After owning my first EV for three years (A battery lease Renault Zoe Q90), I traded it in and switched over to a Vauxhall Mokka-e Elite Nav Premium in December last year. I'm very happy with my change overall, but I thought it might be useful for others (and just a bit of fun) to list out the differences in the vehicles that I've noticed in the few months I've had it and how they compare to one another. This is by no means an exhaustive list but covers most of the things that I think about on a regular basis while using the vehicle. So here we go!
Range
Despite having a bigger battery (~41kWh vs ~45kWh usable) the Mokka-e is a physically larger and less aerodynamic vehicle so gets a pretty similar range. Without driving them back to back it's hard to be certain but I do feel that I get further in the Mokka-e than I did in the Zoe in mixed driving conditions. Now the warmer weather is approaching I'm getting around 3.5mi/kWh which is fairly decent. It's safe to say that they get "about the same range".
GOM
I miss the Zoe's GOM every single day. I trusted that figure with my life. It would quickly adjust based on recent driving and if the number said you would make it, you would make it. The Mokka-e GOM is quite frankly, useless. Every time you charge the car it resets itself back to 195 miles (or close enough, seemingly varying slightly due to battery temperature). This means even if you've just flat out emptied the battery driving at 70+ for the past 120 miles, you top it up and it'll go "Hey you can do 195 miles!". Then as you set off down the motorway again you lose 4 miles for every 1 that you cover for the next hour or so. It's abysmal. Then you arrive home with 20% charge and decide to pop to the supermarket and the car is warning that you only have 9 miles of range left. I now just have to mentally calculate how many kWh of battery are left based on the percentage and roughly work out if I can make it. Very very bad software. 0/10 would not recommend.
Headlights
I used to joke that with the Zoe that I would have had more luck sellotaping a candle to the bonnet of the car instead of using the headlights. Switching from that to the Intellilux Matrix LED headlights on the Mokka-e nearly brought me to tears. I feel like I'm driving with the mid-day sun attached to the bonnet, lighting my way (but it's fine because it parts the beams around oncoming vehicles). Truly incredible. I love them dearly and they were worth the £750 upgrade when ordering. I will never go back to regular headlights.
The App
The My Renault app had its fair share of issues. So much so that I made my own third-party version to fix some of the annoyances (Zeddy). The My Vauxhall one is acceptable but it's certainly lackluster. It looks like PSA group had big plans for the car's API and in theory, the app should be able to do things like lock/unlock the car and honk the horn. The developer website seems to have sat in stasis for several years now that it's part of Stellantis. A shame really as I would have loved to do my own version again! That aside, the app shows the charging status and lets you precondition (climate) the car. No major complaints but I do wish that it was just a bit more feature-filled.
Precondition
The Zoe had a (15 minute?) precondition that you can activate from the keyfob. The Mokka-e doesn't have any such button on the keyfob so the only way to activate it is through the app. A little annoying but I've gotten used to it. It's also worth noting that the Zoe had a kind of "Blast it for 10 mins" approach, often sounding like an angle grinder in my driveway while it did its thing in the summer months where the Mokka-e takes a "lightly cool it for an hour" approach. I'm not even sure how long the Mokka-e precondition runs for, it's somewhere in the region of an hour and it's very quiet. You have to really get close and listen to notice that it's on. It seems to work well enough but the real test will be in the summer months.
There are a few issues though. The Zoe would draw power from the connected charging cable to precondition but as far as I can tell, the Mokka-e uses battery power exclusively to do this, even when the charger is in. If the car has charged overnight and I precondition, I often get in the car to 99% or 98% battery remaining. Additionally, where the Zoe would let you precondition on battery down to something like 40% charge, and at any level with the cable connected, the Mokka-e stops you at 50% and due to the issue mentioned above, outright refuses to precondition at lower levels even if the charging cable is plugged in.
Charge schedule
My Zoe came with a ChargeMaster home charge point for free and it served me well. The Zoe would have its moments where it would mess up the start/stop time but 95% of the time it worked well. Getting the Mokka-e has been slightly problematic due to it having no internal charge schedule other than a delay charge. You plug it in, press the delay button 15-20 times until it recognizes what it's doing then it waits until the pre-programmed time (you can also set/enable this in the app). The issue I now have is that there's no way to set a stop time, so either I get out of bed in the middle of the night to stop it or just accept that if I've used more than half the battery, I'll be paying the higher rate on my electricity tariff while it charges itself up to 100. Thankfully I'm moving house soon and planning to get a new home charger that supports scheduling.
In conclusion, I'm very happy with the switch I've made. I love my heated steering wheel, adaptive cruise control, and infotainment display with CarPlay. It's all lovely. I'm also aware that the new Zoe fixes some of the issues mentioned and has some of these additional features. Having CCS now at 100kW charging is beautiful, although I do wish it was even faster.
Regen/B-mode
The Zoe didn't have an option for regen, it just did its thing. I was 100% used to it and my only complaints were that you couldn't adjust the level and if you went over a bump while braking, the regen would cut out for a split second and make the car kind of lurch forward. The Mokka-e has its standard mode and a B-mode which has noticeably heavier levels of regen. I drive exclusively in B-mode in the Mokka-e as it feels more like what I was used to with the Zoe and I like being able to slow down using just one pedal. One notable difference is that even at 100%, the Zoe would allow regen so you never noticed a difference. The Mokka-e seems to disable regen (Even when it shows that B-mode is enabled) if you are above about 95% battery. This can be weird because you're used to feeling the regen slowing you down and when you leave home with a full battery and let off the accelerator, suddenly you're not slowing down and you need to use the brakes until there is enough room in the battery.
