Used Renault Zoe-can a case be made to buy one?

[NewcastleFalcon]

Below £10,000 if you want to buy a used electric vehicle the choice is a 24kWh Nissan Leaf, or a 22kWh Renault Zoe...................you may find a Peugeot Ion/Citroen C-Zero, Mitsubishi i-miev but more of a rarity.

The Bargain basement Electric thread covers the Leaf but have Renault effectively killed the second-hand market in the Zoe with their continuing battery leasing millstone now on ageing vehicles. If anyone takes a Zoe on with a leased battery do not imagine that they will replace the battery for you! Why? it would be complete economic madness for them to do it.

But the Zoe is one of the best-selling EV's ever, surely a case can be made for taking on a second-hand Zoe
Don't think I could, but then again I have an aversion to leases. Don't like to be told how many miles I can do or be lumbered with charges for the odd inevitable scratch or scuffed alloy wheel, and dont like paying for an insurance ie supposed to take away "battery replacement anxiety" when the chances of them ever replacing a battery under the terms of the lease are precisely zero (in my opinion).

So dig up some Zoes second hand and see if completion of the Bargain Basement Electric handy calculation aid comes up with a case for buying a second hand Zoe. The majority of the Adverts of Zoe's for sale never mention the battery lease.

FCF Bargain Basement Electric thread provides the double tab packet worksheet to assist careful decision making.....

Regards Neil

[Michel]

I'd not touch a Zoe with someone else's Neil. Precisely because of the battery lease.

When our C3 Pic has served it's time, I shall be getting a leaf. We don't do many long journeys now.

[NewcastleFalcon]

To add to the information base for anyone considering purchasing a second-hand renault Zoe in relation to battery leases. THis is a good summary.

Battery Lease Explained

There appears to have been a bit of a change. The agreements are a simple annual milage with no fixed term, and a little more straightforward to transfer between sellers and buyers. When battery efficiency drops to 75%, the batteries are repaired or replaced, free of charge. (bit of a looming liability for Renault I would have thought as Zoe's get older).

Depend a great deal on whether you trust the "battery lease" to do what it says or not, without quibble.

Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Information on Car Dealers adverts rarely mentions the Battery Lease on most Second hand Zoe's.

Zoe's with a "i" prefix I interpret as being Battery owned, altough best to check out of course. So this example at Arnold Clark at Irvine should be a battery owned Zoe....£8,998, 22kWh, 65 reg, £8,998 and 31,609 miles.

I would have thought that would plug into my tab packet calculations and over 4 years without a battery lease doing a decent milage, fuel savings should virtually pay financing costs, after the residual value comes in at year 4.

https://www.arnoldclark.com/used-cars/r ... d-u-627234

REgards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Video time on the "Used Renault Zoe-can a case be made to buy one?" thread.

First up.....Renault Video October 2019 explaining their Battery Lease.....(er or more correctly RCI's battery lease)

Bearing in mind that only an "i" branded Renault Zoe comes with a battery owned, and all other (the majority) of second-hand Zoe's will have a battery lease. All very simple.



Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Video number 2.

The Battery Lease Scheme has been ditched on the new Renault Zoe, but leases exist for the majority of all Zoes sold prior to this. RCI, through Renault Dealers, are prepared to allow buy out of existing leases, and indeed are probably keen to dispose of the leases.

Question is as Zoe's get older, and approach the 75% SoH threshhold on batteries (the point at which under the lease Renault will repair or replace the pack if indeed it is as simple as the renault video previously posted), does a lease for an 7-8 year old Zoe start to become an advantage over owning the battery.

The video gives an example quote of a 22kWH 2016 16-Reg Zoe at £3,800 for a buy out of the battery lease, and RCI require it to be organised through a Renault Dealer. The calculation method will be standard and vary only with battery age and designed to be cost neutral when compared to having bought the battery as part of the original purchase.



Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

This piece from Simon is worth bringing into this thread....his reasons why he ruled out a Zoe when replacing his Peugeot Ion

Hi Neil,

Yes I've ruled out the Zoe for a few reasons. Here are some of them:

1) The 22kWh model (as that one is) doesn't have a range much more than what I have now, maybe 75 miles in summer, whereas the 30kWh Leaf will do a bit over 100. So I don't feel the range increase is enough over the 63 miles the Ion originally did when I got it to be worth the cost and hassle of swapping. The 40kWh Zoe has a range of around 140-150 miles however is much more expensive pushing up near £20k as it is still a very new model.

