Roland Dane: The flip side of my EV experience

I’ve sung the praises of my Cupra Born in this column since I bought one almost 12 months ago. It’s performance in and around Brisbane has been outstanding.

However, my experiences last weekend underlined my opinion that there is really no sensible way that the average motorist can rely on a full electric vehicle as his/her only car, however good that EV might be.

Now, 95 per cent of my motoring is within 100km of my home in Brisbane. An average week will include some highway driving, but it’s about 20 per cent at most of the overall kms covered and almost none of it at over 100km/h, given the speed limits around the city. In fact, the average speed to date is around 50 km/h.

In such an environment, with start/stop driving and a lot of regeneration happening, plus limited time over 80km/h, the range of the Cupra is superb. I get around 600km from a full charge even using Sport (Cupra) mode all the time, which I do.

The city and suburbs are the perfect arena for an EV to perform at its best, and the Cupra is no exception. This is hassle free, extremely economical motoring if you can charge the car at home at off peak rates, which I can.

Roland has discovered EVs are best suited to the urban environment

But…

Last weekend three of us decided to venture up country to Gympie for the ProMX event at MX Farm (great event and venue, by the way) for the day. I decided to take the Cupra. Comfortable, economical, and well within it’s range capabilities, it seemed like the perfect choice. With a couple of pickups/drop offs enroute, the total return route was 420kms, so well within the range capabilities of the Born, even allowing for a reduction given that the cruising speed is 110kmh/h for the bulk of the journey, and we were three up with a bit of extra weight.

What I didn’t expect was to arrive home on Sunday evening with the battery showing less than 10 per cent charge. That’s too tight for comfort with no realistic margin for detours, incidents and the like en route. When I’m local in Brisbane, I’m pretty relaxed about running the battery down, but who wants to run low on the highway on a wet evening?

So, realistically, for highway driving, the effective useful range of the car, with only a moderate load, is less than 400km. Personally, I’ll limit use of the Cupra now to highway journeys of up to 350km only. Head winds, for instance, can reduce range even further so I want a decent margin of safety. And this is a model that sections of the European press rate as at or near the top of the EV sector in terms of efficiency.

We’ve all driven cars that don’t have 400km of range from a tankful of petrol, that’s for sure. But we can drop off the highway and fill up in minutes and then be on our way. Given that a venue like MX Farm doesn’t have charging stations, and never will have, round trips in an EV have to be very carefully planned if they’re of any length.

Some consumers will ask why the range drops off so dramatically when on the highway. It’s very simple, even if the extent of it caught me by surprise. Constant speed, with almost no regeneration, at 110km/h uses far more energy than at 80km/h. The aerodynamic drag increases dramatically and therefore so does the energy needed to counter that.

The superb range around town in the Cupra had lulled me into a false sense of security.

Then, on Monday morning, I was again reminded of the short comings of the EV. I’d popped the Born on charge at home overnight on Sunday. But I only use, deliberately to avoid heat buildup, a 10amp charger which is really like trickle charging the car. Normally I’m in no rush.

Hence, on Monday morning, the battery was only reading 20 per cent. But I wasn’t concerned as I was due to drive the 45km to my workshop south of the city, which wouldn’t be an issue. I had more kms to cover from there during the day, but I have a fast charger on site there and I’d be parked for two hours, so everything was looking sweet.

The charging network remains a a work-in-progress in Australia

Luckily, just before I left home, my mechanic at the shop called me to say that all the power for the area was down for maintenance that day! Bugger. No charging available.

Now, I’m fortunate enough to have several cars. So, I left the Cupra on charge and jumped into my trusty VW Golf GTI for the days motoring.

But if my only car was the Born, then I’d have been struggling to get everything done last Monday. And I’d have been very annoyed.

For the average Australian, with access to one car, it’s crazy for governments, state or federal, to realistically expect that they will jump into full EVs any time soon. Even for those with multi car garages, they only work if you’ve got home charging capability and then only in urban environments.

You may only make a long journey a couple of times a year, but you still want to be able to make those journeys without having to work around the need to recharge, in my experience. I’m now going to have a real good think about whether I stay electric with my next everyday car, even though it works for me most of the time. I’ll let you know where I land with that one in due course.

In the meantime, next time I’m hitting the highway I’ll get the 2011 Saab 9-5 Vector out of the shed. With it’s turbo diesel engine, it’ll do over 1000km on a tank, and it takes five minutes to fill!