Renault Zoe beginner's or new owners guide to using a help you with your new EV

So this video is like a beginner's guide to owning a Renault Zoe. So if you've just taken delivery of a Zoe, in this case this is a 22 kilowatt hour Zoe, then this just gives you the basics that you need to know to get started on how to use it. So first off, let's talk about locking and the keys. So these are wireless keys. So you just need to keep your key in your pocket or your handbag and when you come up to the car to unlock it, you just push the rubber button here and naturally you would sort of have your thumb here anyway and then open it. And as long as the keys with you, it will then open. You can also do the same with the rubber button under here on the boot and that will unlock and open. And then as you walk away from the car, again keeping this in your pocket, you don't need to push a button, and as you get about two meters away from the car, there, the car automatically locks. If you use the buttons on the key, then it puts it into manual mode and you've always got to use the buttons. So it basically decides whether it's an automatic mode or manual mode depending on how you lock the car, because as soon as you run the engine or the motor, it resets it. So however you lock it is then in that mode. So if you just walk away and let it lock automatically, then it's in automatic mode and you don't need the key to unlock it. But if you lock it with the key by pushing the button, then you've got to push the button to unlock. Because these batteries are wireless, they tend to use batteries quite quickly. So the coin battery is at the back there. You'll probably find you need to change them every six months or so. To get to change the battery, you just push the little grey button there, pull out the blade key. I can't really do this one-handed, but anyway, you can then flick off that back and change that battery. While we're here, I'll also say if this battery goes flat while you're out and about with a car, you do get notice. It tells you on the dash that the battery is wearing out and you have a good a few days before it actually goes dead. But if you ignore that message and it goes dead when you're out and about and you can't open the car, the way you can open it is you take the blade out and then the lock is here on the passenger side, because of course it was built for French left-hand drive cars. You can then open the door with the old-fashioned key. And then when you're inside, to start the ignition, you need to slide the key into the key slot here. And that key slot has just got a switch in there which then switches on the ignition. So you only need to use that if your battery is flat and it's not working wirelessly. So next, let's talk about starting the car. So I've got the key in my pocket. I've jumped in the car. What you've got to do is you must put your foot on the brake pedal. And then you just quickly hit the start button there and just allow it to switch on. And you get that musical chime. And then what you're looking for is the ready symbol on the dash. If the ready symbol isn't on, you haven't done it properly. You haven't pushed your foot on the brake. And when it says ready, you can now put it into gear and drive. So your gears are shown here up on the screen. Park, reverse, neutral, drive. They're also displayed down here on the bit of plastic. But you push the button on the back of the gear stick and then you put it down to reverse or drive whatever you need. And then at that point on, you just drive it like an automatic. As obviously being an electric, there's no gearbox. So you don't get any gear change. It's just an electric motor directly driven, driving the front wheels. But it's very simple to drive. And the way they've set up the Renault Zoe is they drive, they've made it drive like a petrol car, really. You get very light regen. So the nice thing about electric cars is the regen braking. So regen braking isn't braking. It doesn't use the brakes. All that is, is the motor, when you lift off the accelerator, the motor then instantly turns into a generator or a dynamo because the motor is still being spun because it's connected to wheels and you're going forward. So at that point, that motor is generating electricity and putting it back into the battery pack. And that slows you down. So with an electric vehicle, you want to capitalise on that. So what you do is if you're coming up to a junction or a roundabout or a corner, you lift off the gas and you coast. And while you're coasting, you're charging the battery. You don't want to go straight onto the brake pedal if you can help it because as soon as you hit the brakes, you're wasting your kinetic energy into friction and heat on the brake pads. Whereas you want to really put it back in the battery pack, which extends your range and it also stops your brakes wearing out. So with the Zoe, the regen is quite light. So you lift off the accelerator much, much sooner than you would do and you coast. And while you're coasting, you're charging the battery. It's a little bit different on the Zoe because they don't give you any adjustment on the regen. On a lot of electric cars, you will get an extra mode here on the gear stick and you'll get a B mode, which increases the regen. On the Zoe, they haven't done that. The new Zoe, the ZE50 that comes out in Spring 2020, that has brought in the B mode and it's set up like normal electric cars. All the previous Zoes like this, they don't give you an adjustment. The way it's done is actually on the brake pedal. So if you're traveling over 40 miles an hour and you lightly touch the brake pedal, that first bit of travel on the