to re-negotiate the payments. Turns out you can only partially alter the payments after the fact, all very boring and not worth explaining the intricate details here. Just make sure you get enough miles in the first place is the answer.

Oh well, that's a lesson learned and would apply to any car bought this way. I could of course reduce the miles driven and use the Volvo. I'll see.

Drawbacks:

You can't tow. You can't put a bike rack on the back. You can't put anything on the roof. And..not much else really!

The future:

After two years, the end of this PCP, would I buy the same/similar car again? As of so far, yep, certainly would.

Would I ditch the diesel second car? I was certain not at the start, much less certain now. We will keep the Volvo for our holiday in May - we think that going to Wales in the Zoe would be ok ish, but we are taking other folk too and whilst we don't mind hanging about in motorway services for an extra hour or two charging on the way, they might not care to play that game. I'm quite sure the journey if perfectly doable of course though, and the car could be charged overnight at the holiday cottage each day with the granny cable.

But I think the idea of having just one car and hiring for holidays is more and more attractive, and cheaper too.

As to the state of the market in two years, Renault are now emailing owners asking them, basically, if they would be prepared to pay for a Zoe with a 44KW battery. That will have, they say, a real (as in actual honest to goodness real, not fudged testing) range of 185 miles, but they are also talking about a possible 5000 Euros extra for it.

Other manufacturers are all doing similar things now - it will be a different ballgame all over again in 24 months, I would think.

Thanks for reading, if you did.