Real-world Range Test...

As I was preparing to leave work today and set off on my 130-mile commute home, it occurred to me that I tend to drive the car conscious of range anxiety and often trying to drive super-sensibly to generate impressive stats on the trip computer always on display in front of me. This got me wondering what consumption figures I would return if I drove without a care for economy as I always have done with my ICE cars. I had a full charge and time to stop to top up if required, so what better time to do a genuine real-world test.

The first thing to do was remove the trip computer display from the dash so that I wouldn’t subconsciously slip into the mode of trying to drive economically; it was actually nice to try a different layout, taking full advantage of the digital configurable dash. The temperature gauge was indicating a chilly 12 Degrees Centigrade so I set the climate control to 22 Degrees and set it to automatically maintain this temperature throughout the journey. Finally, I plugged in my phone for Apple CarPlay as I would be using Waze to help me avoid the worst of the traffic.

My journey home consisted mostly of motorway miles although I did at one point take a 10-mile detour through a town due to an incident on the motorway which Waze decided I should avoid. Throughout the journey I very deliberately drove without giving any though to economy so when I needed to accelerate hard to take advantage of a gap, or to perform a country road overtake, I did just that; it’s also fair to say that occasionally I accelerated hard without any good reason, just to enjoy the brutal EV acceleration! Overall, my driving can be described as somewhere between relaxed and spirited, spending most of my time in the overtaking lanes but not going at a speed that was going to raise any eyebrows with the local law enforcement.

In total, I covered a total of 131 miles at an average speed of 52 mph which is pretty much what I would expect given the amount of motorway miles, the sections with roadworks, and a detour through town with heavy traffic. I completed this journey at an average of 40.5 kWh / 100 Miles which is better than I expected.

Based on the maximum usable capacity of the iPace battery (84.7 kWh) a 40.5 kWh average would give me a total range of 209 Miles, which is slightly higher than I would have expected when taking into consideration all the different factors.

I will continue to log journeys and blog about them to provide a true real-word view of range based on different driving styles, conditions, and journey types.