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Advice on buying out the battery

10K views 35 replies 16 participants last post by  ThudnBlundr 
#1 ·
The 3 year battery lease on my ZE40 comes up in about a month's time. I asked Renault finance and my local dealer about the price to buyout the battery, both confirmed it would be £4,500, though the answers were two months apart. Does the figure only change on the anniversary? In which case I assume should wait a month and then get a new quote for it if it is likely to drop.

Either way, is there a generally accepted wisdom on whether it is worthwhile or not? I always slightly regretted going for the lease initially rather than just buying the battery, though it is also nice knowing I don't have to worry about it. I have only done 10,000 miles in 3 years, and Renault did not ask for this figure, so presumably the price is fixed regardless of mileage. Does this low mileage push more in favour of buying rather than continuing to lease? I am clueless on these things so I do not know whether batteries tend to degrade based mainly on age as opposed to mileage or whether mileage is also a key factor.

If I did buy it, is it advisable to keep extending the warranty? But at that point maybe I could just use the money to keep leasing?

I go back and forth on this, so interested in opinions/experiences.
 
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#2 ·
As a general rule, it’s only worth buying out the battery if you do a lot of miles (over 10,000 per year or so) or intend to keep the car for a long time.

The buyout price should reduce by around 10% per year.

So rough maths, at £4,000 buyout and £59 per month lease, it would be worth buying out the battery if you keep the car for more than 5 years.

Of course that doesn’t account for a higher re-sale value, which is a bit of a guess. So let’s say you get a payback in something like 2-3 years?
 
#3 · (Edited)
If you buy the battery, you lose the perpetual battery warranty.

Ask yourself why you want to buy the battery in the first place. Is it just because you don't like the monthly charge?

A lot of people have an emotional reaction to paying a monthly charge for the battery. Probably because they compare it against fuel costs and figure it's more than what they would pay monthly for petrol.

This is the wrong way to think about the battery lease.

It's better thought of as a small PCP payment, and you are getting something out of it: a perpetual warranty on your battery, and breakdown cover.

I'd argue that the longer you plan to keep the car, the better a deal the battery lease is, because of the above benefits.

By paying the battery lease, the battery is never your problem. That's a very good situation.
 
#5 ·
Thanks for the replies. When I first got the car, I thought I would probably only keep it for the initial 3 years, but over time this has changed. As it is our second car and only gets used for my short drive to work, it works very well for that purpose and isn't worth replacing in my view and I think instead we will replace my wife's car. We are just waiting for EV ranges to increase a bit more before we are comfortable with an EV being our primary family car. This means we will keep the Zoe for longer than originally planned; time will tell but I wouldn't be surprised if we had it for another 3 to 5 years from now.

My main concern about the leased battery was always potential difficulty in being able to sell it on / trade it in the future. From what I have seen, although it adds a bit more complication this is seemingly not quite as big an issue as I thought, so I am not opposed to continuing with the lease if it is the better option for me.
 
#9 ·
My main concern about the leased battery was always potential difficulty in being able to sell it on / trade it in the future. From what I have seen, although it adds a bit more complication this is seemingly not quite as big an issue as I thought, so I am not opposed to continuing with the lease if it is the better option for me.
If you have difficulty selling it, you could consider buying the battery at that time, and it’ll be cheaper by then. Or just explain to the potential buyer that they can either carry on paying the battery lease if they prefer, or once they’ve bought it, they can then buy the battery if they so choose.
 
#6 ·
I still say that Renault will eventually buy out the batteries when the approved used market for ZE40 tanks due to the lease (and RCI’s 10% APR...) making them more expensive per month than a new car, but that opinion seems to be held in the same regard as Donald’s views on the ‘rona round these parts :)
 
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#8 ·
First thing to make clear is that the warranty on the battery and the warranty on the car are two different things.

Whether you lease the battery or own it, the warranty on the car is only 3/4yrs (depends when you bought it) and if you want to maintain that it's £289. You must do this before it expires. After that you can extend it for ~£300 until the car is 10yrs old.

The warranty on the battery if you own it is 8yrs/100k miles. The only difference in the first 8yrs is the % degradation threshold before they replace it. Given that degradation is very minimal it doesn't make any difference IMHO... So I'm reality the battery lease only has an advantage beyond 8yrs and for the breakdown cover beyond 3yrs. Of course you could source your own for about £60/year of it's important to you.

In terms of the economics, as on all leases, the battery lease is simply covering the expected depreciation/and finance costs/profit for the company. Whether it's financially the best thing to buy out your battery now depends on a raft of assumptions about the expected value increase in your car when you buy it out and the expected value when you come to sell it (whenever that may be), relative to the current value of your leased car, it's expected value when you come to sell it, and of course the cost of the lease payments.

For example, let's say your lease model is currently worth £8k trade value. Assume in 3yrs time you want to sell it and you anticipate it will be worth £6k. Then you have £2k depreciation costs + £1,764 lease costs. So £3,764 to keep leasing all in.

