Forget about the Tesla Model S, Tesla Model X, or Tesla Model 3. Renault’s unassuming ZOE electric hatchback is currently undergoing a massive rise in sales across Europe, making it the most popular plug-in car across the continent for the first quarter of this year.
Despite being nearly as old as the Nissan LEAF in terms of its design, the Renault ZOE recently gained a massive battery pack upgrade, going from 24 kilowatt-hours of capacity to a whopping 40 kilowatt-hours.
And that, as we explain in the video above, has changed things forever for the four-seat plug-in.
Renault opens 2017 with an electric car sales surge, as the new ZOE is selling like proverbial hotcakes.
Renault ZOE
The first quarter of 2017 ended with some 9,220 ZOE sales, which is 57% more than year ago (around 5,900).
Most of the sales comes via France – 56% (5,191) where ZOE holds an astounding 70% of all electric passenger car registrations, and notes growth of 60% year-over-year.
“Against the backdrop of a particularly vibrant and rapidly growing (up 22.9%) electric passenger vehicle market, the ZOE with its increased range of 400km NEDC has seen its sales figures climb close to 60%, and it alone accounts for 70% of the market with 5,191 units registered.”
Sales also hit new high in March – around 3,800 (41% of the total first quarter), which gives us hopes that ZOE may be able to reach up to 40,000 sales for the year (in 2016 it was around 22,000)!
Many people are in the market for a cheap car lease, and that’s something we can help with. We source our cars from around the UK and have negotiated some great deals, so talk to us.
We provide all of our cars on a monthly contract so it’s much like a mobile phone tariff. These contracts take two different forms and it’s worth outlining them:
Personal Contract Hire (PCH) or Business Contract Hire (BCH). These are straight leases, also known as contract hire. Essentially they are a form of long term rental, and are becoming increasingly popular.
Personal Contract Purchase (PCP): this is like a lease. However it has the benefit that at the end of the lease you can choose to keep the car. This is done by making a large one-off or ‘balloon’ payment. A PCP is now the most popular way for people to buy their new car.
Cheap Car Lease – Electric Car
We specialise in selling electric cars. With an electric car you get a new car at a low monthly cost, and it’s also especially cheap to run. The technology of electric cars is developing very fast with new models coming out all the time with longer range and greater performance. Our advice, therefore, is always to expect that you will give the car back at the end of the contract. Then you can upgrade to a new and better model.
Most popular electric cars on cheap car leases (Image: Fuel Included)
Essentially you don’t want to be in a situation like someone paying off an iPhone 4 contract when everyone else is upgrading to an iPhone 8. That’s why for our purposes you can consider leases and PCP to be equivalent. They are just finance contracts where you get a new car with an initial upfront payment plus a regular monthly payment. The key thing is what the car is costing you per month.
The beauty of electric cars, of course, is that you can save a lot of money each month on fuel and road tax. This can virtually pay for the car, i.e. you can get a new car for free. It’s because of the low ‘fuel’ costs (i.e. charging with electricity) that many of our cars are offered with free charging. Specifically we provide the first 10,000 miles of charging at home for free. This, along with email and telephone support, is the Fuel Included service.
If you just want to see how much an electric car would cost check out our most popular deals below. We provide both fully electric vehicles (EV) and plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEV):
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.
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.
Electric Cars for Sale
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.
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):
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 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):
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.
Cheap cars for sale
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
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.
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.
Renault ZOE and Renault CLIO
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 yearElectric ZOE Vs Petrol CLIO cost comparison for 15,000 miles per yearElectric 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.
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:
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.
Multi-car test-drive
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.
