• Long range but slow charging
• Very average warranty
• Some reliability issues

What are the running costs?

As with all electric cars, how much the Renault Zoe costs to run will depend on how you charge it. For while road tax and company car tax will certainly be low, there is a big difference in the price of charging at home using a dedicated electric car charging tariff and topping up using the the public charging network.

With the former the Zoe will cost just a few pounds per charge – with the latter it might end up being more expensive than an equivalent petrol car.

View detailed figures on our Renault Zoe spec page

Range and charging

The 52kWh battery park promises 239 miles of driving according to the WLTP standard; according to the very honest Renault, this drops to something more like 149 miles in the winter. Even so, that official figure puts the Zoe at the top of its class for driving range. But if you’re tempted to consider the Zoe for longer-distance commuting, keep in mind that the range drops markedly with sustained high speeds.

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Renault says a constant 69mph, for example, will bring the effective range below 150 miles. In our testing, with B-mode for regeneration on downhills, a 130-mile motorway round trip gave us a 163-mile total range; but that was in deserted conditions making maintaining a steady speed easy.

Using a 7kWh wallbox – the most common type in the UK – a full charge will take around 9 hours 30 minutes. The Zoe is compatible with up to 50kW DC charging, which will do 0-80% in 1 hour 10 minutes – that’s not especially fast by modern standards, and that capability hasn’t always been fitted as standard. So make sure you know what you’re getting if buying used.

Servicing and maintenance

Renault is forever chopping and changing the length of its standard warranty, which is presently three years or 100,000 miles (unlimited mileage in the first 24 months), whichever comes sooner. But the Zoe has been sold with up to five years of cover.

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Regardless, the battery pack is covered for eight years, or 100,000 miles. You can get a Renault extended warranty for added peace of mind.

Service intervals for Renault’s electric car range – including the Zoe E-Tech – are once every 12 months or 18,000 miles. That’s a longer distance than it’s conventional cars, helped by the reduced number of moving parts and absence of any need to refresh the engine oil. A Renault EasyLife Service Plan can help spread the cost of maintenance, if required.

Reliability

• Few moving parts in an electric motor
• Lots of parts shared with Renault Clio
• But not a spotless reliability record

The Zoe scores an average mark in our Parkers owner’s reviews section, although much of that is down to the range not delivering the claimed 245 miles, with few comments about overall reliability. However, it doesn’t take much of a scan of the owner’s forums to find some tails of woe, and we’ve personally experienced charging issues with these models.

That said, although earlier examples were subject to a few safety recalls, suggesting some issues with the build quality, there has been only one such problem since 2018; Renault recalling small batch (31) due to a potential short-circuiting error in 2021.

So fundamentally, we believe you’d have to be unlucky for the latest Zoe to let you down. But if looking at earlier, used examples make sure you carry out a thorough inspection and ideally drive several examples to make sure they one you purchase is in the condition you should expect.