RENAULT HAS announced that its Fluence ZE electric vehicle (right) will be priced at €21,620, with the battery to be leased separately for €72 per month. The car itself costs €26,620, but with the €5,000 Government grant, the buyer will pay just €21,620.
Renault is choosing to lease the battery to buyers because, according to Renault Ireland managing director Eric Basset, this will “allow customers to move with improvements in battery technology.”
The car will be a fully electric vehicle with zero emissions and a range of 160km from a full charge, which can be done from a domestic socket. Renault will also offer an electric commercial vehicle – the Kangoo ZE – which will cost €15,800 – with the same price for leasing the battery of €72 per month. This is based on an annual travel distance of 15,000km.
According to Renault, by favouring the option of leasing the car’s hugely expensive battery, the car owner would always have access to the latest available battery and they are not responsible for disposing of the old one.
Although this would open up the possibility of battery swap stations, where the driver pulls in and a depleted battery is replaced with a fully charged one, this is a model which appears unlikely to come to Ireland in the short-to-medium future.
Basset asserts that the early electric vehicles will not be for everyone and that they aren’t likely to replace the demand for their big-selling diesel models, in particular. The firm are not ruling out selling the car to a customer, or indeed offering a leasing package for the car and battery.
Rival firm Nissan is set to offer the Leaf electric vehicle for sale, costing €29,995 after the Government’s €5,000 grant, but critics say that buying an electric car outright has more dangers than leasing the battery.
“After one year of ownership we would expect EV residual values to be above the segment average expressed in terms of pound values,” explains Andy Carroll, managing director at Glass’s. “But, if the battery is owned rather than leased, and lacks the appropriate extended warranty, the value of the typical EV will then fall dramatically until the vehicle is five years old, at which point the car will have a trade value little more than 10 per cent of the list price.”
Details are scarce on how Renault’s dealerships and finance partners will deal with the new scheme. Trials will begin next year, with the Fluence ZE expected to reach customers in Ireland in significant numbers in 2012.
To hear an interview with Eric Basset, managing director of Renault Ireland on the new electric car battery leasing scheme, listen to the Irish TimesMotors Podcast