Temperature or speed: what has a bigger impact on the range of an electric car?

One of the big problems facing potential electric car buyers’ confidence is range. Will batteries be enough to deliver the range needed to make these cars truly useful? And furthermore, we have seen that in cold places and at very low or very high temperatures, the battery does not deliver the performance expected and the number of kilometres that can be covered is considerably reduced.

So, what do we expect from electric cars? At least from today’s models. To understand everything these vehicles can offer, several studies have been carried out. The one we are looking at in this article aims to determine whether driving at low or high temperatures negatively affects the car’s range, or whether what really affects it is the speed at which it is driven.

It was carried out by the company Geotab, and it sought to find out which of these two factors causes the range of electric cars to drop the most. To do so, they examined data obtained from three million trips, with 550 million hours of driving in electric cars.

This data was collected through telematics stations and anonymously, with no information about the vehicles or their drivers. The analyses were carried out on cars and vans with batteries of 65 kWh capacity. The cars amounted to 500 electric cars, covering 350,000 journeys and totalling around 180,000 hours of driving.

As for the vans, there were 2,000 units, which made 2.8 million trips, with 370,000 hours of driving. And what do the results show?

Study results

The recorded data indicate that the vehicle’s air resistance affects its range. Low temperature also has a negative effect on range. But it is important to note that this is more noticeable when driving at low speed. Once speeds exceed 115 km/h, the battery’s energy consumption is higher. If the car also has poor aerodynamics, energy consumption will be even greater and range will be reduced further.

The study offers this conclusion: to cover a short distance at a limited speed, low temperature will affect range, but if driving at over 115 km/h is required, energy consumption will soar and affect range. To maximise the number of kilometres that can be covered, it is advisable to choose the route that allows driving at a lower speed. Temperature can have an effect, but the greater consumption occurs when driving at high speeds.