Autonomy of 1,000 kilometers.
It is the psychological barrier that seems to have been installed in the collective imagination when it comes to talking about electric or highly electrified cars. It doesn’t matter that it is a figure that is worthless because, obviously, it is totally inadvisable to sit in the car and put in 1,000 kilometers at a stretch between your chest and back.
Right now, with a good part of the electric car market recharging 300 kilometers or more (real) in about 20 minutesthere are not many reasons to defend those ranges of more than 1,000 kilometers.
And yet, such has been the insistence of those who do not trust the electric car that the manufacturers of plug-in hybrids themselves have focused their communication on selling us autonomies that exceed those 1,000 kilometers. And promise, among the electric ones, that we will see batteries that can withstand them.
However, and although for everyday life it is something completely absurd, one always feels attracted to challenges like the one presented by the host and owner of the channel. Offroad adventure on YouTube.
How many kilometers can your old diesel Volkswagen Passat travel?
2,300 kilometers with its little tricks
He promised that he would repeat it if the video went viral.
And he has done it.
Elias is a German YouTuber specialized in car travel videos. His YouTube channel is full of incredible landscapes, challenges aboard his cars and videos in which he explains how he has transformed the vehicles. In one of them, he picked up an old Volkswagen Passat B5 diesel from 1998 and he decided to know how far he could go.
He traveled more than 1,900 kilometers but did not manage to break the two-mile ceiling with a single tank. The promise seemed obvious: likes to the video and a new challenge ahead. No sooner said than done.
More than 2,400 kilometers with just a tank? This is the title of the video in which Elias tells of his new experience with this familiar diesel with almost 30 years behind him. The car, at that time, approved an average consumption of 5.6 l/100 km (4.5 l/100 km in the extra-urban) and a 62-liter tank in Spain but in Germany, according to the data provided by the Youtuber, it reached 72 liters. That is, to cover 2,400 kilometers it was necessary to maintain a consumption of about 3 l/100 km.
And with these tools, what seemed impossible was posed: how to get from Hildesheim (Germany) to the Arctic Circle with a single deposit of fuel?
Let’s get to work. Elias swapped the original rims for closed hubcaps to improve aerodynamics on the wheels and reduce drag. It eliminated everything that could interfere with the exterior: goodbye to the roof bars and the antenna. He also points out that he changed some of the car’s filters to improve efficiency, as well as the lights, replaced by LEDs that consume less energy. Some air vents were covered to further improve efficiency.
The YouTuber also points out that he installed a cruise control system, used low-friction oils and Michelin, which is one of the sponsors, gave him a set of low-friction tires that have been inflated to the maximum pressure allowed to reduce resistance.
Searching for the sweet spot between driving at a constant speed high enough for the car to move at a low rev rate but without forcing it to downshift and increase consumption, the YouTuber manages to achieve his goal and shows how the car ends up stopping after 2,398.7 kilometers, registering an average speed of 74 km/h and a consumption of 3.0054 l/100 km.
The car, in fact, at some point reaches a much lower figure, of about 2.5 l/100 km of consumption. However, in the last kilometers this figure “skyrockets” and leaves our protagonist on the verge of breaking the 2,400 kilometer barrier. Moment in which he removes the seal from the fuel tank to add a little more diesel and be able to get to a gas station.
The test demonstrates how far diesels from a few decades ago were capable of reaching, but it also confirms that if the road is clear and used correctly, adaptive cruise control can save a lot of fuel by keeping the car at a sustained speed.
Photo | offroadadventure
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