Forum menu
Just put my order in for my yellow Renault 5 to replace the ID3 🙂
Have to wait until October though ☹️
We have a Leaf - the 'slow' charger is type2, 'fast' is Chademo. Whilst it is becoming a problem that Chademo is basically the Betamax of chargers, it comes with a strange hidden benefit.
New 'superfast' charging infrastructure is now exclusively CCS, but the pre-existing chargers that are fast but not 'superfast' tend to have both CCS and Chademo. Which means they tend to be more available. And it's not like they're 'super' slow.
That said, just like VHS, you'd be foolish to go against the direction of travel.
Of course the downside is when you have an overnight power cut that won't be back on until lunch and wife needed car charged because she's out tonight.
I'll have to get it charged after power comes on, at extra expense.....buggers up plans!!
Given that you can buy a Scenic that is 4 months old with only 2K on the clock for nearly £10K less than the new price and that there are similar deals on the Megane, what is the advantage of ordering a car now for delivery in October over just buying a nearly-new one in October with a big discount?
For me I can answer this easily - it's a company car.
Otherwise I'd be looking to make those savings. 🙂
Given that you can buy a Scenic that is 4 months old with only 2K on the clock for nearly £10K less than the new price and that there are similar deals on the Megane, what is the advantage of ordering a car now for delivery in October over just buying a nearly-new one in October with a big discount?
Because it’s through work salary sacrifice, my current car is due to go back in October and there lead time on the R5 works out about right timing wise.
I wouldn’t buy a new EV, like you say buying nearly new will be a big saving.
If I like it I might try to buy it at the end.
there are similar deals on the Megane
The cost of a Megane is also the same through the company as the 5 so arguably that’s the more sensible choice. But sometimes it’s nice to not be sensible.
Is anyone considering the Alpine A290?
A quick question to the EV geeks out there....
What sanely priced EVs have roof rails? I'm going to need to move kayaks about some of the time - and I reckon having a roof rail makes taking on and off roof bars a manageable faff. The ones that slot into grooves or even clamp around the edge of the door is just not somewhere you'd go once or twice a week plus the paint wear.
Also - just to make options limited, it needs to be a vegan interior.
I think it might be a shortlist of the facelift eNiro.... Which is a bit bigger than I'd like.
@Daffy I had a test drive booked but was ill so had to cancel it. I’ve sat in one and had a look around it and was impressed.
I was holding out waiting for it to be added to the list so I could order one but it’s still not appeared on there.
So yes I was considering one… but tbh I’ve kind of gone off the styling of it. The more I look at it the more I think it looks a bit garish. I’ve got a Golf GTI and I’ve always liked the Golfs because they’re subtle, the Alpine isn’t really.
And the more I look at the 5 the more impressed I am, it just makes me smile 🙂
I’ll be gutted if the Alpine appears on the list cheaper than the 5 though 🤣
I posted these further up the thread, but here they are again.
The dash/display looks blummin huge in that little car.
@Daffy I had a test drive booked but was ill so had to cancel it. I’ve sat in one and had a look around it and was impressed.
I was holding out waiting for it to be added to the list so I could order one but it’s still not appeared on there.
So yes I was considering one… but tbh I’ve kind of gone off the styling of it. The more I look at it the more I think it looks a bit garish. I’ve got a Golf GTI and I’ve always liked the Golfs because they’re subtle, the Alpine isn’t really.
And the more I look at the 5 the more impressed I am, it just makes me smile 🙂
I’ll be gutted if the Alpine appears on the list cheaper than the 5 though 🤣
I was the same Phil. I looked at teh Alpine and I'm sure it will be a lot of fun too but the looks are not for me. I must be getting old because I thought it looked too over the top, but that is just my opinion.
Ended up choosing the 110kW Iconic. It was a coin flip for the yellow or the blue, I think they both look awesome!
It was a coin flip for the yellow or the blue, I think they both look awesome!
Good choice, the blue looks great 🙂
I think it would work well with some gold wheels like the Clio Williams had 😉
The dash/display looks blummin huge in that little car.
I think it's just that photo, when I had my test drive of the 5 I thought it was nicely laid out and looks great. I didn't have much of a play about with the infotainment tbh, so I'll have to wait to find out how it actually all works.
Having owned two Renaults and two Peugeots - the idea of a FULLY electric French car terrifies me.
hope you ordered the baguette holder as well
Unfortunately not an option with the lease company 😢 I’ll have to get one from somewhere else 🥖 😆
Having owned nothing but Renault, Dacia, Peugeot and a French built Fiat for 30 years, and fully Electric Renaults for 8 years I have a great deal of faith in the cars. 30 years of paying for home/roadside assistance and recovery, and never ever called them out.
