Sunday Drive: Renault Zoe

Sunday, 31 May 2020

EV fan (and Kryten from Red Dwarf) Robert Llewellyn goes for a ride in the mad Renault Zoe e-Sport concept.

RENAULT ZOE
Base price: $59,990
Powertrain and economy: permanent magnet synchronous electric motor with a 41kWh lithium-ion battery, 68kW/226Nm, FWD, combined economy 13.3kWh/100km (source: RightCar)

The current Zoe is coming to the end of its life cycle. The new one should be here shortly.

Vital statistics: 4048mm long, 1945mm wide, 1826mm high, 2588mm wheelbase, luggage capacity 338 litres, 16-inch alloy wheels.
We like: A brilliant little urban commuter, effortlessly easy to drive and live with.

The Zoe's interior is pleasantly simple and comfortable, but the driver's seat is oddly high.

We don't like: No DC fast charging, cabin noise at open road speeds, driver's seat is weirdly high.

The Renault Zoe has been an undeniable success for the French company since its launch back in 2012, quickly becoming the best-selling EV in France, while also being the best-selling EV in the world in 2015 and 2016.

The Zoe has regularly been the best-selling EV in Europe since its launch.

But the charming little EV was never going to replicate that success here in New Zealand and the reason for that is entrenched deep in its DNA - the Zoe was conceived and designed as a city car, to buzz around high-traffic, densely populated European cities with maximum efficiency and minimum fuss.

So when you bring it to a country with a total population around the same size as a single European city and where people still actually use the 'What if I want to drive from Auckland to Wellington non-stop?' question as an argument against EVs, it was always going to struggle.

The Zoe is all about simplicity and ease of use, so no overwhelming amounts of unnecessary info here.

The lack of DC fast charging isn't the biggest issue if you use the Zoe as a city car. Open road motoring is more challenging, however.

* Renault planning two new electric SUVs

* BMW confirms electric Mini price for NZ

* We drive Renault's trio of electric vehicles on Kiwi roads (and around a carpark)

Pricing didn't help its cause either, with the diminutive Zoe initially landing here at a hefty $75,000, putting it not that far from the larger BMW i3 when it first launched here.

But now the Zoe is in runout in preparation for the new model landing here shortly, so Renault New Zealand has slashed a handy $9k out of the Zoe's latest pricetag of $68,990. And while $59,990 still doesn't make it cheap, Renault NZ has made no secret of the fact that you could easily twist their arm to go even lower on one of the few examples left on sale.

That makes the Zoe the cheapest new EV you can actually buy and drive off the showroom floor in New Zealand today, but does that make it a worthwhile purchase?

That depends a lot on your attitude towards EVs (and particularly the price premium they demand), but also how you would actually use it.

Driving the Zoe around a city is a pure, unadulterated delight. Pick up is brisk as you would expect from an EV, while the steering is feather-light and nicely responsive (albeit weirdly springy just off-centre), making it perfectly suited to a busy urban environment. Which is, after all, exactly what it was designed for.

Renault also designed the Zoe to be as user-friendly as possible, with nothing in the way of EV-centric gimmicks, multiple drive modes or even comprehensive energy-flow displays - it is as straight forward as it is possible for a car to get, let alone an EV.

And I loved it for that - the Zoe's simplicity and ease of use are second to none, and add that to its predominantly guilt-free running (that coal and gas-fired power station at Huntly is a lurking reminder on that Auckland to Wellington run that driving an EV isn't exactly 100 per cent guilt-free) and it almost literally is the perfect city commuter.

The Zoe's limitations start to show pretty quickly when you step outside the city, however.

While it is brisk off the line and happily perky around town, the Zoe quickly runs out of breath at speeds higher than 80kmh - as evidenced by its particularly dismal 0 to 100 time of 13.5 seconds, a disproportionate amount of which is used to get that last 20kmh - which you might think would limit its ability to overtake other cars, but it really doesn't matter because you probably won't be doing that anyway.

This is because, while impressively silent at urban speeds things get increasingly noisy at open road speeds and, as well as the increased road and wind noise, the electric motor develops an irritating hum at around 95kmh that means you generally find yourself sitting at around 90kmh, simply because it is less irritating.

A larger limitation for open road trips, however, is the fact that the Zoe only comes with a Type 2 connector, meaning the quickest it can charge from zero to 100 per cent is 2 hours and 40 minutes using a 22kW, 3 phase, 32 amp wallbox. The slowest - using a 3-pin plug into a wall socket - is a colossal 27 hours.

This also leaves it incompatible with a decent chunk of the national charging network, so while the Zoe has a decent 300km or so range, you won't be wanting to do that Auckland to Wellington run anytime soon.

While this sounds like a relentless wall of negativity that the Zoe is driving headlong into, that is only because all of those issues only arise when you use it in direct contradiction to what it was actually designed for.

The Zoe is definitely not a car for the apparently massive group of people who regularly need to do record-setting runs between Auckland and Wellington, but for people living in the cities at either end of that route, it could well be the perfect daily commuter.

The lack of DC fast charging is less of a drawback around town (and even becomes non-existent if you simply plug it in at night, even on slow a three-pin trickle charge) and the Zoe's cheerful zippiness and agile city car abilities make it a delightful little thing to weave around a busy city in.

It's easy to see why it has been so popular in large cities, but it is equally easy to see how it would never take hold outside them either.