Renault Zoe review - the best value for money EV in 2020!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is the renault zoe and it's a bit like an electric scooter in the way that it's perfect for urban transport it's cheap to run and you can refuel it by plugging it in at home now renault has actually recently updated the zoe to give it some new technology tweak the design slightly and they've also fitted a better battery and motor and in this video i'm going to tell you if it's better than a peugeot e208 or a mini electric and whether you should buy one buying a new car head to car wow to get offers from the uk's top dealers car wow dot co dot uk the car buying comparison site let's start this video by talking about the price so the renault zoe starts from twenty nine thousand four hundred and ninety five pounds however you get a three thousand pounds grant from the government to go towards that so you're only paying just over twenty six thousand pounds but if you buy through car wow you can save even more money an extra three thousand something pounds because the total saving you get through carway including that government grant to three grand is six thousand seven hundred and forty six quid off one of these renault zoes so if you want to check out more information on the renault zoe and see how much money you can save through our trusted dealers click on the pop out banner up there to go to the car wire website carwire.com one of the things about the renault zoe is that it doesn't look overtly like an electric car it's more just a modern hatchback and it's looking more modern since renault did some changes to the exterior design in mid 2019. so they gave some new headlights new chrome strip here to make it look posher it's a more aggressive lower bumper with air intakes there and some breathers for over the wheels there to improve the aerodynamics it's quite decent looking car actually from the side the zoe looks the same as before so it's a hatchback that's about it i do like these creases though crease out the front and the one at the back look pretty cool and the fact that there's no door handle that you can see on the rear door but more about that later now as standard you get 15-inch alloy wheels but then as you move at the range you get 16s and then with the top-of-the-range car you get these diamond cut alloy wheels which look lovely one thing to point out though is that on the entry-level car you don't get body-colored door mirrors which looks a bit cheap and this rain stopping version does make things look a little bit cooler with blacked out rear windows which makes it look very street i'm not sure about this at all to try and make it look like this is all one piece of glass renault has stuck some black plastic here it's just a sticker over the door look at it that's crap round the back the only real noticeable changes that renault has made to the zoe is to include some horizontal stripes in the rear led brake lights that's it otherwise it's the same as before which means it's sort of featureless now i complain about manufacturers fitting fake vents to cars and i can now see why they do it because if you don't like reno hasn't done really for this zoe you just get expanses of plastic and it's bland that's really kind of upset my entire world view i was dead against like fake vents but now i'm not so sure one of the biggest changes to the zo is that renault has increased the battery capacity by 25 so it now has 52 kilowatts which means you can get a range of up to 245 miles which is quite a lot to charge it you have to get to the port underneath the badge on the front which i quite like it's a nice design feature and then you can charge it if you want to from a traditional three pin socket but i'll take you like 37 hours you're not going to do that more likely use a seven kilowatt wall charger then that'll take about eight and a half hours so you can do it overnight the quickest you can charge it is up to a 50 kilowatt charger and that will take just an hour and a half from zero to completely full now you can get the zoe with two motors oh look gastro that's quite posh like i was saying though two motors the entry-level motor is 107 horsepower this one has a range topping motor which is new it's 135 horsepower it drives the front wheels via a one-speed automatic gearbox that's all you need to know really this 135 horsepower nozzle should be able to do 960 in 9.5 seconds but i'm going to test it with my specialist timing gear here so just hold it on the brake and now i'm going to accelerate and see how quick it really is smooth steady and constant that's me describing the acceleration and there's your 60 miles an hour renault blomming liars absolute blooming liars the cheeky burgers look not to 60 8.37 seconds that's like a whole second quicker than they said here on the inside renault has completely redesigned the zoe's cabin though it doesn't really look that much more modern than before the standout feature is the new infotainment screen so on the top of the range version you get this portrait style a model's low down the range you get a slightly smaller screen but still fine this is what it looks like actually see it's okay isn't it all models do get a digital driver's display now later on in this video i'll actually do an in-depth review on this technology but let's continue with the cabin so if you've got squidgy materials here which is quite nice though here it's all kind of hard and scratchy here it's hard and scratchy hits hard and scratchy i'm also not a fan of this this armrest is quite hard it's not padded and then there's not even one here so you can't rest this arm which is a bit annoying really i tell you what's also annoying renault has moved the cruise control buttons to the steering wheel which is good they used to