Renault Zoe 2018 electric car owner review

Renault Zoe 2018 electric car owner review

Jack Sivewright drives a Renault Zoe Signature ZE40 2018 electric car.

This is Jack’s first electric car, he’s owned the Renault Zoe under 1-2 years and drives 5,000-10,000 miles annually. The current mileage of the car is between 30,000-40,000 miles and he achieves 160 miles range from a full charge.

 

Rate your Renault Zoe out of 5.

 

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Why did you choose this electric car?

I wanted to be environmentally conscious, aware that EVs suffer less from high maintenance costs, less polluting and aware that govt policy to phase out ICEs in about 5 years or so. ICE at the time of buying an EV was liable to need bigger maintenance bills soon and the Zoe was Car of the Year for two years; reading people’s experiences with EVs was positive.

 

Positives – List 3 or more reasons why you love this electric car.

  • Easy to drive an automatic
  • Driving it has made me IMHO a safer, more relaxed driver
  • I am continuously calculating the savings in ‘MPG’ terms (e.g. one short trip recently gave me the equivalent of 1940mpg (based on using a home charger & being charged at 7.5p/kWh after midnight). Additionally, the rate at destination chargers is between 7 and 9kWh but home charging comes at 24kwh for some reason. However, the max. rate is supposed to be 7kWh.

Negatives – List 3 or more things that you really don’t like about this electric car.

  • The charging flap is at the front – in our first winter, it froze and would not open but I solved it by spraying PTFE spray
  • The manual says the glovebox is A4 size, not at all, a4 sheets have to be rolled up
  • The manual shows the one piece back seat folds flat, not at all, The squab is thick and lies at about 20 degrees to the horizontal, this limits the load taken with the back seat down.
  • The manual says no roof rack allowed but companies sell roof racks for the car, possibly illegal.
  • The small lead acid battery is supposed to be changed every two years, surely it should last longer than that?
  • The battery for the remote control can fail in days. In our first three weeks, the display told me to change the brand new battery five times.
  • The onboard computer has reset the sat nav sound to mute by itself on a random basis.

 

Have you experienced any faults with the car? If so, what have they been?

In about 9,000 miles of use, the suspension & steering have needed three repairs. Without the Renault maintenance warranty taken out at time of purchase, we would have had higher than usual charges.

 

What are the standout tech features of the car?

Cannot think of any, except that the newer Zoes have a worse Euro NCAP safety rating; unusual in that the newer models are worse and not better than the older ones.

 

What electric car are you interested in next and why?

I expect that this car should be the last one I buy (barring accidents, of course).

What home charging unit do you use? Would you recommend it to others and why?

Wallbox

 

Rate your home charging unit out of 5.

What home electricity supplier & tariff do you use? Would you recommend it to others and why?

Octopus Go

 

Rate your electricity supplier out of 5.

 

What public charging networks would you recommend to others and why?

  • ChargePlace Scotland – (uses an RFID card and very widespread in Scotland )
  • Pod Point- app is really easy.

 

List your top 3 favourite public charging networks (in order of preference).

  • CPS,CPS,CPS!

 

Who do you insure your electric car with? Would you recommend them to others and why?

Tesco

 

Rate your insurance provider out of 5.

 

Estimate how much money you save per month owning and running an electric car compared to a petrol/diesel car.

£60

 

See other owner reviews here

 

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