brake pedal is actually increasing your regen before it's putting the brake pads on. But that only works over 40. So when you're at speed, you can lightly touch the brake pedal. That increases your regen and you'll see it on this meter here. This is showing your regen braking when the line moves down into the blue area. I would just quickly say when it's in the green and yellow area, this is a bit like a rev counter in a petrol car really. So this is showing power usage. So you want to drive with as few green bars as possible and use little power. And when you're regening and it's charging the battery, it's showing as it goes into the blue area and you also see a line going up and down the battery pack showing it's putting energy back in the battery. So if you're doing over 40, you can lightly touch the brake pedal. You'll see the regen increase and that's charging your battery. But of course if you need to touch the brakes, you've got to touch the brakes. But if on an electric car you want to drive like you've got no brakes, you want to really predict the road ahead better and coast, lift off the accelerator and coast much sooner because then you use the motor to slow down and you're gaining all that kinetic energy back and putting it back into the battery. You can also see your regen here on the screen if you push the flow meter and then that shows you what what's happening with the battery pack and the motor. So while you're driving you'll see energy coming out of the battery and going to the motor and when you're using the regen, you'll see the motor producing energy and putting it back into the battery. So this is just a nice little gimmick that you can show any passengers when you've got your new car. Also, if you put the heating on, which I will put the heating on, the heating system is the only other thing that uses energy from the traction battery. Let's just turn the fan down a bit and we'll see here that the heating system is on. It's showing it here and you'll see energy coming out of the battery to run the heater. So the only things that use power from the traction battery underneath is the electric motor up front and the heating system. Everything else, lights, wipers, dash, all the ECUs in the car, the stereo, all uses power from the 12 volt battery up front. So while we're talking about heating system, the Zoe uses a heat pump, which is a lot more efficient than the resistive heater on many other electric cars. However, it does use energy from your traction battery. So in the winter, not only are the batteries cold, which makes them less efficient, but heating use does reduce range. But a heat pump is much better. It's hardly noticeable. You're probably looking at something like a 5% loss of range by using the heating. But when you're using the heating, you're better off if you're going to put it on, put it on and leave it on, because the heat pump will use more energy getting up to operating temperature than it does just by leaving it on. So you set your temperature you want, press auto and just let it do its thing. By constantly turning it off and then five minutes later turning it back on again will actually use more energy. However, to get the best use from your heating system in the winter is you want to use pre-conditioning. So what that is, is you tell the car what time you're going to leave in the morning and while the car's connected to your charger, it will put the heating system on, it will warm the cabin up and it also melts the ice off the windows. So you can do that by setting a timer on the screen here. So you go to menu, vehicle, electrical vehicle, and then here we have comfort timer. And what you can do is tell it what time you're going to leave in the morning, set a schedule, and then it will pre-condition the car at that time and get the car ready for that time you're going to leave. So in this case, we can say edit 8.30 in the morning. That's now, let's say 8.15 in the morning, done. Done. And the car is going to get ready for 8.15 in the morning. When you've got a timer set, you'll see the same timer symbol there lit up, which is the same timer symbol there, and you also see it on the top of your dash there. So that's going to tell you it's going to pre-condition for the next scheduled time. However, when you drive, it takes it off. When it's done it, it's finished. So every night when you get home in the winter and it's going to be a cold morning in the morning, well, actually you want to use pre-conditioning every morning, whether it's winter or summer really, because in the summer it cools as well. You've quickly got to go into the menu and switch it on again. The quick way you can do that, let me just take the timer off. So there's the timer off. There is a shortcut to do that. Rather than going through the menu, you can just push that button there. And when you push that, it jumps you straight to that menu selection. And you can then just select that timer, say done, and there it's back on ready for the morning. So you need to remember to do that every night. You can also use an app on your phone. And if I just get the key out of my pocket, if you've forgotten at any time and you don't have a scheduled timer set, you can just push this button, which is the same symbol again, on your key. Hold that down when you're within range of the car. Hold it down for about three seconds and you'll see the indicators flash and it puts the heating system on. It does only do it for 15 minutes, but if you're about to leave, you haven't got the timer running or you're, you know, in case you're at work or in a car park and you're not at home, you can just push that. It will run if it's not plugged in