Great bit for first video at the end starting at 11:30. Talking about buying second hand wanting to see State of Health report. It's always worth trying to get it out of the dealer, at very least lets you see see how knowledgeable they are about their stock.

If the New Labour Government pledged it pre election then pledged it is.

 

'Just do it'. 

 

 

We need more like these honest traders. Sounds like EV is a no-go for the lady, so it's better to lose a sale than to flog a car. 

 

When I talked to my Skoda dealer in 2022, they did ask the question that I have driveway to charge the car. 

But the Kia and Hyundai dealer were not only poorly informed on their product, couldn't care less about charging. Kia even pushed us toward the refreshed Niro so they can a completed sale quicker (component shortage back then). 

^^^ As said in the Youtube vid comments.  He 'could give used car salespeople a good name.'

 

I will just put this here, it could go to the Legal section. 

 

I am interested in the law in England / Wales or Scotland or Northern Ireland if buying a used Renault Zoe with Leased Battery.

 

Say i see a Renault Zoe for sale.

I get a HPI check, i check the MOT history, i go see the car at where ever, private seller at home, work, at KFC or a trader / dealer.

I check the car, the V5, their ID, i test drive it, want to buy it, i have cash & i insure it and buy it and drive away.

?

How am i to know there is a Battery Leased if Renault UK are not the Registered Keeper, or the person with the V5 & the car and they do not tell me they only own part of the car.

(Same thing if you buy an ICE vehicle that has a new engine and gearbox that the Registered Keeper got a loan to fit, or paid with a Credit Card and it has an  outstanding balance to pay.)

?

Are Renault UK going to try and get the car i am now the Registered Keeper of, are they taking me to a Court in the country i live in or keep the car in.

?

What legal redress have they against me, or even who i bought it from who also never knew there was a Leased Battery and never signed any agreement?

 

***There should be a Plate on the vehicle that is not easily removed, or a message that appears on the car when charging stating.

Battery owned by Renault UK. Lease payment agreement required or return battery to owner.  Return Postage paid..***

 

LOVE THE BIT ABOUT A BANK MAYBE BEING ABLE TO DISABLE THE BATTERY REMOTELY.

Is this a UK Bank & is this after some COURT JUDGEMENT or something issued by whoever? 

?

Can Court Bailiffs in which ever country of the UK actually seize a vehicle because part of the vehicle is owned by A.N.Other and if the person requires the vehicle to earn a living can they even disable it?

 

 

Edited 28 August, 20241 yr by Ootohere

I was asking myself the same questions about the hundreds of ex La Poste and other utilities Renault Kangoo EV's languishing in fields near to me, certainly the first generation had leased batteries, most French are god fearing and those that bought these not so bargain vehicles carried on paying for the battery rental for the guarantee, but Renault will only replace the battery if it drops below 60% of original capacity and they have some very optimistic testing equipment!

 

I have been put off for the time being because the sale of these decomposing vehicles by the garage that is buying them from auction is tied into the government "prime à la conversion" where the government will pay from €1500 - €5000 (means tested) but you have to PX an old diesel or petrol car so its yet another aid scam.

 

It used to be far more generous than this but was reeled back in February of this year which was when the fields of vehicles overflowed and they started renting land from neighbouring businesses. I am hoping that it will be removed completely next year because as with all these things many people are getting scammed, at that point I will see if I can get one cheap before they go to the scrapyard.

 

Which brings me to my questions regarding the battery packs.

 

Do they self discharge and will they become irreparably damaged after a certain time?

 

Does an old battery with reduced (storage) capacity take less electric to charge or the same amount, maybe even more and then quickly lose that charge? An illustrative example would be filling a fuel tank where the pump charges you for more fuel than you drive away with and it also having a leak.

 

On these older basic vehicles (utility vans) is there a battery condition display or test function? If not how does the motor trade test the health of an EV battery? I have drop testers and internal resistance testers for traditional lead acid car batteries.

I do not know any of the answers. Electricity is magic as far as i am concerned.

Fires are scary. 

 

But i think.

The Battery will not discharge if not running anything, getting over the air updates etc.

Well the 5 Electric Bikes i have sitting with 75% of charge have never dropped. 

