I’m planning an EV-like experience next month – I’m driving a 1972 Triumph Spitfire from Oxfordshire to Lake Garda.
EV-like because:
1) The full-tank range is approximately 220 miles / 350 kilometres.
2) The seats are sufficiently uncomfortable that at each fuel stop I’m likely to want to stand up and walk around for approximately as long as it takes to charge an EV.
Better fly a Spitfire than driving it 
Graham wrote:
EV-like because:1) The full-tank range is approximately 220 miles / 350 kilometres.
2) The seats are sufficiently uncomfortable that at each fuel stop I’m likely to want to stand up and walk around for approximately as long as it takes to charge an EV.
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Graham
EGLM & EGTN
Some years ago a friend treated me to a ride in a Ferrari (no idea what model but a vintage one). It was memorable. We had to fuel up every 100 km or so, all in all 4 times that day. There was no suspension reckognizable, the car was hard as a ton of bricks. The seats were so that I had to exit the car on all fours and then somehow get myself into a standing up position. To this day I can’t understand why particularly elderly men drive this contraption, I was 10 years younger than but getting in and out of the Mooney was easy by comparison.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
To this day I can’t understand why particularly elderly men drive this contraption, I was 10 years younger
I think it is about the overall experience. Most cars all feel the same like Mc Donalds which makes every place feel kind of the same. The fact that 10 years later you can still remember this one drive probably explains it. Having said that as with some aircraft the right driving distance for the right kind of car is important. Driving such a car 100km on the right road can be heaven. Driving it 1000km on the freeway might be hell.
UdoR wrote:
Mercedes EQV, Ford Tourneo Custom, or their derivates from Citroen, Peugeot or Opel. In real life they drive less than 300 kilometers per charge.
That’s really surprising. My 6 year old EV is about the same size as a Mercedes EQV except that the luggage compartment is a bit smaller. It has a range of about 450 km in summer and perhaps 380 in winter. (And I’m talking about Scandinavian winters.) Of course the speed makes a lot of difference – if you spend your days driving at 120 km/h, then range will be considerably less.
Some of the city cars have this kind of range which is more than enough for them. Most of the family size cars like the Teslas or BZ4X and the Chinese cars have considerably more.
Also the Citroen C3 Aircross or the C4 are over 400 km in the extended range version.
And some Chinese company now makes swap batteries for the Nissan Leaf which gives it over 500 km as well apparently :)
Peter wrote:
Also the range is unaffected by heating, aircon, temperature, etc.
I would disagree with that. In the summer, my Honda Civic will go about 75km further on a tank of fuel than in the winter. It’s quite surprising how much of a difference the season makes. If I take my car across to the UK, the car gets worse fuel economy because the fuel in the UK has been adulterated with ethanol which has a lower energy density (funny you don’t get a discount for that!)
You can have “charger problems” with a petrol car. Last month I had to take my wife to a very early hospital appointment for an operation, the evening before I had gone into town but forgotten to get fuel. On the way home, all the petrol stations had shut for the night. The problem was they were all shut in the morning as well. I had enough fuel to get to the hospital (about 30 minutes away) but not get home. All the petrol stations that advertised they were open at 7am actually were not. I had to sit in the sea terminal car park for half an hour to wait for a petrol station to open. Ironically, had I had an electric car there are plenty of charging points all of which are open 24/7 (including one at the sea terminal where I had to wait).
There are precisely zero gasoline stations that aren’t open 24/7 in my US area. That’s obviously not a technical problem, gasoline stations and changing stations can equally be open or closed.
I think I posted earlier about my winter EV drive to go skiing in Austria, and how what was initially indicated as 50% excess range became a critical situation. We ended up with 5 km left before we were able to charge at at AGIP station, for a higher price than gasoline would have cost for the same return trip. Cold weather proved to be a significant factor in range, and wasn’t considered in the car’s range prediction algorithm.
Airborne_Again wrote:
if you spend your days driving at 120 km/h, then range will be considerably less
Why is it less, if I else go at 150 km/h?
Just joking. But the point is also clear: ironically the efficiency of a combustion engine increases with load, so the energy consumption doesn’t rise as sharp as that of an EV. In a combustion-engine car I can drive at 150 km/h all day long and will only have a rather small penalty, whereas doing that in an EV will increase consumption by many factors.
The EV does teach you how to drive real slow, else it’s like with our aircraft: you make a tech stop that costs a lot of time.
Airborne_Again wrote:
That’s really surprising. My 6 year old EV is about the same size as a Mercedes EQV except that the luggage compartment is a bit smaller. It has a range of about 450 km in summer and perhaps 380 in winter. (And I’m talking about Scandinavian winters.) Of course the speed makes a lot of difference – if you spend your days driving at 120 km/h, then range will be considerably less.
I also get similar performance out of my E-Tron SUV; I can manage about 430 km. I usually drive at 60- 65 mph, but sometimes I get sick of it and do the full shebang at 70 lol. Winter is a lot poorer since I’ve got no heat pump; however, my last 5000 miles cost 180 GBP, including fast charging, so quite worth the trade-off. I have a long term avg of 3mi/kwh.
