Electric car range

What it's for

To get an idea of how many km you can drive on one charge, based on the battery and how much your electric car consumes.

Note

Cold and A/C use greatly reduce range (up to -25% in winter). Highway speed and driving style also matter a lot.

Cold is the factor that weighs most

In winter range drops by as much as 25-30%, and it is not the battery going flat: it is cabin heating, which on a petrol car would be free (it comes from engine heat) and on an electric one costs real electricity, 2-4 kW while you drive.

The remedy that works is preconditioning while plugged in: heating the cabin while the car is still on the charger, so the grid pays for it and not the battery. On the road, heated seats cost far less than heating the air.

On the motorway consumption nearly doubles

At 130 km/h air resistance is more than double what it is at 90, because it grows with the square of speed. A car doing 15 kWh/100 km in town does 22-25 on the motorway, and the quoted range nearly halves.

It is the opposite of what happens with petrol: an electric car is more efficient in town, where it recovers energy under braking and wastes nothing at idle. Drivers who only do urban trips see better figures than the brochure; motorway drivers see much worse ones.

Quoted numbers and real ones

The WLTP figure is a laboratory test, not a promise: it is driven to a set profile, at 23 degrees, with no climate control and no load. In normal life you typically get 70-85% of that number, and in winter on a motorway even less.

For real sums it is better to think in kWh per 100 km rather than in kilometres: it is the number on your dashboard, it does not depend on battery size and it compares directly with litres per 100 km on a petrol car.

Nearby tools

How long it takes to put those kilometres back is answered by EV charging time, and what it costs by Electric or petrol: cost per km. For the whole year's picture there is Yearly car cost.