have the one like levers behind the steering wheel but they've still got the stereo controls behind the steering wheel so it's hard to see what you're doing when you're trying to alter the stereo so you just do it on the touchscreen pointless won't they change that it's about time really now let's move on to the driving position so lots of adjustment in the steering wheel which is good what's not so good are the seats now i like the look of them this one piece design pretty cool i also like the fact that this leather is faux leather so no animals have been killed also the fabric is recycled so that's nice and green as well what's not so good though is that the fact that the batteries are underneath the floor and they sit underneath the seat so they raise the seats that you'll probably see here look as a result renault has decided to not give you height adjustment for the driver's seat so if you're really small you won't be able to raise it up and if you're really tall you won't be able to lower it down and look the headroom's okay for me but it might be a little bit tight if you're tall so that's something to consider another thing to consider is that the seats are well they're lacking in any kind of support they're all a bit squidgy and soft and feel cheap to tell you the truth you have a similar problem here in the back seats as you do in the front once again batteries being underneath the floor means that these seats are quite raised up if you look at this the distance between the floor and the seat base isn't that great so you do feel like you're sitting with your knees rather high and then you don't have much under thigh support which gets on your nose on longer journey there's another thing that might be annoying if you need to carry passengers in the back who are quite tall look knee room isn't great and if i sit up straight my head is pretty much touching the roof so anyone over six foot is going to really struggle for head room and this bit kind of like arches in as well so if you've got three set in the back at once it's going to be really quite a squeeze they're going to be pushing their heads up against them as you can see on the middle seat it's not great even though this middle seat is actually surprisingly comfy and there's not much of a hump in the floor either so there's plenty of room for people's feet there's another thing that annoys me about sitting in the back of the zoe and it's the integrated headrest means that it's just a little bit harder to see at the front windscreen which means it might be a bit more likely to get travel sick at least you get a good view of the side windows because the window ledges are low and if you are feeling sick look the windows go all the way down which is handy if you need to vomit because then you won't get any splash back anything else i've noticed i do rather like the patterning on this roof here it's unusual just thought i'd mention that to take your mind off the vomit thing right let's move on to the zoe's boot which is actually a decent size the capacity is 338 liters which is more than a peugeot e208 more than a vox or e corsa and more than a mini electrics buy quite some margin actually it's a nice square shape and underneath the low cover you can fit six carry-on size suitcases which is really good now you obviously have to have your charging cables in the bit which do take up space and if you want to take them out you've got to lift them over this load lip which is fairly large and you'll probably notice look all exposed metal so it does feel a little bit cheap in this boot area when you consider this isn't actually that cheap to buy and practicality in here is is only so so so you've got a hook there hook there but there's no underfloor storage or anything like that and if you want to carry longer items you need to fold down the rear seats there we go and the seat belts do snug on them the whole time and another problem you have as i'll illustrate now with my electric scooter is this hump in the floor so you can't just roll it to the front of the car come on and it all just lies a bit kind of awkwardly like that doesn't it so that's not ideal let's finish off talking about the zoe's practicality by going through the in-cast storage spaces so you have a little tray here on the dash which is quite handy look cameraman jack has kept his battery pouch there and it's got a grippy service so things won't fall out the glove box though is rubbish look can't even fit the car's manual in there just won't fit now if you're watching from mainland europe you won't have this problem it's because the fuse box is over here on right-hand drive cars so sod the british a thank you very much for that renault yeah a couple otherwise they're quite big so like smaller bottles are going to rattle around in there but big cups of coffee are just fine you've got a pad here which is grippy yet again for your mobile phone perfect there's another one here but look it's not quite big enough for the larger mobile phones like my galaxy s10 plus you have two usb ports there an aux in and an old-fashioned 12v charging socket if you want to use that then there's the door bins which look here in the front they can hold a large bowl which is good moving into the back though they can't hold one of these kind of bottles look nope so i'll just grab that that's all they can hold just about squeezing now you've got two usb ports down here which is handy for charging mobile devices here in the back left hand is the fact that the pouch on the back of the front passenger seat doesn't open at the top it opens at the side so things are likely to fall out when you go around the corner quickly and there isn't even one on the back of the driver's seat for some reason and that brings me on to five annoying things about the renault zoe the