Sometimes, watching you review bad vehicles makes for the more entertaining videos. 😂😬

Totally agree with your comments 25k for a van you cannot use on a motorway has limited use

I have a Nissan eNV200. Use it for work. I absolutely love it even though it only has 90 to 120km range on chargers. I do have Fast charging which only takes 30mins. Mainly use 3.2kwh charging at home or at shopping centres.

I'm no car driver, nor expert in EVs but selling/shipping a car or van in this day and age without fast-charging abilities is a joke! A parts bin special with a nasty price tag!

You highlighted all my fears about EVs. When something is free and you still don't want it, must be a red flag!

Big fan of this channel, I never miss a video. I appreciate your perspective of usage, and the somewhat "EV spec sheet beginner" angle of this review. I understand it was a shock to find it being powered by a "Golf cart" powertrain more or less, but thats still where we are at with EVs when trying to save those last extra cents. As you alluded to, being realistic this vehicle was never meant to be recharged on the go, no matter what the manufacturers PR might tell you. Its strictly a "Recharge at the company every night" kind of deal. A friend of mine run a local plumbing business, this is the kind of vehicle he would like. Since they only do a few miles between stops, all other considerations fade into nothingness, since they are in the car at most half an hour at a time. For every one else with differing needs, _stay away_. This is the bargain basement/dollar tree EV van for short local transport and nothing else at cheapest possible price, full stop.

The first true review of an EV I’ve seen without glossing over all the problems. “Just pop in to your local charging station, grab a coffee and voila your charged”. Here in Australia we have hills and mountains and vast distances with nothing in between. EVs are simply not suitable. That kango was empty. Tradies usually have a lot of heavy tools and materials. Imagine the range anxiety in a fully laden one. You’d be down to a 40klm range total. This is why 4x4 diesel utes are the mainstay of tradies here and it will stay that way for the foreseeable future.

Can’t believe they gave you a van without rapid charge capabilities in an effort to promote EV ownership. If you were lucky and were aware, there are 22kw chargers out there for that connector type (and it was a type 2) mainly at Tesco’s and Lidl’s as it happens. But even with those, with that van, you’re talking a near empty to full charge of around 2 hrs. But as you’ve discovered the majority are 7kw, and some as low as 3.5, so yes they’ll take 8-9 and 16-18 hrs respectively to gain a full charge.

The combination of low range and slow charging on a van is a disaster. What were Renault thinking?

You mentioned charging at home. Here in Canada, in many provinces it is now mandatory to install a charging station in all new homes as they're built.

Just looked out of the window and fell in love with my Diesel VW T6 all over again. Thanks for the great vid.

I'd suggest watching any/all of Harry Metcalfe's videos about his various personal extended experiences with EVs and plug-in hybrids. The van you were driving is best suited for a lot of in-town errands and deliveries. Maybe you should consider becoming a florist! 😂 Anyone who, like yourself, regularly runs 100 miles or more in a day to various job sites would find this a bad fit...which is why Harry points to the plug-in hybrid as the best solution for the widest variety of driving needs: full electric for maybe 20-50 miles of shuttling with petrol-range for the motorways. Also, be aware (not to sound condescending because you might know this already) but the recharge rate for any battery (or battery pack) is going to slow down drastically as you near a full recharge. That last 20% will take awhile. That last 10% will take even longer. Which is why some manufacturers and battery suppliers are quoting a speed of recharge to the 80% point, not to 100%.

You’ve summed up exactly why I am steering clear of electric cars. I am 68, live in a terraced house, several times a year I undertake journeys of 150 miles plus, and I don’t want the added stress of range anxieties and finding working re-charging points. Thank you.