 

You can not charge the EV battery more than the cells will take can you?  If the battery pack has less capacity than when new. 

 

The reduced capacity battery (cells) will still charge at the maximum charging on AC will they not.  & take no more than they can take. 

Is that not what Onboard Chargers and controllers are all about.

Why are you asking me these questions? I am the last person to know the answers but I would like to.

Waiting for the smart people on this forum that know about batteries or EV,s to maybe comment. 

I thought you knew stuff and were just looking for others to confirm.

3 minutes ago, J.R. said:

Does an old battery with reduced (storage) capacity take less electric to charge or the same amount

Charging will take less because capacity is less. 

Charging up my 22 kWh net 24 kWh gross Leaf, now at 79% SoH. The energy put in and extrapolate out using % charged consistently comes to 17-18 kWh of energy as if to charge 0-100%. (for example, charge 50% used 9 kWh, this extrapolates to 18 KWh for 100%). 

Think of degraded battery like a petrol tank with a solid piece of gunk that slowly forms. It takes up fuel space in the petrol tank. Less space, less fuel you can put in or take out. 

 

With eNV200, it is based on Leaf platform, you can plug in OBD dongle and read Leafspy off it. There's a similar Renault app for Zoe and probably Kangoo, called CanZE: https://canze.fisch.lu/

The BMS will have a state of health guestimate value as it measures battery parameters, with these tools you can read out this value. Another key metric is to ensure voltage difference between cells are not too large at low SoC. Big delta for a few cells indicate weak/failing cells. 

 

One thing to be careful is that cells degrade as time goes on, known as calendar aging (other one is cycle aging). But the BMS SoH estimate wouldn't update unless it sees cells being exercised. Buying a battery that had been sat for years is risky because the SoH reading isn't up to date. To calibrate BMS, you need to do low SoC to 100% (or 100% to low SoC) at least once. 

 

On self discharge. If the battery were disconnected, they wouldn't self discharge much. Nissan Leaf are simple devices, the HV battery operates on same logic as car engine. It won't connect by itself. I've left Leaf for over 1 month at exactly 50% SoC and come back to 50%. It would take many months for the energy to slowly released as electrons leak back through lithium electrolyte, this is faster at higher SoC and much much much slower at low SoC (below 3.7v per cell). 

Tesla's are known to slowly decreasing SoC because they connect HV battery for everything, even refreshing the app vehicle status. So it draws energy from HV battery. This is called vampire drain. 

This is worth reading on self-discharge. Seems to be SoC + temperature related. Higher SoC, higher temperature, faster self-discharge. 

https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-802b-what-does-elevated-self-discharge-do

 

Perhaps my 1+ month Leaf example not dropping was due to BMS out of calibration and not understanding self discharge happened over that time frame. Again, remember that BMS is just guestimating the battery states and conditions based on parameters it measured. 

 

The article also mentions cell can no longer be charged below 2.5v. So your concern regarding irreparably damaged after a certain time is certainly valid. But that would only be a problem if the vehicle was left at very low SoC and not charged back up for a long time. It would also be very easy to identify because vehicle would no longer connect HV battery, undriveable and not easy to restore, battery would have to be removed and cells re-conditioned using method mentioned in the article. I personally think unlikely to happen for very old vehicles given skill shortage and no shortage of stock. 

3 hours ago, Ootohere said:

Waiting for the smart people on this forum that know about batteries or EV,s to maybe comment. 

I thought you knew stuff and were just looking for others to confirm.

 

No, nothing specific yet about EV's, I've been exposed to a lot through this forum but until I get any hands on experience (how I learn best) I would not be able to tell the nonsense from the real in some instances.

Thanks for the info, I'm surprised by the self discharge at higher temperatures, it's bloomin hot here, over 30° for the last couple of months, a fully charged battery on an unused vehicle would lose 30% in the 1st month dropping to 4% thereafter.

 

The other surprise is the 5% loss in the 1st 24 hours after a recharge.

 

The big problem with these vehicles is that they never had great autonomy even when new with 22kw and 33kw battery packs.

 

I'm sure one will end up in my hands sooner or later.

Edited 28 August, 20241 yr by J.R.

