Ok so the Nova thread might have reminded me about this…

The negative side of electric car ownership? Or have Renault got it a bit wrong? These are all (iirc) £28-32k cars when new, can’t remember seeing anything depreciate like this before:

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?postcode=mk93nz&make=RENAULT&model=ZOE&onesearchad=Used&onesearchad=Nearly%20New&onesearchad=New&advertising-location=at_cars&page=1

The technology is moving so fast that five year old cars are not elegant any more?

Rachel

Outclassed by the latest generation of electric cars e.g. Tesla.

Maybe the pricing changed – Renault website claims pricing “from £14,245”.
Isn’t there a monthly battery lease to factor in?

Deceptive pricing, up to £89/month lease costs for the battery.

Shit oops, ignore my price statement. Still roughly £20k to £5k is going to hurt anyway!

Very few people would have “owned” those cars, let alone paid £25k. Most will be ex-fleet / leases.

Ouch ! That’s going to salughter the electric “cost savings”

As I have said before for me right now it’s Hybrid as the only sensible option if you want to go electric

Renault compulsory battery lease is insane, no idea how they sell any like that. Looked at one in the showroom last time i was picking my car up from its MOT, and can’t see why anyone would ever buy one. Similar sized petrol car is much cheaper to buy and factoring in battery lease, cheaper to run too i’d gamble.

£89 is two tanks of petrol. £5k plus £89 is a well cheap car for lowish local miles imo…

Incredibly few will have been bought outright (the part outside the battery lease), Renault were doing silly cheap PCP & lease finance deals. Not worth it at all to pay the balloon payment, and Renault didn’t seem to want to budge or offer a way to pay off the battery lease so they all came back.

Hopefully they see sense, if you could exit the battery lease for sensible money they’d be a decent buy at those prices.

Three year old French hatch. What did you expect?

The newer 2017 Zoes are pricier because they go much further, but the earlier ones were a bargain for a short range runaround. I know of people who have kept them at the end of the lease period because chopping it in for one of the newer ones would be much more expensive for extra range they don’t need.

matt_outandabout

£89 is two tanks of petrol. £5k plus £89 is a well cheap car for lowish local miles imo…

Two tanks of petrol is probably good for about 1000 miles in a small petrol engined car though. That’s a lot of local miles.

I was thinking of getting a second hand Zoe as a replacement for our current car. It would mainly be used by my wife for work and any longer journeys would be in my pick up.

I did some back of a fag packet calculations based on mpg of current car, 1.4l petrol Astra, cost per mile of the battery lease and cost per mile of electricity to charge. At today’s petrol cost it came in pretty even, slightly lower for the Zoe. Factoring in VED, reduced it further in favour of the Zoe. I then thought if you factored in the extra cost of a similar age low mileage equivalent ICE, say a Clio, over 5 years it reduced it significantly in favour of the Zoe. Added to this the likelihood of petrol cost going up and being able to shop around for cheaper electric, I’m coming down on the side of the Zoe at the moment.

£89 is two tanks of petrol. £5k plus £89 is a well cheap car for lowish local miles imo…

+1

Whattiler – for S/H, don’t forget to factor in the cost of a charger and wiring it in- it won’t charge from a 13A three pin socket. The calcs I’ve seen also have a very slightly lower maintenance per mile calc – no turbo, injectors, DPF issues, I assume.

As I have said before for me right now it’s Hybrid as the only sensible option if you want to go electric

For you on a personal basis perhaps, but we note that Toyota who were big pro-hybrid anti-electric types are now going to be heading electric.
Must have found they had the rights to a lithium mine.

it won’t charge from a 13A three pin socket

It can, albeit slowly and not very efficiently, if you buy the adapter, but they’re not cheap so unless you’re regularly going to be charging it in several locations you might as well get a proper charger.

I think you can still get the OLEV grant with a second hand car, can’t you?

£89 is two tanks of petrol. £5k plus £89 is a well cheap car for lowish local miles imo…

You know it’s £89 a month yeah?

That’s more than my Wife spends on fuel each month. She’d be the perfect candidate for an EV. She only drives 15-20 miles a day, lots of short trips between stops, but she’s not going to make the leap to EV if it costs more.

As above, it’s £89 / month. So £5k + £1068 (per year) + eleccy charges.

