Renault Zoe EV: Price from £18k plus £70 a month battery lease

Price and specifications revealed for the Renault Zoe EV which will start at £18k for the Zoe Expression plus an extra £70 a month for battery lease.

The Nissan LEAF may be the best-selling electric car in the world, but it’s still an insignificant speck on the car sales landscape. But Nissan hope sales of electric cars will get a boost with the more ‘affordable’ Renault Zoe EV. But we doubt it.

Renault are trumpeting a starting price of ‘Just £13,650′ for the Zoe Expression, but that’s a bit disingenuous. The £13,650 is the price after we – the taxpayer – have chucked in a bribe for EV buyers. And that’s not the worst of it.

Having trumpeted a price, Renault then tell us it’s only valid until 5th April when Renault prices will go up – the Zoe EV by £345 – and you’ll have to fork out £70 a month for battery lease. But it gets worse.

Renault charge you £70 for battery lease only if you sign up for three years and do less than 7500 miles a year. Do more and it’ll cost you more, with a 12,000 mile annual mileage costing £93 a month. But it gets worse.

If you decide you only want to take a punt on A Zoe EV for a year, and do just 7,500 miles, than the battery lease will also cost £93 a month. That’s around the cost of 15 gallons of diesel which, in a reasonably frugal supermini, would carry you for around 900 miles. So you can do more miles in a regular supermini for less cost – and that’s before you actually add in the cost of recharging the Zoe’s batteries.

Still, if you just must have an electric supermini, the Zoe offer three trim levels – Expression, Dynamic Ze and Dynamic Intens – all of which get the same 86bhp electric motor offering adequate performance and a range of around 90 miles.

We can’t see buyers queueing up to make the Renault Zoe EV the best selling electric car, when you can pretty much lease an ICE supermini for the battery cost alone on a Zoe.

It just doesn’t add up.

By Cars UK