You must share your autobahn experiences. It’s very rare to see EV’s used regularly at high speed. It would be very interesting to get your feedback on performance, range impact that sort of thing ?
When I get the car, I will!
Currently I'll keep at 110-120kph with the Zoe because I want to have a speed reserve to overtake others safely. I'll drive fast in the winter in the first leg to heat up the battery, afterwards I'll resume to driving my normal speed. You certainly feel the range melt away while driving at 130kph+ , especially in mountainous and hilly regions like Austria. When I'm passing by Vienna, I always have to make a short charge 50km before Vienna in order to compensate for the terrain.
Only 145kph is annoying though because I want to overtake and it doesn't take long to have a BMW breathing down your neck. It forces you to be the slow poke and stay in the slow lane because of that. Constant accelerations also cause the consumption to jump up, so driving with 130kph will get annoying because you will encounter people who drive a few kph slower than you and then when you overtake someone faster comes from behind and forces you to accelerate. And 145kph isn't quite the 160kph that many are driving there. So at 120kph you will have much fewer people to overtake and you're driving more constant and economical. At 110kph it's even more economical because of even less overtaking needing to be done. But then again if there are only two lanes and there are trucks in the slow lane, you kind-of have to keep up with the others in the fast lane.
I also mostly avoid the autobahn if I can, on journeys of less than 60 miles.
With the Zoe the travelling time including charges doesn't change much between 110-140kph. So I stick to the lower end, at 110-120kph most of the time. It doesn't cost much time and saves money. The Zoe kind-of forces you to be slow because it doesn't have the range nor the charging speed or the efficiency to allow for higher travelling speeds.
So, for example I planned a 981km route in ABRP. I've been using it for a few years now with a paid subscription and OBD plug to get live data from the car in order to have the best routing possible. I also used it
multiple times with long journeys (1000km) across multiple countries and it's predictions were accurate, so I can vouch for the displayed values below. For the kWh I took a mean charging speed of 40kW which is realistic for the Zoe. The cost per kWh varies between 0,35€ to 0,46€.
At 140kph I get 13h40m total time, of which 5h27m are charging time - 218 kWh or 76€ to 100€
At 130kph I get 13h33m total time, of which 5h3m are charging time - 202 kWh or 70€ to 93€
At 120kph I get 13h32m total time, of which 4h37m are charging time - 184 kWh or 64€ to 85€
At 110kph I get 13h42m total time, of which 4h5m are charging time - 163 kWh or 57€ to 75€
The above plan is a favourable route, driving east through Austria and Hungary on the other hand yields about one hour of delay because it's quite hilly.
So in the end the time doesn't change much based on how fast I drive, the difference is mostly how much time and money I spend at the charger and at 110-120kph it's the best deal.
I'm curious how the travel times will develop with the MG4, given that it has a larger battery and much faster charging speeds. That means that I believe it won't hurt as much to drive a stint at high speeds when I need it, and don't have to get out of the way as often because I can keep up better with the fast lane when I need to.
Of course, driving on the autobahn doesn't involve constantly dealing with maniacs driving 200kph and people that always get slower if you're behind them forcing you to overtake. But there are cases where what I described above is relevant and I wish the Zoe was more flexible in this regard. The Zoe is very much sufficient for autobahn driving, it's just tedious because of the slow charging speed and it's mediocre efficiency at these speeds.
?
