Electric car (zoe)?

Del Lardo said:
Couldn't be further from the truth, I know 2 other owners personally who bought them for the same reason we did, a cheap way to get a new car when looking at overall ownership cost over 2-3 years due to cheap lease deals and low charging costs.
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It's a false economy for most people though. When you have battery rental (if you don't have this it will cost many £1000s to replace them), very high depreciation and what it adds to your electricity bill. Even for something tiny and low powered like a Zoe

You need to be in the small window between the fuel cost outweighing the battery rental cost and not having too high daily mileage for the battery charge. E.g I spend maybe £20 more a month on petrol than it would cost to rent the batteries (on a 2.0, 200bhp petrol), but I'll get a FAR bigger return when I sell the car. So an EV isn't worth it for me. But also if you do want to go on a long trip you'll have to rent a car or have a second one, so that adds to costs.

It's more than just EV = cheaper. You need to run the numbers because there's a catch :/
 
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It's pretty terrible really these cats are not going to be cheaper for 90pc of people you have to do serious miles every day.

Don't use it for 1 month. 100 quid for the rental down drain
Dunno what I'll do
 
413x said:
It's pretty terrible really these cats are not going to be cheaper for 90pc of people you have to do serious miles every day.

Don't use it for 1 month. 100 quid for the rental down drain
Dunno what I'll do
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Yep. If you live quite close to work and maybe bike a lot, your still paying the rental while it's not in use. So then it becomes much more to run than a normal car. To leave my car standing on the driveway costs £1.63 per day (tax and insurance). An EV would cost about £3-3.50 a day just in battery rental.
 
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Jonnycoupe said:
But it's the Ampera-e in Europe and they have already said they have no plans for a RHD variant for the U.K.
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My hope is that it encourages Nissan to put a 60kwh battery in the next Leaf, and VW, Ford etc all follow suit. The bolt proves that it's possible to fit that kind of battery in that size of car, and still sell it for a reasonable price.
 
Looks like this is a no go.
Electric cars are just not viable.

The electric cost (if done mental maths correct) is about 4 pounds a day 40kw battery

So looking at 100 for fuel
100 for car lease
200 for finance

Definite no go
 
Nasher said:
It's a false economy for most people though. When you have battery rental (if you don't have this it will cost many £1000s to replace them), very high depreciation and what it adds to your electricity bill. Even for something tiny and low powered like a Zoe

You need to be in the small window between the fuel cost outweighing the battery rental cost and not having too high daily mileage for the battery charge. E.g I spend maybe £20 more a month on petrol than it would cost to rent the batteries (on a 2.0, 200bhp petrol), but I'll get a FAR bigger return when I sell the car. So an EV isn't worth it for me. But also if you do want to go on a long trip you'll have to rent a car or have a second one, so that adds to costs.

It's more than just EV = cheaper. You need to run the numbers because there's a catch :/
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Very much agree that you need to run the numbers, they can work or they can end up being more expensive. It worked for us so if you can find me a new automatic supermini with climate, touch screen satnav, bluetooth & cruise control for £150 down and £140/month (what we're paying) I'd be very happy as SWMBOs car is going back in a few months, unfortunately that deal which got a lot of people in to Zoe's 2 years ago was down to Renault getting the GFV very wrong but on the plus side it does now mean you can pick up a 2 year old car with remainder of 4 year warranty for £6k compared to £7-8k for an equivalent Clio or Fiesta. Fuel savings on 800 miles/month pays for battery lease and it's then down to depreciation where £2500-£3000 seems a fair amount for both.

Will straight up agree that that does depend on those 800 miles being across journeys within the range of the Zoe but for a lot of people they will be.



413x said:
Don't use it for 1 month. 100 quid for the rental down drain
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Nasher said:
Yep. If you live quite close to work and maybe bike a lot, your still paying the rental while it's not in use. So then it becomes much more to run than a normal car. To leave my car standing on the driveway costs £1.63 per day (tax and insurance). An EV would cost about £3-3.50 a day just in battery rental.
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You're both forgetting that lovely thing depreciation! Don't use a new(ish) ICE car and it's still costing you huge amounts of money just sat on the driveway. Something like 75-80% of new cars are on finance, only £250/month sounds cheap until you don't use it. By BMW has barely moved in the last month, just worked out it's cost me £4/mile in depreciation in that time :eek:
 
413x said:
Looks like this is a no go.
Electric cars are just not viable.

