Although I am a fan, I think EVM must have got out of the wrong side of the bed before doing this review which started as a bit of a rant about how to operate some elements of the Zoe. Spending 5 minutes reading the manual would have resolved some of the problems encountered, the same applies to any car you haven't driven before. Personally I am a big fan of the Zoe. If you want to get from A to B or even further and don't want to carry a vast amount of camping gear, get a Zoe, if want to pay more money, carry loads of camping gear, have less range and have the inconvenience of rapidgate, get a Leaf
John Douglas I did figure it out in the video. Think of it as a test to how easy it is to jump in and go. If I was designing a car I’d put controls commonly used on a motorway on the opposite side to the gear lever too!
The Renault Zoe Q90 is a great car.Q90 mans Quick charging with 43 kW, not only 22 kW. I also have the Z.E: 40 battery, with 41 kW/h. The car is build may 2018.
We have two Zoe's running in an share program: they are great! Very easy to get used to for novice EV drivers and very little to go wrong or break. Love them!
Electric Vehicle Man i would still want to have a clue has to what I was doing you can still see how easy or not the controls etc are to use but would know what they were for and it's safer
I have a Captur with basically the same interior,no problems whatsoever and definitely no electrical faults.Great video,will definitely look to hire one,see if it fits my needs.
psst key doesn't need to go in slot its wireless, and as per my video you can change the indicator noises there's lots to choice, and cruise is same as all other Renault models the symbol near the gear stick match's the one on steering wheel you need to select either limit or cruise 🔋🚗🔌
Great video really enjoyed it, I'm due to college my new 40kw Zoe in a few weeks. Yes it's has a few cheep issues but when the dealer offered me the mid spec brand new car for £13,600 how could I say no? I can't wait for the technology and companies to start making hot hatch electric cars.
Had our 41kw Zoe for a couple of months now and for a second car it is brilliant. You are correct with some of your comments but just consider it as a town or city car and all becomes clear. You are not going to get all the bells and whistles on a relatively inexpensive vehicle. My wife and I love it. As usual good video though.
There's another bunch of controls behind the steering wheel on the right side (yup out of sight) this includes an entertainment presets scroll wheel, volume controls and also that illusive mute button you where looking for, also has variable regen this is part of your braking, the first part of travel increases the regen then as you press further the brakes join in.
We have a 22kwh Zoe and rent the batteries, it was £3k less than a Clio of the same age and mileage, its the only car I've ever own that is worth more now than a year ago and Its saved me £500 in fuel bills. Charging it take minutes (you get home, plug it in, go inside, its ready when you need it, just like a mobile phone).
one of the best features with the Zoe according to me is the autolock feature.. i always have the key in my pocket and the car auto locks itself when you leave it.. i really really like that feature! I have been driving 24kwh leaf for 3 years and zoe for 1 year.. i cannot really say wich one is best.. both have disadvantages and advantages.. the range of the 41kwh zoe is really nice though! I can drive 185 miles without problems in the summer..
How big an issue is the Zoe charger? I know you said in one of your live videos that it carries a version which is going to be obselete? ..Is it currently very common at public stations or are they already phasing this out?