I do low miles in a Fiesta 1L ecoboost, I spend nowhere near £89/month on petrol, not even half that. Although given my mileage the battery rental would be £69 or £79/month.

https://www.renault.co.uk/renault-finance/battery-hire.html

So a Tesla costs £100k and does 200 miles, a Zoe costs £25k and does 150 miles.

Mate of mine has one, I’ll have to ask him how he purchased / leases it, he didn’t mention renting the battery !

He’s impressed with his and says it’s saved him loads of money

I need to do some sums. As P-Jay above, my wife only does 10-20 miles a day, so range isn’t an issue. What else is worth looking at?

P-Jay – one year old Nissan Leaf probably the best option for Mrs P-Jay, then.

How does the battery lease situation differ with the Leaf?

Those Leaf prices are hilarious.
The depreciation is catastrophic, what happens when the battery no longer holds the charge? How much is a new battery ? Can you get hold of a first gen battery even ?

But £5k for a run about is cheap for a relatively new car with little miles.

I just had a look at the original link and changed the car from a zoe to a clio. At first glance the cars with similar age/spec are about 7-8 grand.

Is the depreciation on a Zoe much worse than a Clio then?

stevio the Clio didn’t cost £25, more like £15-18 ?

It’s a bit like buying a razor (cheap purchase, expensive replacement heads)

Surprised at how cheap they are though. 90%+ of our journeys are in range of an electric car – regular short trips

If we needed a 2nd car we’d consider one if the pricing got more realistic

Fair enough Jamba. Looks like depreciation is a real issue.

I wonder if it’s driven by the battery thing or is it because of the new gen of EVs about to hit the market with bigger ranges?

Edukator has one (in France) I’ve asked him what the expected economics are and about the battery lease

igm I don’t doubt full electric is a genuine possibility for the future just for me it’s just later not now. Also Hybrid’s have no range issues

Some of the Zoes and Leafs have batteries included, but are sometimes a little more to buy 2nd hand. You can also still get a grant for the charger at home.

For a 2nd car they look like a reasonable option if most of your journeys would be in range. Battery life seems better than feared, but if you do need to replace them it could be pricey.

How does the battery lease situation differ with the Leaf?

Some were sold with the battery, some were sold on a battery lease arrangement like the Zoe. If you’re looking on autotrader, the leased ones have E in the model name. Nissan dealers can apparently buy out the battery to make a leased one owned again.

So a Tesla costs £100k and does 200 miles, a Zoe costs £25k and does 150 miles.

The latest Tesla is about $35k, UK pricing TBA.

https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/model3

I don’t know what the deal is with batteries for electric vehicles, is there a standard one size fits all approach, or does it vary between manufacturers?

does it vary between manufacturers?

They are all car specific.

I’d be tempted if I had £4.5k, it’d be unusual for both of us in the ‘spoon house to be doing >100miles in a day. And I’m getting through £200 in petrol each month so £110 to lease a battery for unlimited milage seems a bargain.

That and no congestion or LEZ charges now or in the future. If you work in London that could save a fair amount.

They are all car specific.

Depends how far you go in stripping down, apparently inside they’re just a load of 18650 cells, so if you’re that way inclined you could re-build one. A colleague stripped and refurbished (by charging the cells individually on a smarter charger) a prius one when it failed (NiMH not Li-ion, but the same principle).

For a 2nd car they look like a reasonable option if most of your journeys would be in range. Battery life seems better than feared, but if you do need to replace them it could be pricey.

That’s the advantage of leasing the battery, you never need to pay outright to replace them.

Depends how far you go in stripping down, apparently inside they’re just a load of 18650 cells, so if you’re that way inclined you could re-build one

Well you could, but wiring up over 1700 18650 cells DIY is quite brave….

The Tesla batteries are pretty sophisticated, custom cell chemistry, explosive charge 1500A fuse, integrated thermal cooling running between the cells, integrated thermal management etc etc.

I was tempted by a Leaf as there are lots at under £4k now. The minimum £79 a month for the battery plus £2 a go for charging it means it’d work out about £30 a month more expensive than my diesel Focus just for going to work. I know cost isn’t the only factor to take into account though.

The minimum £79 a month for the battery

Says £49 (for 7500miles/year) is the minimum on the nissan site?

I suspect the maths is making it pretty close to diesel anyway, presumably things like government subsidies are calculated to get them competitive.

I know cost isn’t the only factor to take into account though.

This is probably the clincher though, the question is rapidly moving away from “can I use an electric car” towards “can I really justify my use of fossil fuel”.