Mike4 wrote:Howard wrote:PS Mike: Nissan e Vans start at around £220 a month but don't ask about the cost of stretching a charging cable across the road .JohnB wrote:Mike4, the Fully Charged Youtube channel had a 5 part series on electric vans over xmas. I found it interesting as it was more user experience than van review, and I don't want a van. The channel is wide ranging about decarbonising, and only a little preachy.
Thanks you two, I'll have a look.
Over in The Combustion Chamber", there is one guy who says his company bought a handful of electric vans for the fleet. Fully laden and in cold wet weather he says the range on a full charge is down to about 65 miles, so no-one will use them. He is a bit of a know-all/whiner though so I don't attach that much credence to what he says with no independent coinciding opinions.
He probably isn't too far off - https://ev-database.uk/car/1117/Nissan-e-NV200-Combi
However it interesting to see that the Nissan van is only using a 38 kWh battery but newer EV cars such as the Kia e-Niro are using 64kWh batteries and a Kia e-Nero has a similar unladen and gross vehicle weight as the Nissan van. Thus as you would expect for a vehicle with a battery with almost twice the capacity the Kia e-Nero has a 'real world Highway - Cold Weather' range of 160 miles compared to 80 for the Nissan van (https://ev-database.uk/car/1338/Kia-e-Niro-64-kWh).
Cold weather use not only has an impact on the battery but also the extra load on the battery from heating the vehicle. This can be mitigated to some extent by setting a timer to pre-heat the vehicle whilst it is still connected to the mains and the use of heated seats/steering wheel which uses less energy. Most manufacturers are also moving from resistive heating of the cabin which is a significant drain on the battery to adding a heat pump for efficiency. Others are using the waste heat from the motor and battery to heat the vehicle.