Category Archives: ZOE

Electric Car Day – Focus on Renault ZOE

May 22, 2017Blog, Electric Cars, Leaf, Leaf 30kWh, Nissan, Renault, ZOE, ZOE Z.E. 40Trevor Larkum

We were very pleased to be able to show off a Renault ZOE at our test drive event recently. It’s one of the new longer range ZOEs with the larger 41kWh battery (where the previous version was just 22kWh) so it has nearly twice the range.

Renault ZOE at our test drive event in Milton Keynes (Image: J. Tisdall)

It was a very popular vehicle, with all available slots for test drives taken. The general opinion was very favourable – this is a lovely car. Plus having the longest range of any electric car on the market (bar the Tesla) certainly works in its favour.

Prices are here: Best Renault ZOE Z.E.40 Deals

Below is a brief video walkaround comparing the Nissan Leaf and the Renault ZOE.

Our thanks go to Paul Smith of Brayley Renault for bringing the ZOE to central Milton Keynes and for taking our customers out for test drives.

Electric Cars For Sale

May 22, 2017Blog, BMW, Buying a new car, Buying/Leasing, Electric Cars, FAQ, Hyundai, i3, i3 94Ah, IONIQ Electric, Leaf, Renault, ZOE Z.E. 40Trevor Larkum

Electric Cars For Sale

If you’re looking to buy a new or used electric car then you’ve come to the right place. Electric cars are getting very popular very fast and we have lots of electric cars for sale from a wide range of manufacturers.

We are a leading independent broker with wide experience of electric cars so we are able to advise you about all the ones on the market and which ones would suit you best. We are based in Milton Keynes in the East Midlands and are able to supply electric cars throughout the UK.

In addition to pre-sales support we offer our special Fuel Included service with many of our deals. This provides ongoing telephone and email support as well as refunding the cost of your first 10,000 miles of charging.

Going Electric

If you don’t know whether an electric car would work for you economically then talk to us. We provide a ‘total cost of ownership‘ (TCO) service, for free, to help you calculate how much you might save by going electric compared to a fossil-fuelled car.

Just get in touch with us or fill in the form on our TCO page.

Widest Range of Electric Cars For Sale

We source electric cars from all the main manufacturers including BMW, Nissan, Renault, Volkswagen, Kia and Mitsubishi. We get good deals and pass them on to you.

By being independent we can advise you best on what would suit you – whether it’s price, long range, performance, looks or a combination of all these. We can also help with installing a charge point.

Prices and details for the offers on our most popular cars are below. We provide both fully electric vehicles (EV) and plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEV):

Should you buy a used electric car?

May 20, 2017BMW, Electric Cars, i3, Leaf, News, Reviews and Comment, Nissan, Renault, ZOEJo

With more coming onto the used market, is now the time to go electric?

The used market for electric cars is pretty attractive. If you’re buying. If you’re selling then it can be a distressing experience as the initial depreciation on many electric cars is proving very high [Fuel Included Editor’s Note: of course with a PCP lease, you get a guaranteed final value and so are protected from unexpected depreciation]. The market seems to feel concerned that technology is moving so fast that an electric car even a few years old may be ‘old tech’ fairly soon, and that is reflected in the prices. Which, if you’re buying and you understand the market, can be very good news indeed.

For example, you can pick up a used Nissan Leaf for under £6000 these days. A car like that will give you free access to London and other zero-emission zones, will cost very little to keep powered up, will be cheap to tax and doesn’t cause pollution – at the tailpipe.

Of course there are things to watch out for. Older cars will almost certainly have less range, so range anxiety really is a thing. And the other anxiety thing is the battery. Will it last? Is it included in the price or is it leased? These are vital questions.

If you buy a more expensive electric car like a Tesla or a BMW i3, then the battery is something you’ve bought along with the rest of the car. Many others are only offered with a leasing deal on the battery, with charge that scale up as mileages mount.

A Nissan Leaf or a Renault Zoe fall into this group along with many others. Battery lease costs are around £70pcm. And don’t forget you’ll need to add a charger at home. This can be in the £279 to £354 range depending on speed of charge.

So all that is something to factor in while you’re looking at fuelling costs of only about 2p per mile. Maintenance costs can be as little as a quarter what a comparable petrol or diesel car would cost too, so there are definite compensations.

Nissan Leaf

Used prices from: £6000
Real-world range: 60-90 miles
Battery warranty: from 5 years/60,000 miles

The top-selling Leaf can be had with a battery either bought outright or leased for £70pcm with an annual limit of 7500 miles. Later models with 30kWh batteries have a greater range.

BMW i3

Used prices from: £14,000
Real-world range: 80-100 miles
Battery warranty 8 years/100,000 miles

The achingly contemporary looking i3 includes the battery in the price. The looks are backed up by carbonfibre and aluminium, with the battery array low in the floor so it drives well.