I have this van for almost 3 years now and it's been great, I'm using for small/medium sized building works daily. As I am in London, here's quite good charging point network from multiple providers. I do not have charger at home. Driving this van in a city is great, no congestion charge, parking is quite cheap for ev (not everywhere but some of the boroughs gives good rates). Or even you can charge your van while leaving in a parking space and you don't need to pay for parking just for kWh. Biggest struggle is when in motorway, range is terrible and you have to very carefully plan your journey. So yeah no quick charge is a big issue if you outside the city and need to do more than 50miles/h

Dingbro (a trade auto parts supplier) up here in Scotland use diesel Kangoos all the time, and they do some real miles - it's not unheard of for a 3 year old Dingbro Kangoo to have over 180k on the clock. Now I understand why they don't use electric Kangoos 😂

As for Renault ZOE business (van) version. My work has them as pool vans. Personally, I'd feel quite ripped off if I'd paid £5k for one, never mind whatever they actually cost. To be fair, the dashboards claim around 200 miles range when they're full, but as you found in the Kangaroo, motorways drain that range big time. And even as pool vans, we need to top-up charge them during the day occasionally. Lastly, watch out for the HUUUUUUUUUUUGE triangle of doom on the ZOE! 😳

Thanks for the real world review. Van has a no Kangoo attitude.

I had a very good experience with the Kangoo EV on a moment it was the only van available I could afford to use to transport furniture for a charity 95 kilometres further. Despite the gloomy stories of batteries leaking empty when airconditioning or CD-player was used, I took the risk. Renault provides a tool on its website to predict the range, which taught me that speed was the parametre second to none to reckon with. To avoid risks I demanded the car would be 100% charged. Therefore I decided to limit my speed to 80 km/h. Going to Brussels it was the right decision as unexpected emergency braking would send material in my neck and through the front window. In Brussels I got stuck in a traffic jam that cost me almost one hour. Back home I was in the middle of early July rush hours, so 80 km/h was not the worst of ideas either. The last 15 km I sped up to 100 like a horse smelling the stable. Back home I noticed the batteries were still charged for 23%. I'll tell you more: as it was 31°C and later on 32° I put on the airconditioning and I even listened to 3 CDs. A terrific experience!

It's good to see a totally unbiased review of EV motoring. Most of what I've seen up to now is either in the "greatest thing since sliced bread" category or the "don't touch with a bargepole" camp. My reservations about EVs are very similar to your own. I live in a 2nd floor flat, no on street charging, and do runs of between 90 and 250 miles on a reasonably regular basis. Like you, I really don't want to spend 2 or 3 days on a trip that my current diesel can comfortably manage in 2 to 4 hours (depression on how far I'm going. I have better and more pressing things to do than sit at charging points for who knows how long. I get the feeling that EVs are currently at the same kind of level as conventional cars were in about 1899. All fine and dandy for local trips into the town centre or dropping the kids at school, but not much else. Quirky little toys for the minority to play with, but not yet a real world alternative to the internal combustion engine. I definitely wouldn't want one if I lived in a rural area.

Supplying a Chademo-plugged car to get a taste for EV’s is as relevant as supplying a fax to get a taste for telecommunications.

A very eye opening video! Thank you.

Love your honesty . Ideal for the postman or meals on wheels but not for tradesmen

Excellent review . Loved it !

My dad has had a Zoe since 2017 and loves it. He does sometimes drive longer distances for recreational purposes and is pretty accustomed to using the charging network now. He does not use the car for work though, I think having to do a long commute and take time out of your day to recharge on route is a major drawback of EVs. If you drive a small car over short distances in am urban environment and have the ability to charge at home then the EV could be the car for you. If not then you are in for a lot of waiting around in service areas.

Great video as always FD! It's staggering how Renault thought that omitting fast charge was a good idea for any vehicle, never mind a commercial vehicle, was a good idea is beyond me. Some might say cost saving but then how many commercial drivers do so little mileage? My answer - very few! Also a big believer in Hydrogen here.

Completely agree with your findings; many EVs are difficult to use in terms of range and the waiting at charging stations is agonising.

Had a Nissan leaf on a extended test drive in 2018, and took it from my address in Essex to my mother's in Lake District....300 miles. Encountered massive battery over heating issues resulting in car not accepting a fast charge....took 12 hrs to do the same journey that my diesel mondeo would do in 4 hrs....

That was your best review ever , loved it and so true . 👍👍

A few weeks ago I watched a video by a self employed electrician who bought an electric van. It severely reduced his potential earnings and he bitterly regrets buying it for a lot more than a diesel van, but now he is stuck with it. The bitter truth is that electric vehicles are crap, and new research suggests that they do not really reduce carbon emissions because of the far higher energy input into their manufacture.