driving mode selector is a bit frustrating to use the most annoying thing is the fact it doesn't have a part button so you have to go into neutral when you want to be stationary and it's a bit fiddly to do and you often can move past it into drive and then or reverse and it's much easier to just have a button you can press another problem with it is that you cannot get that right and then go to get out of the car and then start moving forwards you know i said that you could charge the car at 50 kilowatts well you have to pay a thousand pounds to enable that feature otherwise it'll only charge at 22 kilowatts and then it'll take three hours instead of an hour and a half to charge from empty to full the low curve in the boot is unnecessarily awkward to remove so pop it out oh come on then it gets wedged against the boot you can't pull it this way so you have to push the headrest down like that and then you have to move it forward and if someone sat there you're just going to annoy them slightly like that and then you can get it out and if you want to store it in the boot then it's just in the way again so you know what i'm going to do it's going to have to go flying i broke it the rear door handles are actually a horrible design you have to open them like and it's just like this horrible cheap plasticky flap it's just so awkward and i hate the way that they've done a little thumbprint there just to remind you how to do it like after you do it the first time you're gonna completely forget yeah it's uncomfortable to do don't like that the adjuster for the seat backs for the front seats is so close to the center console that's really hard to operate it so you try and turn it crushes your knuckles every single turn you make ah oh sorry i'll just have it like this even though i'm not comfy it's not all negative though here's five good things about this car renee gives you a five year warranty for the zoe the battery gets an eight year warranty or one hundred thousand miles whichever comes sooner the myreno app allows you to monitor your car remotely using your mobile phone you can do things like see how much charge you've got left in the battery you can pre-heat or cool the car so it's at the right temperature when you get in it if you can't find it in a car park you might be located you can do things like find the newest charging point and even plan your routes if you buy renault zoe charge master will give you a free 7 kilowatt hour wall charger for your home and if you charge the car overnight on an economy seven tariff it'll cost just five quid to fully charge up the battery that's five pounds for 245 miles range good zeissfix here on the front passenger seat which is handy because while there are two other ice fix points in the back which means you can fit three child seats in this car the spacer maneuver a larger child seat is a bit limited there in the back seat so you're probably going to use this front seat if you've got one of those big bulky rear facing seats then of course you are going to have to turn off the front passenger airbag yeah for safety reasons it's really annoying when these touchscreens get covered in horrible fingerprints like that but don't worry renault gives you a cleaning cloth for it that doesn't seem to work i have no idea why finally let's see what the renault zoe is like to drive starting off with what it's like in town because after all that's where electric cars excel and it's really good in town actually so the power delivery is smooth the steering is light it's easy i don't know if you can hear this there's a weird noise being emitted from the car which it does at under 20 miles an hour to warn pedestrians that you're approaching but it sort of sounds like that noisy in horror films which builds tension before someone's about to either get killed or someone's going to open a cupboard and a bird or fly out of it and it'll just scare you a bit unfortunately you can turn it off if you want to and then pedestrians won't be able to hear you so probably best to just leave it on really now one of the good things about this renault zoe is that the turning circle's really really tight so it's 10.6 meters which is better than a mini electric or a peugeot e208 so it's easier to do u-turns like you need to one thing to note is that the brakes can feel a little bit grabby and oversensitive so you do sometimes end up just like jerking to a hold quicker than you'd probably like you can put the kind to a b mode which is a breaking mode which means you get more regen braking from the motor so you can lift off the accelerator and it will slow down without you actually having to touch the normal brakes the only thing is is that you don't get the full effect of that if the battery is over 90 which is a bit annoying why can't it just work fully anyway the system isn't quite as good as the e-pedal mode you have on the nissan leaf which allows you to actually just drive along completely using the accelerator without touching the brakes at all because when you lift off with a nissan it will even apply the friction brakes so you can just drive around using the accelerator when you're in town in fact if you want to see my full in-depth video review of the nissan leaf click on the pop-up banner up there one area where i think it's quite slightly better than the leaf is that it just absorbs bumps it looks better so when you're going over a cobbled street or over potholes like i'm about to now it's not too bad you don't get bounced around terribly although the camera may make it look like i really am but trust me that is a pretty bad surface yep it's actually designed for testing tanks to tell you the trees so this keeps with it okay then there's the visibility which ford is really good at the back is really good as well but there is a huge rear