Renault Zoe

Used prices from: £5000 (with leased battery)
Real-world range: 70-100 miles
Battery warranty n/a

Second only to the Leaf, the Zoe offers practical space and is a very useful car as well as being quite fun to drive. The leased battery can take a fast charge as another practical bonus.

Car Leasing Deals

May 19, 2017Blog, BMW, Buying/Leasing, Electric Cars, FAQ, Hyundai, i3, i3 94Ah, IONIQ Electric, Leaf, Leasing a new car, Nissan, Renault, ZOE, ZOE Z.E. 40Trevor Larkum

Car Leasing Deals

Traditionally in the UK we have tended to buy cars outright and then run them into the ground. That has changed in the last few years so that most people buy cars on some form of finance, and there are some good car leasing deals available. The main kinds of finance are Personal Contract Purchase (PCP), and leasing also known as Personal Contract Hire (PCH).

These forms of finance both tend to come to be nearly the same thing for a driver who wants to change their car regularly. In both cases, there is an upfront payment and then a regular monthly payment and the term of the contract will typically be 3 years. It’s much like a mobile phone contract.

With a PCP you can keep the car at the end of the contract (by paying a larger final payment). With a lease you generally give the car back (though there are even exceptions to this). If you plan to upgrade at the end of the term, they basically come to the same thing. They are both a form of long term car rental (though there are some pros and cons). Therefore people may talk about car leasing deals and actually mean PCP deals or PCH/lease deals. Really they are just looking to get into a new car for a low monthly payment – which is what we do.

Electric Car Leasing Deals

What’s interesting to note is that car leasing deals work really well with electric cars like the BMW i3 or VW e-Golf. They save you a lot of money on fuel (a fill up is typically about £3). Plus the fixed term contract means you get to upgrade your electric car every few years. So it’s just like upgrading to the latest iPhone 7 or whatever rather than being stuck with old technology.

With an electric car that means every few years you’ll get a new car with longer range and better performance. Yet they remain cheap to run and you don’t pay road tax (and often get free parking).

Electric Car Leasing Deals (Image: Fuel Included)`

If you’d like us to work out how much money you can save with a cheap car lease on an electric car, try out the Fuel Included ‘total cost of ownership’ service.

If you just want to see how much an electric car would cost – and in many cases with the first 10,000 miles of fuelling included – take a look below. We provide both fully electric vehicles (EV) and plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEV):

Cheap Cars for Sale

May 18, 2017Blog, Buying a new car, Buying/Leasing, Electric Cars, FAQ, Leaf, Leaf 30kWh, Nissan, Renault, ZOE, ZOE Z.E. 40Trevor Larkum

Cheap Cars for Sale

Like lots of people we are always looking for cheap cars for sale/cheap cars to buy. This is because so many of us spend a considerable amount of our income on our car and are naturally interested in saving money. However, it is still relatively uncommon for people to consider getting an electric car. This is despite them being notoriously cheap to run, and therefore good value when considered in terms of the ‘total cost of ownership‘. For example, what other new cars can you buy from £200 per month including fuel? That’s certainly worth considering if you’re looking for cheap cars to buy.

Most people’s hesitation with going electric is probably because they assume they’ll be expensive to buy. To be fair, they do tend to be more expensive than an equivalent fossil-fuelled car to purchase. However, it’s not true across the board. Electric cars vary in price all the time and if you’re looking for cheap cars to buy there are bargains to be had (especially on car leasing deals).

Nissan Leaf and Renault ZOE: Cheap Cars to Buy

It’s interesting to note, for example, that the Renault-Nissan alliance seems to price its Renault and Nissan vehicles alternately high and low. This means that when one is expensive the other is cheap. Of course, this may be an accidental result of launch timing. When the Leaf 30kWh launched it was expensive and the ZOE 22kWh was a cheap alternative. Then the ZOE ZE40 launched at a high price. The Leaf had been around for a while so then it looked like the cheap alternative.

Renault ZOE and Nissan Leaf - cheap cars for sale — Renault ZOE and Nissan Leaf

Currently the Leaf is sells at very low prices, partly because the long range ZOE has the spotlight. It is probably also in part because the market knows there’s a long range Leaf on the way. If you’re wanting a cheap car for sale then the current Leaf is your best bet.

The new Leaf will launch in September and should be available to buy by the end of the year. If it follows the usual trend it will initially be at a higher price. Suddenly the ZOE will again look like the cheap alternative.

Both are great cars though and, like all electric cars, are considerably cheaper to run than their combustion equivalents. Please use our ‘Total Cost of Ownership’ calculator if you’re looking for cheap cars to buy and you want to know how much money you could save.