Thank you for making this video. Yes, the survey of the Zoes on sale, is sobering once you twig the battery-leasing is rife. Basically, under £6,000 there's dozens of Zoes - and every one is a battery-lease model. Minimum about £60 per month, probably seemed okay for a twenty grand car new! But on a ten grand car used, it's suddenly a lot of dosh - basically, it seems IMHO like paying Renault all the money you saved in petrol (gas)?! I agree, but it is more than irritating - it is a deal-breaker. The prices reflect people's views on this surely? All the lease ones, are £5k to £9k, with a few fantasists trying for more. All the battery-owned ones are over £10k, except one solitary one I saw, it was £8k or so, and I knew it wouldn't be up long (3 weeks and gone, that's short for an autotrader advert, plus it was a private sale.) Loads of the lease versions, are with dealers. Why? Because Renault do not charge the dealers the battery lease while they have the vehicle, it seems to be dormant. The previous owner, MUST get the new owner, to take the lease deal on board before daring to part with the vehicle or do the V5 !!! There's a horror story waiting to happen there, no wonder dealers end up with them. Incidentally, the penalties are pretty horrible if you go over the mileage - so when people say the battery lease is £59 per month, they are talking about quite limiting mileage - if you want to err on the side of caution, it's more like £80 per month. That, is simply not viable in the used car market, especially as these older Zoe EVs are only good for 100 miles ish per charge. That was ok 2 years ago, but I wouldn't pay £50 to £80 (more than I pay in petrol) per month, when my entire point of moving to an EV, is firstly it has to be economically viable compared to a cheap old Clio that is paid for. The interior looks lifted from a Clio mk 4. We have one of these too. The car is incredibly well-made. I don't know where you initially were imbued with the view French cars are bad for wiring or whatever, we have an 18-year old Clio 2, and I just changed the HT leads at 129,000 miles, as they made a lambda sensor light come one - so I am pretty sure it's not that oxygen sensor that the OBDII system says it is at all. Contrast this with the substantial number of people stating Mercedes cars have the most terrible tendency to pop an electronic fault, and Renault and peugeot etc come out shining? I keep hearing that refrain when I go to buy a used car, and there's some such 'niggle' with the vehicle as a warning light etc 'It's nothing that, an easy fix'. Patently, if it were an easy fix - it would be fixed. Walk away. I did, with a damn good Mercedes, because it drove massively well, loads of push and lovely inside, but two issues: seemed oddly cramped; and a handbrake warning beep or light kept coming on, I couldn't shut it up. Maybe it was a brilliant car, but electronic sensor faults, are potentially days of fault finding and part-swapping. I would feel like a fool for actually buying myself into such a situation, no matter how cheap the vehicle. I went on to buy a lovely but unreliable Volvo (blame Ford who owned Volvo at the time), which had no warnings but actually had hidden faults galore waiting to pop as soon as the weather got warmer. We tried the Zoe, when wife wanted a Clio replacement - Clio is dead (actually, still alive) long live Clio sort of thing! So wife tried the Zoe with me and salesman in it (brand new) but it was doomed to suffer three issues: First it actually IS awfully like a Clio, so there's no USP there; Second, the Zoe somehow FELT slightly smaller; Third, the range issue is a killer for somebody who is used to 250 miles without breaking a sweat. 100 miles and then charge for an hour, is a hard sell (it is an hour - they don't refill to the same level in 30 minutes at all, which is not fine, when you were already keeping speeds down to 50mph, and freezing your feet off to save energy, and so on, and counting on every one of those advertised and entirely fictional 100 miles in winter!). So, as a car, we loved the Zoe. But as a solution to family motoring, where my car will be the big old one that tends to be breaking down more but we try to rely on for family journeys, it needed to be able to step in as needed. 125 sold cast-iron miles, would do it. But that is a lot harder to obtain than you might think... It means in practice, 150 miles being the range (because motorway services to charge at are maybe 20 miles apart if you are lucky). Then, all the caveats come pouring in - even that 41kWh Zoe, I can run flat in maybe 70 miles. How? I will drive at the unofficial 90mph m-way speed, and just watch that battery range plummet. I will treat the heater like in a petrol car, have it blasting hot air while climbing a huge hill section of Cumbrian motorway, with 4 people on board and tyres we forgot to pump up. And so on. That's what happens. Under the same circumstances there is no chance at all of a petrol car leaving us stranded in the dead of night, you will make changes and allowances all over the place. I still intend buying an EV, but it is with the experience of a 500-mile round trip that my family absolutely hated and detested. The