How far can electric cars REALLY go?? – we drive 12 until they DIE! Tesla, BYD & more | What Car?

action and we're off 14 miles there's some life in this thing come on oh that hasn't gone well electric cars are great when it's hot and dry but what happens when the temperature plummets and the heavens open we've got 12 cars here and we're going to drive them all in real world conditions until they die we're going to show you exactly what happens when electric cars run out of charge and how far all of these EVS will really go on a typical Winter's day and then at the end we're going to Crunch all the numbers to see how they stack up for efficiency but before we start testing make sure you hit subscribe for lots more videos like this [Music] one right first things first we've got to set these cars up and because this is a relatively scientific test we got to make sure it's fair so we want them in basically the same condition so Dan what are we doing with the tires so all of them need to be at their recommended manufacturer settings and that's what you're doing here exactly yes so I've got to attach the toing eye to these cars so that when they run out of battery and we pull over to the side of the road they're ready to be put into the trailer so I've just been in every single car zeroing all of the trips I've also set the climate control in each car to 21° and they're now all in Eco Drive modes with all the cars set up for the test it was time for the driver briefing as always because it wouldn't be safe to deliberately run cars out of charge on the public road we recreated real world conditions at our private test center in bedfordshire we followed a simple test route of roughly 15 Mi which included 2.6 Mi of simulated stop start Urban driving 4 mil at a steady 50 mph and 8 mil at a constant 70 the rationale for the high percentage of high-speed cruising is that drivers who want to travel long distances in one hit are likely to be using the motorway Network the evening before the test the 12 cars were charged to 100% And then left out in the open for roughly 14 hours in 6 to 10° ambient conditions just before we started the test they were all plugged in again to check they were fully charged and then the head headlights were switched on the cars would be driven repeatedly around our test route in Convoy with driver changes and a switch in running order at the end of every lap to make things as Fair as possible okay will so what cars do we have here today well the car that can officially go the furthest is the one I'm driving right now that's the Tesla Model 3 it's recently been updated this is the long range version so the version that can go furthest on a charge and the official wtp figure for this guy is 390 MI however that is with the optional 19in Alloys this car has the standard 18in aerrow Wheels there isn't an official wltp for that well it's exactly the same as with the bigger Wheels but Tesla estimates 421 miles so in theory this should go the furthest okay just behind it though is the VW id7 which I'm in now and you aren't seeing double we have two pretty much identical id7 on this test the big difference is is though one of them has a heat pump the other one doesn't so driving them both on this wintry day in real world driving conditions will let us see if having a heat pump really makes a big difference or not okay so after that we've got the Mercedes eqe quite an expensive executive Saloon and actually we had one of those in our summer range test that we did a few months ago and it went furthest of all of the cars that we had on that test including the Tesla Model 3 although that was before the Tesla's update next up we've got the byd seal which is a brand new model 3 rival from Chinese company byd and we've already driven it on a long road trip and we were pretty impressed with it there but how is it going to do today after that we've got something that's quite a lot more expensive it's the BMW I5 very good electric car there's no doubt about that but it starts at £75,000 so the fact is sort of middle of the pack when it comes to official range is maybe a little bit disappointing but perhaps it will surprise us in the real World Behind the I5 in terms of official ranges we've got the Volvo xc40 which has just had a fairly major update giving it a much bigger battery and we've got a twin motor version on this test okay so one of the cheapest cars in the whole test next is the mg4 it's actually the topof the range mg4 so the mg4 range starts at 27,000 this one is £365,000 it's called the extended range and the official wltp for that car is 3 23 mil and actually we used that on a road trip a few months ago against the Tesla Model 3 you can watch that video if you want by clicking the link up there at the top now if the mg4 represents brilliant value for money in the electric car world the next car might not it's the Lexus ux and it's just had a fairly major update from Lexus however it is still a fairly small electric SUV which can only fast charge using a Chad Mo connector and the one one that we've got here today is a Tumi ux which costs £57,000 and it also has one of the worst ranges here bargain so that's almost twice as much money as the byd dolphin so you've already mentioned we've got the byd seal in this test this is the much smaller dolphin it's a little bit smaller than the mg4 costs around £31,000 so when you factor that in perhaps the range one of the weakest here but understandable when you consider the price and really you'd expect the seal and the dolphin to be pretty good in wet conditions wouldn't you will but anyway next we've got the Lexus RZ which is another Lexus in this test which is also extremely expensive and it really stands out towards the bottom of the pack here but you never know it could surprise us today let's hope so okay so after that the final car is the Jeep Avenger European car of the year actually has the worst official range of all these cars 200 144 mil