EV range for 148 mile motorway commute

[LeeM135i]

Morning all.

I am looking at a new job which will require me to work 4 days a week 148 miles from home. I will drive down on Monday stay in a hotel and drive home on Thursday or Friday. 99% of the drive will be on the motorway at 70mph (hopefully). Looking at the range anxiety side of the journey what kind of published range should I be looking at to make this drive?

I know petrol / diesel cars will see their best mpg/range at these speeds, is it the same for EV's? I don't want to buy a car that says it has a 200 mile range and find it only does 135miles and I have to stop for 30 mins to charge it on route. I will be able to charge the car at home and at the office so I will have a fully charged battery to start the journey every time and access to a petrol powered car if I need to travel further.

Thanks in advance!

[hepy]

E niro will be fine in my experience.

Even in depths of winter, still gets 200-225 miles to a charge.

[Mr E]

Anything with 50KWh of battery should be ok unless it’s shaped like a brick.

[SWoll]

Based on the assumption the trip will be all year round so having to deal with weather extremities and that you'll need a buffer for both unforseen scenarios and on arrival so you can get back to a charger and leave it sitting for a few days you'll be looking for 180-200 miles of year round range IME which in reality is cars with 220-250 miles advertised.

In reality I'd suggest cars with 64kWh batteries or above if you want to remove range anxiety from the equation.

[dmsims]

A 58kWh ID3 will easily do that all year

[Ex Boy Racer]

I have a Taycan Turbo S. It would deal with that scenario no problem, even though it only shows 195 miles on a full charge in this weather. Cost-wise, I imagine each trip will cost around £7.

[gotoPzero]

Where EVs fail as cars IMHO is not the actual trip.
Its once you are home and need to pop to the shops or drop someone off somewhere.
So bear that in mind and try and get something thats 200+ mile range really to give you that spare capacity.

Also remember public charging is a lot more expensive than home charging. Instavolt are 45p/kw at the moment.
It was 25p not long ago. So if you are charging near work for the return home it might be quite a bit more expensive.

To fully charge my ipace is IRO £30 now at a public charger.

[SWoll]

dmsims said:

A 58kWh ID3 will easily do that all year

In winter weather, with a decent buffer just in case and at motorway speeds? Not convinced based on tests I've seen.

[joropug]

Out of interest why do you need an EV to do one 300 mile trip in a week? That's bread and butter diesel territory, your basic repmobile 2.0d will be getting 60mpg easily, why waste money on the EV?

That is assuming it isn't used in between of course.

I had a similar commute to Croydon a long time ago now, but was 110 miles each way if I recall, staying in a hotel for 4 nights on the company and then coming back home for the weekend.

It cost me peanuts in a 2.2 Vectra petrol at the time - Petrol was still expensive 10 years ago I think it cost me £35 in fuel for the return trip but the company paid £112. Appreciate it sounds like you're not being reimbursed but I think you have to really want an EV here.

[anonymous-user]

gotoPzero said:

Its once you are home and need to pop to the shops or drop someone off somewhere.

what? WHo is driving a long distance to go to the shop or "drop someone off"? My 7kW home charger which is really slow in the scheme of things, adds around 20 to 30 miles of range in an hour. So i get back with a compeltely "flat" battery, i just wait 30min then pop out to Tesco's as it's only 3 miles away......

In the absolute worst case, there's an emergency or whatever (never happened yet in 7 years of driving an EV) i'll just get a taxi. yeah, it'll cost me a "lot" of money, but with the money i've saved over 7 years i could actually hire a helicopter to take me to what ever the emergency is and still be better off overall!

[gotoPzero]

Max_Torque said:

gotoPzero said:

Its once you are home and need to pop to the shops or drop someone off somewhere.

what? WHo is driving a long distance to go to the shop or "drop someone off"? My 7kW home charger which is really slow in the scheme of things, adds around 20 to 30 miles of range in an hour. So i get back with a compeltely "flat" battery, i just wait 30min then pop out to Tesco's as it's only 3 miles away......

In the absolute worst case, there's an emergency or whatever (never happened yet in 7 years of driving an EV) i'll just get a taxi. yeah, it'll cost me a "lot" of money, but with the money i've saved over 7 years i could actually hire a helicopter to take me to what ever the emergency is and still be better off overall!

I think you misunderstand. You drive from work to home. Its 145 miles. You arrive home with lets say 20 mi in the tank.

Then the mrs says can you just pop to B&Q or whatever. Or the phone rings and kid is not well and you need to go to pick them up. Or you get home and the dog is not well and you need to go to the vets Etc etc etc.