Thanks: clear review, so electrically speaking .. we are not there yet ( certainly not in a hurry..). This must be the city parcel-van and not for rural purposes.

As an every day EV driver and instructor in a Nissan Leaf, I am amazed that this van comes without a CCS charging capability, how useless? I hope the Zoe is better, if not see if KCC will lend you a Nissan 62kwh, you won’t be disappointed 👌😎 Great video…….although not for Renault e van sales😂

In fairness, a lot of tradesmen's and local authority vans spend a lot of time standing outside customer's premises and don't cover much mileage in a day, so for that purpose the Kangoo is adequate. In this form it's obviously not suited to your requirements, partly because it's now an old design, but one has to wonder at a council seeking to promote EVs offering this vehicle to you. A two-minute conversation would have told them it was the wrong choice.

Welcome to the world of lower end EVs. I have the Skoda citigo which is limited by type 2 slow charging as well. Brilliant car to drive, but its going back at the end of its lease as its no good for long distances and all the type 2 chargers near my house are constantly broken!.

I have currently got an identical Renault kangoo crew cab van on loan from Kent revs. The big difference seems to be that they supplied it with a ‘granny’ charger. I leave it on charge overnight and am comfortable doing a 100 to 110 mile round trip every day. It has surprised me how usable it is, especially considering that it was this video that introduced me to the Kent revs scheme. It certainly seems to be that the key is charging at home. This van has really grown on me but I think it really is a case of ‘horses for courses’. If you can charge it at home and do less than 100 miles a day you are on to a winner. Loads of motorway miles and you can forget it.

Glad you did a real world test! Sometimes it seems EV isn't the answer. I'm surprised it doesn't have better range or faster charging

You don’t throw pallets in the back so the Zoe is probably what you should have gone for to start with, but the boot may be a bit small. Was the Mokka-e or Leaf an option? I reckon a plug-in hybrid would suit your use better than a pure EV.

With all the excellent technology in EVs, they have not thought AT ALL about the infrastructure or anything like that. About 60% of the people I know love in flats or terraced houses so cannot charge an EV at home. They’re damn expensive, out of reach for most and simply not practical. Very cool video Matt!

In all fairness, this thing is not a typical example of a modern EV. This is just a panel van for a business operating in big cities and if it fits their needs, why would 25k be a bad expense for them. Anyone else (you included) ... just get a different EV suited for longer distance driving.

I was remembering my time as a same-day courier driving urgent items all over the UK, sometimes 1000 miles a day (Portsmouth to Faslane and return on a snowing night with a life raft for a submarine, 17 hour round trip) My vehicle was a 1.1 turbo diesel Citroen Nemo with automated gearbox. It did 180000 miles in three years, sipped fuel and never missed a beat. Can / will any electric van ever beat that?

lol , a local charity i'm involved in has one of these ( again some council promo ) .. we were doing a building project so put about 750 KG of timber & tools in it .. drained the battery going across town & back again ( Edinburgh so lots of hills , total distance about 50 miles )

So how far would it go in winter with the lights, heater, and wipers going? Builders would be like "Hi can I plug my van in while I build your extension mate."

The council highway maintenance company I work for part time has some electrical kangoos on the fleet and it’s mostly town mileage short trips and I have driven one. The seats were not the best and the steering had a little too much play for my liking but it’s just something I should get used to if I was driving the van every day. Then the brakes were worn. But it had 109k on the clock so it was just expected problems. The automatic tranny got stuck in drive when I was parking it outside the MOT test centre of all the places it could happen at it happened there.

It looks like they never really updated it since 2011 (a new model was just announced) which is crazy. There were a lot of electric vans released back then with the same limited range as they took the batteries from contemporary EVs, but unlike the passenger cars they were based on the vans were very slow to get upgraded batteries. Renault had this weird thing with not giving the Zoe proper fast charging until 2019 and it looks like this van shares a lot of the tech. You couldn't even option fast charging as you can see from the lack of space for the plug and their solution was too rare and still half the speed of fast chargers for cheap EVs back then.