Cheap Cars for Sale Near Me

If you’re specifically searching for ‘cheap cars for sale near me’ then note that we have bases and electric car suppliers in Milton Keynes, St Albans, London, Northampton, Bedford, Cannock, Leicester and Liverpool. This allows us to supply all around the Midlands (including London, Cambridge, Luton, Oxford, Rugby, Kettering, Coventry, Nottingham and Birmingham). However we can deliver all around the country – just contact us for details.

A Total Cost of Ownership Comparison of ZOE Vs CLIO

May 15, 2017Blog, Buying/Leasing, Cost of ownership, FAQ, Renault, ZOE, ZOE Z.E. 40CLIO, Compare, electric car, Total Cost of Ownership, ZOEJason

At Fuel Included, we have run our Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator on a real-life example to help show the way the costs break down, and the considerable savings that can be made.

Today we have gone head to head with an all Electric Renault ZOE Dynamique 40 kWh, and a Petrol engined Renault CLIO Dynamique Nav TCe 90.

We have taken a commuter travelling into central Milton Keynes each day and parking as our representative driver. These tables show the total monthly cost* by summing all costs for the three year period of the lease and dividing them by 36.

Total Cost of Ownership

Electric ZOE Vs Petrol CLIO cost comparison for 20,000 miles per year

Electric ZOE Vs Petrol CLIO cost comparison for 15,000 miles per year

Electric ZOE Vs Petrol CLIO cost comparison for 10,000 miles per year

Conclusions

Even at the lower ranges of driving there are significant cost savings to be made. However, we see that as the mileage increases, the money to be saved is simply staggering.

Please contact us if you would like us to assess the cost of ownership of an electric car for your use case.

*Assumptions made for these calculations:

Petrol price from Sainsbury’s Bedford £1.21 per litre.
Electric charging is home charging plus 10 charges per year at £6 per charge from the Ecotricity rapid charge network.
CLIO mpg 52 from https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/realmpg/renault/clio-iv-2013
Both cars taken on 3 year PCP. Clio prices from http://offers.renault.co.uk/cars/clio/selection?offer=305 and ZOE prices from our current Fuel Included offer.
ZOE miles/kWh 4.5 from manufacturers real-world mileage figure divided by battery capacity.
Home charging Economy-7 unit cost 7.5p
Tax: Clio 1.2L 118 g/km CO2 = £160 in year 1 and £140 per year subsequently.
Parking costs based on person parking 200 working days per year in Milton Keynes town centre

Electric Car Day – A great Success for our Milton Keynes Multi-Car Test Drive Event

April 28, 2017Blog, i3, Leaf, Leaf 30kWh, Milton Keynes, Nissan, Renault, ZOE, ZOE Z.E. 40BMW, EV-200, i3, Leaf, Milton Keynes, Nissan, Renault, test-drive, ZOEJason

With support from Nissan, Renault and BMW, we hosted our first Milton Keynes multi-brand electric car day at our offices in Milton Keynes.

In a packed two and a half hours of pre-booked drives over twenty people enjoyed the thrills and spills of electric car driving, with 2 Nissan Leafs, 2 BMW i3’s, 1 Renault ZOE and one Nissan EV-200 electric van.

We’ve written about these vehicles in more detail in other posts:

This is the first of many. Please contact us if you have an office that would benefit from a multi-car test drive event.

Facebook Live Video from a BMW i3 test drive

Video walkaround of a couple of our Cars available for test

Leaf, i3 and EV-200

Multi-Car Test Drive in Milton Keynes – This Friday 28th April 12pm – 2pm

April 24, 2017Blog, BMW, i3, i3 94Ah, Leaf, Leaf 30kWh, Milton Keynes, Nissan, Renault, ZOE, ZOE Z.E. 40BMW i3, electric car, Milton Keynes, Nissan Leaf, Renault ZOE, test-driveJason

FuelIncluded have organised a test drive day this Friday in Milton Keynes.

We shall have the three best-selling all-electric cars here; Nissan Leaf, Renault ZOE and the BMW i3.

Please contact us now if you would like to drive one or more of these great cars at a single, convenient location, with experts on hand to discuss and ask questions of.

Renault Gets an Electric Car to Write Jack Kerouac Fan Fiction via Artificial Intelligence

A new campaign for Renault in Sweden sees its Zoe electric car “write” Jack Kerouac fan fiction for test drivers via artificial intelligence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVONkH6QV0o&feature=youtu.be

According to agency Edelman Deportivo, one of the major obstacles to widespread electric-car adoption is commonly labelled “range anxiety,” or the fear that a vehicle has insufficient range to reach its destination. So the effort aims to show how far a Renault can go in a single charge, by showing a car going where no other has gone before — by turning automobile into “author.”

The “Written by Zoe” promotes the Zoe, which has a 400km range. The brand obtained permission from the the estate of Jack Kerouac to write authorized fan fiction stories based on the themes and style of writing of his novel “On the Road” (which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year).