quality of that drive, was apalling, so bad in fact I won't mention the vehicle make and model, because it is not fair, any EV would be the same until you get to about 60kWh of battery capacity I believe. The bigger the battery, the less the issue of emptying the charge quickly, matters. In short, here's the issue: there is a law that says the faster you drain the battery, the less kWh it actually can give! In other words, when quoting kWh of battery the EV has, it could be argued, the maker ought to tell you, what rate of usage of energy, that kWh capacity, is stated for. Do 50mph or less, on A-road Britain, in a perfect 16 degrees centigrade (Goldilocks temperature!) and you will get the stated range. Do a motorway blast like most British people drive (X0mph with occasional bursts to XX0mph) and from my experience with 30kWh or less battery says it will die in 50 miles. I did 70mph ish for less than 10 minutes, because the range meter plummeted. Within 15 minutes of setting off, we got lost. It burned ten percent of our energy to get back on track. I get lost in new places all the time. We can't have that happening on a holiday. My strategy then, is to buy a small cheap EV (and even that is twice what I would pay for a gas/petrol runabout the same age), and it has to be a second car or a third, for definite. We will have to accept, this vehicle can NEVER step up to the plate, in the stead of a gas/petrol car. It will be resolutely useless if you ever end up needing it for more than dropping the petrol car off to get fixed, or getting parts for that petrol car to repair it. Town driving, and recharging at your own home, my strategy works. The precision of that prescriptive use, automatically will ruel an affordable EV out I think, for anyone divorced or single, who ever would dare contemplate a long drive. Sure, they can hire a gas/petrol car, but then you have that battery lease just using money the entire time you are away. So, it's careful, prescriptive use if you are like us trying to get a used, slightly-older tech and range EV, and it has notable limits. If you can live with those limitations, then it can work. Also, lastly, there is a kicker for me too _ it is my belief, manual clutch vehicles, cause a lot of hip and back problems, and I am certain from experience, I have none, if I drive automatics. That, alone, makes EVs a whole lot better in my view, they are all automatic transmission in effect. I do hate people claiming they are CVT though - that really has gotten old and are they not embarrassed to claim this?! No EV yet produced I believe, has ever had a CVT, and they never will. Funny.
Just viewed this after buying a ‘leased battery’ Zoe, and it was great entertainment. After all the criticism you said you quite liked it - I came to same conclusion too and for the price it is probably the cheapest EV you can get.
I showed the Zoe to my mum at the Fully Charged Show, she really liked it, until she sat in it and discovered she couldn't drive it without a booster seat!! Why doesn't it have a height adjustable drivers seat? It's crazy, instantly off the next possible car list.
When Renault made the RHD version they left the centre console as in the LHD. I saw a LHD driver finding the touch screen nearer to him much easier to touch, knobs being further away (LHD) is less of a problem than the touch screen being further away on RHD, in my opinion. Actually i'm left handed so I find centre screens easier to use anyway.
I have got my new Zoe today. Passed on the guided tour as I enjoy finding out everything myself. Like here every ten seconds I am saying "How the hell to you turn that off"? Or where are the volume buttons? There is a lot to these cars and the manual is not that great. Next time I will have the tour. Great car though.
The speed cruise control not working most probably is due to the fact that is a rental car. I rented a prius a month a go from Toyota it self and it was disabled for legal reasons.
Just because NOBODY took a moments notice of your first comment doesn't necessarily mean you have to repeat it. I might of replied to this comment, but I'm still not interested in looking at whatever you mentioned. Just for info!
That’s pretty much what I would expect of a Reno interior, I’ve had Reno in the passed and exactly the same. The card key is poor and unless they’ve changed them will give up the ghost as indeed both mine did.
I love the Zoe, but the positioning of the cruise control is really weird. Why not activate it on the steering wheel, where your hands are? Instead you have to reach down to activate and deactivate.
I had a Zoe for 4 days loaned from Renault. I liked the car but I thought the infotainment system was awful, almost impossible to call people or play music while driving. I ended up with an Ioniq (Hybrid sorry). I still have a model 3 reservation but can see me going for a VW ID or Hyundai Kona because I lose patience around 2020 when Tesla still haven’t started making right hand drive cars or they do but the base model is £40k.
Nice idea but the infrastructure is not in place yet & EVs are just too expensive. Better to wait awhile until things settle down, unless of course you have pots of money...
