Electric Adventures

2023-12-22

Buying your first electric car, you might want to consider some criteria beyond the marketing buzz from the manufacturers.

First, there is the battery and closely associated with it the maximum range of the vehicle. As usual the manufacturers data is massively overestimated if you dare driving your car in the real world. To put it a bit clearer: the number is total bullshit and imho should be considered fraud. When planning a longer trip, divide the maximum range by two and you might not end up with your car being towed away in the middle of nowhere. And don't rely on the calculated range of your car either. The number given by the VW e-up! I bought that number was off by a factor of two!

Planning your trip also should take into account the time you need to spend reloading your vehicle, whether you are driving uphill (VW seems to think Germany is a huge table tennis table) and the temperature. Yes, that's right in the winter the maximum range may decline up to 30% due to low temperature, because the battry doesn't like it.

In order to reduce the loading time try getting a car with CCS. Having accidentially bought a car without CCS I really miss one advantage one does not necessarily realize before driving a longer distance with an electric car: A lot of loading stations only support CCS loading.

So getting a CCS enabled car not only reduces the time for reloading it. It also increases the number of loading stations accessible for you. This can be crucial, especially in less populated areas!

Another surprise in Germany is the almost ridiculous troubles you will run into without a loading card. Theoretically the loading stations should be useable with a mobile phone and a credit card. However, in the real world I failed loading at an ARAL station because it wasn't possible to enter the year part of the expiry date of the credit card.