pillar which does make a bit harder when it comes to parking really creates a huge blind spot so you do absolutely have to rely on your mirrors or the reversing camera if you've gone fit to the car how easy is it for a more unlike me to maneuver front parking sensors are helping me out but look i did that on one lock way awesome me quite pleased with that it was easy to park now i want the sensors to shut up shut up good they've stopped anyway enough of that let's see what this air is like when you head out on the motorway the old zoe used to feel a bit underpad when you're out on the motorway but this new one with the 135 horsepower motor is fine look i mean 50 miles an hour want to get up to motorway speed or overtake someone flaw in it off we go it's not stellar performance but it's more than adequate and they're 70. one thing you do notice though is when you're getting quickly at motorway speeds you get quite a lot of wind noise kind of drones on so you can end up turning up the stereo to try and ignore that other than that it's fine for just getting the motorway and while you can hear the wind noise you don't get blown about too much by other cars or big hgvs which is a good thing now part of that is due to this vehicle's weight so it weighs one and a half tons that's because it's got all the batteries in it now that's quite a lot heavier than the equivalent renault clio at least the batteries are mounted low down in the floor which keeps the center of gravity low and that is important for handling speaking of which let's see what this zoe is like when you do encounter a twisty road the car does lean a little bit in corners it's not too bad you don't feel like you're in a listing ship but it does roll a bit more than some other electric cars one thing you do notice that the front tires soon run out of grip if you start pushing too hard also the steering look at that it's not the most responsive steering when you're going quicker it's great in town nice and light but when you're getting quicker you want it to weight up a bit more and let you know what the front tires are doing because actually i have no idea oh no i can tell they're running out of grip now because they're starting to scream slow down yeah this car isn't particularly fun to drive on a twisty road but that's not why you buy it you buy it for going around town it's good for that and it can cope with longer journeys as well so that's fine that's good enough for me and good enough for most people are going to buy this car finally let's talk about the zo's equipment levels so the range kicks off with the play and that gets led headlights cruise control electrically operated and heated door mirrors plus android auto and apple carplay for the seven inch infotainment system next up is the iconic and it gets rear parking sensors which sort of makes the car look like it's got acne it also gets climate control rather than basic air conditioning as well as charging for the mobile phone electric rear windows and split folding rear seat bench yes that's right you don't get electric windows or a split folding bench on the entry-level car which seems a bit mean you also get lane departure warning and traffic sign recognition and the seven inch touchscreen gets sat nav as well at the top of the zoe range is the gt line which is what this car is so as well as rear parking sensors you get front ones you also get a reversing camera which is handy there's blind spot monitoring as well and electrically folding door mirrors so that the cars can't knock them off the biggest change though is this you get the large infotainment screen which is portrait style so like a tablet and i like the way that you can have like two views on it so you can have the sat nav and some other functions there so it's easy to multitask it's quite easy to whip through different functions using these shortcut buttons though because they are not actual physical buttons they're a bit harder to press when you're driving now you can go full screen on the sat nav if you want to like the screen is a bit laggy so it's like a phone from about like five years ago but it's all right the sat nav is generally okay though to tell you the truth you're gonna be using the standard fit apple carplay and android auto but overall this infotainment system is pretty decent the standard fit digital dials which you get on all models are pretty nice as well so you can cycle through different menus so you've got various car information you've got your music and stuff your sat nav and you can change the view to make it wide screen or slightly smaller screen for the sat nav and then you've got various other information about the car which you can cycle through as well the only problem with it is it doesn't have any information about your phone so you have to still be looking on this main screen to be operating the phone but overall it's still pretty decent now the question is though which version of the renault zoe would i go for well i am going to configure one right now using the car wow configurator to see what offer i can get back so if you want to see which zoe i'd go for and the deal i got on it click on the pop-out banner up there to go check it out so then what's my final verdict on the renault zoe should you yeah avoid it should you consider it should you shortlist it or should you just go right ahead and buy it well i reckon you should shortlist the zoe now it is flawed in quite a few areas but where it matters for electric cars the range the value for money and how it feels to drive it actually does really well do you agree with my verdict let me know in the comments section also please subscribe to this channel for more videos and if you click on the deals box to the right you can see how much you can save on a new car at carl wow or click on