perhaps it will surprise us it does come with a heat pump as standard and obviously it's much much cheaper than the RZ although still around about £40,000 just under so not exactly a bargain so will what's your money on to win this test well as I said I reckon the Tesla Model 3 probably has it in the bag it's the longrange version of that car we know the rear wheel drive we tested that already and that returns some fantastic efficiency figures but given what we're seeing so far only a few miles in then the id7 or at least one of them could run this pretty close and what do you think is going to die first I reckon it's a toss up between the Avenger and the RZ they've both got very similar official ranges it really depends on which one deals best with these quite poor weather conditions obviously a lot of rain and reasonably cold temperatures today let's find out now if you're watching this in Canada or Sweden or somewhere like that you might be thinking this is not a winter at all it's currently 11° according to the car so not particularly cold and in the UK even in Scotland you know it rarely gets down to- 10us 20 really cold temperatures like that but still this sort of temperature is not ideal for electric cars they will go quite a bit further when it's 20 25° in the summer and there's a lot more to contend with as well so it's very windy today that's not good for efficiency and it is pouring with rain and there's a lot of standing water on the road as well so these cars are having to push through that which again is harming their efficiency and reducing how far they can go on a full charge so will we've been on the road for a few hours now the sun's come out the rain's gone away for a bit what car are you in at the a minute so I in the byd seal and I'm getting a little bit annoyed because every time I try and put the wipers on I indicate because the stalks the wrong way around but there's better news when it comes to the range because at the moment I have 50% of battery left and the car is telling me I still have 177 miles left to go how about yourself okay that's pretty good I was also doing a lot of accidental indicating in the seal but now I'm in the mg4 I've got 44% of my battery left with 11 miles of range Apparently that is pretty good I'd say especially given the price but do you reckon we were right about which of these cars would run out first so we checking with the others okay so it's between the Avenger and the rzed isn't it so let's find out what they're on how many miles remaining in the Avenger 52 miles what about the RZ it's down to 14 miles 14 miles so that's a 75 77,000 electric SUV and it's going to run out of juice quicker than a byd dolphin that's 31 Grand and a Jeep Avenger this this mg4 is going to be on the road for like another eight hours and the RZ will just be broken down do you think it would die pretty much when it gets to zero reading miles or will it get a second wind and do another 100 or so no I suspect it will get to zero and die there but there's only one way to find out okay so I am now in the Lexus RZ and I've just started a circuit which is around about 15 mil and the car is telling me I have 7 miles left so if that's correct then we're going to run out completely on this journey at the moment we're doing very low speed stuff we're doing the stop start at 30 m hour but in a minute we're going to be doing 50 and then 70 M hour and I expect that figure to start to go down very quickly and and if we don't run out this time it's almost certain that we'll run out next and guess who's in it [Music] then and you know what we're just ping off the highspeed circuit we've done 143.5 mil hour so that means I have made it round a full circuit and it also means dog revolter is in the car next and I think given that there is zero miles left according to the trip computer there's a pretty good chance that he is going to have to deal with the car running out which is quite funny great it's been on zero miles for quite a while now so let's see what [Music] happens okay we've survived the town section at 30 mph can we actually get up to 50 mph performance is quite restricted but we're almost there 47 49 50 m an hour now okay how long can this keep [Music] going we made it through the 50 mph section so now we've got to get up to 70 and we've been going for 14 miles with the car saying that it has no miles aing but I am struggling to get up to 70 mph I'm at 56 57 my foot is flat to the floor 58 oh I'm getting overtaken by everyone I'm losing power I'm dropping I'm down to 59 mph 58 55 I think this is going to be a really really painful slow death now 5150 my foot's still flat on the floor and we're just very slowly losing power 49 oh oh no oh I really thought we stood a chance of making it a whole way [Music] around will what's happening in the Avenger I'm currently cruising at 36 miles hour I still have 1% of the battery according to the car so I reckon it's only a matter of time obviously I've done a couple more laps than you so I won't be last but I think I might be second from Bost I think the recovery truck is going to be quite busy for the next hour [Music] okay so the Avenger is actually the first one certainly when you look at time to die it's done 162 miles according to the trip computer but the rzed started to drop off quite a bit sooner so I reckon this has actually done more miles or will have done by the time that we finish I've got my hiis jacket on because this car needs to be now taken to a oh and I'm moving I'm moving I'm moving didn't expect that happen I'm going onto the tow [Music] truck well we've been in limp mode for what feels like several hours now we're still moving forwards at 8 m an hour we've been on an empty battery for almost 20 [Music] miles okay so the Avenger is first back at the charging points if we're talking about time it was definitely the first to die but I'm not sure if this will have covered more miles than the RZ because that car started