I will admit I couldn’t get through the full video as your obvious neglect of knowledge on how to handle the cars options was quite frankly, embarrassing. What a I will say is that we had a Zoe for 2 years and despite its limitations we loved it. I think he said it all at the start when he mentioned that he will see why people love this car in this one day review. That says it all really.
its very useble as a secound car, for job pendling. its very cheap to run and we use about 13kw/100km. thats NOT what you get in the BIG VW SUV ID3 or 4 or more heavy ID5.. the high tech is a bit old, and the car is simple to use, but i do missing adaptic pilot.
Maybe Renault will get people asking about a better version and do what other cars makers do and make a new bigger version with a bigger battery of course with better internal and say a 6 seater with split seats and nicer feel.. Maybe call it a Renault iZoe Plus or IZoe EX? Sort of a small EV turned into a medium people 6 seater carrier IZoe.?
The key card looks like the sort of thing hotels attach to their room keys to stop people wandering off with them. Not very convenient and in these days of micro electronics, not necessary either.
AC fast charging !! Although everyone else is going DC, there are plenty of small posts that can do 22kW which makes them really handy for charging in places that don't have the larger fast chargers. Our local Morrisons has four 22kw charge points but as most cars can only handle 7kw AC you'd need to spend much longer there. Of course you never mentioned the glove box. A small point I know but flippin' eck that is small. So much is down to Renault not flipping the interior. Lots of things like the cruise control enable button you can't see as they are placed for left hand drive.
I love my Zoe, but as you have found, it isn't perfect. A downer that you missed, the reflections from the dash top on sunny days is awful. I test drove the Leaf and the Zoe before deciding, and found, as you did, the Zoe handles and steers better. I judged that the Leaf was just below that thresh-hold where I would just hate it more and more with time. The Zoe is just fractionally above it, and sure enough, two years on, I still love it. I still don't understand why it is so difficult for manufacturers to make cars that are nice to drive, particularly the steering. You described the Leaf as blancmange like, and that is exactly right, along with too many other cars. As a driver that does many miles in company pool cars, I know that this does not make for comfy journeys as the makers probably think it will. You just get tired wrestling it everywhere. When they are good, eg a BMW, you get out after 300 miles fresh and itching to make the return journey. Back to Zoe, you don't need to put the fob in the slot. Mine lives in my wallet. If you put it in your pocket as I did for a while, the charger door will get accidentally triggered and you will have to stop to close it. At least you get a warning though. Tim
PS, I was going to add. Be careful when looking at Zoes. Even Renault aren't too careful distinguishing between leased and owned batteries, I don't know if this is deliberate or ignorance. Make sure you know before travelling far to see one. Otherwise a great car and a stunning looker, especially from the front. Tim
Problem with Ian is he also claimed to love the Leaf, only when he had swapped did he admit the battery range was not good enough towards the end of the leaf (with a full 12 bars). Sadly like most others he sold out to Nissan, Next thing it will be Z0E is the best EV on earth and rake in the rewards from Renault. Its a bit like Fully Charged sucking on the pink cigar of Ecotricity.
Ian obviously does love the Leaf, lets face it he bought his wife an E-NV200 however the carrot of extra range is what moved him to the Zoe. I think we all need to see what the 60kWh leaf is like (and hope it has active battery cooling).
If you watch the videos carefully you will find that they actually had a breakup with the leaf about range a love lost !. He got his wife an eNV200 van for the army of kids they have - for a good price - thats why he bought that. He also wishes that had more range. Look I like Ian''s Videos, but the facts are the facts. I think Andy will get a Zoe for his wife - lets wait and see :)
I agree with the previous comment. Would it not have been more professional and more informative for us if you had spent a few minutes understanding the car before moving off and spending 30% of your attention on the road!
Whoever said I was a professional? It’s youtube. It’s also a very old video! I also get in a car and test it blind to see how intuitive it is. Who reads a manual on a car you’ve got for a few hours? Rather than create loads of moaning posts on here, just stop watching what is a free thing anyway.
@@ElectricVehicleMan you will see I’m not the only one who noticed your poor video. You are obviously a bit sensitive if you can’t take criticism. As the consumer, I’ve a right to say what I think. I have enjoyed your videos to this point but will take your advice and unsubscribe as there are professionals on RU-vid - believe it or not.
