Lately, I've been doing some driving efficiency testing on my free time. And I've discovered some new things. When I first started driving the car, I thought freeway driving was killing my range. But now as I have been driving to the airport, a 30 mile round trip, a couple times a week, I have been noticing that the freeway isn't all that bad. Using cruise control, I am able to get around 4.9 miles/kilowatt hour on the way there and around 5.9 m/kh on the way back. This translates to great range as after I plug in, the car registers a maximum range of 127 miles. And this isn't with super efficient hypermiling, just normal everyday driving.
Now one day, as I live in LA, I decided I would go to the Apple Pan for lunch, a 34 mile round-trip. The problem was, I only had a 37 miles left on the charge, with no charging stations anywhere around my destination. But since I knew I had been getting great range, I decided to go for it. I just rolled down the windows instead of using the air conditioning just to be safe. And living in the valley, this meant taking the 405 over the Sepulveda pass. Going up the pass, my range quickly went from around 35 to 20, and I started to worry. The cars battery hit 20% and the car asked me if I would like t turn off all unessential devices such as the radio and clock etc. But then on the way back down, in low gear, I quickly regained my miles. By now I was regenerating battery while going 70 mph. I ended at my destination with 35 miles of charge left. I couldn't believe it, a 17 mile trip while using 2 miles of charge. But on the way home, the San Fernando valley being at a higher elevation than LA, I quickly started to loose battery life again and the car even helped me save even more battery by reducing propulsion power once I got down to 10% of battery life. I made it home fine with an average of around 6 miles/kilowatt hour for that entire charge.
So the moral of the story is you can get incredible range out of this little car if you want, and downhill is always much better than uphill. Yet, this car continues to amaze me and put a smile on my face.