IME these things come in 3s!!
I am just saying always have extra capacity if you can.

My worst experience with my iPace was when my dog was unwell unexpectedly and it was a case of get her to the vets asap but we had limited charge. Turned what was already a stressful situation into a very stressful situation!!

[TheDrownedApe]

SWoll said:

dmsims said:

A 58kWh ID3 will easily do that all year

In winter weather, with a decent buffer just in case and at motorway speeds? Not convinced based on tests I've seen.

Charged to 90%, with air-con off, averaging 56mph (cruised at 68 where possible) from south Cov to Preston (138 mile journey) and our ID.3 managed it there with 12 miles left and back with 3 miles left. this was on 18/19th Dec 21 and it wasn't very cold.

[phib]

My commute is 140 miles leave on a tuesday, back on a wednesday.

We have a charger at work 7kw

If I get there at 8.30am the car is full by 6pm ish

I have a Taycan Turbo and the advertised range is 280 I think but at this time of year its really 210 - 220 dependent on heating etc It wont do advertsied range in summer.

If I didnt have a charger at work there is no way I would have gone electric

I belive the battery size is 93.4KWH and there is no way I would want anything with a smaller battery.

Phib

[raspy]

phib said:

My commute is 140 miles leave on a tuesday, back on a wednesday.

We have a charger at work 7kw

If I get there at 8.30am the car is full by 6pm ish

I have a Taycan Turbo and the advertised range is 280 I think but at this time of year its really 210 - 220 dependent on heating etc It wont do advertsied range in summer.

If I didnt have a charger at work there is no way I would have gone electric

I belive the battery size is 93.4KWH and there is no way I would want anything with a smaller battery.

Phib

Surely, it's less about the battery capacity and more about how efficient the car is? What if another sporty similar sized EV has a smaller battery but more range due to using its smaller battery more efficiently at any speed?

[SWoll]

joropug said:

Out of interest why do you need an EV to do one 300 mile trip in a week?

Where does the OP state that is all the mileage covered? Could do 100 miles more during those 4 days locally, and then run around at the weekend doing 200 more?

[phib]

raspy said:

Surely, it's less about the battery capacity and more about how efficient the car is? What if another sporty similar sized EV has a smaller battery but more range due to using its smaller battery more efficiently at any speed?

I am sure that probably the case although e have two Jaguar Ipaces as well and they have 90KWH batteries and do c. 220 miles on a full charge so a similar metric.


Phib

[MattyD803]

joropug said:

Out of interest why do you need an EV to do one 300 mile trip in a week? That's bread and butter diesel territory, your basic repmobile 2.0d will be getting 60mpg easily, why waste money on the EV?

I wonder if 1% BIK might be in the mix for consideration here......?

[anonymous-user]

gotoPzero said:

My worst experience with my iPace was when my dog was unwell unexpectedly and it was a case of get her to the vets asap but we had limited charge. Turned what was already a stressful situation into a very stressful situation!!

er, great, but do you buy a car for the one time every 15 years when your dog is unwell? I'd have just called a cab, or gone round my neighbour and begged a lift or whatever. I asume you aren't driving hundreds of miles to get to the vet in any case?

Not many people drive a transit van every day instead of a corsa, because they once, 4 years ago, needed to pick up a large old sofa from aunt Agetha, so why wuld you bias your choice to include (easily solved) outliers like this?

(genuine question, my only car is an i3 with a 38 kWh useable battery and a 120 to 160 mile range, ive never found that to be an actual problem that can't be solkved trivially easily and for a tiny cost (certainly the overal finincial aspect is far far far into the positive overall)

[joropug]

SWoll said:

Where does the OP state that is all the mileage covered? Could do 100 miles more during those 4 days locally, and then run around at the weekend doing 200 more?

In the other half of my post not in your quote I added that I have assumed the car isn't used whilst wherever he is working.

Certainly in my case, I drove the car into the hotel car park and didn't drive it all week as there was nowhere I needed or wanted to go. Not the same for everyone. I actually did less miles per month whilst commuting to Croydon than I did down the road to our other office.

[dmsims]

TheDrownedApe said:

SWoll said:

dmsims said:

A 58kWh ID3 will easily do that all year

In winter weather, with a decent buffer just in case and at motorway speeds? Not convinced based on tests I've seen.

Charged to 90%, with air-con off, averaging 56mph (cruised at 68 where possible) from south Cov to Preston (138 mile journey) and our ID.3 managed it there with 12 miles left and back with 3 miles left. this was on 18/19th Dec 21 and it wasn't very cold.

I would get your car looked at

Did Home to Bristol and back easily (184 miles) when it was 5C