Your Gemini IV Speedmaster is unbelievably cool.

My eyebrows raised when I saw the charger port, the same as on my plug-in hybrid, which takes a couple of hours to replenish its 30-ish mile EV range. To not have a fast charge on a full EV nowadays is crackers.

I worked in Renault last year, and these are dirt 🤣. An Phost (the Irish postal service) have several, and they were constantly in getting fiddly little bits and pieces done.

I have a small courier company and my own courier work generally puts me at over 100 miles per day. This is residential driving with use of A roads and occasionally the M25/M23 to reach customers. Sometimes it's more than 100 miles in a day, sometime's it's less, but there's no way I'd ever want to be left with less than 150 miles range at the start of my day at a minimum. This review sums up for me how impractical EVs currently are for my sort of work. In fact if I was to buy an electric vehicle to use for deliveries it'd make more sense to buy a Kia Niro and strip the back seats and extra bulk to use it as a van - 260+ mile range and actually purpose built (as an EV, anyway, and with fast charging). However, if I'm blowing upwards of 25k on something there's absolutely no way in hell I can compromise on the stuff you've brought up in this vid. I'll continue to 'recycle' my old petrol van that has 150k on the clock and still going strong.

You need a big battery and a fast charger. The Hyundai kona is quality around 280-300 miles true range and charged very fast.

How is it you don't have any adapters with you?

That just looks like a crap EV. My wife has a Hyundai Ioniq EV for 2.5 years now, which has a real world small range of 120 miles. We also have a Citroen c8 people carrier and a Lotus Elise on the fleet. Choose the right car for the right journey, but it says a lot that the EV does 20k miles a year, the Citroen 8k and the Lotus 4k. EV as part of the fleet is great, but we always charge overnight at home. Wouldn't be without an EV on the fleet now but if you have a small range one you need a ice car on the fleet too for those longer journeys.

Try North Wales, about 4 chargers in Holt, Wrexham and 6 in Bangor and that's it!

Im a mobile detailer. My current van is a 20 year old 450,000mile Vauxhall combo diesel. Even loaded I get 50mpg, 600+ miles per 5 min fill up. I paid £1500 for it, 13 years ago! I hired a Nissan EV van for a month. I gave the thing back after 2 weeks because I was having to cancel appointments and loosing money. I cannot charge at home even if I bought one. So I'd be reliant on public charging. The EV van allegedly had a 200 mile range. On a typical day. I drive 150miles per day. Except. Once I'd loaded the van for work inc the water tank but minus the inverter. I was getting 50 miles from a charge. I had to charge the thing 3 times per day! Thats around 4 hours wasted per day!. My typcial day with the EV .....: 5am Take missus to work. She comes home on the bus. 6am Charge the van... Yawn. 8am Do 1st job... 12.30pm Drive to the charge point, wait in a 3+ deep queue and eventually charge the van. Cancel 2nd job because of the charging issue. Charge the van so its ready for taking the missus to work. If we did any socialising, shopping etc... I'd need to visit the charger again before turning in for the night or we wouldnt have enough juice to take the missus to work in the morning. Charging the van isnt just the time charging the thing. Theres the time to drive to the charge point (not many around here). Waiting for a charger to be available if someone is already there. I have been 5 deep in a queue. I really despair for the future. They are not good enough. The range is too short and the charge time too long. public charging facilities are sketchy at best. I live in a city of 320,000 people. My nearest public charge point is 8 miles away, there is just 2 points. The next charge points are across the city some 15 miles away. I hate card payments. I can pay for diesel with cash.

Whilst charging you could catch up on emails calls and other paperwork etc .

Excellent review - thank you for the honesty and real life experience comments - makes a refreshing change from the fan boy articles, many of whom I suspect are getting payments for their favours.

I think that would be ok if charged overnight at home and used in town. A 13 amp plug with a heavy custom extension cord would be fine, most people don't really need much more than that at home for any car.

They're only practical if you were to have a 'fleet' of vans. So some are charging whilst others are in use.

Probably says more about me but I really enjoyed this review

Only works for milkman and people doing very local deliveries-7Kw charge needed back at base.

