Posts by Pavonefan

Renault Zoe Review

I think it looks nice. More importantly, it looks quite normal. There are only so many people who want to be seen driving around in something obviously different like the Twizzy.

Now the down side.

All reviews of electric cars seem to be carried out by people who do a few short journeys trying to get the best possible mileage out of the car. What about a real life 'living with the car every day' situation?

What's the range when driving home on a wet night with lights and wipers on plus the radio for comfort and your mobile phone on charge?

What's the range if you get stuck in a traffic jam? How much electricity is used on a slow stop-start journey caused by an accident several miles ahead?

Don't forget that you need to use a special charging point so halve the range for a return journey to a place of work (for example) that doesn't have the required charging point.

How many charging points will each Renault dealer have? If these cars do catch on, how long will you have to wait before you can get connected for your half-hour fast charge? It's not like running low on petrol or diesel and stopping for a 5 minute fill-up.

I recommend that anybody buying an electric car should take out an AA Relay membership just in case.

It looks like a nice car and I might be interested when they get around to fitting a proper engine, as they surely will if they are to justify the investment. It even has the radiator intake already designed into the bumper. Bear in mind that the larger Fluence has been in production for a couple of years in South America, with a variety of engines, none of them electric.

My guess is that, in a few years time, Renault will say something like: "We built a range of electric cars and nobody wanted to buy them so please go away and let us get on with what we do well".

You can lead a horse to water......