I can’t confirm it yet but I feel like there a few things impacting my range on colder days.

The obvious first one is that the heater is on for longer. I’d say I’m using about 1kW more than I do on warmer days over a 60 mile drive (2 hours).

Secondly the battery does seem to be impacted by the cold. I’ve noticed charging overnight when the temperature is below 0 results in longer charges and slightly lower range. In the same way, I feel like I’m getting less mpkWh although that could be partly the heating and could possibly also be my driving as the motorway has been running a little slower recently. I’ll be keeping an eye on the mpkWh ratings over the winter 🙂

Overall I’d say:
* where I’d expect a full charge to take 3.5h it is taking over 4h. This is partly due to using more charge on my commute.
* where I used to get home with 30% remaining and about 25 miles remaining on cold days I am getting home with 20% and 15 miles remaining.
* where I used to be regularly hitting 3.8mpkWh I’m now getting closer to 3.4mpkWh on cold days.

I can’t prove these figures but these are what I seem to be seeing.

Overall I’d say on a day where I charge overnight in sub-zero temperatures and drive in and out of work in temperatures less than about 4 degrees (and often just either side of 0) I’m finding my range is dropping by around 8-10 miles.

Interestingly today was milder and only reached about 3 degrees overnight and was up around 6 or 7 degrees on my commute in the morning and 9 degrees this evening. As I’d suspected, I had an estimated range of 84 miles instead of the recent 76-78 miles in the morning, the charge didn’t take as long and I arrived home with 27 miles left on the display and about 30% of the charge remaining – back to the levels I was seeing in september/october.

I’ve thought about replacing the headlights with LEDs as that should help range in the winter, but haven’t yet done anything about it.

BTW, in your first post linked to above you say ‘the car will refuse to move once it hits 5% in order to protect the battery’ but that certainly wasn’t my experience when range testing – I managed to get down to 2% before I gave up through nervousness, it hadn’t stopped.

To be honest: though it’s an interesting idea (for scandinavia with months of snow on the road) I don’t consider this a good one.

Three points:

1st: in the german forum a lot of guys already run on winter tyres. If you buy a tyre with rolling resistance “C” (Conti, Dunlop or Nokian) you won’t see a large range drop – the inability of the battery to recuperate large amounts of energy when cold kills your mileage much more than the rolling resistance of winter tyres.

2nd: summer tyres lose when it comes to breaking distance on temperatures below 7°C – a damaged car because of a not suitable breaking performance is much more expensive than a set of decent winter tyres (with rims you can go around 480-500 Euros in Germany, don’t know the UK prices)

3rd: what do you do when the ground changes rapidly (snow, cleared road, snow again)? Socks on, socks off, socks on? I’d be to lazy for that. 🙂

Regards
Umbi

the car is limited at 87. i was going 87 and then went down a steep section on the road and it briefly showed the battery to be charging which makes me think they have actually limited the car at 87 no matter what as my speed did not go over 87 and it should have at least got me to 90ish…

How much does it dent our battery percentage? I have been trying it out every morning but finding that even when 100% charge my mileage drops to 77 instantly and then within 2 miles (eco mode driving perfectly!) drops to 72 miles left.

Is this due to my comfort timer, use of heat and light or my previous driving memorise?

Jon

I’ve recently been in touch with the lease people as i wanted to increase my annual limit and took the opportunity to ask this question. The answer was simple. They will offer a new lease at the end of each one, but as of now, they don’t know what costs will be. I guess its just their way of keeping things flexible until they know how long their batteries will last in real life etc.

I spotted those also Buzz, I asked the dealer what would happen once the mileage/time limits were passed. He didn’t know but gave me the phone number for the lease people (which I cant find now), they confirmed a new lease would be given, but it may be at an increased charge.

Steve