Would somebody who has access to a salary sacrifice scheme mind sharing the "true costs" ?
Not your own of course, but let's take the Renault 5/Megane mentioned above. What would the total cost to you (i.e. after tax) be for say a two year lease at 20k miles/year?
I'm trying to work out whether to hang on to see the details of an NHS salary sacrifice scheme that my wife will have access to soon(ish) or just pull the plug on one of the nearly new cars on sale with big savings over the list price.
By the way, I totally get the head/heart thing. The 5 looks amazing in the metal and I've always had a soft spot for a dual-motor Volvo EX30 in yellow, despite it being a pretty awful combination of scandi minimalism and dreadful software 🙂
Surely depends on what tax bracket you are in to get figures...does it not?
It does
Having owned nothing but Renault, Dacia, Peugeot and a French built Fiat for 30 years, and fully Electric Renaults for 8 years I have a great deal of faith in the cars. 30 years of paying for home/roadside assistance and recovery, and never ever called them out.
and for balance, two low mileage scenic owned, different models, both with too many issues to list out, the most noteworthy was a design issue in the auto gearbox that meant it would always fail after n years / miles, which it did, 3-4 weeks and about a grand direct to a gearbox place to rebuild and fix, with the clear message that in their vast experience “it will definitely go again, it’s a known design fault”. The later model also had a similar expensive design issue with the auto box. the gearbox specialists told me - Renault knew about the fault, and it’s this that really pissed me off.
renault won’t get my money again. YMMD
Are Renault unique in this ? I highly doubt it - I suspect plenty of manufacturers know of issues but still let the cars roll out, taking the risk vs cost assessment route.
OK, fair enough. Does this work as a rough calculation though ?
LeaseLoco seem to think the best deal for a top spec Renault Megane for 40,000 miles over 2 years is around £13,700
Assume a 40% tax rate then that would actually cost you £8,220 over those 2 years right?
A 9 month old top spec Megane with 5k on the clock is currently around £25k on autotrader. That's lost £15k in less than a year by the way. Ouch!
So that car at three years old with 45k on the clock would need to be worth less than £17k for it to work out more expensive than leasing with salary sacrifice. And that's ignoring the fact that, if I buy it I'll probably end up keeping it for more like 7 years (based on previous experience) whereas if I lease it I'm more likely to go for another lease after those two years.
If you want to keep a car for a long time then owning is always better, I think. Because you pay the finance, but then after a while you don't. But you still have the car.
I am not sure I'd buy an 8 month old car though unless I were feeling rich.
Sometimes I buy new, sometimes second hand. I work out roughly what the depreciation, maintenance, failures etc. are likely to cost over the period I intend to own it and choose. A lease has never worked out worth while, there's always been a catch that's made it more expensive than it first appeared. Looking at the current market then in this part of the world a two-year-old Megane is the bargain of the moment especially if it has the 5-year guarantee.
there's always been a catch that's made it more expensive than it first appeared.
Yes. In a shocking turn of events I agree with Ed. You're paying the depreciation either way (for the new car) but you're also paying the lease company's costs and giving them some profit at the same time, along with insuring their risk. And you have a hard stop on the number of miles - if your circumstances change and you need to drive more you could be screwed.
Re the lease vs pcp vs buy on finance
the salary sacrifice has blurred the lines a little as it’s not quite the same, as it’s an all in one, car + insurance + road tax + (on the one here) breakdown + (tusker’s profit margin)
Leasing has to be overall more costly, as you don’t get the car (usually) at the end of a lease.
Does that mean you end up effectively getting a tax break on your car insurance? Not sure what I think about that.
Presumably these schemes will be designed so that the gross price of everything is a bit more than you could get yourself by shopping around, but you get the tax break. So you pay a bit less, the company running the scheme make a nice big profit and the taxpayer foots the bill. Hmmm.
Would somebody who has access to a salary sacrifice scheme mind sharing the "true costs" ?
Not your own of course, but let's take the Renault 5/Megane mentioned above. What would the total cost to you (i.e. after tax) be for say a two year lease at 20k miles/year?
On our salary sacrifice scheme for 24m with 0 down and 20k per year on a Megane EV60 Techno/Comfort/Range 60kWh the total price with all insurance and maintenance is £12.25k or around £510/m nett at a 40% tax payer.
My comparison is a BMW i4 which with the spec I want is around £700/m for 2 years s £17k. In contrast I can buy a 3y old I4 for £26k. Yes, I'd need £1500/y to make it equivalent, so £29k. but if I pay for that over 3y, assuming a £3k deposit for my old car, That's around the same amount as above, but in 3y, I have a 6y old car which I own....