If your leased version is £8k, buying the battery for £4,500 might make it worth £11,500 trade. So it's costing you an extra £1,000 to buy the battery than you are adding in value. In 3yrs you expect it to be worth £9,500. So that's the same £2,000 depreciation, plus the £1,000 I'm extra costs to buy the battery, so £3,000 all in. £764 less than the lease. You may want the break down cover so to make it on par with the lease cover you add £60/year breakdown cover, so £3,180. Still £580 cheaper.

Of course this is all just hypothetical and based on guess work, but that's how I would decide what to do.

I would say you need to factor in increases in mileage for the lease, but it doesn't seem that is being collected, so that helps! If you were paying £110/month on the lease you can quickly see how it favours the battery owned model....
 
#11 ·
Thanks for that. I had not realised the battery and car warranties are entirely different entities but now you've pointed it out it does make sense.

It doesn't seem clear cut either way, which I guess makes sense as if it did it would probably mean they had not priced the batteries correctly. I go back and forth on it to be honest. On the one hand I think it will probably work out a bit cheaper for me to buy it out given I could well end up owning it for the whole 8 year warranty, but I do also quite like the idea of leasing and not having to really worry about it.

I think my current thought is to let the final payment go through shortly and then request a new quote from Renault after the 3rd anniversary. If the figure is closer to £4,000, I think at that point it becomes more tempting.
 
#12 ·
Check when your car warranty expires as depending on order date it will be either 3 years or 4 years. If 3 years I would strongly recommend you extend it as you cannot do that once the factory warranty expires. The Renault deal is very good compared to other 3rd party options.

In your shoes, personally I would rent at £59 a month for another year, at which point the buy out price will drop again, so the net cost over the year isn't much. IMO the only case to buy the battery now would be if you have a lot of cash savings. I certainly wouldn't recommend borrowing money to buy the battery.
 
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#17 ·
I've got a 5 year old 22kwh Zoe that I've had from new and my Mum has a late 2017 ZE40 that she has had from new. Over the last 12 months I've asked a few times for the buyout price and I've come down to the fact that it's better to get on the minimum rental value and wait for the buyout price to stop going down more than the rental cost before buying out, which is about year 5 to 6, i.e. now for me.

Info is as follows:
In May 2020 I was given the price of £3,500 to buyout the battery of my car and £5,500 for my Mum's car.
In November 2020 after spending another 6 x £49 (£294) on rental I was given the price of £3,000, a drop of £500. (the rental cost £206 less than buying out)
In January 2021 after spending another 8 x £59 (£472) on rental my Mum was quoted £4,500, a drop of £1,000. (the rental cost £528 less than buying out)
Today after spending a further £49 x 5 (£245) on rental my quote is now £2,800, a drop of £200. (the rental cost £45 more than buying out)

If you are keen to buyout, based on the above (as long as RCI keep doing the same thing), it would be financially better for you to get on the minimum rental and wait a couple of years. You can always ask every 6 months or so for a new price and monitor what's happening.

Of course there is no guarantee that they'll keep reducing the prices so much, but it has to be in their interest to sell the batteries, particularly as they no longer offer lease on new cars.
Interesting, thank you. Was your mum's car registered in late 2017? If so, the £4,500 she was quoted in January 2021 is after the 3rd anniversary, which would suggest my buyout price is not necessarily going to fall next month after it becomes 3 years old.

Did you check the warranty paperwork as opposed to what the app or My Renault says? In the app and My Renault my wife's 2017 Zoe showed as 3 years whereas the paperwork showed 4years, I called Renault CS and they confirmed their system shows four years. Its a mess :(
Yeah, I double checked the paperwork and it is definitely 3 years on mine unfortunately.
 
#18 ·
Interesting, thank you. Was your mum's car registered in late 2017? If so, the £4,500 she was quoted in January 2021 is after the 3rd anniversary, which would suggest my buyout price is not necessarily going to fall next month after it becomes 3 years old.
Yes, December 2017.

My car is March 2016 and it dropped £500 between May 2020 and November 2020 so the register date of the car isn't the necessarily the place for price drops. With mine I feel I've reached the point where buying it would make more sense. It's just that niggle of what if something goes wrong with the battery.:rolleyes:
 
#28 ·
If you have one like mine on 86% post-BMS-update, it's probably worth keeping the lease. Another couple of years at this rate and I'll end up taking advantage of that guaranteed minimum capacity.
 
#33 ·
Our 50k-mile 2015 R240 is now down at 83% SOH. We were thinking of buying out the battery when we sold it to make it easier to sell, but we're no wondering if it might be better to keep the "perpetual" battery warranty that comes with the lease to make it easier to sell.
 
#32 ·
It does seem that the price difference between battery owned and battery leased vehicles is broadly in line with the RCI buyout cost, which I guess you’d expect since dealers seem to offer it as an option for the buyer.

We just traded in our Q210 (battery owned, got pretty much what we paid for it nearly 3 years ago) for a Sep 2017 Q90 with battery lease and are considering whether to buy out the battery in September. Current price is quoted as £4k and I’m expecting it to be £3.5k once the car is four years old.

I think differences in battery warranty may be a key factor, so we’ll be considering that before making a decision. It feels like, if battery ‘depreciation’ is £500pa at the moment, we’d be effectively investing £200+pa (via the battery lease) into having a continued battery warranty beyond 8 years.
 
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