Small incident with our Prius this morning, and we need to replace it. We’d planned to change it for an EV in the next year or two anyway, so I’m thinking about the best and/or cheapest way to get one.

Leaf was the most widely available last time I looked. We don’t need a lot of range as it only does local trips and we have another car, so I’m thinking one of the older models with smaller battery that people have been replacing due to range anxiety.

Got a garage, drive you can charge on from a normal plug? Something like a 2015 Leaf , with 11 bars left , charge on a normal plug overnight, will be the cheapest/most bang for buck in my experience. What’s the going rate for one of those?

2011 Leaf with 24kWh battery and 77k miles for £4,500 seems like a bargain, no?

EDIT ah, the first gen is apparently a bit rubbish, but another £500 gets you the second gen.

twizzy?

be careful with some cars right at the bottom (pricing) of the market – some still have battery leases.

Renault fluence was dirt cheap last time I looked, similar size to the prius

We probably don’t need a Prius sized replacement anyway. It’s just for school run and local trips.

I picked up a £5K Leaf a year or so back to go a couple of miles up and down to the station and to and from the supermarket. It has a pretty knackered battery with only a 35-40 mile real range.

Over the last year it is pretty much the only car I use. I make myself take the other two out for some journeys just to keep them moving a bit.

The MK 1 Leaf has some really annoying features such as not being about to adjust the radio when in reverse and making you turn the car completely off and then on again if you have been stationary with it switched on for more than a couple of minutes but if you forget about it as a car and just think of it as a domestic appliance to get you from A to B it is amazingly effective.

I’ve discounted the Mk1 Leaf, as the Mk2 isn’t much more and is apparently a lot better. As well as not having a cream interior which let’s face it is a deal-breaker for us!

I’d seriously consider the smallest Renault as the battery leases make the car worthwhile (ie get one with the battery on a lease).
There were some decent leafs going last time I looked but you need to be willing to travel. Search areas such as Harrogate where you have a population that is more likely to have invested in such things as hybrids and electric cars. We bought a really nicely specced Toyota hybrid from down there one careful lady owner etc low mileage.

Lots of Zoes at much lower mileage and younger than the similarly priced Leafs, but with the battery lease. On the one hand, it’s £49/mo for the battery but on the other it’s always a decent battery.

They look pretty good but they are a smaller class of car and my 12yo already has legs as long as my wife does.

We have a 15 plate Zoe as the local runaround. Junior is 6’2” and gets in the back no problem. Lovely little motor – it has a few quirks, but I paid just less than £5k for it 18 months ago and we’re on the £49 per month battery rental deal.
When we were looking, I knocked up a spreadsheet to compare TCO figures based on 3 years use and even with the battery lease it came out on top vs used i3, Kia Soul and a Nissan Leaf.
Get one, they’re great!

I agree about avoiding the pensioner beige Mk 1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEu_E3ukiY8&ab_channel=ClassicCarClips

Here you go – https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202104061030694

Deals like that are certainly persuasive. It’s a much newer car than what I’d get from Nissan. Not that I need new though.

What’s the range like on your Zoe?

We’d buy on finance because we need it now ofc, so for £50 extra on the loan payments we could get a more expensive Leaf though. Mileage will be low.

Range is about 75 miles – more than enough for what we use it for.

Hm this is a bit complex. Cheap Zoes are all battery leases.. is there a commitment to the lease giving some kind of negative?

If the battery fails they fix it. I don’t think it’s more complicated than that.
But you do need to think in TCO terms rather than purchase cost and that requires some crystal ball gazing.

But you do need to think in TCO terms

Not necessarily, as op-ex and cap-ex are budgeted differently.

I think the lease battery thing is OK if you are going to sell the car after a year or so, or keep it and run it into the ground but otherwise the secondhand value is going to get even worse surely? Cheapest lease is £49 a month (and presumably may change), so £600 a year which isn’t much still equates to about 5,000 miles in my old diesel (accepting that this may cost more with tax, servicing etc).

Puts me off a bit tbh

Cheap Zoe’s won’t fast charge. But I’m still tempted. And I like white and could do with something ULEZ compliant. RIP RS Twingo.