to die quite a bit sooner than this although I've heard that somehow it is still crawling around the circuit right now or beit at about 6 M hour so I think now it's about time we found out which of our cars went furthest and also we talked about how efficient they all [Music] are so we're talking about range first and then we're going to cover efficiency and as you've just seen the jeep was the first to fully die but it actually still traveled further than the RZ and the RZ trip computer was showing a remaining range of 0 miles after just 136 mil but it kept going for another 21 M after that remember though the last 3 miles were going at about 9 M hour so in total it covered 157 Mi meaning that one of the most expensive cars on this test had the worst range of the entire lineup so the Jeep Avenger was next it does cost roughly half as much as the RZ but it's still not exactly cheap it cost almost £40,000 and it covered 163 miles now we should clarify at this point that we didn't just go by each car's trip computer because they were all reading slightly differently so what we did was we took an average of the trip computer reading at 100 miles and then we adjusted all the figures accordingly yes we did and next to die was another Lexus it wasn't a particularly good day for the Japanese manufacturer it was the ux 300E and it was third to drop out covering 170 Mi which was 37.9% short of its official range and that was the biggest shortfall of any of the cars here the other thing to mention about the ux is that the one that we had on test costs more than £57,000 and it's the only one of our contenders that uses the old-fashioned Chad mod connector to Rapid charge and if you find a Chad connector and connect to it then you need to wait for almost 1 hour and 30 minutes to get a 10 to 80% top up because the ux can only accept a maximum charging rate of 50 KW so not a particularly recommendable EV on the evidence of this test uh next Fallout the running was the BD dolphin that managed 188 miles now okay that's not a particularly long range by Modern Electric Car standards but the dolphin is a small little Urban runaround it has a footprint about the same size as a BMW 1 series then that's a little bit more understandable and also it's the cheapest car here it costs 316 95 and that's in the range topping trim sure the next eight cars all managed at least another 35 mil but it was the mg4 that went next and in total the mg4 extended range covered 227 miles which is pretty impressive for an EV that costs less than £37,000 but it is the most expensive mg4 that you can buy alongside the X power and really we do think although it still represents good value for money it's really the cheaper versions of the mg4 that are more recommendable and make more sense even if they can't travel for quite as far on a full charge absolutely I agree with that so next drop out 5 miles later was the Volvo xc40 recharge now this is the new updated one it recently got a bigger battery and we were testing the twin motor version so it's very quick and that managed 232 mil not bad at all although that was about 30% shy of its official wtp range the I5 was next and to be honest you might expect a better winter range than the 253 miles that it managed to cover because it cost almost £80,000 but the I5 did at least get relatively close to its official range after that it was the id7 without the heat pump that dropped out the running just one mile later and then another mile after that it was the new byd seal that fell out of the running so the BD seal has a pretty good range when you consider that it is much cheaper than cars like the id7 and the I5 and it actually beat those cars will beit by a small margin and it was the id7 with the heat pump which finished third overall it managed an extra 14 miles on top of what the id7 covered without the heat pump and eventually the id7 with the heat pump died after 268 miles okay so the final two now was only seven miles in it in the end but sheer battery size did eventually win the day so the model 3 longrange that managed 293 Mi and the eqe managed 300 mil on the nose but then when you consider that the eqe as I said has a much bigger battery has a 19% larger usable capacity it costs almost 20,000 more to buy than a model 3 then perhaps such a small margin of Victory isn't that great and the model 3 was also by a country mile the most efficient car that we had on test and it averaged 3.9 m per kilowatt hour and the reason that efficiency is important is because if an electric car has a massive range but terrible efficiency then it's like having a fuel powerered car with a massive tank that means it can travel 800 miles before you have to fill it up but if it's doing 10 m per gallon then it's going to cost you an absolute Fortune so you'd be better off having a car with a smaller fuel tank which can't travel quite as far in one hit but is much more efficient and would then cost you a lot less money and a few years ago when electricity prices were really really cheap and any electric car was Far cheaper to run than an equivalent petrol or diesel efficiency wasn't such a big consideration but electricity prices have skyro rocketed particularly you'll notice that if you're using the public charging Network so it's a much bigger consideration for buyers now or at least it should be and you might be surprised by the difference in running costs between the electric cars that we had on this test you might so if you take the Tesla Model 3 for example as you mentioned that was the most efficient car we tested and if you were to charge that up exclusively at home at the current energy price cap that's around 29p per Kow hour then you would spend roughly £740 in electricity every 10,000 MI now of course we know a lot of EV buyers use cheaper overnight tariffs so let's just say for argument that you were paying 7p per kilowatt hour then that 10,000 Mi would cost you £179 but on the other hand if you were doing