The electric cost (if done mental maths correct) is about 4 pounds a day 40kw battery

So looking at 100 for fuel
100 for car lease
200 for finance

Definite no go
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We average 3.5p/mile in electric so for 100miles/day I'd say £3.50 but to err on the side of caution use your £4 and let's assuming you work 46 weeks/year that's £920 plus £1320 for the battery lease so total of £2240 for 'fuel'. Where this may get interesting, is if you use Economy 7 you can set a charge timer on the car to roughly halve your electricity costs giving you a total of £1780.

Assuming you get a 50mpg ICE car and fuel is £1.20/L you're looking at £3036 in fuel.

On both cars add in other costs such as depreciation, tyres, insurance etc and I don't think either type of car is really suitable to justify travelling 100miles/day for a £4000/year take home improvement.
 
Agreed
Del Lardo said:
We average 3.5p/mile in electric so for 100miles/day I'd say £3.50 but to err on the side of caution use your £4 and let's assuming you work 46 weeks/year that's £920 plus £1320 for the battery lease so total of £2240 for 'fuel'. Where this may get interesting, is if you use Economy 7 you can set a charge timer on the car to roughly halve your electricity costs giving you a total of £1780.

Assuming you get a 50mpg ICE car and fuel is £1.20/L you're looking at £3036 in fuel.

On both cars add in other costs such as depreciation, tyres, insurance etc and I don't think either type of car is really suitable to justify travelling 100miles/day for a £4000/year take home improvement.
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Agreed. Sounds like commute needs more pay or move
 
Del Lardo said:
You're both forgetting that lovely thing depreciation! Don't use a new(ish) ICE car and it's still costing you huge amounts of money just sat on the driveway. Something like 75-80% of new cars are on finance, only £250/month sounds cheap until you don't use it. By BMW has barely moved in the last month, just worked out it's cost me £4/mile in depreciation in that time :eek:
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Depends what you buy. Often paying more for a better, used car saves money in the long run compared to something cheap which plummets in value. But I bought my car with cash, don't do many miles and it's barely lost any value since I got it. So what's cheaper to me might not be for everyone else.
 
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Based on the ongoing situation a family friend has, don't touch a Zoe. Short version is the dealer had his car longer than he did in the first year, he eventually had enough and tried to p/x it, the interest from any dealer was about as high as the Zoe's engine emissions. He then went with the rejection option as it had spent the majority of the first year of ownership in the dealers for various issues, Renault weren't interested. Up-shot is he is still paying for the thing even now and looking to go legal.

The car industry misdirects people with impressive MPG figures and VED as indications of what a car costs to run. and ignores depreciation, The first is an indication of the distance you can travel based on the amount of fuel used and the other is the amount you need to pay each year to have a car on the road, depreciation is reasonably predictable on existing models. For example my old petrol Fabia (38mpg) was cheaper to run per mile than my Leon Sport DSG (50mpg), once you included depreciation the Fabia was was even further ahead.

While this suggestion is unlikely to get much love on here, this thread started with discussion of a Zoe, so i'll assume anyone reading this has adjusted his or her expectations accordingly.

Consider a used Jap built petrol Yaris. After many years of messing about with VAG based diesels and telling myself that it was worth paying for the extra space that was rarely used and slightly nicer interior/ability to overtake comfortably, I eventually accepted and embraced the idea that a car for commuting is simply a tool to do a job. It has to be said that this is not a fun car to drive, however VVTI makes it slightly less boring than alternatives, cheap insurance, 50+mpg, tyres lasted around 6x longer than the Leon and cost less than half as much, discs and pads were similar and virtually nothing went wrong. Going petrol means no DPF regeneration/blocking or DMF failure to deal with, NA so no turbo failure, chain driven so no belt interval and simple to work on/service (read it takes about as long as a family Domino's order to arrive and costs the about the same) and it just kept going, owners are regularly seeing 2-300k from them without major issues. A decent low miler can be picked up for a few grand rather than 10k for a Zoe and the fuel cost will be only slightly higher each month than a Zoe's battery rental and cheaper once you allow for electricity.
 
I had a Yaris as a courtesy car a couple of days ago while mine was in at Toyota. They are actually quite punchy for a shopping cart :D

But yea, NA petrol is probably the best choice for reliability. Theres just less to go wrong.
 
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