I'm a bit worried about the range

[Jel]

I haven't driven in a while due to lockdown but I did notice that my usual journey used around 3 times more battery power when the ambient temperature was around zero compared to 10c

This wasn't because of the AC/Heating as I had it off to give it an accurate test.

[stu-evs]

That will be the battery heating. I think the threshold is something like 8 degrees or below then it will automatically activate. It uses a fairly huge amount of power too (I think it’s circa 9KWh) - this is why people who do lots of short journeys in cold temperatures are reporting greater battery consumption/shorter range.

This is no different to any other EV mind - they all operate in a similar fashion. I do wonder if VW have been a bit more cautious than most though re their battery guidance and management - I wouldn’t be surprised to see the duration of battery heating and/or temperature threshold being reduced over time as more data comes in on how the batteries health is maintained.

On the cost to run vs. petrol/diesel - I would say 1/3 is far more accurate than 1/10 across most EVs - I have another EV that I’ve been using for longer than the ID.3 and think I average 25-30% of the cost of ICE. Add the fact there’s no car tax either then it’s still a significant reduction. And once most people get their head around the fact the intention is not to use public charging unless you HAVE to, then I think much of this noise will go away. In almost 2 years of EV driving I’ve used public ‘en-route’ chargers 4 times! And pre Covid was a pretty high mileage driver (150 mile daily commute + friends all over the country) - nearly all charging at home or at destination.

[Daveion]

I have had mine since the 30th Dec. I have posted some figures on other chat topics and I find owners experiences are very similar. The thing is you cant make any real assessment one car to another because so much depends on your driving stye, cabin temperature, length of journey etc. All things you and I have heard before but you carry on analysing as I have for the past 4 weeks.
This is my first EV and the bottom line for me is now to look at the battery level primarily and dont give too much attention to the range. Unless you are doing 100 mile each way journeys it doesnt seem that relevant. The range goes up and down as you make adjustments for comfort on your trip.
For me it has been a complete change in how I run my car. I would let my ICE car go down to 20 miles of range and then put £30 or £40 of fuel in knowing Im surrounded by petrol stations. No anxiety.
Making regular top ups at home to 80% and now just observing the battery level has stopped my concerns on range.
My long term average consumption is 3 miles/kwh.
Although that is not wonderful my journies are frequent but short and I think I pay a price here for warming batteries up each time. That equates to a projected range of about 180 miles. I know on longer runs the average rises close to 4 miles/kwh.
Nearer 240 miles.
The battery symbol though is my fuel gauge, not the range. Hope that helps.

[stu-evs]

I have had mine since the 30th Dec. I have posted some figures on other chat topics and I find owners experiences are very similar. The thing is you cant make any real assessment one car to another because so much depends on your driving stye, cabin temperature, length of journey etc. All things you and I have heard before but you carry on analysing as I have for the past 4 weeks.
This is my first EV and the bottom line for me is now to look at the battery level primarily and dont give too much attention to the range. Unless you are doing 100 mile each way journeys it doesnt seem that relevant. The range goes up and down as you make adjustments for comfort on your trip.
For me it has been a complete change in how I run my car. I would let my ICE car go down to 20 miles of range and then put £30 or £40 of fuel in knowing Im surrounded by petrol stations. No anxiety.
Making regular top ups at home to 80% and now just observing the battery level has stopped my concerns on range.
My long term average consumption is 3 miles/kwh.
Although that is not wonderful my journies are frequent but short and I think I pay a price here for warming batteries up each time. That equates to a projected range of about 180 miles. I know on longer runs the average rises close to 4 miles/kwh.
Nearer 240 miles.
The battery symbol though is my fuel gauge, not the range. Hope that helps.

Good comments here! I've regularly said to people over the past 2 years of EV driving, who have asked me about converting from petrol/diesel to electric, that you just need to stop thinking about it as like you would have done your previous car - and think about it more like your mobile phone....i.e. just plug it in overnight everynight - you'll wake up with a full charge - and you never need to worry about it in the average day-to-day. Just occasionally you might have a mammoth demand on it one day and need to charge part-way through the day - but not most of the time! Seems to help people get their heads around it!

On my other EV the manufacturer gives no such guidance re. 80% max charge etc. - their view is that there is sufficient headroom capacity built into the BMS - so the user shouldn't worry at all - and just use the full capacity available. In fact, in the first lockdown they sent out an e-mail stating that they recommended charging to 100% and leaving the charger cable plugged in throughout the lockdown in order to keep the car in the best health!

