Renault Fluence Full Electric

Irishder

What are peoples toughs on this? Any idea of range?

https://www.donedeal.ie/cars-for-sale/renault-fluence-full-electric/24710922

Gumbo

Have 2 of them in work since 2012.
Decent yokes.
No fast charging.
Not as powerful as the newer EV’s, torque etc not on par with the Leaf, i3 or above.

Range probably 70-80km.

Soarer

Probably monthly battery rental too.

ELM327

Do not buy unless the battery is owned

unkel

Great car for about EUR1500-2000 if it came with the battery owned. With battery lease it's barely worth anything. A few hundred at most

Orebro

Was the battery lease on these for the life of the car or something? Surely it expires at some stage?

Gumbo

Orebro wrote: »

Was the battery lease on these for the life of the car or something? Surely it expires at some stage?

Life unless bought out.

Gumbo

Gumbo wrote: »

Life unless bought out.

I never got how this works .
Say I bought it on done deal then how do they make me pay the rent etc ?

Guy:Incognito

Gumbo wrote: »

Life unless bought out.

Will they replace the battery if the range goes to ****?

zg3409

BrownFinger wrote: »

I never got how this works .
Say I bought it on done deal then how do they make me pay the rent etc ?

Assuming battery lease, the lease stays with the old owner unless the new owner agrees to take it on. I think they might halt payments if it sitting on dealer forecourt, but basically you need to scrap car and give them the battery to stop repayments. It makes old cars very hard to sell as lease is fixed amount on new or old car, and at a point the lease costs more than the car is worth. I would read all small print before getting stuck with this sort of deal and beware it may be unsellable in future years.

unkel

zg3409 wrote: »

basically you need to scrap car and give them the battery to stop repayments

And not only that, you actually have to pay Renault to scrap your car :rolleyes:

It's all in the contract, but iirc this payment is about EUR250 and it is considered to be the contribution to the cost of removing and recycling the battery

Markcheese

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

Will they replace the battery if the range goes to ****?

Yup,

ELM327

BrownFinger wrote: »

I never got how this works .
Say I bought it on done deal then how do they make me pay the rent etc ?

You have to take over the lease contract or the seller doesnt sell the car.


Also, with a fluence, because it's so old, if you dont take the lease contract (or sign with a different address) , you can just take the sim out and they can't do anything else about it. It's a physical sim card.

kanuseeme

Its possible to buy out the lease on twizzy and zoe models in other countries, https://pushevs.com/2017/11/24/renault-now-lets-buy-battery-lease/

I liked the car, but its slow to charge, limited range and the lease problem, if you signed up for the lease and then decided to scrap the car YOU were responsible for the battery to be returned to Renault, not your local dealer, some place far away at YOUR expense.

As for signing the lease with a different address, I am sure Renault finance have a legal department who would do their best in calculating their time and expense in finding their property, recovering it and any lost income. That's what finance companies do?

Soarer

ELM327 wrote: »

You have to take over the lease contract or the seller doesnt sell the car.


Also, with a fluence, because it's so old, if you dont take the lease contract (or sign with a different address) , you can just take the sim out and they can't do anything else about it. It's a physical sim card.

Always wondered about that.

Would they chase up the previous owner for payment or new owner's details?

slave1

That car is a headache between lease, charging, age and range.
Avoid avoid avoid

colm_mcm

I’ve seen a few on the Aran Islands

ELM327

kanuseeme wrote: »

Its possible to buy out the lease on twizzy and zoe models in other countries, https://pushevs.com/2017/11/24/renault-now-lets-buy-battery-lease/

I liked the car, but its slow to charge, limited range and the lease problem, if you signed up for the lease and then decided to scrap the car YOU were responsible for the battery to be returned to Renault, not your local dealer, some place far away at YOUR expense.

As for signing the lease with a different address, I am sure Renault finance have a legal department who would do their best in calculating their time and expense in finding their property, recovering it and any lost income. That's what finance companies do?

They can't interfere with the car though as they don't own it.
Only the battery.

Irishder

Asked the seller about the battery. He said it is paid for but not owned by the owner. No idea what that means but its enough to run away from it

ELM327

Irishder wrote: »

Asked the seller about the battery. He said it is paid for but not owned by the owner. No idea what that means but its enough to run away from it

battery lease

stesaurus

ELM327 wrote: »

You have to take over the lease contract or the seller doesnt sell the car.


Also, with a fluence, because it's so old, if you dont take the lease contract (or sign with a different address) , you can just take the sim out and they can't do anything else about it. It's a physical sim card.

Yep and it's only about 5 mins work to remove once you know where it is

unkel

You can remove the SIM and then Renault won't be able to remotely disable your car, but if you signed the lease, you would be in breach of contract and you can and probably will be sued. The legal costs alone would be thousands. No thanks to that.

n97 mini

unkel wrote: »

You can remove the SIM and then Renault won't be able to remotely disable your car, but if you signed the lease, you would be in breach of contract and you can and probably will be sued. The legal costs alone would be thousands. No thanks to that.

There'd be a few solicitors' letters long before that, and assuming it did eventually go to court there's no guarantee costs would be awarded against you (no point in going to court to recover €3k if the legal costs are €3k or more). And even if they were awarded against you there's also no guarantee they'd be recovered, going on frivolous personal injury claims anyway. Not that I'm advocating going down that route.

Mulling slightly over a bargain basement Fluence. Could make a cheap second car. In the last while all my journeys have been under 5km (wonder why?). Drive it for a few years, and when it's no longer fit for purpose whip the battery out and use it in a solar PV setup, and scrap the car.

unkel

n97 mini wrote: »

Mulling slightly over a bargain basement Fluence. Could make a cheap second car. In the last while all my journeys have been under 5km (wonder why?). Drive it for a few years, and when it's no longer fit for purpose whip the battery out and use it in a solar PV setup, and scrap the car.

Yep same plan here. If only they were around the €1.5-2k mark (battery owned)

You can get a degraded Leaf (with better range than a Fluence) for not much more than €3k as I showed in the bargains thread a week ago or so. Likely a better choice.

mr chips

I've seen a battery-owned Fluence come up for sale from a dealer in GB. Toying with getting it delivered to Liverpool and then bringing it over here to NI as a cheap local commute car for the other half, whose round trip to work is 30km every day. Depending on the cost of getting it to the port, I could possibly have it here for under stg£3k. It'd be zero tax here, and slow charging each day wouldn't be an issue - in fact she might even be able to granny charge it for a couple of hours at work.

So in the short term it might make sense to buy this, so long as the battery isn't so degraded that it can't even manage the 30km. Longer term, would there be any prospect of swapping that battery out for a bigger one out of a crashed Zoe? A Fluence with 40 or 50 kWh under the floor might be quite a useful mid-range machine. I'm fairly sure the car was designed to be compatible with battery-swapping as an alternative to recharging, but I don't know if the battery from a more modern Zoe would be a straight swap.