[Ravon]

Autocar Magazine in the UK are running a long term test i8, will be interesting to see their conclusions ?
Already they are suggesting 24 miles emissions free range, something I've never got close to, and I have experience of three i8's on our company fleet and four i8's that were loaned to me whilst me first i8 was being replaced with a new one, as it terminally failed on delivery. My car usually starts the day from a full overnight charge with sixteen miles electric range, as do all the others I've sampled, so what is different about the car that has been loaned to Autocar Magazine ?

[Ricardinhouk]

Exactly the same here. I do run day time lights, AC, internal lighting, HUD, media streaming etc but surely that doesn't make a 50% range improvement if turned off?

[Aye-eight]

The main thing is how you drive it. The range meter will remember that and indicate the fully charged range accordingly. I have gotten 40km / 25mi out of it once, but I'm getting 34km / 21mi pretty consistently. Also, you can beat your range indication if you drive more carefully than last time.

BUT - you do have drive it like a raw egg. The battery isn't huge, so any additional consumers will suck range. The A/C is a big one. So are seat heaters, headlights, constant wiper usage, driving on wet roads ... I'm not kidding ... as well as overall outside conditions. I get considerably more range in the summer than in the winter. I think it's the outside temparature, but also all the additional energy consumption (like heater) that drive the winter range down.

[Ravon]

Mine never charges to more than 15/16 miles ? I live at the top of a hill with a mile and a half decent, so it gets that effectively for free to start the day off, seldom have headlights of seat heaters on.

[Twitch Massacre]

Originally Posted by Ravon

Mine never charges to more than 15/16 miles ? I live at the top of a hill with a mile and a half decent, so it gets that effectively for free to start the day off, seldom have headlights of seat heaters on.

I've gotten 24 miles to display on the range a couple of times but it's usually 16-18 for me. There's a million things that affect the range inside and outside the car, specially with a battery this small, simply running the ac vs not can make a huge difference.

[Aye-eight]

Originally Posted by Ravon

Mine never charges to more than 15/16 miles ? I live at the top of a hill with a mile and a half decent, so it gets that effectively for free to start the day off, seldom have headlights of seat heaters on.

Again, your car charges to 100% battery capacity. How far the car thinks this will get you is a function of your past driving and your current comsumption. Humor yourself: pick a light-traffic day, a route with few stop lights, and just cruise at 35 mph. If a stop comes up, let car coast towards it. If you have to accelerate, do it with the power indicator in the first of the two blue segments. Use Eco Pro. Turn off everything that comsumes power. You'll see, you get more than 16 miles. And when you recharge it at that point, it will suddenly indicate 22 miles of range or something like that. That indication will be true as long as you keep driving like that. You'll come up short as soon as you go back to "normal" driving.

The app will actually give you feedback on this: it will tell you how efficient your driving has been and what the main factors have been. Benchmark: I've managed 96% efficiency accroding to the app - in a test to see how far I can get. That got me 40 km on a single charge. But I was driving worse than my grandma.

What people have to understand is this: the battery is small, so small changes in behavior have a noticable impact on range. Imagine your car held only one gallon of gas (which is incidentally about the equivalent of a battery charge on the i8). How much do you think the range of that car would vary based on the same factors: acceleration, anticipation, overall speed (wind resistance grows exponentially with speed), a/c usage, ... How often have you taken it real easy to get to the next gas station when the tank showed nearly empty?

It's the same thing. We're not used to think that way, because we're used to 20 gallon gas tanks. So we don't notice the difference if we let loose once or twice.

And everybody is welcome to ignore that fact, use the i8 as a sports car, and the e motor just as a booster. That's fine. But then, don't expect record-breaking economics.

If, on the other hand, you're willing to give the car's two personalities their respective spaces, and to go slow despite the racy looks of the car and the red-light challenges from other drivers, you will discover that the promised range can be achieved.

[Ravon]

Thanks to all, especially Aye-Eight for the brilliant explanation ! So it can achieve twenty-something if you drive totally artificially. My 981 Porsche Cayman S with a PDK gearbox would nudge 39mpg on a typical UK journey, provided you didn't exceed 70mpg, that seems a far more impressive figure considering how its achieved than coaxing a twenty something range from the i8, by driving in a totally artificial and non real world and hugely inconvenient manner.

[MalibuBimmer]

I live in the mountains and hills are battery killers. The best I've gotten is 21.7 miles on electric only. Twice. Slowing down and stopping in traffic don't help either.

[Aye-eight]

Originally Posted by Ravon

Thanks to all, especially Aye-Eight for the brilliant explanation ! So it can achieve twenty-something if you drive totally artificially. My 981 Porsche Cayman S with a PDK gearbox would nudge 39mpg on a typical UK journey, provided you didn't exceed 70mpg, that seems a far more impressive figure considering how its achieved than coaxing a twenty something range from the i8, by driving in a totally artificial and non real world and hugely inconvenient manner.

It doesn't have to be entirely artificial. My commute is a 33 km drive along a lake. The entire road is limited to 50-60 km/h. Switzerland is brutal on speeding, so it's cruise control all the way. And coasting up to those roundabouts when you see them coming is neither a hard nor a dumb thing to do. In the summer, I can do that entire drive on all electric, with charge to spare.

I had a Cayman S (first gen). On that same drive, going equally slow, I never got better than 9 l/100 km, which is 31 mpg (Imperial) / 26 mpg (US). No way of getting even close to 39. I'd have let it roll downhill somewhere to get that.

I find the i8's fuel economy fairly unbeatable in the current sports / GT car world.