Four seasons with an EV

We’ve logged our longer EV journeys for a year now. We wanted to get a feel for what a realistic range is like as the days grow warmer, and cooler.

When we started out, the measure that made sense to us was: how many miles do we travel per 1% of car battery? 

You can picture the spreadsheet: start mileage, start charge; and then arrival mileage and charge. Subtract the numbers, do the division and … “miles travelled/percent used”.

Here’s how that looks, as mean miles per 1% over the year:

Plot of the monthly mean miles per percentage use of battery, showing higher values in the summer, meaning longer range.
Plot of the monthly mean miles per percentage use of battery, showing higher values in the summer, meaning longer range.

BTW: now, a year one, we’re comfortable with the more standard miles per kWh. And we know how to make the car report this. But, a rough conversation from miles/percent is to multiple the numbers on the graph by 3 to get miles/kWh.

As expected, there’s a degree of relation to the change in temperature over the year:

Temperature data for Brighton, UK. © WeatherSpark.com
Temperature data for Brighton, UK. © WeatherSpark.com

The point of this was to know the variation of the range of our car. It helps plan longer journeys.

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