Range and efficiency/consumption

[duncerduncs]

A quick tip from a Ford Mustang owner at work.... (not the V8 one!)

He was having low numbers on his 'guess o meter' so he started resetting his trip computer/energy use after each charge.  After 3 weeks the car was displaying higher range figures...

Maybe that's something to try in the bZ4X? 

[TonyHSD]

Well , here have you seen that? 
 

https://www.carscoops.com/2022/11/disappointing-134-mile-bz4x-achieves-half-of-official-ev-range-figure-in-danish-test-toyota-investigating/
Is it true or just another auto journalism. ? 

Btw Michelin cross climate are not a winter tyres but all season tyres that are safe and ok to be used during winter on snow and ice where typical summer tyres are not, and they are even dangerous. All season (all weather) tyres work better than summer tyres in cold but they also loose grip and become hard when temperatures drops further. On paper they are ok down  to -5C°., where summer tyres become hard at around 7C°  

[Cyker]

I'm pretty sure I could make any EV show such a catastrophic drop - Go to a freezing cold place, set the heater to max and hoon the smeg out of it through some mountain roads, while full of drunken mates and a few beer kegs in the back until it's crying for mercy!

So it depends under what conditions they have managed to 'achieve' those figures.

But this is why I specifically stipulate 300+ miles at 70mph in winter with the heating on as part of my requirements, so EV evangelists can't fob me off with these 300miles-but-only-in-high-summer-downhill-with-a-stiff-tailwind range figures  

[TonyHSD]

36 minutes ago, Cyker said:

I'm pretty sure I could make any EV show such a catastrophic drop - Go to a freezing cold place, set the heater to max and hoon the smeg out of it through some mountain roads, while full of drunken mates and a few beer kegs in the back until it's crying for mercy!

So it depends under what conditions they have managed to 'achieve' those figures.

But this is why I specifically stipulate 300+ miles at 70mph in winter with the heating on as part of my requirements, so EV evangelists can't fob me off with these 300miles-but-only-in-high-summer-downhill-with-a-stiff-tailwind range figures  

I know, but come on if that is true it’s a half range from the advertised one. If your Yaris does 30mpg in winter against 60.  I can see my girlfriend ioniq drops range when cold and when using ac and heating but not half, maybe 20% max. She has 160 now and she says can do it indeed. If I drive it on motorway not sure will make it though. Summer goes up to 200 miles. 

[G S]

I have just got back from a 768 mile road trip over the last week from Somerset upto The Lake District, back into Wales and back to Somerset. This included at least 500miles of motorway set at 70mph on cruise though sometimes slower in traffic as well as mountain roads. I averaged 3.2m per KW. I easily was getting 200 miles from a full charge and the outside temp varied from 5 to 12 degrees. At no time did I need to stop to charge before I needed to stop for coffee/wee break. The two seemed to work hand in hand and a 30min break was long enough to get fuel in both me and the car before I was on my merry way. The longest single journey was 190miles and the orange light saying 30miles to go came on.

Given it is cold outside, I did a lot of motorway miles and I don't have a particularly light right foot I was more than happy with the range.

[Mister Mike]

I took my car to a public rapid charger for the first time this morning (Gridserve, Braintree). It charged from 20% to 80% in about 40 minutes, which was around 10 minutes longer than I was expecting but not a big deal. In the opposite rapid charge bay, a chap was hopping mad that charging his car (not a Toyota) went into slow motion beyond 75%. I let him know that the car was protecting its Battery as it got near to full. He wasn't too happy as he was due to deliver it to someone fully charged within a half hour.

As for myself, I wish I had a charger at home, but British Gas installers won't put one somewhere without a dropped kerb. I'll have to see if my regular sparky will do it anyway. AFAIK, he just has to notify the electricity supplier without informing the dropped kerb police. My next door neighbour has been parking out front for decades without a dropped kerb.

[Mister Mike]

4 minutes ago, G S said:

Given it is cold outside, I did a lot of motorway miles and I don't have a particularly light right foot I was more than happy with the range.

I nipped out for a 4-mile trip to B&Q this evening, having used the car about 6 hours earlier. It was about 7ºC outside but I didn't bother turning on the heater. Insulation in the BZ4X seems quite good because I didn't feel chilly at all.

