Forget range, electric car efficiency is what really matters for drivers looking to cut costs

Our recent long-range EV winter mega test put five of the very latest electric cars through their paces over a 370-mile route to see how they would perform. Two things quickly became very clear - a huge battery doesn’t necessarily translate into huge range and we should all be focused more on efficiency than range when it comes to electric cars. 

One of the models we tested was the Audi A6 Avant e-tron Performance. It has a 94.9kWh battery and an official WLTP range of 430 miles. Sounds great, right? But it achieved just 2.6 miles per kWh, meaning a range reality of just 246 miles. That’s only 246 miles before you’ll need to stop and re-charge that executive car’s massive battery. The average cost of rapid charging in the UK is currently around 80p/kWh, meaning it’ll cost over £75 to fill up completely using the public network. That’s over 30p per mile!

From the very moment electric cars started becoming more popular, the range figure was what the public became fixated on, and it still is. Nobody wonders how big the fuel tank is on a petrol car or how far it will go on a single tank, so why do we essentially do it for EVs? If it’s all about miles per gallon for petrol cars, it should surely be all about miles per kWh for electric cars. That’s the car’s efficiency, the real measure of how far you can travel on the fuel you buy.

In a bid to hit those big range figures that EV buyers love, manufacturers seem to be putting bigger and bigger batteries into their cars. But bigger batteries add cost, and weight, that perversely hampers efficiency. Surely, lightweight EVs with smaller batteries and more aerodynamic designs are the way forward. 

I’ve leased a number of electric cars but my first real foray into EVs, a fair few years ago now, was when I leased a Hyundai Ioniq Electric. It wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t fun to drive and everybody kept confusing me with an Uber driver, however, this simple and relatively lightweight car was an efficient master. 

I would regularly get over 5.0 miles per kWh on a daily commute, which meant I would get a real-world range of almost 200 miles from its tiny 38kWh battery. And arguably the most impressive thing about it was that Hyundai quoted 193 miles as the official range. My car not only achieved this, but often easily went beyond it. Oh what owners of some modern EVs would give for those sorts of efficiency figures.

So stop looking at the range. Too often the headline range figures in modern EVs are achieved with bigger batteries that make cars heavier, more expensive and less efficient. A standout range figure doesn’t even necessarily mean the car will go further on a single charge in the real world. Focus on efficiency when thinking about your next electric car instead, you’ll be far less stressed about long journeys and it’ll save you plenty of money on recharging costs.

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