@@ericgraham7026 I 'get like this' with people that post on years old videos (when I was relatively new to RU-vid as well), repeatedly in separate comments. You created a new post each time so no idea on which comments you're referring to which doesn't help. I've done free videos on RU-vid for years, clearly as an amateur. Watching a really old one and saying 'unprofessional' etc is only going to have one effect. It's like me looking at your work from the early days of your job and calling you out on how poor it is. How would you reply?
Cheapinterioritis, made me laugh! The Zoe does look like a very good car, though I’d stay away from any battery leasing arrangements - just exposes you to extra payments and makes it harder to sell the car later.
Electric Vehicle Man Sure I watch all your vids. I really like your show. That said I still think you will get a zoe. That's what I think, it's no slur if you do they are a cracking car.
EV's are not cheap but they all seem to want to save pennies on the plastic. Can't manufactures get it it's 25 k and just fit a decent trim and charge 500 quid more. I get cheap materials in a 10k car but 20k + is just a joke.
Oh Dear! Renault is the most reliable of the European brands and we have used Kangoos and Clio vans for a long time and they are very reliable so much so I bought a 2008 Kangoo Expression DCi and that has also been very reliable. If your Clios failed with rotten wiring then I would guess that they were old and or not very well looked after cars and would have been the same as most older cars in that case.
One car was new the other was a year old two Scottish winters and both cars had electrical faults with wiring loom later found out Clio’s were bad for getting water in the loom . To be fair it was 10 years ago really put me off the brand
18 year old Clio 2 now sat in the driveway, we had it since wife got it ex-demonstrator in 2000. Most reliable car we ever had, and the few issues you benefit from a massive user base as it were, forums galore, etc? Sorry it was not good for you. The issues were often with some cover wearing and chafing the wires at the back of the engine area? Ours is the 8 valve one, and had a massive steel surround, so no issue.
That’s exactly where I had the problem in the engine bay in both cars anyway new Nissan Leaf arrives this Friday hopefully the boys at Sunderland put it together well 👍👍👍🏴
Had a shot in the old LEAF and the only issues you could really dredge up were range and purchase price, which is to say as a car it was really pretty good. The news being slopped around lately about the precise nature of charging the 40kWh one if multiple charges in a row are conducted, strike me as potentially small, niche issues, if not entirely irrelevant depending on time of year and your own personal use or accommodations you can make. The new version by all accounts is a great car, I'd expect owner satisfaction rates to be generally through the roof. Good choice!
Some of Your Frustrations are easily solved. MEDIA CONTROLS Behind the Steering wheel on the right hand side is a stalk with full controls for the media centre, so no need to be stabbing about at the controls on the centre console BACK SEAT Yes there is no 60/40 split but this is for a reason, if you fold it down the whole back seat back section lifts out of the car giving you a huge load space this would be difficult to achieve if it was in 2 sections NO % OF BATTERY SHOWN You get used to the fact the battery meter has 8 sections each of which equate to 12.5% battery life left so a little maths and you know where you are, yes 10 sections so 10% each would have been better but heyho its french! LUMBAR SUPPORT Its only on the leather seats in the Top of the range SignatureNav spec as standard, so if you want it you have to get that spec, shame they did not offer it on all levels but thats upselling for you I suppose. If you can get the Zoe for a longer time, you will love it even more after a few 200 mile days (We are over 20k miles in ours now in just over 6 months)
It’s the cruise control buttons on the opposite side of the handbrake that annoy me. Every other car etc I’ve ever been in is on the steering wheel. Given it’s often used on a motorway (cruise) I cannot understand why they’d do this. As for the split seats. Where does my daughter go when we camp? Seems a cheap thing to do.
Yep I use it daily on the motorway, I leave the button in the on position then the cruise is controlled from the steering wheel, no need to keep switching it off and on on the centre console. As for Load space and seats its horses for courses. For us being able to take the back seat out and get bikes etc in which we could not in the leaf is more what we need, if you need to seat 3 then you lose the roof space, in a leaf I very much doubt there is enough room to take a load of camping supplies in the boot anyway. for 3 people with only the split seat down. You would be better with a roof box, that way you could get a lot more stuff in the boot, and the journey would be quieter and less chance of getting juice on the interior and being nagged with "Are we there yet" ;-)
Richard Hurn Few videos of the camping trips in my channel! The fact you operate the cruise from the steering wheel just proves how stupid it is to place it in the centre.
