We took several different Teslas, Volkswagens, BMWs, and a couple of Chinese cars for the test.
The owners of the most commonly used electric cars in Ukraine decided to compete to see which of their cars consumes the least energy. And therefore, what is the real range of different electric vehicles. To do this, they gathered 15 electric cars and drove from Kyiv to Zhytomyr and back.
Various cars took part in the experiment: several Teslas (Model 3, Model X, Model S in different versions), Volkswagen ID.4 (Chinese and European versions), BMW i4, IX, Audi e-Tron, and several Chinese models.
The real range of an electric vehicle is very difficult to calculate. Undoubtedly, it depends on the technical characteristics provided to the electric vehicle by the manufacturer’s engineers. However, there is also a high dependence on specific driving conditions: air temperature, operation of electrical appliances and air conditioning systems, terrain, filling the car with passengers and luggage, speed and nature of the traffic, etc. However, in this experiment, the organizers tried to neutralize several of these factors.
In particular, all the electric vehicles were moving along the same route at the same time with a similar load. They had more or less the same speed and even switched places in the column to reduce the impact of the air flow. Based on the average power consumption and battery capacity, we determined the real range of each car.
The results of the Ukrainian experiment turned out to be very similar to similar tests of foreign colleagues. Tesla Model 3, BMW i4, and MG4 proved to be the most economical.t At the end of the list are the heavy crossovers Audi e-Tron 55 and Tesla Model X. However, if we recalculate these results for the range (where the main factor is the battery capacity), the results are somewhat different (see table).
