David NicholsonThe new electric Renault 5 has won rave reviews. At the same time there is a whole genre of EV hating video’s produced to try and keep people driving fuel burning vehicles. Some wildly misrepresent or fabricate the facts and are essentially oil company propaganda output.
This video we are unpacking here is not like that at all. Even though the basic format.. starting off positive and openminded and then suffering setback after setback does follow a format of some of those propaganda videos.
As I first watched this video the night before heading to Somerset on the train to pick up a Renault 5 for testing I was intrigued as to whether this gent from the Twingo channel had indeed identified some real issues or not. What had made his experience go wrong and do Renault UK have lessons to learn? The result was a bit of surprise.
Here is a summary of the figures from Rob’s video covering a round trip from Manchester to near Oxford in a brand new 52kWh Renault 5 in what seems to be iconic spec. My commentary is in italics
- Manchester to British Motor museum at Gaydon used 52% of the battery to cover 120 miles.
That works out to 4.43 miles per kWh and a 100% range of 230 miles. All good so far - He arrives near Oxford having covered 195 miles with 19% remaining.
This works out as having used 42kWh and is equivalent to 100% range of 4.64 miles per kWh including plenty of motorway work. Still good - He then does 3 charges using the “mobilise charge pass” provided to owners by Renault UK. As Rob quite reasonably comments he hopes the card gives him a discount. He shows the 3 receipts which show a
total of 75.91kWh of charging at a cost of £68.08 which works out at an eye watering 89.67p per kWh.
The first charge was at Shell (joint second most expensive network at that costs 85p via contactless) while the second was probably at Gridserve. - After the first 2 charges Rob says he has 180 miles range and a 170 mile journey back when leaving the oxford area for the journey back to Manchester
- On the journey back Rob stops at Stafford services where the Google navigation says he needs to top up
- The google Nav said he was still 52 miles from home and unless he charged again would be minus 5% on arrival and so needed another charge to make it.
Why is this odd? Well according to the dash range readout Rob had 30% battery and 67 miles remaining range. Tight? Certainly but 15 miles to spare isn’t bad and there are plenty of chargers all around Manchester if that gap closed. It appears the car was still being efficient at 4.29 miles per kWh on a mainly motorway trip. The route back was also quite a bit shorter which partly offset the fact that he left Oxford with 81% battery which happened to be exactly what he used on the outbound trip. - Rob charged at Stafford adding 60-61% to the battery taking it to 90%
Rob appears to have used Gridserve (usually 79p per kWh contactless) but it appears Rob was charged 93p per kWh on his Mobilise card (£29.86 for 31.939kWh according to the receipt) - Rob got home and the battery showed 64% battery remaining on arrival. He therefore used 26% to get home from Stafford services in the end. Had Rob not charged at all at Stafford he would have arrived with 4% battery remaining. As I noted above tight but the gap rose from 15 miles to 18 miles based on that 4.29 miles per kWh consumption figure.
So what actually happened then?
- Well Rob left home and travelled 195 miles to Oxford using 81% of the battery, Rob has a driveway and a 7p per kWh off peak tariff. This essentially should have cost £2.94 or £3.30 if you factor in charging losses on a home charger.
- For the return journey Rob was unlucky and picked some very expensive charging networks and then paid using a charge card that further increased those costs.
- He also, because the in car navigation system suggested he needed to, did a third charge that wasn’t strictly needed.
- Rob had exacerbated the issue by having a meal and as a result ended up adding 60% of very expensive charging for £30 at Stafford North when he only needed at most 15%. In the end he added so much charge he could have driven back to Banbury from home without a further charge if not quite all the way to Oxford.
- Had Rob not charged at Stafford it would have cost him under £3 to do that final charge at home back to 80% or around £3.60 back to 100%. This would have taken his round trip cost down to £41.22+£3.30+£3.60=£48.12
- How to cut that £41.22 for the 44kWh charged around Oxford?
Alternatives?
