Electric Vehicle Lineup RANKING: Segment A – Smallest Vehicles [December 2017]

How long will an electric car travel on one charge? What is the range of an electric vehicle before the battery is completely discharged? How much energy do electric cars use to drive? Here are the EPA ratings and editors' calculations www.elektrowoz.pl.

Line-up leaders: 1) BMW i3 (2018), 2) BMW i3s (2018), 3) BMW i3 (2017).

By ranges The undisputed leader is the BMW i3. (blue stripes), especially in the last 2018. Despite the same battery capacity, the new BMW i3 travels 10-20 percent more kilometers on a single charge. That is why the latest models take up all the seats on the catwalk.

Fiat 500e is doing well too (purple stripes) with a 24 kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery, which, however, should be remembered that it is not available or serviced in Europe. It is worth buying only when the price of the car is so low that a possible breakdown will not rip all the hair out of the head. The next item – also not available in Poland – is the Chevrolet Spark EV.... The rest of the cars look terrible against this background: electric cars travel from 60 to 110 kilometers on a single charge.

In terms of cabin space, the VW e-up could compete with the BMW i3, but the 107 km range will effectively scare off even the biggest fan of the Volkswagen brand:

Rating of the smallest electric vehicles in accordance with the EPA procedure, which means that they are close to real applications. Mitsubishi i-MiEV, Peugeot iOn and Citroen C-Zero are shown in orange as they are the same vehicle. Unavailable, announced and prototype vehicles are marked with silver, with the exception of e.GO (2018), which is already finding buyers in Germany (c) www.elektrowoz.pl

The Chinese Zhidou D2 (yellow stripe), supposedly made in Poland, is not doing very well either. On a single charge, the car covers only 81 kilometers, which even differs from the Mitsubishi i-MiEV of the same size.

How long do small electric cars burn? Energy rating

Fuel-efficient driving leaders: 1) Citroen C-zero (2015), 2) Geely Zhidou D2 (2017), 3) BMW i3 (2015) 60 Ah.

When you change the rating and take into account the power consumption, not the battery capacity, the situation becomes completely different. The undisputed leader here is Citroen C-Zero, which consumes only 14,36 kWh of energy per 100 kilometers, which corresponds to the consumption of 1,83 liters of gasoline.

"Our" Geely Zhidou D2 also behaves well with a consumption of 14,9 kWh. The rest of the cars have from 16 to 20 kilowatt-hours of energy per 100 kilometers, which corresponds to the cost of burning 2-3 liters of gasoline per 100 kilometers.

The electric VW e-Up is close to the middle of the table with a consumption of about 17,5 kWh of energy per 100 km, which corresponds to 2,23 liters of gasoline per 100 km. Another thing is that in the Auto Bilda test the car performed much worse:

> What is the range of an electric car in winter [TEST Auto Bild]

How do we calculate ranges?

All ranges are in accordance with American Environmental Protection Agency procedure as they represent the actual range of an electric vehicle on a single charge. We ignore the NEDC data provided by the manufacturers as it is heavily distorted.

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