2) The 22kWh and 40kWh Zoe use AC rapid charging, originally at 43kW but more recent models are 22kW. No other EV on the market uses AC rapid charging at these speeds and it is considered to be oddball and obsolete now, with all other EV's using DC for rapid charging. Many new networks such as Instavolt do not support AC rapid charging at all (Chademo and CCS only) and while you can plug into a normal Type 2 "Fast" charger with a Zoe, most of those are not 22kW they are only 7kW. Being able to rapid charge a Zoe in the future is going to become problematic.

3) There are numerous reliability problems reported with the Zoe - it's a French car remember... And unlike a Citroen you get French unreliability but without the French quirkiness that we love. The AC onboard charger has to work all the way from 3kW to 43kW and there are many design compromises in its design to do this.

It is extremely inefficient at anything less than 7kW, it has a tendency to trip RCD's in charge points and houses, it is extremely fussy about testing the Earth connection and will refuse to charge if the earth connection is higher than 100 ohms from memory, whereas other cars are much more lenient, so there are a lot of reports of charges failing which Renault are not able to solve.

The onboard charger and high voltage system seems to suffer from a worrying number of failures, also the aircon compressor is a known weak point often needing regassing in only two years or failing outright, and as it uses the A/C compressor to cool the battery this can cause problems with rapid charging.

There were reports of rapid battery degradation which caused Renault to issue a firmware update to the Battery management system to "fix" this problem, however I'm a little cynical that they have just modified the reporting algorithm to make the battery seem better without actually unlocking any more capacity. To be fair Nissan released a similar firmware update for the early 30kWh Leaf's to address what initially appeared to be rapid degradation.

4) The rear seat is not split - which is a bit of a dealbreaker for us with a child seat in the rear but the need to squeeze in as much stuff as we can sometimes. (We use the split rear seat in the Xantia a lot let alone the Ion - trips to Ikea etc)

5) Interior build quality is noticably tacky and cheap with lots of hard plastics etc - very much like the Ion which has a very bare bones interior. The Leaf has much better interior build quality that is more comparable to the Xantia Exclusive.

6) There are a lot of reports of problems with the heating system in the Zoe ranging from the heater failing altogether (usually due to the A/C compressor failing as it is a heat pump system) to control system problems that cause it to put old cold air when it should be putting out hot air, while the heating system in the Leaf is well regarded and reliable with almost no reports of failures.

7) It's a bigger car than the Ion for sure, but it's smaller than a Leaf. You can probably tell better than me since you drive one, but a Leaf is roughly a Xantia sized interior and a true 5 seater while the Zoe is a similar size to a Renault Clio.

The 50kWh Zoe does address some of the issues above - it uses CCS charging and it has a greatly improved interior and interior build quality from what I've seen, has a split rear seat, as well as a nice bump in range (something like 180 miles) but they're brand new and still very expensive as a result, and I still worry greatly about the reliability of the high voltage system as it's still French...

On the plus side all Zoe's have active battery thermal management so should see less battery degradation than the Leaf.

I'm sure the Zoe works well for some people and it is a step up from the Ion, but it has enough quirks and concerns that it's a no go for me certainly in 22kWh guise.

Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Seeing as a Second hand Zoe got a mention today, a while since the thread has been updated.

So bit extra info. Things to look out for etc
Headlights


Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

..and there's more, my newly discovered youtubers do a decent enough job, and the moving pictures give a little more interest than a long page of prose about the same thing...and I've saved a portion of the introductory waffle to boot...
a whole 44 seconds of it



Informative well presented but....NF opinion warning....but don't agree with her conclusions especially the ever so assuring "if battery drops to less than 75% of original capacity if you have a battery lease Renault will replace it free of charge."

No doubt if they do (highly unlikely...the series of owners will have fallen foul of some condition of the lease over 8-10 years) they would have to come up with subsequent battery leasing arrangements to cover the cost of the "free of charge" replacement battery, and cast iron build into the monthly payments a nice slice of profit.

Then again I am operating a bit of a "battery lease" system myself on a used EV. A least if you have ownership of the vehicle and battery, its your choice whether you set aside a monthly sum to cover battery replacement. How many do? Well there's me but probably not many others. The battery lease, if it works as it should, does the same thing, whether you like it or not, in a contract with RCI. Its just I have little confidence of the battery replacement bit on 8-12 year old cars being honoured.

Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Heavy going maybe if you aren't in the process of seriously considering a Zoe, but I have quoted this outfit before and their thorough written assessment of battery leases, but they have done videos too, lengthy-ish as I say, but informative if you are actively interested.

Battery Leases

EV Help: Beginners or new owners guide to using a Renault Zoe


Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Anyone interested in a used Zoe should be aware of the different versions with respect to charging. It was mentioned in the video from electrifying earlier in the thread. viewtopic.php?p=696542#p696542

From Speak EV
Edit

https://www.speakev.com/threads/used-zo ... are.47393/

All early ZOEs were 43kW 'quick' capable. Then Renault introduced their own motor which was only capable of 22kW maximum charge rate; these are the R models. You could still opt for the Q version (with the original Continental motor) by paying a premium. Supposedly, the R motor is more efficient, but there has been little evidence for this.

Looking under the bonnet, the Q and R models are very different.

Edit: With the paucity of 43kW AC chargers available "on the road", and declining, the Q versions are of little advantage

Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

If you missed it amongst the verbage and presentation style of this, important points are made about insuring a car with a battery lease. The battery if subject to a lease is owned by RCI. In the event of a claim they require their loss to be covered. Insurance is easy enough to arrange, and pay the premiums, but in the event of a loss with a battery lease RCI require paying for the Battery, and you are paid for the car. This is this chaps interpretation of that, he is a car dealer not an insurance company and securing a policy which pays out in case of a loss for both battery and car requires the Insurance company you choose to be switched on and you as a car owner with a leased battery need to declare insured values to cover both the car and the battery.

At taking premium time, all this declaring correct values may give some assurance, but at claim time the potential for "messyness" of payouts to RCI/ and the Owner, I would suspect rarely result in a no quibble claim, whatever value you stick in your initial proposal.

The video starts at the Insurance matters bit.



REgards Neil

[Gibbo2286]

Yes I read that Neil, my insurance on the C5 is due so I'm going to try and twist their arm a bit about insuring the Zoe.
They don't like us oldies too much so the quotes keep getting higher as each year goes by and the no claims can't be used against two cars.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Ported over from the spotting thread.

The Zoe deal is getting to be a bit of a drag, got the battery lease forms to sign yesterday just two signatures needed along with twelve pages of small print.
Lot's of interesting stuff in there but it gives me a headache.

Effecively there isnt a choice whatever the small print says. RCI own the battery and if you have agreed to purchase the car, and you dont want to take the battery out of the car and return it to RCI, you have to accept the agreement on their terms.

The only other course of action would be to buy the battery out. RCI will give you a price for that. Bearing in mind they have probably already recouped the full value of the battery plus their profit over the 7 years, the buy out may be £2,000-£2,500 ish and has to be done through a Renault dealer.

This video from March 2020 covers most of the points and had a quote of at that time a 22kWH 2016 16-Reg Zoe at £3,800 for a buy out so a 4 year old Zoe at that time.

viewtopic.php?p=638151#p638151

Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Anyone want to see the Battery Lease Agreement from RCI for a Zoe?

https://myrenaultzoe.com/docs/batteryhi ... eement.pdf

One of the short and curlies walk away clauses

6.3 We shall not be liable to you for damage to private electrical installations, the Battery or the Vehicle where you have failed to comply with the manufacturer recommendations in particular (but not limited to) loss that arises as a result of your:

6.3.1 using charging equipment that does not comply with the recommendations of the manufacturer;
6.3.2 using installations that are not equipped with the correct charging equipment as recommended by the manufacturer;
6.3.3 failing to maintain the Vehicle or the Battery in accordance with the manufacturer/supplier recommendations;
6.3.4 failing to service the Vehicle as specified in the maintenance and warranty handbook;
6.3.5 carrying out repairs or maintenance yourself or through a repairer that is not authorised and such repairs failing to comply with manufacturer recommendations;

6.3.6 damaging the Vehicle/Battery through use in a sporting competition of any type whatsoever;
6.3.7 making modifications to the Battery or Vehicle.

The reality is they will of course just take your money for the Lease payments, and such clauses will no doubt only be examined and evidence required to be provide of compliance should a SOH of 75% be reached, and RCI are faced with a possible battery replacement claim.

Regards Neil