and it just preconditions the car before you get in. I would just say though, if you use the 15 minute heating session by pushing the key on the button, don't run a second session without driving it. You know, if you've done it and it's still very cold and you're not in the car, don't press it again. Because on some earlier cars that haven't had a software update, that can actually cause problems with your heating and disable your heater. So if you're using that method, just be on the safe side. Just press it once and let it do its 15 minute thing and then drive the car. So I'll just quickly explain the dash a little bit more. We've obviously got our gear selector here. This is the best display. This shows you your power usage, as I said, but you can change the dash display by pressing this button up here. And there's basically three types of layout and then two versions of each depending on the font size. You get this one with arrows. You can change some of the information there. You can make it bigger font, but this display I think is the best one and the most user-friendly and you get the most information from it. You can then change this information at the end by pushing the buttons on the end of the stalk. And you can toggle through various menus there as well. I'm not going to cover everything on the R-Link system because there's a lot in here, but it's all pretty self-explanatory. It's all touchscreen. And everything is clickable. So if you want to get to your phone rather than going through the menu, you can just press the signal information up there and it's a quick way into the phone. So everything is everything is touch. So just try it. You know, if you want to go to the clock settings press the clock and you're straight in there. The only thing I would just comment on which is something you have to get used to on the sat nav if you have a route defined it will often tell you you don't have enough energy to get there even though clearly you do. You have to ignore it. It's crazy the way they've built it into the sat nav. It's just over cautious by a huge margin. So for example, the battery is not fully charged here and it's estimating a range of 83 miles. Range meter up here is very much an estimate because it's based on your driving style at the time. But let's say in this case, we've got 83 mile range. If I put a route in this sat nav and it was say 60 miles away the way the Zoe works is the sat nav will start giving you error messages saying you need to charge and it will want to point you to a charger even though we've clearly got enough range left. So don't let that fool you. It does it a lot, sometimes by a huge margin. So you have to just ignore that. It's a crazy system and it will falsely give you range anxiety. The other thing I'd also say is obviously the sat nav gives you charge point locations. With all cars, not just the Zoe, but all cars, they're never up to date enough. With all cars the sat navs are just not up to date enough and the charge point data isn't particularly accurate. So do not rely on it. It's far better to use ZapMap or PlugShare on your mobile phone because the charging network is changing at such a rate. They're putting so many chargers around, but also I found that the charger information isn't right. For example, there is a charger I pass and the Zoe thinks it can't charge there. It thinks there isn't AC charging but there always has been. So the Zoe ignores it, yet I know this rapid charger it's actually at Cirencester exists. I've charged there many times and the Zoe can charge there but the sat nav says you can't. So don't rely on the data that's in there. Use your phone apps instead. They're always up to date and far more accurate. So what I do is, if I need to go to a charger, I find the charger location in ZapMap. I check it out and then I get the postcode and then I'll type the postcode into here and use the navigation to get me to the charger. It's a far better solution. So I'll just quickly show you the other controls. The lights here, you've got an automatic mode so just put it on auto and let it do its thing. The same with the wipers, you've got an auto mode and when it's in automatic you can adjust the sensitivity of the sweep with the dial here. It's just the same as most other modern cars. You've got your stereo controls down here where you can adjust the volume and the station, that sort of thing. On the steering wheel here you've got a voice control button where you can talk to the car and get it to do things. You tend to find these a bit of a gimmick and in all cars they tend to not recognize your voice too well. So in reality you'll use it once and it won't work and you'll never use it again. Down here you've got your speed limiter and cruise control buttons. So you can push the button and then it tells you in the dash what you've selected. So we've selected speed limiter and then you use these buttons on the dash. So you would set your speed by pushing the plus and it shows you the symbol up there that that's the set and then you can adjust it one mile an hour by going up and down just like every other car and this is your off and your resume button. And then if you push the switch down here to the cruise control it shows you you've got cruise control on and you set it by pushing the plus and it will set it at whatever speed you're currently driving at and then you can adjust it and again you've got off and resume. And then to turn the system off you just push the switch back to the middle. While we're down here we've got the eco switch. The eco switch reduces the power to the motor to conserve energy and in the winter it might also stop the wheels spinning