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Renault Zoe Electric Car Road-Test Video: No Translation Needed

 
1,996 views Mar 15, 2013
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What the Nissan Leaf is in the U.S.--the highest-volume battery electric vehicle on the market--the Renault Zoe hopes to be in Europe.

French carmaker Renault has a wide-ranging alliance with Nissan that includes electric cars.

Together, the two carmakers have delivered more than 70,000 electric cars since Leaf production began in late 2010.


The subcompact Zoe five-door hatchback is a size smaller than the compact Leaf, but like the Leaf, it's still the carmaker's only purpose-built four-seat plug-in electric car.

The first Zoe was delivered last December, and cars are now entering dealerships in France.

The video above, from French site Technologic Vehicles, has only a few captions, both in French and English.

The relatively unrelated audio track is bass-heavy but otherwise pleasant English-language vocal pop.

So you can enjoy the three-and-a-half-minute Zoe road test without having to know a word of French.

The test includes a variety of roads, field tracks, weather conditions, urban and rural scenery, and more.

As the reviewers learned, the Zoe electric car does essentially everything that any other car does.

That includes, as it turns out, behaving exactly the same way when driven onto some particularly challenging terrain.

Enjoy the video and watch for the segment that ends with those immortal words uttered by many French drivers in distress:

Et grâce à l'aide d'un bon vieux tracteur!

[hat tip: Brian Henderson]

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Comments (14)

  1. fb_100002320805019 avatar Bryan Lund Posted: 3/15/2013 7:13pm PDT

    Nice video. Don't try driving your ZOE on the beach very much, it's not built for it!
     
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  2. Starliner avatar Kent Stuart Posted: 3/15/2013 7:58pm PDT

    I wish Nissan would shelve the Leaf and replace it with the Zoe. Much prettier and likeable.
     
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  3. fb_742416538 avatar James Cooke Posted: 3/16/2013 12:31am PDT

    Yeah, but I would want to be able to buy the battery. Otherwise you run the risk that they could "EV1" you, leaving you with a car with no battery!
     
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  4. Chris O avatar Chris O Posted: 3/16/2013 2:34am PDT

    That's not going to happen obviously but if it did Tesla could pick up the slack. They are way ahead of the pack in terms of energy density and cost so for the same price they could probably offer a 35KWh battery that would fit in the same space. Now your Zoe has ~150 miles of real world range!

    I wonder if Renault could force consumers to exclusively use their battery lease scheme.
     
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  5. fb_800937730 avatar Yuval Brandstetter Posted: 3/16/2013 11:44am PDT

    Buying the battery is ridiculous. Why spend 10K dollars on a piece of chemistry that runs down on you within 2000 cycles? How about paying for the miles as you go and unlimited range with a swappable battery?
     
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  6. Chris O avatar Chris O Posted: 3/17/2013 12:13am PDT

    Let's do the math : 2000 cycles X 90 miles per cycle (for the Zoe)= 180000 miles. $10K:180K miles works out at $0,05 per mile in battery cost.

    It would appear buying the battery is a pretty good deal after all using your numbers.
     
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  7. Chris O avatar Chris O Posted: 3/16/2013 2:48am PDT

    Looks like Zoe is turning around the anaemic French EV market single handedly tripling the total French EV market and outselling its closest rival -Nissan Leaf- 7 to one.

    Goes to show how important it is to have a well designed car on a dedicated EV platform. Zoe's in house competitor, the rather poorly designed ICE platform based Fluence only sold 4 units this year in France so far versus 510 Zoe's.

    http://www.automobile-propre.com/dossiers/voitures-electriques/chiffres-vente-immatriculations-france/
     
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  8. fb_800937730 avatar Yuval Brandstetter Posted: 3/16/2013 11:39am PDT

    The poor sales are because the Fluence ZE with a fixed battery cannot deliver the basic minimum that a 1000 dollar ICE car delivers: freedom to roam. The Fluence I drive is wonderful, and its range-unlimited in the same way that an ICE fluence is unlimited: Batt-swap stations care care of that
     
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  9. Chris O avatar Chris O Posted: 3/16/2013 11:55pm PDT

    The Zoe has the same range limitations as the Fluence in France yet it seems to sell more units per month than Better Place manages to sell in a 6 months in Israel despite the battery swapping option.

    The Zoe does have a 43KW on-board fast charger though so if BP ditched the cumbersome batteryswapping concept and invested in a dense network of cheap to install power outlets and used the clever Zoe rather than the unloved Fluence with battery quick drop system instead of boot space the company might yet have a chance at survival.
     
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  10. fb_787701102 avatar Martin Winlow Posted: 3/16/2013 9:54am PDT

    WHAT a positively irritating soundtrack! I appreciate the idea is to appeal to the 'yoof' (is it?) but this is enough to induce nausea in anyone who does not spend their entire life inside a nightclub. Nice car though - planning to test drive one as soon as it appears at my local R dealer. MW
     
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  11. dgatewood avatar Don Gatewoood Posted: 3/17/2013 9:16am PDT

    There is a volumn control which I regularly use for this noise.
     
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  12. fb_800937730 avatar Yuval Brandstetter Posted: 3/16/2013 11:40am PDT

    What it doesn't show is how far it can travel and what happens when the battery runs out. Does it stand around for hours recharging?
    It could swap a battery and move on. However, that needs investment in batt-swap stations as was done in Israel. Non in portugal so the ZOE will be relegated to being the supermarket and kindergarten runner for rich people who can afford a 10000 dollar battery inside a subcompact
     
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  13. dgatewood avatar Don Gatewoood Posted: 3/17/2013 9:32am PDT

    If you take the time to research it Zoe has best-in-class NEDC range of 130 miles (between 62 and 93 miles in real world driving. It's also been driven a record breaking 1005 miles in 24 hrs with 18 fast charges.
    You obviously didn't read the Chris O post answering your point on cost.
    Its not feasable for a car manufacturer to set up a quick batt-swap operation nationally, get real!
     
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  14. fb_1514986133 avatar Emile Nossin Posted: 4/3/2013 5:30pm PDT

    However, Renault has said that the Zoe does have the potential to have a swappable battery with only a few minor changes, in case future infrastructure would make it available (like in Israel and Denmark).
     
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