Such a practical and cute little Kangoo. What a real pity that it was useless, it is quite obviously for use around towns or city centres. It is a good initiative that your local Council is offering so hopefully the Zöe will serve your needs better. Also you won't be liable for the earth shattering depreciation that my work colleague faced when he inquired at his Renault Dealer about updating his Wife's 4 years old original Zöe to a new one. He was a genuine pioneer EV owner but he traded the little Zoë in for a Petrol powered Clio. After that slap in the teeth he should probably have bought a Fiesta or a Corsa, this is not how loyal customers should be treated Renault. A 4 year old Zöe is worth a lot more than £4000.

As for the range side of things, it all depends on your use case. I think this van was developed mostly for delivery fleet usage, or for taking a load of kids to soccer practice/school/whatever. Electric vans are crazy succesful for delivery fleets in my area (around Amsterdam) where the distances are short, idle time is high, and speeds are low except for the short bit of highway around the city. I wouldn't blame the car for being focused on that. I get the impression that almost all electric vans are designed for use in delivery fleets. However, if the marketing implies that this van can just replace a normal van, that is a bad thing to imply. It's worthless for contractors who sometimes easily drive for an hour to reach their job, and then have multiple jobs to do that day. Or for private owners who randomly use it to pick up stuff from far away. It's absolutely a niche product.

Thanks for concreting my opinion of EVs 👍

This is definitely one of your better videos; you're getting the hang of comic timing 😊

So they did not provide type charger cable because those charging station on the side have 7 or 22kw plug in with your own cable

I expect this is apocryphal, but I read recently a post on a motoring forum from someone who when buying their new build house ticked the box for EV charging in the garage. What they got was an additional 13A socket near the garage door labelled as 'EV charging point'.

This probably suits some people very well if you need a van and don’t do lots of miles in a day etc. charge it at home end of week etc. I have a kangoo diesel and I certainly wouldn’t be swapping out to electric as in the south west going to places in the sticks doing 100 ish miles full of equipment at night for events just wouldn’t work. It would get me there but not sure it would get me back. Very few ev charging points around here. I live in a main town and no chargers for a good number of miles.

What's in the filler flap where you'd normally fill with fuel?

That van only works if you can charge it at home every day. And really only drive locally. This really proves that many EVs are single purpose vehicles whereas nearly every petrol/diesel/hybrid/phew are multi purpose vehicles. As EVs go, I quite like the MG5, it’s quite practical, fast enough and does not look too bad. But I could only use it 80% of the time. I had to drive 250mi last week for business. The MG would not have done it. I say roll on hydrogen but that development seems to be slowing down.

It's the wind direction and strength you need to worry about on fast roads

That would probably be a decent van if fitted with a nice frugal, powerful and efficient diesel engine.

Great honest review , i went for a phev instead as the range anxiety worried me as looking after my father i wouldn't want it to have been flat or on charge if something happened to him and is just come back from work, if you fancy doing a review or a test in a mg hs phev , your more than welcome to pop this way or something, keep up the good work on your channel

Should have popped into the Poachers pub next to the Hilton for some refreshments!

I can see myself getting one of these cars since it could replace at least 90 percent of the trips I do with my car. With the savings on fuel alone I could also keep a 10 year old diesel or gasoline car for longer trips.

And there I was..very optimistic when I saw Electric Classic Cars but.. he uses...mainly Tesla-stuff (?) so that is another kettle of expensive fish I guess and..Mr Fur is lucky that it is not cold. Can't wait to see how this ZOE-thing does it! But....

That Generation of Kangoo is getting on a bit now and it was rather cobbled together with parts from an earlier Generation Zoe as a van around town. There are some much better electric vans on the market that are more capable with greater range and rapid charging. Renault will be launching an all new Kangoo this year which again shares its underpinnings with the new Mercedes Citan. It has a claimed range of 186 miles and 80KW rapid charging is available. Kent Council must have had a good deal off Renault.

These where everywhere on a small island, but that's where this is only usefull

7:20 A normal car needs 15 to 20kW to sit on the highway at 100km/h. This means that with those 3kWh, you can do about 18km, not including acceleration to 100km/h. How much kW the van uses at 100km/h i don't know. Does it display it in kilowatts, or just on an arbitrary scale?