a little bit. So for general driving, particularly in the summer, I just keep it on eco. It gives you about the same performance as a petrol car when it's in eco mode. However the eco mode also reduces the power to the heating system because again that's drawing power from the traction battery. So it's fine in the summer but if it's in the winter and it's particularly cold you may want to take it off eco mode so you get full power to the heating and you get your heat a bit quicker. So the dashboard, I'll also quickly explain, the colours in the back of the dash reflect what mode you're in. So if we put it into eco, we have an eco symbol here but the bottom half of the dash has gone green. So that shows it's in eco mode and if you take it out the bottom half of the dash is now blue for standard mode. And then the top half of the dash reflects your driving style. So at the moment it's lit in green and that shows you're driving economically but if you're driving worse it then goes blue and if you're driving particularly fast and uneconomically it then turns purple. The other thing on the Zoe is every time you turn the engine off it will give you the stats, well if it's set up to do that, it will give you the stats of your driving so you can see how efficiently you're driving. So it tries to promote efficient driving and it gives you a score out of 100. In this case we've got 93 out of 100 and it shows you where you can improve whether your anticipation or your speed. Anticipation is just whether you're not using the regen enough so you're braking too much and not coasting. And then up here it gives you your economy figures. They're not particularly accurate because these ones at the bottom, energy save, that's showing how much has been put back in the battery by using regen. That's only in whole numbers so it's showing two here but that could be 2.5, 2.6. It won't lock up until it's three so it's not particularly accurate but it gives you a view of driving style. And our average consumption here is 3.9 miles per kilowatt hour so we're very cold here in the winter so that's about right for the winter driving. Ideally you want to aim for about four and a half miles per kilowatt hour summer driving, that's about average on the Zoe. I'll quickly explain the controls down here. This opens the charge flap, this one adjusts the brightness of the dash. Some people hit this with their knee or their foot when they're getting in and out so if you find a dashboard is completely dark and you can't see anything on it just check this dial first and make sure that it's turned up properly. This one adjusts the level of the front headlights so if you've got someone heavy sitting in the back or you've got something heavy in the boot you can adjust the headlights down so you don't dazzle other drivers. This one turns off the front audible tone so the Zoe's play a tone when you're driving below 19 miles an hour so cyclists and pedestrians can hear you. At any point you can turn it off and then it's silent. It will always default to on every time you start the motor, every time you drive that's a once only thing. It actually displays a little red light in there when it's off but you can't really see it from the driver's seat but you can also change that tone. There are three different tones it will play and to select the tone you've got to have it running and then you just push and hold and it will keep scrolling through the three tones and when you're on the tone you prefer you release it and then that's selected the tone you wish to use. So let's talk about charging next. To open that charge port at the front you can either push that button there on the dash or you can push that button there on your key. Push and hold it and then it opens up the flap at the front and behind here is your type 2 charging socket. When you're using a charger you're always best to plug this end into the charging socket first before you plug this end into the car and if you're on a public rapid charger sort out the payment on the charger, sort out your app and get the charger ready to charge before you plug it into the car because what you'll find is when you plug a cable into the Zoe straight away the Zoe is trying to communicate with the charger and you'll see there the blue light flashing trying to communicate. If it's a public rapid charger and you've then got to go and sort out the app, sort out the payment that might take you a few minutes and in that time the Zoe would have given up looking and it will throw a charging fault on the dash saying I cannot find the charger. So always sort out the payment, make the charger live or if it's your home charger it doesn't really matter but if it's home charger just plug that end in first before you plug it into the car. So I'll quickly talk about the light at the front. The fast flashing blue light says it's communicating with the charger trying to set up that charge. When it's slow pulsating light that's when it's charging and if it's red that's saying it's failed and it can't see the charger. So if you're using a granny cable just like the other charge cable it's always best to plug it in and make the cable live before you plug it into the car. Even though it's live I would just say there isn't any power at the socket. It's designed to be safe so obviously if you walk into the car and you happen to drop this connector into a puddle you're not going to electrocute yourself. When you plug it in the car then communicates with the charger or in this case the granny cable and when it's happy it then turns the relays on and then puts power down the cable so it's not live until it's done this communication sequence. So it's