Electric Vehicle Man - I wonder if they’re expecting people to either use cruise control or speed limiting and not switch between them. It does seem a little odd but I’d probably just engage cruise once on a journey then use the steering wheel switches... By the way, were the beeps lane warnings, maybe?
Great city Car but overpriced for the awful interiors. Placement of controls is poor and the seat are so uncomfortable on longer journeys. I loved driving one around short trips and whilst the range was good I’d rather have less range and a bigger, more comfortable car than a zoe.
Watched you right up to the point you clearly did not know how to use the car. A wee bit of preparation might have gone a long way instead of shouting ‘does anything work in this car’ geez oh? 😳
I figured it out a minute later. Plus which self respecting bloke reads a manual before jumping in. Think of it as a ‘how easy is’ test. Plus, putting something you often use on a motorway on the opposite side to a gear stick is not the brightest idea and clearly a leftover from LHD models.
I’ve just looked at some of the comments and for EVM to say “think of it as a test” suggests a certain arrogance. And for the individual who stated that “safety is overrated” should have a word with the friends and relatives who are left without a loved one due to some avoidable crash! I appreciate it was probably a throwaway statement but, if that’s the case then perhaps a little thought before you comment may be in order.
Electric Vehicle Man If your video showing 6 hours from Bardford area to London is 6 hours then a drive to the South of France will be met with added accommodation costs. Tesla3 have a lead time of 18 months. Thinking of one but I am waiting till all the development has been sorted. From visits to Germany it seems that Hydrogen fuel cell is their option, after all they are now running Hydrogen Fuel Cell trains. In-addition a slight problem I cant seem to find just what the towing performance of EV's is from anywhere?
Electric Vehicle Man - From the other side of the Pennines and further North to the South of France, towing a caravan; works out as afternoon start, arriving at Portsmouth for the St Malo overnight crossing in the evening, overnight, off the boat and a tank full of French diesel then a drive to north of Bordeaux mid afternoon, top up the tank in 5 mins and an overnight stop on a caravan site, 09.00 start next day and arriving at a South of France campsite mid afternoon. The best I have heard of, is from the other side of the Pennines and further North via Calais to Malaga in 28 hours with 2 drivers.
I didn't even see your video as far as it comes to zoe, doesn't matter its a good car or not...if you don't own a battery and only body what is good about it. So for me its a shit car
English have a reputation for not managing any car company , now all run by germans French Indians Japanese . Racist comments not required Against French especially from the English who built some of the worse cars ever.
Nigel Weir - British cars were no worse or better than any of the other cars - it is just that the British love bashing their own and think that the German cars are more reliable than everyone elses because they used to advertise this as fact when in reality all of the German makes are POOR for reliability in the UK in the ACTUAL break down charts - that is why VW etc are not allowed to advertise how reliable they are any more because they are not. Renault is ACTUALLY the most reliable of the European brands and have been for a long time now and we have been using Kangoo and Clio vans for a long time and they are very reliable and NEVER had any electrical issues or any other issues so much so I bought a 2008 Kangoo Expressions DCi car version - last of the old models and that has been an excellent reliable car as well and is so versatile you can use it as a car, van, camper etc. Wouldn't dream of having an ordinary car now and there is no need for electric cars if they released the technology for running cars on water with just a simple splitter in the engine compartment that splits the Hydrogen from the rest of the water thus absolutely no polution or having to have tanks of Hydrogen in the car etc and not having to generate electricity to run electric vehicles either. There are already patents out there for doing this but big power companies and oil companies as usual are stopping all of the clean safe energy from coming out apart from the wind and wave etc crap that is not a big threat to their profits. Nikola Tesla FREE ENERGY was used to turn the SEVEN buildings on 9/11 mostly to DUST that day and they are hiding that as well - Google Paisley Expressions and the video interviews of Dr Judy Wood exposing that on there.