Ah, no fast charger on the low end Zoes? Hmm. Apparently Leafs get them after the first gen.

Having looked a bit more it appears that the battery lease price is based on mileage, so goes up to over £110 a month!

Will you use that higher milage?

you can buy out the renault battery leases (or you certainly could) – I think the cost depended on the battery condition, and might be worth considering if you want to run the car into the ground.

Will you use that higher milage?

This would be low mileage.

Early Zoes do 43kW AC. Most rapid chargers today support it, but where they’re expanding existing sites it tends to be DC only.

Later (mid 2015) they moved to “R” motors (R for Renault, ie their design rather than buying them in). Those cars only do 22kW AC charging (but can use the 43kW chargers), and the battery is a bit bigger. You could get the older (Q) motor as an option though if you needed faster charging. Pretty much irrelevant for local tootling about though.

Good guide here: https://www.gogreenautos.co.uk/buyers-guide/renault-zoe-guide

Battery lease is a bit divisive. It makes the car cheaper up front, and while you’re paying for the lease the battery is covered by warranty (drops below 75% capacity they replace). You also get breakdown cover included, even if you get caught out and run out of charge. Don’t really think of it as fuel equivalent, it’s a way of paying for part of the car. Headache is if you sell you need to make sure it gets transferred properly to the new owner if a private sale, and non-Renault trade don’t like them as they’d need to pay the lease until it sells.

RCI (Renault finance) let you buy it out now if you wanted, it’s £2k or so for an early Zoe.

https://www.gogreenautos.co.uk/buyers-guide/battery-lease-explained

Leafs are fine too, but generally the 2013 onwards (british built, dark interiors) are better. And batteries degrade worst than most other cars. The “battery bars” on the right of the display shows roughly how much of the original capacity is available (lose first bar at 15% gone, then 6.25% for each bar after that). But they DC rapid charge, very few have battery lease (check though, Nissan’s Flex lease was similar to Renault’s), generally very reliable.

Trouble I have with these is there’s so much demand and little supply that prices are a bit silly IMO. If you’ll be borrowing/financing to buy one I’d seriously look at the lease deals on new – you can get an Ioniq, Zoe or Leaf for not much over £200pm.

Thanks simon_g

non-Renault trade don’t like them as they’d need to pay the lease until it sells.

That puts the buyer in a strong position though if you can find one?

If you’ll be borrowing/financing to buy one I’d seriously look at the lease deals on new – you can get an Ioniq, Zoe or Leaf for not much over £200pm.

Well, sort of. I’d be borrowing £4-6k at a cost of say £100/mo ish purely because we need the car now but then probably paying it back much sooner as finances are set to ease significantly. A lease would be nice, and I’d get good range, but it’s a long commitment. But then, being a low mileage user would put us in a strong position leasing. I did a quick search and got £180 pcm for a Zoe.

What do you mean by 2Gen – the new body shape , or , as I suspect , the 2013ish model. The latter is one I would avoid as the batteries on those did not hold up well. The 2011 ones are 10 years old, so I’d avoid, avoid Gen2, so that’s why I said go to 2014/2015 or younger.

My source of this info is the internet, Nissan dealer and someone who designs batteries for a living for ROV’s, subs, military, speaks at conferences etc.

Isn’t it Gen1 up to 2013, Gen2 is 2013 to 2019 isn’t it? But there are some changes during that time to the battery aren’t there?

I’m referring to the battery 🙂 – should have made that clear. Body wise I suppose there’s the very first Japan made, then everything else, then new body from 2017 on (?),

Thinking about the leasing. You can get a £33k car for £180pcm on a low mileage deal – and it’s a much better car with a decent range and a more modern battery etc. And on top of that, the battery’s not your problem.

On the other hand, with the low mileage plan we’d be unlikely to be taking advantage of the long range…

Yes, we’ve been leasing for ages and it’s good value if you get the right deal and your mileage is low.

I’ve spent (too much) time pondering getting a cheap Zoe or Leaf next, it’d be absolutely fine for most journeys and the long ones we can use the petrol MPV for. I know longer term it’d save a bit of money but I struggle with £5k then £45pm battery lease for <90 mile Zoe when a brand new >200 mile one is £200pm to lease and would do plenty of the occasional long journeys too. Or just mean you go many more days between charges.