[OllyExeterID3]

Agree with all the above comments. Something extra to add - we had an EV for two years without a driveway so to start with I was pretty anxious about ensuring we always had enough range - but then I started to become quite relaxed about it as I realised that I could always eke more out of it than I thought - and as long as we planned our journey with contingency chargers, we were always fine and never got stranded. Luckily we had a free podpoint charger in a car park about a mile from us so, when the car park was free (after 6pm), we would just leave it plugged in for 3.5hrs and then go and grab it again!

Despite a 100 mile range, we regularly did trips from Devon to Cambridge to see family and only once did we have a close call with range (three chargers out of order). It is never range anxiety, it is charger anxiety. Imagine if a high proportion of petrol stations were 'out of order' - then ICE cars would also get range anxiety eventually!

Some of this is a learning curve, some is just getting used to a new technology. I have an old brick phone that has a 15 day battery life and a smart phone that has a 12 hour battery life - it is surprising how quickly I got used to the latter just by knowing I could charge it at work, home or if I was out and about.

Range will probably double in cars over the next 5 years - but - I think we have already reached a good balance. You will find you will start to relax as you do more journeys. The concept of filling a car up with flammable dead dinosaurs will feel like a distant memory!

[Deleted User 192]

Great post OllyExeterID3

[Daveion]

2nd reply
The ambient here in the South has been higher this past week so I have had the opportunity to apply most of the best practices I have read to get the best out of the batteries.
I did this not as a range test but to understand where the capacity goes under driving conditions.
Im now at 55% capacity showing a remaining range of 143 miles. I project that to be a range of 260 miles as driven on this charge.

Mode ECO, short journies, no pre conditioning of the cabin, crack the drivers window a tad rather than using screen demist, no seat or wheel heating, lots of wiper use, no night driving, no AC or cabin heating.

That all sounds a bit draconian in a £30k car but it illustrates its possible. I really believe at ambients above 12C I will get around 4 miles/kwh.

I dont have a heat pump and conclude that the cabin heater, even on 16C, takes me from 3 miles/kw down to 2'sh miles/kw. When the weather was colder, Zero to 5C, there was an added load of battery heating at the start of a journey so several short journeys made a big impact. I dont know at what ambient the battery heater kicks in but would guess its somewhere around temps lower than 6 - 8C.

In an ICE car heat from the engine is a by-product of the combustion process. It costs nothing on a cold day and doesn't affect the fuel consumption.
If you want to be toasty warm in an EV without a coat you have to accept it will foreshorten your range considerably. Heat pumps will be much better as they can extract heat from the ambient air even below Zero C.

As said. Not a range test but understanding my first EV.

[simonrg]

I'm pretty disappointed in the range so far. I only managed to get 90 miles of range from 75% of battery usage. This is in town driving on short 10 / 30 mins trips each time.

This is in 5-10c temps and with heating set to 21c so I'm expecting some range drop but 90 miles is really shocking when its listed as getting 250 miles.

It is understandable you are feeling disappointed, as EV were hyped as the perfect town vehicle and they still are, but 90 miles on 75% looks a lot less than 260miles on 100%. But as Scotty on Star Trek says ".. you can't change the laws of physics ..".
Basically lithium batteries don't work well in cold temperatures, so for each of your journeys your car will have been spending a lot of energy heating the batteries to make sure they aren't damaged and you can access all the power. If you are only doing lots of short journeys then your batteries get heated every time, probably for the whole of a 10 minute journey.
If you look at the blue and green lines on the driver display, you will see when you first get in, they are a lot shorter than when the batteries are warm. you can tell when the batteries are warm enough when these two lines are back to full length. The car is restricting acceleration hence blue line shorter and regen hence green line is shorter, as the battery would be damaged if power was drained or replenished at full rate until warm.
So if you went on a longer journey you should get more range and in summer you will get more range even on short journeys.
You'll find discussion of this on here, on other forums and about other cars via a search engine.

[Jel]

I'll now make sure to check the Power Meter when I get into the car to see where the levels are. There's no documentation in the ID3 manual specifically stating that when the meters are lower this will initiate the battery heating system, it only refers to restricted power and regen. Not sure if the manual has been updated to include this information.

Not sure why this isn't made clearer to the driver. I'm sure most drivers would like to know when the battery heating system is in use.

[hwhbev]

Not sure why this isn't made clearer to the driver. I'm sure most drivers would like to know when the battery heating system is in use.