all completely safe. I would also say you can charge in the rain, you can leave this open, it's all waterproof and it's not going to get wet. There is a drain hole down here all the water runs down here. Obviously they've made these that they're completely safe and fully waterproof. So if you get error messages on the dash if you're a new owner to a Zoe your first thought might be oh god you know the car's broken major problem and you assume the worst. However the error messages aren't particularly helpful so it's only limited to a few. Obviously you can get the charging impossible error that's just trying to tell you that there's something wrong with your charger not the car. But you might see electrical failure, danger stop, all that sort of stuff, motor failure. Don't assume the worst sometimes just turning the car off locking it leaving it for 10 minutes starting again will clear it. But often what it is it's just the 12 volt battery up front is low. These have a 12 volt battery just like every other car and if that battery gets low particularly let's say it's winter and you've had your first frosty night if you then see it in a on a cold morning you pretty much know that could be your 12 volt battery because batteries get killed by the cold. And that can throw these errors so often it's just a case of getting your battery tested or just going to going off and buying a new 12 volt battery will solve it. You don't have to call the recovery and get it recovered into a Renault dealer but the Renault Zoe's owners club and a Facebook group they're very good and you can always get advice. So you know what I'm trying to say is don't assume the worst. Some people will see a message on the Zoe and assume the worst and get it recovered and be without the car for days when quite simply it's something you can sort out yourself. So if you have charging impossible errors on your Zoe at home and you've got an earth rod then often it's just because the resistance to earth is too great around the earth rod. So a very simple solution is get a bucket of water or a hose pipe and soak the ground around here for a few seconds just wait for 30 seconds to let it let the water absorb into the water and try again and that will solve your problem. I used to see this a lot myself here at home and what it was is because right behind me I've got a whacking big tree and the roots are all around here and the roots were absorbing all the water from the soil around the earth rod and the Zoe was constantly failing as was Renault Kangoo. So what I did is further along here I stuck another earth rod this is a standard four foot earth rod just down the side of the garage there I put an eight foot earth rod in I joined two four foot rods together and put another one in and since then I don't have any issues at all regardless of the weather or regardless of how dry the soil is. One other quick point I'll just make on the Zoe is when you're cleaning the car it's worth getting a vacuum cleaner and vacuuming any debris that's stuck in the door rubbers here because particularly in the autumn when all the leaves and seeds fall off the trees they'll often collect in here and if there's too much rubbish in here when you open the door you will get the rubbish falling out and landing on your seats so just keep these clean. Another thing you should note is the edge of the drivers and the back doors is quite sharp here on the corner and every Zoe owner at some point will smack their forehead on this when they're reaching in to get something out the car so open the doors wide and just keep your head away from the corner of these doors. Another little tip on the Zoe is your tyre pressures. As standard they say 36 psi however particularly with the Michelin EV tyres on the 16 inch wheels they too tend to prematurely wear on the outside edges if they're run at 36. Many Zoe owners have found if you run them at 40 psi the tyres will last twice as long and theoretically that will improve your range slightly. Whether that's measurable I don't really know but certainly I always run Zoes with 16 inch wheels at 40 psi and it does help. Another tip on the Zoe is they have an inner flap here over the type 2 charge port. In this case it's broken off it's a common fault on the Zoes and the Kangoos that they do break off it's because this hinge is very weak so you need to keep that lubricated. If it's starting to get stiff then don't force it because they will easily break and that's exactly what's happened in this car at some point in its history that has broken off. What you can do if that happens is in this case we've got a cover from a BMW i3 and that makes a really nice solution to keep that socket waterproof. Actually it's better than the original Renault one but if your Zoe has the flap just keep that lubricated. I found that white grease works the best it lasts a very long time but anything whether you've got some silicone spray WD-40 you know anything on there is better than nothing and you want to keep that flap running nice and smoothly. As soon as it starts getting stiff just be very careful with it and get it lubricated quick because once that breaks then you can't fix it and then the solution which all the details are on the website is to use this BMW i3 charging cap. Another little tip is on the Zoe ZE22 and ZE40s the front halogen headlights aren't particularly bright they're pretty poor actually so what helps hugely is just to run some good quality 130 percent light bulbs. The Philips and Osram bulbs are particularly good they've both won the Auto Express bulb review test and sticking those in makes a huge difference and makes the headlights far more effective at night.