[Cyker]

52 minutes ago, TonyHSD said:

I know, but come on if that is true it’s a half range from the advertised one. If your Yaris does 30mpg in winter against 60.  I can see my girlfriend ioniq drops range when cold and when using ac and heating but not half, maybe 20% max. She has 160 now and she says can do it indeed. If I drive it on motorway not sure will make it though. Summer goes up to 200 miles. 

Yeah I know but this isn't just a Bz thing; I was considering a Zoe before as that advertised well over 200 miles range, but it turns out that's a total lie too unless you do all of that at 20mph; Motorway range was something like 135 miles!!

It's just a fact of life with EVs, ironically because they're so efficient!

We don't really realize how much extra energy is required to go at high speeds - All the extra drag etc., because ICE engines mask it.

At low speeds the fuel flow is low, but their efficiency is also very low so you use more fuel, but at high speeds the fuel flow is high but the efficiency is high (Well, not maybe not high but high-er!) so the fuel use doesn't go up as much as would be expected, especially with the correct gearing to keep the engine at its most efficient zone of load and RPM. In some cases this efficiency difference is really big - In my Mk1 it used equal to or less fuel to do nearly double the mileage round the motorway than it did to crawl through hours of London traffic to get home!

EV's can't do this - Their efficiency is practically maxed at all times and changes very little whether going fast or slow, so at low speed they use almost no Battery, but at high speed they use a lot more of the Battery as they have to overcome more drag, but because they don't increase in efficiency like an ICE does it uses proportionately more of the Battery capacity to do so.

EVs show the true energy cost disparity of going at speed that was masked by ICEs.

We also don't realize how much energy heating uses, because it was 'free' with an ICE car; Resistance/PTC heaters are very efficient but the energy is not 'free' (i.e. energy that would otherwise be thrown away or wasted), so it has to come from the battery and we don't realize how much energy you need to heat the cabin that way - When it isn't 'free' it is a significant percent of the energy use! That's why they have to use 'cheating' methods like heat pumps, which don't generate any heat, just move it from outside to inside the car, which requires far less energy.

The energy requirements are huge, and all these combine to really hammer the battery and is why in my head I was estimating a 120kWh battery minimum for what I want, as the energy capacity isn't just for moving the car but for everything else too, and that's a lot of power!

I'm already getting a taste of that in my Mk4, as when winter hits I literally have to choose between a 30%ish drop in mpg or being warm!!   (Except on Mondays as my first site is via a motorway trip so I can open the taps and get the car nice and toasty without impacting the mpg so much!)

 

[bZ4xSupra]

20" / AWD / Dunlops

Driving style

Heating - ON  Eco  - ON  One Pedal - ON Adaptive Cruise - OFF Target Speed - 70mph

----------------------

At 1,000 miles and now achieving 2.7 / 2.8 kwh trip average for my 50 mile 1 way commutes that are 80% motorway.

180 mile round trip yesterday and based on the % shown by the app it took 47% of the Battery to do the first 90 miles. It was wet and 3c when I set-off. Added 20% at a BP Pulse just to be comfortable before returning. The app gave me 98 / 100 driver score 🤞, though stayed as close to 70 as traffic would allow me.

In Winter this will be a just about 200mile car if I wear mittens 👍.

[swoop5511]

The Danes that did the original test that "rocked" the world did a repeat. Interesting info - cross posted from US forum via @rfrancis073

https://nybiltester.no/biltest/test-av-toyota-bz4x-active-tech-med-trippeltest/

Gives some insight on the "buffer"

[duncerduncs]

Knock me down with a feather, I think they actually like the car!!

It's interesting that there is no 'turtle mode' and you can comfortably take the car to zero percent....

[Kieran78]

Norwegian site Elbil24 posts new article on their 3rd range test for the BZ4X ... range is still not great 😔

https://www.elbil24.no/nyheter/testet-pa-nytt-sa-langt-gikk-toyota-bz4x/77916779

 

 

[W id]

Tests keeps coming in every other day from Norway and Denmark and the bz4x seems to continue to underperform a lot in range and charging speed. What do you guys think can be done about this. What is possible to achieve with software updates or is it just a too small Battery to begin with. And do you even think Toyota will do something about it? I must say that I feel disappointed and a bit nervous that I have made a huge mistake by ordering this car. 

[FROSTYBALLS]

At the end of the day, WLTP testing is still laboratory based, so can only give an estimate of what a vehicle's range or consumption is, and is only intended to provide a comparison between models. It doesn't provide a real world picture of what owners will achieve. 

