24 Hour Update — EV Part 2!
Yesterday I went and picked up my Zoe!
So how has it been?
Its actually a really nice car so far, one of my biggest worries which was getting used to it being an automatic car has been not too bad and already around 30 miles later I’m feeling much better driving it.
Charging so far hasn’t been an issue, despite only having a 3 Pin charger because I’ve only taken 2 short 12 mile round trips but both times I’ve been able to get it charged to 100% within about 2 hours. Currently its on charge after doing around a 25 mile round trip.
Its a surprisingly big car, one of my concerns was that it was going to be smaller than my Panda based on the photos and initial viewing however when parked side by side it is a bit bigger and not smaller than I thought. But as you’ve not got the traditional engine in the front I’d say you have more room in the car overall as the front passengers can sit more forward and leave more room for the back.
Automatic!
One of my biggest worries was it being automatic, admittidly yesterday to begin with what I would previously have described as my “clutch control” wasn’t the best. However with a bit more driving I’ve gotten quite used to it quickly, furthermore I also figured out how to use the cruise control and its really easy, simply get to the speed you want. Make sure the cruise control mode switch is already enabled and press the plus button and it’ll activate.
Dash
The Dashboard is lovely, you’ve got a very nice big display and its really easy to see the speed.
In the centre you’ve got a media system which is a 7" touch screen display, it seems reasonably responsive and mine (and I think as default) has Bluetooth, FM, USB, SD and Aux sources. Mine doesn’t have DAB which doesn’t fuss me and its also my first car not to have a CD player.
Charging
So far charging hasn’t been an issue with my slow 3 pin charger. I’ve charged it up to 100% twice so far from around 80%. I might try an experiment soon of running it down to 10% or lower to see how much total range I get out of a charge. I am planning on fitting a proper EV charger soon and that’ll be in another blog post.
So far I’ve only seen one public charger which I tested today and seemed to work fine, however limited to 7KW so I just went through the process of using a public charger and drove back home.
Activation issues
The only issues I’ve had so far is activating the ZE Services, I purchased the Tom Tom pack & ZE Connect to be able to remotely check on charge, range and control the air conditioning. Upon purchase there was a warning that it could take 72 hours to activate and so far around 29 hours later they’re still not activated.
While it can take 72 hours I would expect better as my previous TomTom activated instantly and it seems I’ll need to phone Renault on Monday to get the activation code as they’re unfortunately shut all weekend.
This so far has been the only bad experience of the car as being able to know if my car is charged or not is very handy to be able to then take it off charge and put the cable away.
However
There’s a fishtank app so I guess that’s cool?
Originally published at ryanteck.net on September 29, 2018.
