[36degrees]

Hello!

We're expecting to take delivery of a Renault Zoe ZE50 GT Line RC – our first EV – next Monday. I've been reading through some of the threads in the Zoe forum and thought it was worth joining and saying hello!

It was originally meant to be turning up mid May, but funnily enough we haven't been in much of a rush for it… and frustratingly a lot of the reasons we opted for the EV are now completely irrelevant – 50% off parking at the railway station means nothing when you're no longer commuting every day! – but still excited.

Given all the disruption this year, we're still waiting to hear back about getting our home charger installed, so in the meantime we've got a granny cable that I'm hoping our house will get on with… we trialled a ZE40 from the Electric Vehicle Experience Centre in Milton Keynes earlier this year and whenever we tried to charge it off our house it tripped out the RCD 😬 Am I right in thinking the ZE50 has quite a different charging setup to the ZE40?

Also trying to get my head around all of the different charging networks… is it common to have multiple 'memberships' or do most people just pick one?

Thanks!

Ollie

 

[80698]

Welcome! I'm sure you'll love the car, despite the reduced usage.

As for charging, the ZE50 I believe has had some improvements, but the car remains fairly picky like all other Zoes about where it is happy to charge. With that said, it's probably more likely your home electrical setup that's at fault than anything to do with the car if you're tripping your RCD. Get an electrician to check everything is good, and that you're not overloading any of the circuits in your home if possible before doing much charging at home. If you're using the car less, you may be able to get by with using the public chargers for a while until you're all sorted with a home chargepoint.

Regarding the public charging, just take a look at Zap Map and see who operate the chargers in your area and along the routes that you frequently drive. It's certainly not uncommon to have a phone full of charging apps or a glovebox full of RFID Cards, especially for the networks that don't want a monthly subscription and let you pay as you go. I have a ridiculous amount of both, but I drive all over the place with little planning so like to be prepared.

Zap Map have a handy filter to only show chargers that accept contactless payment cards too. So if you don't want to be signinig up everywhere, you could see if you could maybe rely solely on them too.