The “stories” are entirely composed through live driving data from Stockholm test drives in the Zoe, with the help of AI-technology. The idea is that, by analyzing “On The Road” and using the car’s internal and external sensor data to turn it into contextual storylines, the system writes unique stories for each driver.

Renault Zoe vs rivals – cost analysis

April 14, 2017BMW, Economy, Electric Cars, Hyundai, i3, IONIQ Electric, Leaf 30kWh, News, Reviews and Comment, Nissan, Renault, ZOE Z.E. 40Jo

We’re all pretty clued-up about the benefits to zero-emission driving these days. Not only do electric cars help to improve air quality, lower your SMR costs and bring a reduction in BIK tax bills, they also deliver huge savings by not relying on fuel.

According to many experts, we are now getting very close to mass adoption of electric cars here in the UK. But they’re still a niche choice for many fleets because higher P11D prices and anxieties over range remain key stumbling blocks.

A whole-life cost approach is essential and, as discussed in the previous pages, they have to be fit for purpose to provide enough savings to outweigh the initial cost. But technology is improving at a considerable rate and battery ranges are increasing with every update.

The Renault Zoe

Refreshed in 2016, now offers an official 250-mile range – the best the sector has to offer, Tesla aside.

According to the French carmaker, if you use the most efficient means possible, like charging at night, running a Zoe could cost as little as 2p per mile in warmer weather, rising to 3ppm when the nights draw in. As well as offering the best range of our four cars here, the Zoe is also the cheapest to buy with P11D prices starting as low as £18,440. Despite some disappointing residual values, which are a common theme for most electric cars currently, the Zoe is the cheapest per mile too, costing 52.9p.

Renault Zoe Dynamique Nav 41kWh R90 – 52.2p CPM
P11D: £27,890
CO2 (tax): 0g/km (7%)
BIK 20/40% per month: £33/£65
Official range: 250 miles
National Insurance: £1,116
Boot space: 338 litres
Battery size/power: 41kW/92hp
0-62mph: 13.5 seconds
Residual value: 18.7%/£5,225
Fuel costs: £600
SMR: £890

Nissan Leaf

The biggest-selling electric car here in the UK by some margin, the Nissan Leaf also had a battery upgrade in 2016, which saw its range increase up to 155 miles.

Not only is the Leaf the most popular of our models here, it’s also the most practical, offering a 355-litre boot and the most interior space. The Nissan is also easy to drive and comfortable over longer distances.

Nissan Leaf Acenta 30kWh
P11D: £30,235
CO2 (tax): 0g/km (7%)
BIK 20/40% per month: £35/£71
Official range: 153 miles
National Insurance: £1,210
Boot space: 355 litres
Battery size/power: 30kW/111hp
0-62mph: 11.5 seconds
Residual value: 16.9%/£5,100
Fuel costs: £980
SMR: £1,029

BMW i3

First launched in 2013, the i3 not only marked the start of BMW’s EV model range, it also moved the game forwards considerably for electric car technology as a whole. It was a game-changer in every sense, and although it’s struggled to gain momentum in sales against its rivals, the i3 has remained one of the most desirable and technologically advanced electric cars on the market.

A battery update in 2016 doubled the car’s range to 195 miles officially on one charge, although the carmaker believes 125 miles is more realistic in real-world conditions, plus the i3 is also fitted with a new charging system that is 50% faster.

BMW i3 94ah eDrive
P11D: £32,485
CO2 (tax): 0g/km (7%)
BIK 20/40% per month: £38/£76
Official range: 195 miles
National Insurance: £1,300
Boot space: 260 litres
Battery size/power: 33kW/170hp
0-62mph: 7.3 seconds
Residual value: 30.2%/£9,825
Fuel costs: £1,200
SMR: £1,216

Hyundai IONIQ

The first car to be available in hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric forms, the Ioniq moved Hyundai into new territory when the car was launched last year. It’s all part of the firm’s plans to have as many as 28 eco-friendly models on sale by 2020.

Arguably the most eye-catching of the four cars, the Ioniq also has one of the biggest boots, and its official 174-mile range is one of the best on offer here too. RVs, as we explained earlier, leave a lot to be desired for EVs in general; however, the Ioniq still manages to better both the Zoe and Leaf at 20.3%, and only the Renault is cheaper per mile for whole-life costs.

Hyundai Ioniq Premium
P11D: £28,940
CO2 (tax): 0g/km (7%)
BIK 20/40% per month: £34/£68
Official range: 174 miles
National Insurance: £1,158
Boot space: 350 litres
Battery size/power: 28kW/120hp
0-62mph: 10.2 seconds
Residual value: 20.3%/£5,875
Fuel costs: £862
SMR: £1,222