Occasionally we see a major car manufacturer making a mistake that does not apply to US sold vehilces. Take Renault, a French car manufacturer with a strong mind of it's own. Renault makes the Zoe in pure EV form. It's an interesting car, smaller than a Leaf, with a range of up to 130 miles.
While you can purchase the vehicle in France, you own it, and you can modify it, and do with it what you wish, Renault will only sell you the car. Car purchasers must agree to rent the battery pack from the battery manufacturer, and this battery rental agreement is protected by a Digital Rights Management agreement that will allow the battery company to prevent charging of any kind. Now the same kind of DRM that discourages copying movies or music will apply to the Renault car batteries.
Initially, Renault had planned to manufacture the batteries itself, in a plant near Paris, but technical problems have held that production up. They are currently purchasing batteries from Nissan-NEC and from LG Chem. Zoe purchasers sign the battery rental agreement with Renault, who purchases the batteries and owns them.
This has all sorts of ramifications in the battery world. If your battery pack appears to the charger as anything other than what it expects, it can refuse to charge, just as your DVD player may refuse to play an illegally copied DVD. This news comes from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the larger and more active groups in making the public aware of DRM problems.
Read further at:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/drm-cars-will-drive-consumers-crazy and the Free Software Foundation in Europe at:
https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2013/10/31/renault-will-remotely-lock-down-electric-cars/