the video windows below to watch another of my videosthis is the renault zoe and it's a bit like an electric scooter in the way that it's perfect for urban transport it's cheap to run and you can refuel it by plugging it in at home now renault has actually recently updated the zoe to give it some new technology tweak the design slightly and they've also fitted a better battery and motor and in this video i'm going to tell you if it's better than a peugeot e208 or a mini electric and whether you should buy one buying a new car head to car wow to get offers from the uk's top dealers car wow dot co dot uk the car buying comparison site let's start this video by talking about the price so the renault zoe starts from twenty nine thousand four hundred and ninety five pounds however you get a three thousand pounds grant from the government to go towards that so you're only paying just over twenty six thousand pounds but if you buy through car wow you can save even more money an extra three thousand something pounds because the total saving you get through carway including that government grant to three grand is six thousand seven hundred and forty six quid off one of these renault zoes so if you want to check out more information on the renault zoe and see how much money you can save through our trusted dealers click on the pop out banner up there to go to the car wire website carwire.com one of the things about the renault zoe is that it doesn't look overtly like an electric car it's more just a modern hatchback and it's looking more modern since renault did some changes to the exterior design in mid 2019. so they gave some new headlights new chrome strip here to make it look posher it's a more aggressive lower bumper with air intakes there and some breathers for over the wheels there to improve the aerodynamics it's quite decent looking car actually from the side the zoe looks the same as before so it's a hatchback that's about it i do like these creases though crease out the front and the one at the back look pretty cool and the fact that there's no door handle that you can see on the rear door but more about that later now as standard you get 15-inch alloy wheels but then as you move at the range you get 16s and then with the top-of-the-range car you get these diamond cut alloy wheels which look lovely one thing to point out though is that on the entry-level car you don't get body-colored door mirrors which looks a bit cheap and this rain stopping version does make things look a little bit cooler with blacked out rear windows which makes it look very street i'm not sure about this at all to try and make it look like this is all one piece of glass renault has stuck some black plastic here it's just a sticker over the door look at it that's crap round the back the only real noticeable changes that renault has made to the zoe is to include some horizontal stripes in the rear led brake lights that's it otherwise it's the same as before which means it's sort of featureless now i complain about manufacturers fitting fake vents to cars and i can now see why they do it because if you don't like reno hasn't done really for this zoe you just get expanses of plastic and it's bland that's really kind of upset my entire world view i was dead against like fake vents but now i'm not so sure one of the biggest changes to the zo is that renault has increased the battery capacity by 25 so it now has 52 kilowatts which means you can get a range of up to 245 miles which is quite a lot to charge it you have to get to the port underneath the badge on the front which i quite like it's a nice design feature and then you can charge it if you want to from a traditional three pin socket but i'll take you like 37 hours you're not going to do that more likely use a seven kilowatt wall charger then that'll take about eight and a half hours so you can do it overnight the quickest you can charge it is up to a 50 kilowatt charger and that will take just an hour and a half from zero to completely full now you can get the zoe with two motors oh look gastro that's quite posh like i was saying though two motors the entry-level motor is 107 horsepower this one has a range topping motor which is new it's 135 horsepower it drives the front wheels via a one-speed automatic gearbox that's all you need to know really this 135 horsepower nozzle should be able to do 960 in 9.5 seconds but i'm going to test it with my specialist timing gear here so just hold it on the brake and now i'm going to accelerate and see how quick it really is smooth steady and constant that's me describing the acceleration and there's your 60 miles an hour renault blomming liars absolute blooming liars the cheeky burgers look not to 60 8.37 seconds that's like a whole second quicker than they said here on the inside renault has completely redesigned the zoe's cabin though it doesn't really look that much more modern than before the standout feature is the new infotainment screen so on the top of the range version you get this portrait style a model's low down the range you get a slightly smaller screen but still fine this is what it looks like actually see it's okay isn't it all models do get a digital driver's display now later on in this video i'll actually do an in-depth review on this technology but let's continue with the cabin so if you've got squidgy materials here which is quite nice though here it's all kind of hard and scratchy here it's hard and scratchy hits hard and scratchy i'm also not a fan of this this armrest is quite hard it's not padded and then there's not even one here so you can't rest this arm which is a bit annoying really i tell you what's also annoying renault has moved the cruise control buttons to the steering wheel which is good they used to have the one like levers behind the steering wheel but