Electric Cars:what's available?

[Gibbo2286]

I'll have to wait until I pick the car up, there was mention of cables in the listing but I can't find the listing now.

[NewcastleFalcon]

I'll have to wait until I pick the car up, there was mention of cables in the listing but I can't find the listing now.

When is e-day then Gibbo

I reckon it would be nice if you start off a thread in the OTCL with the first pics when you take possession of the Zoe. I'm sure you can come up with one of your usual quirky titles.

Who can forget your "Syringe My Ears" thread

That’s the finest thread title so far this January.

Much kudos Gibbo, Part of the FCF’s uniqueness and charm, I can fairly safely say that you won’t find a thread called Syringe my ears anywhere else on the world wide web

Regards Neil

REgards Neil

[Gibbo2286]

I'm still waiting for the battery lease rigmarole to get done Neil, don't have a date yet for the collection.

[Mandrake]

Wait, what, Gibbo has bought an EV ? How did I miss that.

I'm assuming for £2900 from an auction this is a sight unseen punt to have something to play around with ?

While the Zoe is not the car for me and is known to have a few issues that can crop up, (problems with the heating / heat pump system is not uncommon) many people swear by them, and for a long time I believe they were the 2nd best selling EV behind the Leaf. There are certainly plenty of them around which is always good from a 2nd hand spare parts perspective.

When I had the gearbox failure on my Leaf the fact that there are a lot of Leaf's on the road and therefore quite a few in breaker yards saved my bacon as I was able to find a 2nd hand gearbox at a tolerable price and get the car fixed and back on the road. If the same had happened in my Peugeot Ion (which is a very rare car with just a few hundred in the UK) chances of finding a gearbox for that would have been near nill and the price of a new gearbox would have written it off.

Although I wouldn't personally choose a battery lease version of the Zoe, one upside is that the battery remains under warranty for the life of the car so if the traction battery did ever fail or degrade excessively that is covered as part of the battery warranty that the battery lease provides and Renault would replace the battery even when the rest of the car is well out of its normal warranty. So the battery lease can be seen partly as an insurance policy for the battery.

Regarding charging cables - the Zoe would have originally come with a three phase 16/32 amp Type 2 to Type 2 charging cable.

It should look something like the one below on the left:

This can be used at "slow" public chargers, or on dedicated EV home wall chargers like I have. It can also be charged on the AC connector on a rapid charger - not all modern rapid chargers have AC connectors any more (Instavolt and Ionity do not) but many do.

A "granny" charger was not supplied as standard but can be purchased for use with the Zoe to charge it through a 3 pin plug however it's not the recommended method as the Zoe doesn't charge very efficiently at very slow speeds (2kW) due to the design of its charger.

It's also not recommend to charge from a 3 pin plug long term on any EV just due to the risk of overheating the plug/socket. But it's Ok to use for a while. I charged my Ion from a 3 pin plug for about 6 months before I got a proper wall charger installed but I did keep a careful eye on the temperature of the 3 pin plug. A waterproof outdoor socket would be the best way to use a granny charger as using an extension cable has overheating risks due to the quality of many extension cables.

The Zoe granny charger looks like this but any equivalent 3rd party one with the same connectors should work:

[Gibbo2286]

Another upside to the battery lease is that it includes breakdown cover for whatever the breakdown cause. I've reckoned that £1800 for three years still keeps the car under five grand, the cheapest I've found for sale to date is £6495 and with double the mileage on the clock. a car, same age with owned battery is listed at nine grand.
As you say though it's a gamble and something to play with.

[Mandrake]

Another upside to the battery lease is that it includes breakdown cover for whatever the breakdown cause. I've reckoned that £1800 for three years still keeps the car under five grand, the cheapest I've found for sale to date is £6495 and with double the mileage on the clock. a car, same age with owned battery is listed at nine grand.
As you say though it's a gamble and something to play with.

Yep, I thought it might be a toy to have a play around with and dip a toe in the water. I'm assuming it's the original 22kWh Zoe not the more recent 40kWh model ? If so I believe the range of the 22kWh Zoe is around 80 miles when new but I'm not intimately familiar with their specifications. The newer 40kWh model is good for about 150 miles I think.

Included breakdown cover is good - with the Leaf if you use Nissan for the yearly service they include breakdown cover with that, however as I already have AA breakdown cover as a driver (for any car I drive) I'm not too worried about that.

[Gibbo2286]

Yes it's the early one with 22w Neil put up some useful videos one of which is the same model so I now know how to get it on the move.

[NewcastleFalcon]

I'm sure one of the video's probably one of the lengthier ones covered INsurance with a leased battery. This is it here Used Renault Zoe Can a case be made to buy one

This thread on Speak EV mentions some practical difficulties in the event of a claim and a bit of the usual "tit for tat I know better than you" which I find both unnecessary and irritating, and one of the reasons I dont participate in that forum. Key thing I took from the thread is that some of the key players eg Admiral are more switched on than the others.

In the event of a claim RCI who own the battery will expect to be paid the full value of a replacement battery as their loss. They will get that one way or another either out of your pocket or from the insurance policy you have taken out.

This contribution quoted from Admiral
https://www.speakev.com/threads/insuran ... ry.137584/

https://www.speakev.com/threads/insurance-nightmare-and-renault-zoe-leased-battery.137584/

Generally recommended or indeed its pretty compulsory that the value of the car is stated to include, the payout to RCI for the loss of their battery.

Worth getting the clarification you need direct from the insurers when taking out a policy, and try to find one that has some clue about the battery lease arrangement.

Regards Neil

[Dormouse]

The amount of practical nitty gritty about EVs I have learned from these threads alone is huge.
My son in law's parents have a Mitsubishi PHEV and where ever they go they are obsessed with plugging in their 13A granny plug to the point that they carry an extension lead so they can put it out of hotel rooms to charge their car overnight. I don't know why they bother as, more often than not, the unit trips out after 15mins or so and ceases to charge until you reset it. It does it at my daughter's and it does it here when they visit and it does it lots of times when they are on the go apparently. Why would you put up with that?

[Hell Razor5543]

Well, it looks like the Citroen Ami is going to be available in the UK;

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/cars/news/cit ... d=msedgntp

[Gibbo2286]

Not very nice comments on their side column but they might be wrong, there's always a market among the 'cults' for such a model.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Well, it looks like the Citroen Ami is going to be available in the UK;

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/cars/news/cit ... d=msedgntp

David Hallworth will be pleased
viewtopic.php?p=663724#p663724

Regards Neil

[Dormouse]

I don't see any reason why it shouldn't find a market in the UK. A cheap, small car has always had a niche, so why not a cheap, small electric car? Not everybody wants or needs a big car and running / ownership costs should be affordable. Why not? Bring on the Fourgonnette.

[Gibbo2286]

These quotes arrived today, what do you guys think?

[Mandrake]

Why 26mph top speed though, not say 33mph ?

Even on a 30mph road it's going to be holding up lots of disgruntled drivers who are not used to observing the speed limit let alone going below it...

Especially odd given that the Renault Twizzy, which is the spiritual competitor to the new Ami can manage 45-50mph.

Even as a little shopping basket to travel only on 30mph city roads, not quite being able to reach the speed limit of the road seems like a huge disadvantage to me.

My guess is being French, there is some tax threshold or regulation that they are trying to skirt with the unusual choice of speed limit.

(Most Citroen's of the past have had engine sizes aligned with taxation thresholds in France etc...)