Vocal Voices

Must admit, I've always been a bit skeptical about electric cars. But now Renault are selling the Zoe; it's an all-electric car with a range of circa 90 miles on full charge.
The thing that makes it stand out though, is the price. With the government's £5,000 subsidy, the base model can be had for less tan £14,000 new. Battery hire is £70 a month, but that means you don't get stuck with a bill for thousands if tha battery dies on you.
As a second car or a main car if you only ever do short journeys, it makes a lot of sense. (No I don't work for Renault!)

£70 per month to rent the battery.....! You get a lot of litres of petrol for that amount, 53 at my local garage, and then you have to charge the thing up every 90 miles. The home charger is 7 KW and takes four hours to charge the battery at about £3.30 a go. It is not a cheap option.

Then there is the problem (for the UK) of where all that extra electricity is going to come from. We have already been warned that the lights could go out at times because we are already stretched to the limit.

My neighbour has a Peugeot 107 5dr. 0–60mph 12.3 secs, top speed 98 mph, average mpg 65.7, tank capacity 35l (7.7gal), range 506 miles, no road tax and cheap insurance. At a few quid over nine grand I think that's more the way to go.

Not yet it doesn't.

£70 per month = £840 per year. That == 132 gallons of diesel at £1.40 per litre.

Now take your pick of one of these road tax free cars.

Let's average it out at about 60mpg for round town driving. That works out at 7,929 miles per year's battery rental. So if I was only to do 5,000 miles per year, perhaps I'd have a citigo or a Mii or perhaps a Hyundai I30, I'd still be quids in after 2 years.

I've been going on about this for years. If they want electric cars then they have to make them tempting for people to buy. At these prices, even with subsidies of eyewatering levels (for the tax payer), they're still not tempting. Even without the fact that you need to install a 75 amp charging unit in the house and will still have a minimum 4 hours charge time. So what happens when white meter becomes the larceny meter? Public charging points? Maybe, at business rates, but who has 4 hours twice a week to take the car to the charging station?

And even then, you are renting the ridiculously expensive battery. So great, when it loses half it's power they exchange it for a new one. Then what they do is sell it on to companies who are using them for UPS back up or for Solar farm storage and stabilisation. So you lose the ability to have your own off grid power source for the cost of your motoring.

Also what happens when you want to stop using it for a while. Nobody wants to buy it? £70 a month to Renault every month or sell it back to them? Or give them the battery. Either way you lose your investment.

As you can guess, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this as I've been well into the whole idea for at least a decade.

But it's still not working for me...