The worst possible conditions for a journey in a fancy EV? Bring it on. A 3000-mile trip in five days, with temperatures as low as -11ºC, is a recipe for disaster. The car in question is a Porsche Macan, and it’s electric, relying on public chargers beside roads never used before.
EVs have been criticized for their range stats in extreme conditions. Cold weather is especially brutal for them – heat pumps help the batteries, but can’t mitigate the ravages that sub-zero temperatures make on the cells, dropping the range by as much as 100 miles from the claimed figure.
Range and Charging
The Porsche Macan 4S is capable of 376 miles between stops, but the car’s read-out is currently showing 220 miles. The temperature shows a relatively mild 8ºC, and it’s known that the range will drop further the colder it gets.
As the journey progresses, the first surprise hits: this is not a painful experience. The stops are easy to plan, and the Porsche nav ecosystem is much better and wired into what’s best for the car.
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The overall ecosystem within the Porsche nav makes planning stops easy. They offer a system that is well integrated.
Charging Network
The charging network within Europe is far superior. Not only are chargers placed at regular intervals along the trunk routes, but the speeds on offer are incredible. Turn up to a supermarket in Sweden and find four chargers offering 400kW. Each.
Even once the journey gets north of Jönköping in Sweden, which feels like the gateway to the hardcore north, there’s never a need to worry. Range anxiety feels as irrelevant as it used to be.
It’s tricky to get an exact count for the number of chargers in, say, France versus what’s available in the UK, but it feels like Europe is miles ahead. The electric vehicle charging infrastructure in Europe is more developed.
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Infrastructure and Planning
As the journey nears its end, the temperature drops to -11ºC. The surface beneath the Macan’s winter tyres is more ice than tarmac and the average speed eases to just 40mph. The Macan copes but you can feel the weight of the wheels over some of the harsher stuff.
Luckily, the Michelin winter tyres find grip in the most surprising places, so the destination, a frozen lake near the ski resort of Sälsätern, is reached with all four corners intact and still no range fear.
The electric future isn’t perfect but it’s not going to be the hassle we fear it could be, at least not if everywhere does charging as well as Europe. The Porsche Macan EV has been surprisingly hassle-free.
It’s a promising sign for the future of electric vehicles.