all your charging at a public charger at say 79 P per kilowatt now this is a Tesla it has access to the supercharging network so that's generally a bit cheaper but let's base it on 79 P per kilowatt then you would be paying £ 2,021 for every1 10,000 miles you covered and that's for a very efficient electric car we've also got the numbers for the RZ which not only had the worst range but it was also the least efficient car that we had on test and it managed just 2.5 m per Kow so 10,000 m in that would cost 282 on the 7p overnight tariff £ 1,168 at the home price cap or $3,183 if you're using the public charging Network so you could potentially be saving an extra 1,162 on electricity every 10,000 Mi by choosing an efficient EV over a thirsty one yes and although some people might be thinking well those cars aren't direct Rivals you're comparing one large SUV against a much lower selika executive Saloon but even if we look at more direct Rivals so take the byd seal for example that would cost you7 more every 10,000 Mi if you were charging at 29 P per kwatt hour rising to £536 more if you were paying 79p for every Kow hour at a public charging station so even though not all buyers do worry about efficiency when they're choosing an EV they really should and one final point on efficiency we realized in this test that the trip computer what the car is telling you it's achieving isn't actually always right so the numbers that we have the efficiency calculations we've got they're based on the actual miles that we covered divided by the usable capacity of the battery and we found that the actual efficiency was in lots of cases very different to what the car was saying that it was achieving good point so we found the efficiency meters in the BMW I5 the Jeep Avenger the mg4 and the Tesla Model 3 were pretty much spot on there were some big discrepancies so the two bys for example they were wildly optimistic about their energy usage take the dolphin that was claiming 3.9 m per kwatt which was the same as the Tesla Model 3 was delivering much very impressive very impressive figure but actually when you calculate the numbers it was only doing 3.1 m per K so that's an error of more than 20% and obviously nowhere near as impressive as 3.9 m per Kow hour not at all the energy meters in the two 87s were also a little bit optimistic by a much smaller degree though on the other hand in the two lexuses the eqe and the xc40 the meters in those cars claimed they were delivering worse efficiency than they actually were very interesting but what about heat pumps then so we had two identical id7 one with a heat pump one without a heat pump and what did we learn from this experiment so yes heat pumps in theory are supposed to improve efficiency because they can pull heat from the ambient air and transfer that into the car's interior so that's more efficient than using a resistance heater to warm up the cabin now a lot of electric cars a lot of our contenders came with one of these as standard but in some cases you have to pay extra so on the id7 you have to pay £1,050 if you want a heat pump that is quite a lot of money the two cars as you say were near enough identical they had the same Wheels the same tires they were in the same trim the only difference other than the heat pump was that the one with the heat pump also had a panoramic roof so that would have added a little bit of weight but we're talking small margins now the heat pump did improve efficiency and range as you mentioned earlier so the efficiency was 5.2% better it went from 3.3 to 3.5 miles per kilowatt hour but the trouble is even if you're doing all your charging on the public charging Network and you're paying 79 P per kilowatt hour then you will need to do 85,000 Mi before you've earned back that ,050 in electricity savings and only then will you start to actually save money and if you're charging at home particularly if you're on a cheap overnight tariff then you'll be doing half a million miles or more which you probably won't even have the car then the car will be in a scrap peep somewhere sure before it's paid back the initial cost of the heat pump crazy so if you get a heat pump as standard then great but if you have to decide to pay more to have one then it probably won't actually add up potentially not is important to point out that this was on the day in different conditions in cooler weather perhaps with different cars then the difference the Improvement might be slightly greater but yes absolutely is something worth thinking about and obviously we do acknowledge that the temperature on the day wasn't minus 20 so it wasn't like we were conducting this test in a Nordic winter but what was the average temperature for the actual testing that we were doing the average temperature was between 10 and 11° during testing it was a little bit colder when we soak the cars overnight so clearly there are other countries in the world that have much harsher winters this is specific to the UK and as I mentioned earlier even though it wasn't actually that cold it's very wet a lot of standing water and it was quite windy as well sure okay so there you have it thank you very much for watching this video if you want to see another one make sure you click that link up there and to get more information on this test and all the cars involved and if you want a great deal on your next car go to whatcar.com by clicking there

Channel: What Car?

Views: 947,153

Keywords: tesla model 3, new tesla model 3, tesla model 3 highland, car review, doug revolta, will nightingale, whatcar, what car, ev efficiency miles per kwh, electric car efficiency, tesla, byd, byd seal, byd dolphin, vw id.7, ev range test, electric car, electric car range, range test, efficiency test, how far can electric cars travel, mile per kwh, jeep avenger, mercedes eqe, lexus rz, lexus ux, mg 4, mg4, road trip

Id: c10Ck84QgEI

Length: 25min 1sec (1501 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2024