they've still got the stereo controls behind the steering wheel so it's hard to see what you're doing when you're trying to alter the stereo so you just do it on the touchscreen pointless won't they change that it's about time really now let's move on to the driving position so lots of adjustment in the steering wheel which is good what's not so good are the seats now i like the look of them this one piece design pretty cool i also like the fact that this leather is faux leather so no animals have been killed also the fabric is recycled so that's nice and green as well what's not so good though is that the fact that the batteries are underneath the floor and they sit underneath the seat so they raise the seats that you'll probably see here look as a result renault has decided to not give you height adjustment for the driver's seat so if you're really small you won't be able to raise it up and if you're really tall you won't be able to lower it down and look the headroom's okay for me but it might be a little bit tight if you're tall so that's something to consider another thing to consider is that the seats are well they're lacking in any kind of support they're all a bit squidgy and soft and feel cheap to tell you the truth you have a similar problem here in the back seats as you do in the front once again batteries being underneath the floor means that these seats are quite raised up if you look at this the distance between the floor and the seat base isn't that great so you do feel like you're sitting with your knees rather high and then you don't have much under thigh support which gets on your nose on longer journey there's another thing that might be annoying if you need to carry passengers in the back who are quite tall look knee room isn't great and if i sit up straight my head is pretty much touching the roof so anyone over six foot is going to really struggle for head room and this bit kind of like arches in as well so if you've got three set in the back at once it's going to be really quite a squeeze they're going to be pushing their heads up against them as you can see on the middle seat it's not great even though this middle seat is actually surprisingly comfy and there's not much of a hump in the floor either so there's plenty of room for people's feet there's another thing that annoys me about sitting in the back of the zoe and it's the integrated headrest means that it's just a little bit harder to see at the front windscreen which means it might be a bit more likely to get travel sick at least you get a good view of the side windows because the window ledges are low and if you are feeling sick look the windows go all the way down which is handy if you need to vomit because then you won't get any splash back anything else i've noticed i do rather like the patterning on this roof here it's unusual just thought i'd mention that to take your mind off the vomit thing right let's move on to the zoe's boot which is actually a decent size the capacity is 338 liters which is more than a peugeot e208 more than a vox or e corsa and more than a mini electrics buy quite some margin actually it's a nice square shape and underneath the low cover you can fit six carry-on size suitcases which is really good now you obviously have to have your charging cables in the bit which do take up space and if you want to take them out you've got to lift them over this load lip which is fairly large and you'll probably notice look all exposed metal so it does feel a little bit cheap in this boot area when you consider this isn't actually that cheap to buy and practicality in here is is only so so so you've got a hook there hook there but there's no underfloor storage or anything like that and if you want to carry longer items you need to fold down the rear seats there we go and the seat belts do snug on them the whole time and another problem you have as i'll illustrate now with my electric scooter is this hump in the floor so you can't just roll it to the front of the car come on and it all just lies a bit kind of awkwardly like that doesn't it so that's not ideal let's finish off talking about the zoe's practicality by going through the in-cast storage spaces so you have a little tray here on the dash which is quite handy look cameraman jack has kept his battery pouch there and it's got a grippy service so things won't fall out the glove box though is rubbish look can't even fit the car's manual in there just won't fit now if you're watching from mainland europe you won't have this problem it's because the fuse box is over here on right-hand drive cars so sod the british a thank you very much for that renault yeah a couple otherwise they're quite big so like smaller bottles are going to rattle around in there but big cups of coffee are just fine you've got a pad here which is grippy yet again for your mobile phone perfect there's another one here but look it's not quite big enough for the larger mobile phones like my galaxy s10 plus you have two usb ports there an aux in and an old-fashioned 12v charging socket if you want to use that then there's the door bins which look here in the front they can hold a large bowl which is good moving into the back though they can't hold one of these kind of bottles look nope so i'll just grab that that's all they can hold just about squeezing now you've got two usb ports down here which is handy for charging mobile devices here in the back left hand is the fact that the pouch on the back of the front passenger seat doesn't open at the top it opens at the side so things are likely to fall out when you go around the corner quickly and there isn't even one on the back of the driver's seat for some reason and that brings me on to five annoying things about the renault zoe the driving mode selector is a bit frustrating to use the