Hopefully by the time that lease is done there’ll be a much better choice of capable used EVs at sensible money.

Hopefully by the time that lease is done there’ll be a much better choice of capable used EVs at sensible money.

That’s what I’m thinking. We’d be richer and in a better position to buy. I don’t really want to be a permanent leaser, in fact it makes me nervous in general.

Is it really only those two cars to look at?

Where’s @edukator?

Get a proper charger installed and do not charge the car via a 13a plug, as has been mentioned.

The 13a charger you get supplied with the car is for emergency use, not a long term solution for charging the car.

Hi Molgrips, I agree with nearly all that’s above.

On my calcualtions the higher the mileage the lower the Zoé battery lease per km but I’m not familiar with the UK deals on second-hand.

The early Leaf has either an on-board 7kw charger or 50kW DC but there aren’t as many compatible DC charge points as with the Type 2 the Zoé uses. Nearly all Zoés have the 22kW on board charger with type 2. I assume you’ll mainly be charging at home so it doesn’t matter much. Beware Leafs that have been fast charged a lot, a 50KW charger on 23 and 30kW batteries leads to rapid deterioration.

If your budget runs to the 40kWh Zoé it’s the one I’d buy secondhand. I traded my old one in after 2.5 years with no loss of battery capacity and nothing wrong with it. A fun reliable little run about.

I tried both early 23kWh Kangoo and Fluence but the range wasn’t enough for trips I do regularly. The 30kWh Kangoo sometimes comes up cheap on this side of the channel, it’s a practical shed on wheels.

Do they sell the Dacia Spring in the UK yet? In France they are silly cheap for what you get.

The granny charger (via 13a plug) is fine for charging a low mileage EV. My old i3, with it’s 18kWh usable battery capacity (65 to 85 mile range) was only charged on it’s granny charger for the nearly 5 years we had it, doing a daily commute of aroudn 25 miles. At 4 ml/kWh, that meant around 6 hours charging, which fits into normal cheap rate timeslots ovenight

Our new i3, with its 42 kWh battery we’ve just upgraded the wiring and can now charge at 32A single phase at home, and need this to make use of the extra range (only when we use that full range on two consecutive days, which is pretty rare)

Test drove a Zoe. On looking around the car it just seemed to be a bog standard small car, but it’s an absolute pleasure to drive. The dealer quoted £274/mo with a £4k deposit for a lower end model, but the leasing deals via Autotrader are as low as £195 with a £2.3k payment and shorter lease.

Zoe is definitely a small car though – back seats are pretty pokey although the boot is larger than a supermini. Leaf is a lot bigger.

Once you are paying £50/month you may aswel have a small older petrol car. If its a pure money saving exercise.

If its because you find commuter type EVs interesting that’s obviously different.

But something like a £1500 yaris will be cheaper to run and fuel than a £5k zone with a £600/yr battery lease surely?

Looked into this recently for MrsRNP as a local runaround.
2nd gen Leafs are on the rise a little price wise as they seem to catching on a bit with the great unwashed.
There was a bit of unfounded range anxiety with a £4k MK1.

In the end we bought a Mk4 Tdi Golf for £400 that is built like a tank and solid. Will hopefully run it for a year or two and get a MK2 Leak when prices come down a bit more

But something like a £1500 yaris will be cheaper to run and fuel than a £5k zone with a £600/yr battery lease surely?

Not fuel, no. I’ve just done some quick calculations and replacing 8,000 miles in a 50mpg petrol or diesel car with 8000 miles done in a Leaf with typical economy figures saves about £600 a year.

Current front runner is a base model Leaf with 10k miles per year for a £2.3k payment and £197/mo. Only downside is that it’s PCH so no option to buy. At that kind of mileage allowance, and with that size of car, we could do most of our mileage in it (rather than the Passat) which would save us about £50/mo on fuel. They also throw in a free charger.

The range is probably just enough to get us to my folks’ house on a good day (and there are chargers on the way, plus we can charge at their house a bit) but if not – no worries, we can still take the oil burner.