The thing is, I've not noticed actual self-discharge. There had been days I've left the MYLR parked in summer and it may drop one or two % as the car wakes up to report to mothership. It may be hidden and a long drive to very low SoC after left the car for ages is not advisable. I have, however, noticed Leaf SoC dropping faster imminently after charging, but I'm also drawing energy from it so it's difficult to tell. 

 

One more thing to note is that as battery age, their internal resistance increases. This is Hx value on Leafspy. More internal resistance means more heat-loss as power draw increases. I noticed this first hand with my Leaf, where previously borderline motorway commute now requires charging at work because SoC drops faster now on motorway due to increased internal resistance. 

I think it will also play a part with rapid charging, either slowing down or battery heats up faster. But I've no experience with this as my Leaf rarely sees a proper rapid charger. 

 

As you realised, these early EV is strictly local runabout. It's great to see you wanting to experience it first hand in order to learn more about them. Unlike some members of this forum....... 🤐

 

 

This may be of interest. https://www.electrive.com/2024/12/18/dekra-certifies-that-ev-batteries-last-longer-than-expected/

 

Who is Dekra?

 

I've done similar test with my Leaf earlier in the year. No idea whether it's accurate or not.

 

 

 

 

8 hours ago, wyx087 said:

Who is Dekra?

It's one of the the largest vehicle testing (MOT) organisations in the world, offering MOT services in many countries. I found the example of the Munich Jaguar i-Pace taxis quite interesting - the article suggests that charging them to 100% every day has not been harmful but may even have contributed to their batteries being in good health at around 95-97% capacity after 180k-260k kms. This goes against some of the received wisdom in the thread above.

Edited 21 December, 20241 yr by beneix
Typo

At least the 2018 one they tested did not go on fire.

It is interesting they say the Batteries last longer than consumers thought.

Is that the General public consumers rather than those that actually got / bought BEV,s and had not the same thoughts or ideas or were being fed the negatives.

 

No Buying back of 2018 Jaguar I-Pace yet in Europe / EU. 

As far as Germany and Porsche Taycan, what have Dekra to say about the many many recalls on early and not so early models of them. 

 

If any EV has High Voltage / Charging Rate Issues failure to charge and you need to get going, at least give a thought to AC Charging with the Onboard Charger, 

7 or 11 kW AC only but maybe an hours charge can get you an extra 30 miles or so. 

Might help if the issue is just DC charging. Get you on to somewhere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 21 December, 20241 yr by Ootohere

If you get Onboard Charger issues (AC) and High Voltage Charger issues (DC) & no Warranty then you really are stuck with a Mill Stone around your wallet. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

21 minutes, Renault Kangoo. 

 

See @ 24 Minutes. Renault Zoe Van / Light Commercial.  Car without rear seats.

 

@28 mins,  Electric van. 

 

 

 

Edited 25 January, 20251 yr by Ootohere

Driving and owning EVs one does not have in mind engine/gearbox worries. 

 

After expensive repairs in my last ICE car, a mark 3 Fabia 1.4 diesel, nearly £800 to fix a simple thermostat issue as it takes 3 or 4 hours to fix as engines have become so complex.

 

EV ownership, after nearly 4 years, no issue with either EV on mechanicals and servicing costs half to a third of previous ICE cars. Energy input costs about a fifth of previous ICE cars.

 

Cannot see ever going back though it is comforting to have a hybrid on the drive also. In a year or two when EVs can do close to 500 mile range then I see no need to even have a hybrid as a backup.

 

Edited 25 January, 20251 yr by lol-lol

 

 

On 25/01/2025 at 14:03, lol-lol said:

In a year or two when EVs can do close to 500 mile range then I see no need to even have a hybrid as a backup.

 

I doubt we will see such a long range car. Most people don't need that kind of range so there is no market, unless he manufacturers get into a range war. Such a car will need 120-150kWh batteries that will be too large, too heavy and too expensive. The challenge now is to improve efficiency to real world 4+ miles/kWh which would give a 60kWh battery 250 mile range - plenty for most at 4-5 hours of driving. Improved efficiency allows for smaller (easier to package), lighter (more efficient) and cheaper batteries to make EV more accessible.

One thing having an EV has shown me, I don't need more than 250-ish mile range.