most annoying thing is the fact it doesn't have a part button so you have to go into neutral when you want to be stationary and it's a bit fiddly to do and you often can move past it into drive and then or reverse and it's much easier to just have a button you can press another problem with it is that you cannot get that right and then go to get out of the car and then start moving forwards you know i said that you could charge the car at 50 kilowatts well you have to pay a thousand pounds to enable that feature otherwise it'll only charge at 22 kilowatts and then it'll take three hours instead of an hour and a half to charge from empty to full the low curve in the boot is unnecessarily awkward to remove so pop it out oh come on then it gets wedged against the boot you can't pull it this way so you have to push the headrest down like that and then you have to move it forward and if someone sat there you're just going to annoy them slightly like that and then you can get it out and if you want to store it in the boot then it's just in the way again so you know what i'm going to do it's going to have to go flying i broke it the rear door handles are actually a horrible design you have to open them like and it's just like this horrible cheap plasticky flap it's just so awkward and i hate the way that they've done a little thumbprint there just to remind you how to do it like after you do it the first time you're gonna completely forget yeah it's uncomfortable to do don't like that the adjuster for the seat backs for the front seats is so close to the center console that's really hard to operate it so you try and turn it crushes your knuckles every single turn you make ah oh sorry i'll just have it like this even though i'm not comfy it's not all negative though here's five good things about this car renee gives you a five year warranty for the zoe the battery gets an eight year warranty or one hundred thousand miles whichever comes sooner the myreno app allows you to monitor your car remotely using your mobile phone you can do things like see how much charge you've got left in the battery you can pre-heat or cool the car so it's at the right temperature when you get in it if you can't find it in a car park you might be located you can do things like find the newest charging point and even plan your routes if you buy renault zoe charge master will give you a free 7 kilowatt hour wall charger for your home and if you charge the car overnight on an economy seven tariff it'll cost just five quid to fully charge up the battery that's five pounds for 245 miles range good zeissfix here on the front passenger seat which is handy because while there are two other ice fix points in the back which means you can fit three child seats in this car the spacer maneuver a larger child seat is a bit limited there in the back seat so you're probably going to use this front seat if you've got one of those big bulky rear facing seats then of course you are going to have to turn off the front passenger airbag yeah for safety reasons it's really annoying when these touchscreens get covered in horrible fingerprints like that but don't worry renault gives you a cleaning cloth for it that doesn't seem to work i have no idea why finally let's see what the renault zoe is like to drive starting off with what it's like in town because after all that's where electric cars excel and it's really good in town actually so the power delivery is smooth the steering is light it's easy i don't know if you can hear this there's a weird noise being emitted from the car which it does at under 20 miles an hour to warn pedestrians that you're approaching but it sort of sounds like that noisy in horror films which builds tension before someone's about to either get killed or someone's going to open a cupboard and a bird or fly out of it and it'll just scare you a bit unfortunately you can turn it off if you want to and then pedestrians won't be able to hear you so probably best to just leave it on really now one of the good things about this renault zoe is that the turning circle's really really tight so it's 10.6 meters which is better than a mini electric or a peugeot e208 so it's easier to do u-turns like you need to one thing to note is that the brakes can feel a little bit grabby and oversensitive so you do sometimes end up just like jerking to a hold quicker than you'd probably like you can put the kind to a b mode which is a breaking mode which means you get more regen braking from the motor so you can lift off the accelerator and it will slow down without you actually having to touch the normal brakes the only thing is is that you don't get the full effect of that if the battery is over 90 which is a bit annoying why can't it just work fully anyway the system isn't quite as good as the e-pedal mode you have on the nissan leaf which allows you to actually just drive along completely using the accelerator without touching the brakes at all because when you lift off with a nissan it will even apply the friction brakes so you can just drive around using the accelerator when you're in town in fact if you want to see my full in-depth video review of the nissan leaf click on the pop-up banner up there one area where i think it's quite slightly better than the leaf is that it just absorbs bumps it looks better so when you're going over a cobbled street or over potholes like i'm about to now it's not too bad you don't get bounced around terribly although the camera may make it look like i really am but trust me that is a pretty bad surface yep it's actually designed for testing tanks to tell you the trees so this keeps with it okay then there's the visibility which ford is really good at the back is really good as well but there is a huge rear pillar which does make a bit harder when it comes to