E-Golf cold cold range!

[Paul-a594r]

Evening all

I just thought i'd post this for all you possible E Golf owners. If you're doing decent daily mileages, forget them!

Last night was the coldest for us, and also the first time I'd fully charged the car (only had it a 10 days) and I thought my electricity
had been cut during the night! When I got into the car, I found only 78 miles of range! I then looked at the ev fuel gauge
and saw that was full!

I know cold weather affects range, but 62 miles off the "claimed" range because its cold takes the piss!

• excuse my grammar, I've had a few beers and cant think!"

[ChocolateFrog]

Sounds about right.

[Pilotguy]

Every BEV review I’ve read or seen: Fully Charged / Harry’s Garage etc, all talk about the significant effect of cold against advertised range. Even in warm/temperate conditions the ranges claimed by manufacturers are optimistic at best! But hasn’t it been this way for a couple of decades with claimed economy/range figures for ICE cars too?

[bearman68]

It's the future. Imagine planning a skiing trip with this. Would be as quick to cycle.

[jjwilde]

This is why it's important to buy an efficient EV which meets your needs. Check the carwow range tests for example, huge differences with certain brands!

[eldar]

Don't evs have electric battery warmers to help fuller charging?

[off_again]

Yup, to be expected. This is my issue with EV's in general - they work brilliantly for a number of people, less so for others. If you have a driveway, garage, L2 charging and not-so-extreme temperatures, they are awesome. Dont have one or more of those things, it starts to get less awesome.

I have a driveway and garage and my wife was happy to leave the i3 outside in winter (yeah, not really that cold as it occasionally might freeze). But noticed a pretty dramatic drop in range as a result. Re-org the garage and can not get both cars in with ease - coldest it gets in there is around 10C (in the garage) on the coldest nights. Now only have a drop of 10 miles or so. Dramatic improvement and well worth the couple of days effort to organize.

And dont forget that the range will be based on expected usage. Winter driving will see higher rolling resistance in the tires (snow, ice or even just slush / rain), higher energy usage through heating the cabin and an obvious drop in range through cold batteries. The GOM in the i3 always shows low after a cold night, but it does improve as you use the car. We regularly get more range per charge than it says, its just erring on the side of caution.

[Chivs]

There is a reason why the e-Golf has been phased out; it's a long way off the latest EVs these days.

Still perfect for relatively local usage and I expect most buyers will choose the right car for their needs, bearing in mind that large numbers of people's daily car use is still less than this kind of winter EV range.

[oldmanbm]

I did 105 miles with some juice left yesterday in my E-Golf. Yes very cold conditions but I pre-heated and didn't go overly fast. Having the heat pump helps and I agree more modern EVs (excepting Mini and Honda-E) have better range but for my needs I find the E-Golf grand for my needs - well built- compact and blends in with the crowd.

[Paul-a594r]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Hi, that was with the radio on, and the heating. When I switched the heating off, it went up to 84 miles range, but who the hell drives their car in winter with no heating! lol

Cheers for the replies chaps, I didnt think the range would be so drastically affected. I've also got an E-Tron on order for myself, so its a good job I dont do big miles per year!

[jjwilde]

Bjorn's just range tested the new Model3 performance in freezing snow conditions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj3vUh5RqMc

Interesting results.

[South tdf]

Our company fleet has a range of EV cars and when I used a Golf during the summer and the range was something like 120 miles when charged. I dont think anyone can get anywhere near the claimed range

[Evanivitch]

Which eGolf battery?
Heat pump option fitted?

The range is a guess based on your previous driving, if you haven't been driving efficiently recently, then it's not going to predict big ranga.

[sjg]

Yep, it’s a guess. Ours gets used a lot for short local trips so the range shown is usually based on plenty of warming the cabin (often preheating without being plugged in), driving a couple of miles and cooling down again, terrible for efficiency particularly with no heat pump. After a full charge it’s showing 70-odd miles. It assumes the journeys you’re going to do will be the same as the last few. But then I did 70 miles just above freezing the other night, mostly motorway with cruise set to 75, heating on 22 degrees, and got back with just under 30 miles showing.

Estimated range was normally way off with ICE cars (I remember one would show 400+ miles after a fill up but never crack 300) but no-one pays it much attention.

[Otispunkmeyer]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Mines 0 miles in fact!

[andy43]

Evanivitch said:

Which eGolf battery?
Heat pump option fitted?

The range is a guess based on your previous driving, if you haven't been driving efficiently recently, then it's not going to predict big ranga.

That.
If you've been town driving or thrashing it with the heater on full before it got put to bed it'll wake up depressed and guess at a terrible range.
Don't know if the Golf has a thermally managed battery - our first gen Leaf and '18 Soul didn't/don't and it makes a big dent in the range.
Leaf lost 20-odd miles in winter and the Soul is similar.

[ChocolateFrog]

Paul-a594r said:

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Hi, that was with the radio on, and the heating. When I switched the heating off, it went up to 84 miles range, but who the hell drives their car in winter with no heating! lol

Cheers for the replies chaps, I didnt think the range would be so drastically affected. I've also got an E-Tron on order for myself, so its a good job I dont do big miles per year!

I'd imagine with a layer of freezing slush on the road is just about the worst case scenario.

A dry cold is probably not as bad, especially if you can pre heat the car prior to leaving.

[Blue Oval84]

Tesla M3 LR dropped down to a real range of about 210 miles from a 100% battery for me when the ambient temps were about 3 degrees. This was all at motorway speeds. Some considerable way short of the claimed range, but was to be expected really.

[anonymous-user]

It’s interesting that BEVs energy efficiency haunts them to some degree.

A 100kw/h usable capacity battery pack can theoretically hold 360MJ of energy. That’s slightly less than ten litres of petrol.

Can you imagine running an ICE with a ten litre tank and seeing what happens to the range in cold weather, given about two thirds or more of that energy is just wasted! Now scale that down to using the same amount of energy an e-golf has available from its 32kw/h usable pack - about 3 litres of petrol or 2/3 of a gallon assuming it’s at 100% SOC.

I know I’m massively oversimplifying the maths here, but I do find it fascinating that EVs travel so far on so little energy and it really underlines just how wasteful ICE engines are.

[gangzoom]

charltjr said:

I know I’m massively oversimplifying the maths here, but I do find it fascinating that EVs travel so far on so little energy and it really underlines just how wasteful ICE engines are.

Try working out the maths on an eBike, makes EVs looks inefficient!!

The motor+battery unit for my eBike weighs less than 4kg but has enough power to turn even the laziest normal human into a Tour de France rival, even in sub zero temperature and into a good going headwind, 1/3 of a kWh will get you a range of over 30 miles.

There are simply so many better ways to move us around these days, combustion engines really do need to be confined to the history books ASAP.

Edited by gangzoom on Sunday 3rd January 13:11