The wife's Peugeot 207 has written itself off so she's in the market for a new car - not yet decided on dinosaur-juice or EV, or new or used, just investigating the options at the moment.
We went for a test drive of a Zoe at a Renault dealer and liked the car, but after talking to the sales man the whole battery leasing thing sounds clear as mud to me. According to him:
* Batteries cost about £6000 (i.e. buying the battery outright adds about £6k to the cost of the car and replacing a dead battery would be about £6k)
* The battery warranty is 4 years.
* A battery lease is £110/month (unlimited mileage).
* The whole point of leasing a battery is so you don't have a crippling £6k bill if the battery dies.
* There's no option to buy a leased battery at any point - you're stuck paying the £110/month bill for the life of the car.
* Renault are withdrawing the option of buying a battery outright and the new model will only come with leased batteries.
None of this makes much sense to me.
If the battery comes with a 4 year warranty, then that means we only need to worry about it dieing after 4 years. But the lease will have cost over £6000 in under 5 years, so it seems to make little financial sense to lease instead of buy. The Renault website actually says the warranty is 8 years, not the 4 that we were told by the sales man, and if that's true it makes the lease even more of a waste of money.
Also, with no option to buy out the lease, you're left with the prospect of having to fork out £110/month even when the car is ancient. As someone who generally runs their car until it breaks in a way that is uneconomic to repair, this doesn't sit well with me because it means that at some point you're forced to throw away a perfectly good (albeit old) car just because its not worth paying the battery lease.
He also said that used Zoes are almost universally leased batteries, and for me the prospect of Renault withdrawing the option to buy the battery outright on new cars sounds bonkers. The whole concept of battery leasing seems to make the whole thing expensive and shorten the life of the car - its doing quite a good job of convincing us to buy another petrol car instead of an EV.
Can anyone comment on how this works and whether we have been given accurate information? (In case it matters, we're considering the ZE40 battery).
Thanks.
We went for a test drive of a Zoe at a Renault dealer and liked the car, but after talking to the sales man the whole battery leasing thing sounds clear as mud to me. According to him:
* Batteries cost about £6000 (i.e. buying the battery outright adds about £6k to the cost of the car and replacing a dead battery would be about £6k)
* The battery warranty is 4 years.
* A battery lease is £110/month (unlimited mileage).
* The whole point of leasing a battery is so you don't have a crippling £6k bill if the battery dies.
* There's no option to buy a leased battery at any point - you're stuck paying the £110/month bill for the life of the car.
* Renault are withdrawing the option of buying a battery outright and the new model will only come with leased batteries.
None of this makes much sense to me.
If the battery comes with a 4 year warranty, then that means we only need to worry about it dieing after 4 years. But the lease will have cost over £6000 in under 5 years, so it seems to make little financial sense to lease instead of buy. The Renault website actually says the warranty is 8 years, not the 4 that we were told by the sales man, and if that's true it makes the lease even more of a waste of money.
Also, with no option to buy out the lease, you're left with the prospect of having to fork out £110/month even when the car is ancient. As someone who generally runs their car until it breaks in a way that is uneconomic to repair, this doesn't sit well with me because it means that at some point you're forced to throw away a perfectly good (albeit old) car just because its not worth paying the battery lease.
He also said that used Zoes are almost universally leased batteries, and for me the prospect of Renault withdrawing the option to buy the battery outright on new cars sounds bonkers. The whole concept of battery leasing seems to make the whole thing expensive and shorten the life of the car - its doing quite a good job of convincing us to buy another petrol car instead of an EV.
Can anyone comment on how this works and whether we have been given accurate information? (In case it matters, we're considering the ZE40 battery).
Thanks.