Weather decimates range

[Happy Zappy]

With the recent good weather, I've been really happy with the economy from the ZS. Over the past 700 miles I've been averaging around 4.2 miles/Kwh.

However, that changed on Friday. We were due to do a trip out to visit somewhere that was 59 miles away. No problem for the return journey I thought, especially when an overnight charge showed a potential 203 miles on the GOM. The trip up the M3, round the M25 & down the M23 was in horrendous rain, with wipers going constantly, headlights on & large amounts of surface water. We arrived having travelled 59 miles, but it had wiped 120 miles off the range!!!

For the return journey, I thought it might just about be within range, but there were huge queues on the M25 which were adding over 45 minutes to the journey. So we decided to take a longer route back and had to do a "splash & dash" at the Shell Recharge station near Horsham. It was only a 17 minute charge, but, with only 1 "pump" there, I had a 25 minute wait for the previous user to finish. Arrived home with no further issues & around 30 miles of range left.

All in all a rather eye opening journey on the effects that weather can have on the range......

 

[Alb]

What would you do differently next time?

 

[Paulie68]

Wet roads and a bit of a headwind on a colder day do have a massive effect on range, especially at higher speeds. I've done the same route in warm summer now as well as terrible cold wet weather and seen a reduction of 40%!

 

[Happy Zappy]

What would you do differently next time?

Probably the most sensible thing to do would have been to not go. However, we’d paid for tickets to an event and as a Yorkshireman there was no way I was giving them up!!!

Other than that, I don’t think there are many things I would have changed. The air con was only used as required to clear mist on the screens, generally we were travelling in the 60-65 mph range and trying to take it easily.

We made the best of that we could, didn’t run out of charge, weren’t pushed for time and got home safe & sound. Just need to be aware in future of the drastic effects on range of changes in weather.
David

 

[JodyS21]

With the recent good weather, I've been really happy with the economy from the ZS. Over the past 700 miles I've been averaging around 4.2 miles/Kwh.

However, that changed on Friday. We were due to do a trip out to visit somewhere that was 59 miles away. No problem for the return journey I thought, especially when an overnight charge showed a potential 203 miles on the GOM. The trip up the M3, round the M25 & down the M23 was in horrendous rain, with wipers going constantly, headlights on & large amounts of surface water. We arrived having travelled 59 miles, but it had wiped 120 miles off the range!!!

For the return journey, I thought it might just about be within range, but there were huge queues on the M25 which were adding over 45 minutes to the journey. So we decided to take a longer route back and had to do a "splash & dash" at the Shell Recharge station near Horsham. It was only a 17 minute charge, but, with only 1 "pump" there, I had a 25 minute wait for the previous user to finish. Arrived home with no further issues & around 30 miles of range left.

All in all a rather eye opening journey on the effects that weather can have on the range......

Just running the figures, based on what you've said, you did 59miles & had 83miles left on GOM = 142 total range (3.4MpKwh)
Motorway driving in heavy rain, that is actually not too bad.

This is why I always reset the accumulated trip, so that I don't risk being mislead on the range.
Your 203miles on the GOM is obviously based on your "recent" driving in good conditions, but also I suspect not the doing the same sort of motorway trip at high speeds that uses up the juice.
Driving carefully (E3) in good conditions with mostly high speed roads (60-65mph max), we cannot get 4.2MpKwh in ours.
(Our usual 100mile daily commute, driven carefully in E3 currently averages about 3.8MpkWh / 40mph)

It can be unsettling doing long journeys!
We need more chargers around asap so that we don't have to worry!

 

[ARealHuman]

I noticed the other day driving at 65mph on the motorway as part of my regular trip of about 20 miles, using the wipers seemed to take off and extra 5 miles from my range. Up to this point in normal mode, driving these 20 miles would actually take 20 miles off the remaining range.

 

[Tim Green]

One cannot predict the weather that one will have on a journey, except maybe the go/no go option on the day which is unrealistic.
The problem here is the lack of rapid chargers. We, the public, should insist that EVERY petrol station has at least one fast charger so that in emergency we can do a quick recharge.

 

[Gomev]

One cannot predict the weather that one will have on a journey, except maybe the go/no go option on the day which is unrealistic.
The problem here is the lack of rapid chargers. We, the public, should insist that EVERY petrol station has at least one fast charger so that in emergency we can do a quick recharge.

Agreed and curiously just down the road there is a BP filling station with an Instavolt charger.

 

[Kithmo]

It's the tyres that cause the loss in wet weather. They have to shift a lot of water off the road and that causes drag using energy to shift it.

 

[Happy Zappy]

One cannot predict the weather that one will have on a journey, except maybe the go/no go option on the day which is unrealistic.
The problem here is the lack of rapid chargers. We, the public, should insist that EVERY petrol station has at least one fast charger so that in emergency we can do a quick recharge.

That’s a valid point. Alternatively, if the place we went to visit had destination chargers, then all would have been OK. Around 3 hours sat on a 7Kw unit would have sorted everything. As it is, the area we were in (Sussex) is pretty barren for all types of chargers.

 

[Happy Zappy]

A final postscript to the story. Despite putting a £20 pre-authorisation on my credit card (which disappeared the following day), Shell Recharge have not actually billed me for the charge in Horsham. 10 days on now, so hopefully it won’t appear.