Shell contactless price £37.4 (85 per kWh)
Gridserve contactless inc Moto Cherwell valley near Bicester near M40 £34.76 (79p per kWh)
EV point at Esso Baynards Green ( a few mins from Cherwell valley) £28.60 (65p per kWh)
Tesla Supercharger at Banbury or Trentham via the Tesla app – £22.44. Worth noting that while most Tesla chargers are open to non Teslas they generally aren’t when they share the same site as other public chargers. The Tesla apps shows the ones you can use on the “charge your other EV”. It is possible some shorter Tesla charge cables won’t fit the R5 connector location and you would need to use the right hand Supercharger of a row to avoid blocking an extra bay.
So what should Renault and new Renault EV owners learn from this?
Rob from the Twingo channel is clearly a Renault fan and he laid out his experience honestly and fairly especially in the first half of the video. Many Renault 5’s will be driven by first time EV owners and it really matters that they don’t have the same experience. It seems to me 2 key things went wrong
Small issue
Even if it’s just an admin fee, new owners should be told the charge card will often or always be the most expensive way to pay if no subscription is purchased. The fact that the receipts provided don’t indicate the price per kWh charged could give some the perception that they are being fleeced deliberately. I’m sure that’s not the case but transparency is needed if the prices shown in the video are correct.
I use the Wattsup app to find my favourite chargers and filter the ones with plenty of connections, high enough speeds and offer good value via the paid version.
There is an error in how the in car google navigation in the Renault 5 estimates the state of charge on arrival. If you remember in the video it estimated he would get home with minus 5% but he actually arrived with plus 4%. On a one off basis that might not sound so bad. After all he alludes to the fact he may have driven at 60 mph and turned off the aircon.
Well having picked up a test Renault 5 in Somerset I also noticed something odd. On the last leg back to London I started from a hill at Ham Hall country park, 125 miles from my destination in London.
- The car was showing about 30 miles more range than that or just over 155 miles yet the Nav system said I wouldn’t make it and suggested a reasonably long charge stop.
- Throughout the journey the indicated range remained between 20 and 30 miles above the distance remaining
- Because I diverted from a major traffic jam on the A303 the journey was actually longer than the original Google nav route by an additional 8 miles.
- Throughout the journey google nav said I would arrive with between minus 1% and minus 7% charge on arrival.
The estimated range on arrival was regularly fluctuating but as I got closer to the destination I expected the number to move closer to the correct range that the car was indicating all along. But it didn’t. Just 13 miles from the destination google was estimating a minus 6% battery on arrival when the indicated range was 33 miles and I still had 12% remaining.
Once home I parked in the next street to plug into a cheaper charger with 8% charge and 26 miles of range remaining. So it turned out the last 13 miles of the trip only used 7 miles of range delivering a rather staggering 6 miles/kWh thanks to 40 then 30 then 20 mph London speed limits.
That wasn’t the really odd thing though. I still had my navigation set to my home round the corner. Even Google said I was just 0.2 miles away. But while the Renault 5 confirmed I still had 8% charge Google said if I drove the 0.2 miles I would arrive with.. minus 7% a gap of 15%! That’s when it struck me that someone had told google to deduct 15% from the car’s actual battery charge on arrival. This suddenly made sense of the wrong estimate on the journey… where google was displaying minus 5% for a plus 10%.
How does all this affect owners?
Well most owners, once they get comfortable that the range estimate is accurate, will charge to between 10-80%. That leaves 70% in normal use. So if the car delivers around 230 miles for 100% in summer this equates to 161 miles between most stops or 207 miles if they charged to 100% for a longer trip.
But if you add 10% to a google navigation estimate that is 15% worse than your real range then your regular useable battery is 25%-80% or just 55% available. And that means regular range of just 126.5 miles or long distance range of 172.5 miles.
As an owner there could be issues if you assume google is wrong and the calculations are corrected in future. If you are in an area with plenty of charging options in the later part of the journey I would simply use google to show the distance to your destination and the car to estimate its remaining range. As long as the car continues to show a range of 30 miles above the remaining distance to travel then I would continue without charging. You will need to have charging at your destination. If you can’t charge on arrival you should charge on the way if you will arrive with under 10% charge.
I will be adding our own review separately on here but are so far extremely pleased with it. I wish Rob at Twingo channel well with his electric experience if he perseveres!