Back in October, Autocar had the following article on real world range for a number of EV's:

https://www.autocar.sco.uk/car-news/new-cars/electric-cars-best-real-world-range

[W id]

22 minutes ago, FROSTYBALLS said:

At the end of the day, WLTP testing is still laboratory based, so can only give an estimate of what a vehicle's range or consumption is, and is only intended to provide a comparison between models. It doesn't provide a real world picture of what owners will achieve. 

Back in October, Autocar had the following article on real world range for a number of EV's:

https://www.autocar.sco.uk/car-news/new-cars/electric-cars-best-real-world-range

For sure but I don’t think anyone that bought the bz4x was expecting half of wltp in actual range. 

[FROSTYBALLS]

1 minute ago, W id said:

For sure but I don’t think anyone that bought the bz4x was expecting half of wltp in actual range. 

Possibly not - but manufacturers legally have to use the WLTP test results when advertising and selling their cars, same as with the previous NEDC testing regime. That's the world we live in.

[Cyker]

It's a bit ironic as WLTP was made to address the practically fictional mpg ratings the NEDC cycle produced for ICE cars, and did a fair job of it - WLTP mpg ratings are generally achievable in the real world.

Ironically, it was blindsided by EVs the way NEDC was with modern engines, and is about as accurate for EVs as NEDC was for ICE cars!  

It's mainly because they do the tests at standard temperatures and don't take into account summer/winter cycles as that's something that generally had a minimal effect on ICE and nobody took it into account when they were developing the tests because EVs probably weren't a thing at that time and nobody knew this would be an issue.

But this discrepancy is well know for EVs, esp. at high speeds or winter EVs - That range is the maximum under optimal conditions, so you'll get that easily in summer or primarily urban driving, but they just aren't there yet where you need more energy.

It's just physics - For instance, my Mk4 can hold something like the equivalent of 350kWh in petrol vs the 70kWh a lot of larger EVs seem to be settling on. That's a big gap for Battery tech to make up...

 

[FROSTYBALLS]

From Toyota UK's website:

"Electric range figures are provided for comparability purposes; only compare electric range figures with other cars tested to the same technical procedures. These figures may not reflect real life driving results. Electric range can vary significantly depending on a number of factors, including the accessories fitted (post-registration), driving style, conditions, speed and vehicle load."

[W id]

But again. Almost no other car deliveries so far from wltp as the bz4x. Half is not ok. And I wonder if something can be done to better this or if it is just poorly built. 

[FROSTYBALLS]

Raise a query with your Toyota importer (Toyota Sweden?).

[forkingabout]

I have never believed any government mandated official fuel / energy consumption figures as I don't drive / operate machinery in a laboratory.

[W id]

4 minutes ago, FROSTYBALLS said:

Raise a query with your Toyota importer (Toyota Sweden?).

I have. Got a response investigation is being done. But what I wonder is how much is possible to do with software?

[FROSTYBALLS]

Pass.

[Cyker]

42 minutes ago, W id said:

But again. Almost no other car deliveries so far from wltp as the bz4x. Half is not ok. And I wonder if something can be done to better this or if it is just poorly built. 

I tend to disagree - I mentioned earlier the Zoe also has a similarly massive discrepancy, and the MGs are notorious for this too, and so do a lot of EVs that have small batteries but suspiciously long ranges. EV motorcycles too! It's definitely not just limited to Toyota, they just seem to be getting more bad publicity about it.

Every time a non-EV evangelist does some sort of roadtrip in an EV, they encounter shortfalls like this, see Guy Martin's EV Kia run and Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boreman's Long Way Up, where the freezing cold cut the range of their EV bikes so far beyond their most pessimistic predictions they had to be rescued by a truck with a diesel-powered generator at some points.

 

[W id]

12 minutes ago, Cyker said:

I tend to disagree - I mentioned earlier the Zoe also has a similarly massive discrepancy, and the MGs are notorious for this too, and so do a lot of EVs that have small batteries but suspiciously long ranges. EV motorcycles too! It's definitely not just limited to Toyota, they just seem to be getting more bad publicity about it.

Every time a non-EV evangelist does some sort of roadtrip in an EV, they encounter shortfalls like this, see Guy Martin's EV Kia run and Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boreman's Long Way Up, where the freezing cold cut the range of their EV bikes so far beyond their most pessimistic predictions they had to be rescued by a truck with a diesel-powered generator at some points.

 

Maybe. But still the bz4x has shorter range then most competitors at the same price range so the question remains if there is something Toyota ca do about that using existing batteries.