This has been a brain dump and I may update it later if I think of other comparisons but for now, I hope someone finds it interesting! Feel free to ask if you have any other questions or things you want a comparison/thought on.
Range
Despite having a bigger battery (~41kWh vs ~45kWh usable) the Mokka-e is a physically larger and less aerodynamic vehicle so gets a pretty similar range. Without driving them back to back it's hard to be certain but I do feel that I get further in the Mokka-e than I did in the Zoe in mixed driving conditions. Now the warmer weather is approaching I'm getting around 3.5mi/kWh which is fairly decent. It's safe to say that they get "about the same range".
GOM
I miss the Zoe's GOM every single day. I trusted that figure with my life. It would quickly adjust based on recent driving and if the number said you would make it, you would make it. The Mokka-e GOM is quite frankly, useless. Every time you charge the car it resets itself back to 195 miles (or close enough, seemingly varying slightly due to battery temperature). This means even if you've just flat out emptied the battery driving at 70+ for the past 120 miles, you top it up and it'll go "Hey you can do 195 miles!". Then as you set off down the motorway again you lose 4 miles for every 1 that you cover for the next hour or so. It's abysmal. Then you arrive home with 20% charge and decide to pop to the supermarket and the car is warning that you only have 9 miles of range left. I now just have to mentally calculate how many kWh of battery are left based on the percentage and roughly work out if I can make it. Very very bad software. 0/10 would not recommend.
Headlights
I used to joke that with the Zoe that I would have had more luck sellotaping a candle to the bonnet of the car instead of using the headlights. Switching from that to the Intellilux Matrix LED headlights on the Mokka-e nearly brought me to tears. I feel like I'm driving with the mid-day sun attached to the bonnet, lighting my way (but it's fine because it parts the beams around oncoming vehicles). Truly incredible. I love them dearly and they were worth the £750 upgrade when ordering. I will never go back to regular headlights.
The App
The My Renault app had its fair share of issues. So much so that I made my own third-party version to fix some of the annoyances (Zeddy). The My Vauxhall one is acceptable but it's certainly lackluster. It looks like PSA group had big plans for the car's API and in theory, the app should be able to do things like lock/unlock the car and honk the horn. The developer website seems to have sat in stasis for several years now that it's part of Stellantis. A shame really as I would have loved to do my own version again! That aside, the app shows the charging status and lets you precondition (climate) the car. No major complaints but I do wish that it was just a bit more feature-filled.
Precondition
The Zoe had a (15 minute?) precondition that you can activate from the keyfob. The Mokka-e doesn't have any such button on the keyfob so the only way to activate it is through the app. A little annoying but I've gotten used to it. It's also worth noting that the Zoe had a kind of "Blast it for 10 mins" approach, often sounding like an angle grinder in my driveway while it did its thing in the summer months where the Mokka-e takes a "lightly cool it for an hour" approach. I'm not even sure how long the Mokka-e precondition runs for, it's somewhere in the region of an hour and it's very quiet. You have to really get close and listen to notice that it's on. It seems to work well enough but the real test will be in the summer months.
There are a few issues though. The Zoe would draw power from the connected charging cable to precondition but as far as I can tell, the Mokka-e uses battery power exclusively to do this, even when the charger is in. If the car has charged overnight and I precondition, I often get in the car to 99% or 98% battery remaining. Additionally, where the Zoe would let you precondition on battery down to something like 40% charge, and at any level with the cable connected, the Mokka-e stops you at 50% and due to the issue mentioned above, outright refuses to precondition at lower levels even if the charging cable is plugged in.
Charge schedule
My Zoe came with a ChargeMaster home charge point for free and it served me well. The Zoe would have its moments where it would mess up the start/stop time but 95% of the time it worked well. Getting the Mokka-e has been slightly problematic due to it having no internal charge schedule other than a delay charge. You plug it in, press the delay button 15-20 times until it recognizes what it's doing then it waits until the pre-programmed time (you can also set/enable this in the app). The issue I now have is that there's no way to set a stop time, so either I get out of bed in the middle of the night to stop it or just accept that if I've used more than half the battery, I'll be paying the higher rate on my electricity tariff while it charges itself up to 100. Thankfully I'm moving house soon and planning to get a new home charger that supports scheduling.
In conclusion, I'm very happy with the switch I've made. I love my heated steering wheel, adaptive cruise control, and infotainment display with CarPlay. It's all lovely. I'm also aware that the new Zoe fixes some of the issues mentioned and has some of these additional features. Having CCS now at 100kW charging is beautiful, although I do wish it was even faster.
Regen/B-mode
The Zoe didn't have an option for regen, it just did its thing. I was 100% used to it and my only complaints were that you couldn't adjust the level and if you went over a bump while braking, the regen would cut out for a split second and make the car kind of lurch forward. The Mokka-e has its standard mode and a B-mode which has noticeably heavier levels of regen. I drive exclusively in B-mode in the Mokka-e as it feels more like what I was used to with the Zoe and I like being able to slow down using just one pedal. One notable difference is that even at 100%, the Zoe would allow regen so you never noticed a difference. The Mokka-e seems to disable regen (Even when it shows that B-mode is enabled) if you are above about 95% battery. This can be weird because you're used to feeling the regen slowing you down and when you leave home with a full battery and let off the accelerator, suddenly you're not slowing down and you need to use the brakes until there is enough room in the battery.
This has been a brain dump and I may update it later if I think of other comparisons but for now, I hope someone finds it interesting! Feel free to ask if you have any other questions or things you want a comparison/thought on.