[Deleted User 192]

I'll now make sure to check the Power Meter when I get into the car to see where the levels are. There's no documentation in the ID3 manual specifically stating that when the meters are lower this will initiate the battery heating system, it only refers to restricted power and regen. Not sure if the manual has been updated to include this information.

Not sure why this isn't made clearer to the driver. I'm sure most drivers would like to know when the battery heating system is in use.

This is a really good article to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes: https://nextmove.de/winter-performance- ... -verhicles

[Electrovert]

I’ve just had my 1st Edition for 3 days. I’m also concerned about the range especially when I turn on the climate control to 22-23 degrees - around zero degrees outside. Noticed that if I turn the climate control off then the range jumps up by about 30 miles and vice versa. This is going to be an education learning how to get the best range.

I would love it if OllieExteriD3 is correct about his range estimates in different weather conditions and Jel’s 90 miles using 75% battery does sound very concerning.

Anyone else getting dire ranges in cold weather and small trips driving?

[Deleted User 192]

Pre-heat the cabin while the car is charging, that is apparently the single biggest thing you can do in cold weather to maximise range.

[Electrovert]

Thanks scott28tt for that suggestion. I’ll give that a go!

[Deleted User 192]

Many short trips without pre-heating is the worst possible scenario for consumption (and therefore range), so you might be experiencing the worst case scenario - most of my usage at the moment is exactly the same as yours by the way!

[G4XUR]

Don't expect very far, manufacturer's claims are very optimistic.

[Deleted User 192]

Don't expect very far, manufacturer's claims are very optimistic.

WLTP isn’t a manufacturer’s “claim” if that’s what you were referring to, it’s a legal requirement but is tested under VERY specific conditions which include 15-23 degrees Celsius - this is perfect for EV battery efficiency, so any range “reduction” is not specific to VW or the ID.3.

[OllyExeterID3]

Don't expect very far, manufacturer's claims are very optimistic.

WLTP isn’t a manufacturer’s “claim” if that’s what you were referring to, it’s a legal requirement but is tested under VERY specific conditions which include 15-23 degrees Celsius - this is perfect for EV battery efficiency, so any range “reduction” is not specific to VW or the ID.3.

Agreed with this. Perfectly possible to get WLTP range in ideal circumstances - it is a learning curve but think of it like the MPG - it is tested in a similar way but the only difference is, we don't measure petrol efficiency in range, only mpg. If you ran a petrol car in perfect conditions, optimising gear changes, coasting when needed, accelerating slowly and braking efficiently, the results on the MPG will be closer to that of the advertised. Similarly, wait until summer - I can pretty much guarantee that you will get close to 80% of WLTP range just by the weather being warmer.

Ultimately, it shouldn't matter unless you are treating the WLTP range as the standard and not the optimum. 'Real-world' range can vary day-by-day - the best thing you can do is be conservative with any range you see listed, just like you would with mpg. Buy the car for the experience, torque, fast charging and range adequate for pretty much most domestic journeys. Of course, if you plan to drive to Minsk and only want to stop to get a sandwich, then you will be sorely disappointed....

[Daveion]

WLTP set the criterion to which the Manufacturer tests and publishes its results/claims.
It has to be at a temperature range that represents the maximum coverage of where the product is to be used and seasonal averages. 15C-23C sounds reasonable to me for European use.
We know battery peformance and range reduces at temperatures below this not least with battery heating requirement and cabin heating as added loads. Short journeys I know to my cost result in more frequent charging and actually not a lot different from an ICE in that respect as fuel consumption in both petrol and diesel are less until the engine reaches optimal operating temperature.
On various threads, if correct, battery heating and cabin heating can account for as much as 14kw of total load near to zero ambient. That is a big percentage of the battery capacity that is taken out of the range.
Anxiety will pass as soon as you get some runs in over 11C or 12C but in the meantine the Beast from the East will hit your range.

[hwhbev]

If you look at the blue and green lines on the driver display, you will see when you first get in, they are a lot shorter than when the batteries are warm. you can tell when the batteries are warm enough when these two lines are back to full length. The car is restricting acceleration hence blue line shorter and regen hence green line is shorter, as the battery would be damaged if power was drained or replenished at full rate until warm.

I've just seen these shorter blue & green lines for the first time today. It's -0.5ºC outside and the car had not been charging. The lines started at about two-thirds their normal length and increased over time as the batteries warmed up. I noticed that the green line lengthened quicker than the blue. This is probably because the max current available with regen is much less than the max current used to accelerate so regen reaches its full capability sooner.

Thanks simonrg for bringing this to our attention.