All the youtube EV tests.
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Fundoreen

Original Poster:

4,180 posts

105 months

Tuesday 11th February 2020
quotequote all
Why do all these people go on long runs up the motorway. Always seem to be on 300 mile trips.
Most people just go 20-30 miles to work and back.
EV's would appear to be the exact opposite of ICE in that they are better in stop start town driving where ICE fuel efficiency plunges.
I guess they dont want to spend all day in traffic. I could be wrong but haven't seen any real world usage as I understand it.

gangzoom

7,977 posts

237 months

Tuesday 11th February 2020
quotequote all
Most of our EV usage is only 20-30 miles, hence why we were happy with buying the lowest range Tesla on sale at the time.

We have done coming up to 45k miles in EVs now, so have issues with range. However we have also done family holiday road trips to France, Edinburgh, and regularly do a 160 mile trip to see the inlaws. This summer we are also doing a 1000 mile road trip around the West coast of Scotland.

For the longer trips having good range/charging speed really do matter. I estimate only 5% of our trips are beyond the 200 mile battery range of the car, but if we couldn't do that 5% of trips the car would be a major pain.

Equally we do 300 miles a day work related trips every month or so, in an EV these work trips are all but impossible, even in a £80k+ Long Range Model S. Where as in our other car, a Toyota hybrid it will sit at lane 3 M-way speeds regardless of weather/temp for 500 miles at a time. Infact recently my wife did 400 miles in back to back meetings in less than 24hrs in cold/dark/wet roads with no issues, and there was still enough fuel in the tank to cover the remaining work commute that week.

Our EV is our main family car, but there is nothing on sale today on the EV front which can completely replace our remaining combustion car without introducing inconvenience, and not to mention major cost of purchase. A tool that only works 95% of the time might as well be useless, depending on how much that 5% matters.

Edited by gangzoom on Tuesday 11th February 14:04

Fundoreen

Original Poster:

4,180 posts

105 months

Tuesday 11th February 2020
quotequote all
My argument is they dont show shorter trips . How many times can you go back and forth in a week to a typical job 20 miles away in rush hour stop start..
You could probably plug in overnight at home and never go near a petrol/energy station or use an app or debit card.
Why buy one if you do stupid amounts of travel. The constant anxiety will probably kill you in the end.

Dave Hedgehog

15,703 posts

226 months

Tuesday 11th February 2020
quotequote all
Fundoreen said:
Why do all these people go on long runs up the motorway. Always seem to be on 300 mile trips.
Most people just go 20-30 miles to work and back.
EV's would appear to be the exact opposite of ICE in that they are better in stop start town driving where ICE fuel efficiency plunges.
I guess they dont want to spend all day in traffic. I could be wrong but haven't seen any real world usage as I understand it.
dont watch tesla bjorn he does weekly 1000km trips in just about every type of ev smile

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK4AKGg3s-8


anonymous-user

76 months

Tuesday 11th February 2020
quotequote all
There are some reasonable long term reviews of the Niro, eg Autoexpress and Whatcar.

sjg

7,639 posts

287 months

Tuesday 11th February 2020
quotequote all
Most people considering an EV are anxious about doing longer journeys, hence that's where the interest is. If you can plug in at home then you tend to do as many short days as it takes to get down to 30% or so, then plug in. The efficiency of that is largely irrelevant, the difference between the most and least efficient translates to very little in cost to run.

Slow, short journeys are more about how much heating you're using, without a massively inefficient engine up front chucking out heat you need to use the battery for it instead.

Bjorn gets some stick for the relevance of his 1000km tests, but they can be useful to find flaws in cars for those long journeys - which will go on rapid charging quickly after a few in a row, and which will start to slow down.

Edited by sjg on Tuesday 11th February 17:14

gangzoom

7,977 posts

237 months

Tuesday 11th February 2020
quotequote all
Fundoreen said:
My argument is they dont show shorter trips . How many times can you go back and forth in a week to a typical job 20 miles away in rush hour stop start...
Why would you do a review based on short trips? Even a 2011 1st gen Leaf will still do 20 miles rush hour trip with no issues.

Zcd1

600 posts

77 months

Tuesday 11th February 2020
quotequote all
Fundoreen said:
My argument is they dont show shorter trips .
More tests could/should be done with varying driving conditions. Droning along the freeway/dual carriageway is only a small part of the overall picture.

MrB.

595 posts

208 months

Tuesday 11th February 2020
quotequote all
In the ones I do, we talk about range, but we don’t focus solely on it. We try to feature more ride and handling. We will also be running a long term MG ZS so will be doing regular updates on day-to-day stuff, like regular commuting, school run, etc.

Happy to PM details of who we are as I can’t advertise the mag on here.

Blue Oval84

5,360 posts

183 months

Tuesday 11th February 2020
quotequote all
I'm far more interested in the long range reviews. Pretty much any EV will cope with a 20-30 mile commute, I don't need a review to tell me that.

However, start chucking in the odd 350 mile trip, and many EV's are untenable, this is where reviews like this come into their own.

Fundoreen

Original Poster:

4,180 posts

105 months

Wednesday 12th February 2020
quotequote all
I accept that the whole thing needs maximum stress testing as who knows what the actual lifespan is yet of all the components.
Me personally I wouldnt run the vehicle like that. Im probably still 5 years away from it anyway.

ntiz

2,626 posts

158 months

Wednesday 12th February 2020
quotequote all
In fairness I find a long trip 4 up with loads of stuff in the boot shows up some annoying problems with all cars. So I think it is relevant for most cars plus as has been said nobody is worried about running to the shop in a model 3 but they might be about taking the kids skiing in Meribel.

Like that the boot isn’t actually that big in a p400e and that once you add a full boot and people it scrapes 22 mpg if you are lucky.

poing

8,743 posts

222 months

Sunday 16th February 2020
quotequote all
Fundoreen said:
Why do all these people go on long runs up the motorway. Always seem to be on 300 mile trips.
Most people just go 20-30 miles to work and back.
EV's would appear to be the exact opposite of ICE in that they are better in stop start town driving where ICE fuel efficiency plunges.
I guess they dont want to spend all day in traffic. I could be wrong but haven't seen any real world usage as I understand it.
Because it wouldn't be very entertaining or useful. It would go:

"Hey viewers, here is me driving to work. Now I drive home via the supermarket. Now I'm home I have my tea."
3 days later...
"Hey viewers, here is me driving to work. Now I drive home via the supermarket. Now I'm home I plug my car in and have my tea."

Might as well make a video about taking the bus to work. It's the same reason we don't see supercar videos about people doing the work commute.
There is one guy with an electric car and he does some great graphs on charging from solar versus time of year etc. In the summer he manages to add about 60 or 70 miles of range to the car using solar each day. In the winter, not so much!

ZesPak

26,003 posts

218 months

Thursday 20th February 2020
quotequote all
gangzoom said:
Equally we do 300 miles a day work related trips every month or so, in an EV these work trips are all but impossible, even in a £80k+ Long Range Model S.
I do this in my LR Model S. But since most of my remote customers are in the Netherlands, all of them have chargers. They can realistically be over 400km away from me, on their 11kWh chargers it takes me <8h to recharge that amount.
And that is without accounting for superchargers.
480km (300 miles) is just out of reach for the LR Model S in winter, but it literally takes 10 minutes at a supercharger to add another 100km to the car to make it work.

I'd say "all but impossible" are a gross overstatement unless you live somewhere where there are no superchargers anywhere and no destination charging, like Ireland apparently.