Tesla Model X with the highest mileage of an electric car > teslamag.de

Photo: Tesla

While testers from the US Motor Vehicle Authority magazine recently complained about the unreliable charging infrastructure for the Audi Q8 e-tron electric car, a company representative had an interesting explanation: their own customers own more than one car, so they can use it for long journeys. if in doubt he will also use a combustion engine quoted in the report. That sounds like an excuse, but it seems to roughly match the reality of modern electric cars. Because according to a US study, they run less on average than combustion engines – and if Tesla didn’t exist, the gap would be even bigger.

Tesla is four times the average electric car

Information is from from the iseecars.com website, which claims to have evaluated data from more than 860,000 vehicles. Only cars from the 2020 model year that were for sale on the portal were considered. The Tesla Model X (see image above) recorded the highest mileage of all electric vehicles in this sample with an average of 10,378 miles (16,700 km) per year. But even that was less than the average of 20,530 kilometers per year for combustion engines.

Calculated across all twelve electric vehicles considered, the annual average for these was 14,580 km, or about 29 percent less than conventional vehicles. If Tesla did not exist (with all four models currently available), the average electric car would only reach 10,800 kilometers according to iseecars.com, that is, about half the value of a combustion engine. In fact, the driving performance of all Tesla models was above average for their vehicle type and for all other electric vehicles below.

According to iseecars.com, this effect is directly related to the various types of electric vehicles. If you sort the list by this criterion, the results are the same as by annual mileage. Because by the gate, fear of range is not yet an issue of the past: In mathematical terms, electric car drivers would drive 23 extra miles per year for every extra mile of normal range. If you continue to calculate in this way, it turns out that electric cars will need an average of 440 miles (instead of 279 miles today) to reach the same mileage as combustion engines. This range will match what three year old combustion engines can do.

Fear of range despite the charger network

According to the portal, there is no need to fear a very small range in the narrow sense with Tesla electric cars or with many others: According to the standard, almost all of them would have enough to cover twice the distance of 89.4. miles without recharging According to US data, only 1 percent of all trips are. The old fear is less about being stuck somewhere in the wilderness without a way to charge and more about taking longer to charge than refueling, said an analyst from iseecars.com. Problems with charging stations, such as the tests from the Motor Authority criticized for the Q8 e-tron, are not mentioned in the article, but apart from the supercharger network, which Tesla says is very reliable, they should also contribute to the reluctance to drive. long-range electric vehicles.