Thanks @Daffy. That's a fair bit more than I was assuming (see above). Best deal I can see for the Techno spec Megane at 20k miles/year was £12,700 over the two years. So paying £12,250 after tax doesn't sound like such a good deal 😀 OK, add in insurance and maintenance for two years, so that's another £2k, but that's still only saving around £3k over what you could get by shopping around for the best lease+insurance deals and still more than it would cost to just buy a second hand model and run that for a few years I think. Plus there is presumably a small hit to your pension to consider.
OK, not comparing like with like and some people are happy to pay more to drive a new car, which is fair enough. But I was expecting salary sacrifice to be a bit more of a no-brainer to be honest.
Presumably that also means the lease company is pocketing something like £20k over those two years.
As I said, I just can’t make it work through the work (Zenith) scheme at a price I’m happy with and for a car I want.
I can however see that when some lease deals for the public come up, they can be cost effective if you want a new car or are happy to pay a premium to have less worry, but it’s not for me. I think I’m too Scottish/Northern.
Salary sacrifice for company cars used to be a clear tax dodge so they brought in BIK tax (a long time ago) to make it comparable with leasing your own. The tax break for EVs is there to promote cleaner motoring (from which we all benefit). I think the lease companies are helping themselves to a good chunk of that though.
It does work out well if you want to lease a new car; however I don't think it stacks up well against buying used. It does against buying new though (if you're keeping) because whilst you end up paying for the car (probably more) anyway you are getting part of it tax free and it's also spread over a longer term, assuming you finance the purchase after the lease term.
There is a large convenience aspect to it as well. I never own new cars, the newest I’ve ever bought was 12months old.
We run one car that we own (and a campervan) and the all inclusive, hassle free lease takes care of the other. It does cost a bit more than we would spend otherwise - the price of convenience.
A few weeks ago I got a puncture pulling on to the drive in the evening. A couple of hours later there was a guy on my drive fitting a new tyre. The text I received said it cost £277. If I owned the car I would have probably ended up taking the wheel off myself and taking it to a tyre place and it would’ve been at least the next day before I’d sorted it.
I first decided to lease 5 years ago because I wanted to try electric but didn’t want the risk of owning anything second hand. Now I’m happier that the technology has proved itself I’d be happy to buy and may do when we replace the current petrol GTI.
On the salary sacrifice route which my next car is using. it affects other payments such as student loans, which if like most people you will never pay off anyway might be seen as a benefit.
Leasing has to be overall more costly, as you don’t get the car (usually) at the end of a lease.
Not cut and dried.
It depends on depreciation which is factored in on a lease.
I've just got a Vauxhall Grandland Ultimate EV on 18mth lease for £310 down first payment and £310 monthly.
There is no scenario I know of where it's cheaper to buy/own over the same periond. If there is let me know.
A few weeks ago I got a puncture pulling on to the drive in the evening. A couple of hours later there was a guy on my drive fitting a new tyre. The text I received said it cost £277.
You don't need a lease for that - mobile tyre services are widely available. The difference is that they don't charge you £277, but they'll charge the lease company that.
There is no scenario I know of where it's cheaper to buy/own over the same periond. If there is let me know.
Per month, no, because you're effectively spreading the cost over a longer period. But you aren't paying into an asset - even a depreciating one.
That's cheap, Rone, enjoy the car. You'd have to buy second hand (which you couldn't as it's a new model) and keep the thing for many years to beat that. When I bought the Zoé I calcualted it would be four years before buying outright was cheaper than leasing. In fact buying proved the better option quicker than expected due to new car inflation and what a new lease would have cost at three years. At five and a half years it doesn't owe me a lot and I still like it. I suspect I'll be keeping it years.
Yeah cheers Educator.
Key is to swap when it suits. I've bought cars - before depends on what deals are on offer.
Also suits my working circumstances - low miles sporadic jobs.
Lease is just mostly hassle free for me.
Yeah cheers Edukator.
Key is to swap when it suits. I've bought cars - before depends on what deals are on offer.
Also suits my working circumstances - low miles sporadic location jobs - office mountain bike commute rest of time.
Lease is just mostly hassle free for me. And I see cars as necessary hassles.
Yeah cheers Edukator.
Key is to swap when it suits. I've bought cars - before depends on what deals are on offer.
Also suits my working circumstances - low miles sporadic location jobs - office mountain bike commute rest of time.
Lease is just mostly hassle free for me. And I see cars as necessary hassles.
Yeah cheers Edukator.
Key is to swap when it suits. I've bought cars - before depends on what deals are on offer.
Also suits my working circumstances - low miles sporadic location jobs - office mountain bike commute rest of time.
Lease is just mostly hassle free for me. And I see cars as necessary hassles.
Probably wouldn't work as well for higher mileage drivers.
(God knows why this has displayed three times.)