I had considered the Zoe as a practical daily for the commute, but it's off my list since it became the first car to score 0 stars in a 2021 Euro Ncap test. Renault decided to save some money and skimp on safety. I'm not down for that. Too bad.. I rather like looking at the little Zoe, even if some claim it's an old lady's car.

This van is fine if you live near a charge station and only want to use it for trips to the supermarket.

Isn't the charger plagued as well?

an ebike is mans best friend with one of these mate, it is absolutely amazing , fun and saves you money , time and past traffic easily, park up a few miles away, hop on your 1000w ebike and fly down the road, a foldable bike that is, vans in electric are not worth it, only cars

what year is this?

Loving your channel. That was a pretty poor van, totally agree with you on this. And to think … if you need a van for work, you’ll have a load of tools and equipment in it as well. Wonder how well/poorly it would perform then 🤷🏼‍♂️

Is that an Omega chronograph? Model?

Will be interesting to see how the Zoe goes.

Crazy !! i wonder to siwtch my thermic van to an eletric one

Ahh, so that's what the furious part of furiousdriving looks like!

They're so awesome. I mean, even though the electricity is made with coal or gas and then you need to change the batteries every 3-4 years, it's like so good for the environment! Ha ha ha ha ha! Yeah, right.

I think you'd be better off with a sail on the roof Matt. My old Kangoo's 'Heavy Oil'.

Great video Matt. Have to say this the first time I’ve been able to tell you think this thing was utterly rubbish 😂

That van is big enough to put a diesel generator in the back....Sorted.

I think the key thing owning this van is to add diesel generator in the boot to increase its range.

I have a old Renault zoe , its brilliant around town and cheap as chips to run . The charging infrastructure is getting better and will soon be good enough that range anxiety will end. Battery technology is still advancing and soon no one will have cause to worry about running out. Are you aware that thousands of ice cars run out of petrol every day and lots of people put the wrong type of fossil fuel in their tanks. Far more ice cars carch fire than E.Vs pro rata. The introduction of better vehicles will happen no matter how much you squeel about it

Even with fast charging if your a mega miler you will spend days over the coarse of a year waiting to charge them. And that's if you can find one that is working and theres not a queue. Also the infrastructure just isn't in place nor will be for years. I read somewhere charging a teslar uses as much juice as several houses. Not very green.

Yes you can do fast charging, but what they don't tell you is that doing it regularly negatively affects battery life. And long travel on highways are a nono.

this will make a nice micro camper van

This has got to be the first time I have seen you drive something you have absolutely hated. Most things you've driven with a smile, even laughing off their shortcomings. So this thing must be truly horrid.

these are the types of EVs we need. 25kwh battery that is only meant to go and buy milk and charge at home.

Similar to you I do a lot of miles, tomorrow for example I need to carry a boot full of tools and do about 500 miles 2 stops and an o/n same next day. This would be useless, but a friend who does something similar has an id3 nice car etc, however it’s going back because of the cancelled appointments leading to loss of income, extended periods away because of adjusting trips to suit charging etc loss of range in cold weather and finally battery degradation through constant fast charging - if you do local runs with odd private long journey max 10k a year, electric currently works anything else it’s just a pita utter inconvenience- I await the hate and the ‘your killing my kids’ bollocks.

I agree that any modern day electric vehicle should have fast charging. I work for the NHS doing deliveries of new equipment and taking away old equipment from Doctors surgeries for which I have been given a Ford Transit Custom van. Yes, it is diesel but does have the ability to auto stop the engine when queuing, when the gear stick is put into neutral. What I think would be better whether it is the Kangoo or for that matter any of the Transit vehicles is a hybrid diesel/battery vehicle, whereby the battery can either be charged at a charging point or get recharged by the diesel engine, when the diesel engine is in use. There is this technology out there with petrol/battery hybrid cars, why can this not be done with vans?

just imagine, you can fill up a diesel kangoo in less than 5 minutes to get a range of more than 1000km and filling stations are everywhere. if you want to get a coffee (the argument ev owners always use) you can do that at a proper cafe instead of some grimy roadside charging station.