Local is best

Over the past week we’ve just been doing local driving, probably no further than about 10 miles on any one journey and and generally on slower roads with speed limits upto 60mph.

We have found that the efficiency of the car improves greatly, most trips have done between 3.7 and 4.2 miles per kwh, based on that, and the battery size of 71.4kwh means we should reach Toyota’s range range figure of 270.92 miles, in theory if driving local we could get a range between 264 and 299 miles.

This is not a scientific or 100% accurate calculation, but a full charge if starting on 0% (which  you would never do) up to 100% it would cost about £5.35 to charge on the Octopus Intelligent go tariff based on  off peak current price of 7.5 pence/kwh.  At the moment the current price of unleaded petrol is £6.50 a gallon and in my Toyota Rav4 2.5 litre self charging Hybrid I was getting about 40 mpg, so the cost of 280 miles would cost around £45.

So for  local driving and being able to charge at home is a saving of around £40 per 280 miles.

Remember in my post Just back from a 320 mile round trip I was driving faster and had to charge at a rapid charge so the savings are far lower. After a quick google it is suggested that the most efficient speed for an EV on average is 50-60mph, the next time we do a decent journey like the one we did in the above post I will reduce my speed to see how much it effects the range and costs.

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