In Norway they have asked themselves which are the best electric cars at -30ºC. And the answer is clear: Chinese cars

A test that has already become indispensable for the industry. The Norwegian Automobile Club has been carrying out a simple test since 2020: they take the most representative electric cars on the market, fully recharge them and put them to the test. All at the same time and along the same route.

Objective: discover if someone is lying.

A simple test in theory. But it provides a lot of information for the buyer of an electric car. And although the WLTP cycles have been improved and now they show consumption in urban cycles and outside of it, the truth is that the buyer of the electric car needs one piece of information: the consumption on the road at the maximum legal speed allowed.

And in the city, the consumption of electric cars is usually very low. Furthermore, the impact of total autonomy is less relevant because either the car is charged at night or access to the chargers is easier than in the middle of a road.

That’s why he test carried out by the Norwegian Automobile Clubthe NAF for its acronym in the local language, is so important because they get the cars moving and take them on the road on a route that begins in Oslo and extends for more than 400 kilometers. The final intention is to glimpse what real autonomy these cars have and its difference with the figure recorded by the WLTP cycle.

“They lie”. We will put it in quotes. And when companies design their cars, they obviously think about the consumption that a car will have in real situations but, of course, They take into account how the approval tests are carried out to get the best possible result.

He Dieselgatewhere Volkswagen and other brands in the group used specific software when homologating their cars to achieve better consumption figures on paper that were then not met in practice, is the best-known case.

But without cheating, it may pay off for a manufacturer to prioritize the lowest possible consumption in the city even if it later suffers from a slightly higher consumption on the highway. Or that the car behaves worse in extreme cold conditions, as is usually found in these tests. This very low urban consumption can lower the final average figure and distort the car’s real mileage, which is why these real road tests are interesting.

How are they tested? In the test, the Norwegians examine the car’s behavior on a route that starts from Oslo towards the north of the country and which almost always runs on national roads. On the route, which you can see in this linkstarts at sea level and ends at about 750 meters above sea level. Along the way there are two large studs. In the first one you exceed 500 meters in height, then you descend slightly and climb again until you exceed 1,000 meters in height. Subsequently, you descend until you stay at the aforementioned 750 meters high.

The test is also done in winter and summer conditions to get even more information from the cars. The driver stops when it detects a loss of power in the car but it doesn’t drain the battery all the way. This seeks to know to what extent the car is capable of moving at full capacity. In a year like this with very low temperatures, the first driver who abandoned noticed a loss of power when the car still had 11% autonomy left.

And among the data published, the association also includes the weather along the route, specifying the minimum and maximum temperature or whether the sky remained clear or it snowed. This time record temperatures were reached, the warmest occurred in Oslo where the thermometer read -8ºC and the coldest was recorded while passing through Høyeste with -32ºC.

The best. With this way of working, this Norwegian association has published its data. They take into account the deviation from the declared WLTP figure but also the percentage (doing 500 kilometers and deviating by 100 km from the expected range is not the same as doing 300 kilometers and deviating those same 100 km).

Taking this into account, their data says that the best cars were the Hyundai Inster and the MG IM6, which performed 29% less than the expected range.

The cars that deviated the least from the expected figure were the following:

• Hyundai Inster: distance traveled 256 km, WLTP distance 360 ​​km, difference 104 km
• KGM Musso EV: distance traveled 263 km, WLTP distance 379 km, difference 116 km
• Voyah Courage: distance traveled 300 km, WLTP distance 440 km, difference 140 km
• Changan Deepal S05: traveled distance 293 km, WLTP distance 445 km, difference 152 km
• MG IM6: traveled distance 352 km, WLTP distance 505 km, difference 153 km

The worst. The data tells us one thing but it is also important to contextualize it. For example, they point out that the Lucid Air was the electric car that deviated the most from its expected autonomy (49%) but it was also the one that traveled the most kilometers (520 kilometers) so it was exposed the longest to temperatures below -30ºC. In fact, This same car was one of those that obtained the best figures in the last summer test.

Last year, the organizers point out, the Polestar 3 broke the record in a winter test, stopping at 537 kilometers. However, they point out that in that same mountain pass where freezing temperatures have been reached this year, the thermometer that time marked a much more pleasant temperature of 8ºC.

With all this, the cars that deviated the most from the expected figure were the following:

• BMW iX: distance traveled 388 km, WLTP distance 641 km, difference 253 km
• Tesla Model Y: distance traveled 359 km, WLTP distance 629 km, difference 270 km
• Volvo EX90: distance traveled 339 km, WLTP distance 611 km, difference 272 km
• Mercedes CLA: distance traveled 421 km, WLTP distance 709 km, difference 288 km
• Lucid Air: distance traveled 520 km, WLTP distance 960 km, difference 440 km

Especially interesting. The Norwegian association test is especially interesting because it shows the real capacity of cars in extraordinarily harsh conditions. And this year, with temperatures below 30ºC, the deviations are enormous but it also gives a certain guarantee to customers to know that, even so, the “worst” cars have traveled between 340 and more than 500 kilometers between charges.

It is a test worth evaluating, especially taking into account that the real performance when cold has been questioned by some skeptics of the electric car sending messages in which it was said that they could barely cover a hundred kilometers when the temperature approached 0ºC.

Photo | NAF

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