parking really creates a huge blind spot so you do absolutely have to rely on your mirrors or the reversing camera if you've gone fit to the car how easy is it for a more unlike me to maneuver front parking sensors are helping me out but look i did that on one lock way awesome me quite pleased with that it was easy to park now i want the sensors to shut up shut up good they've stopped anyway enough of that let's see what this air is like when you head out on the motorway the old zoe used to feel a bit underpad when you're out on the motorway but this new one with the 135 horsepower motor is fine look i mean 50 miles an hour want to get up to motorway speed or overtake someone flaw in it off we go it's not stellar performance but it's more than adequate and they're 70. one thing you do notice though is when you're getting quickly at motorway speeds you get quite a lot of wind noise kind of drones on so you can end up turning up the stereo to try and ignore that other than that it's fine for just getting the motorway and while you can hear the wind noise you don't get blown about too much by other cars or big hgvs which is a good thing now part of that is due to this vehicle's weight so it weighs one and a half tons that's because it's got all the batteries in it now that's quite a lot heavier than the equivalent renault clio at least the batteries are mounted low down in the floor which keeps the center of gravity low and that is important for handling speaking of which let's see what this zoe is like when you do encounter a twisty road the car does lean a little bit in corners it's not too bad you don't feel like you're in a listing ship but it does roll a bit more than some other electric cars one thing you do notice that the front tires soon run out of grip if you start pushing too hard also the steering look at that it's not the most responsive steering when you're going quicker it's great in town nice and light but when you're getting quicker you want it to weight up a bit more and let you know what the front tires are doing because actually i have no idea oh no i can tell they're running out of grip now because they're starting to scream slow down yeah this car isn't particularly fun to drive on a twisty road but that's not why you buy it you buy it for going around town it's good for that and it can cope with longer journeys as well so that's fine that's good enough for me and good enough for most people are going to buy this car finally let's talk about the zo's equipment levels so the range kicks off with the play and that gets led headlights cruise control electrically operated and heated door mirrors plus android auto and apple carplay for the seven inch infotainment system next up is the iconic and it gets rear parking sensors which sort of makes the car look like it's got acne it also gets climate control rather than basic air conditioning as well as charging for the mobile phone electric rear windows and split folding rear seat bench yes that's right you don't get electric windows or a split folding bench on the entry-level car which seems a bit mean you also get lane departure warning and traffic sign recognition and the seven inch touchscreen gets sat nav as well at the top of the zoe range is the gt line which is what this car is so as well as rear parking sensors you get front ones you also get a reversing camera which is handy there's blind spot monitoring as well and electrically folding door mirrors so that the cars can't knock them off the biggest change though is this you get the large infotainment screen which is portrait style so like a tablet and i like the way that you can have like two views on it so you can have the sat nav and some other functions there so it's easy to multitask it's quite easy to whip through different functions using these shortcut buttons though because they are not actual physical buttons they're a bit harder to press when you're driving now you can go full screen on the sat nav if you want to like the screen is a bit laggy so it's like a phone from about like five years ago but it's all right the sat nav is generally okay though to tell you the truth you're gonna be using the standard fit apple carplay and android auto but overall this infotainment system is pretty decent the standard fit digital dials which you get on all models are pretty nice as well so you can cycle through different menus so you've got various car information you've got your music and stuff your sat nav and you can change the view to make it wide screen or slightly smaller screen for the sat nav and then you've got various other information about the car which you can cycle through as well the only problem with it is it doesn't have any information about your phone so you have to still be looking on this main screen to be operating the phone but overall it's still pretty decent now the question is though which version of the renault zoe would i go for well i am going to configure one right now using the car wow configurator to see what offer i can get back so if you want to see which zoe i'd go for and the deal i got on it click on the pop-out banner up there to go check it out so then what's my final verdict on the renault zoe should you yeah avoid it should you consider it should you shortlist it or should you just go right ahead and buy it well i reckon you should shortlist the zoe now it is flawed in quite a few areas but where it matters for electric cars the range the value for money and how it feels to drive it actually does really well do you agree with my verdict let me know in the comments section also please subscribe to this channel for more videos and if you click on the deals box to the right you can see how much you can save on a new car at carl wow or click on the video windows below to watch another of my videos\n"