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Electric cars have up to a third less range in reality than advertised, an investigation has found.
Official figures for how many miles an electric car can drive after one charge are based on a standardised test, done in warm conditions.
However, What Car magazine discovered that under real-world conditions, including at colder temperatures, cars perform much worse.
The magazine parked a dozen cars outside overnight to mimic how motorists use vehicles in the real world. Testers then drove them over a 60-mile loop on a test track in Bedfordshire until their batteries ran completely flat.
Steve Huntingford, the magazine’s editor, said its test schedule was a better representation of real-world EV range than official testing methods.
“We do it every summer [and] every winter because there is obviously a sizable difference in how battery efficiency works depending on cold weather,” he said.
“We leave them outside in the cold conditions [overnight] for the ambient temperature… so the batteries are subjected to falling down to a lower temperature and it’s the worst possible conditions to be tested in.”
Across the dozen EVs What Car tested, range was on average 29.9 per cent less than the official Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP) figure which car makers are legally required to publish.
One vehicle’s range was more than a third lower than official range figures. The £57,000 Lexus UX 300e Takumi recorded a range 100 miles shorter than its advertised figure of 273 miles.
Its sibling, the Lexus RZ 450e Takumi, had the second-highest shortfall, with a range 92 miles shorter than the advertised 251.
The third biggest gap between official and real-world ranges in the EVs What Car tested was from Volkswagen’s ID 7 Pro Match. The vehicle’s tested range came in at 254 miles, a third lower than the approved figure of 383 miles.
Edmund King, the president of the AA, told The Telegraph that shorter-than-advertised EV ranges come as no surprise to the public.
Motorists, he said, know that driving style and weather conditions “can greatly affect range whether driving electric, petrol or diesel”.
“Most drivers are aware that the miles-per-gallon figures quoted for petrol and diesel cars fall short of real world driving by about 25 per cent,” said Mr King.
“Consumers should take these official figures with a pinch of salt as the most accurate test of charge or fuel efficiency is for drivers to take an extended test drive.”
Standardised conditions
Speaking about the official WLTP test method, Mr Huntingford said that it helped achieve repeatable results that let different cars be compared with each other because of its standardised conditions.
“However,” he added, “the downside is they’re conducted in completely unrealistic conditions for much of the year.”
Manufacturers are required to test all electric cars to the same official standard, the EU’s Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure which was introduced in 2017.
All new cars sold in Europe since 2018 have been subject to the laboratory test, which takes half an hour, runs the car’s engine or motor for the equivalent of 14.4 miles and is carried out in temperatures of up to 23C.
Carmakers are legally obliged to publish range results obtained from the WLTP test.
A Lexus spokesman said a software update is being rolled out for its RZ 450e Takumi model to improve the content of its range display.
“We’re always improving and the software update is an example of that,” said the spokesman.
Last year consumer organisation Which? suggested that the WLTP overstated EV ranges.
A spokesman told The Telegraph that the test “has a strong tendency to overstate the efficiency and subsequent range of EVs, when compared to our own tests – and that figure can vary significantly”.
Last year a pro-EV research organisation, New Automotive, found that EVs were typically being driven further than their petrol and diesel counterparts despite fears over range anxiety.
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