I have now had my EV for a month. I just slip into the driver’s seat with the ease of putting on a well-worn pair of shoes. I comfortably know where most of the controls live, which makes life easier.  And the comfort extends to driving, with manoeuvring and parking becoming fairly automatic. But, tragically, the new car smell is gone. I understand you can buy “new car smell” sprays, but it wouldn’t be the same.

I am enjoying trying the EV-specific features. Using the regenerative braking is a really different thing. When you lift your foot off the accelerator pedal, the car does not coast along, it slows down as if you are gently braking. But it is not braking.

When your foot comes off the pedal, the electric motor switches to being a generator and it is charging the battery. You still use the brake pedal to bring the car to a complete stop or if you want to stop quickly, but most of the slowing down can be done by the motor turned into a generator.

It feels a bit like changing down gears in the old petrol or diesel car when you are going down a hill, to save the brakes. But in the EV, instead of wasting energy, you are recharging the battery!

Wouldn’t it be great if you could get back all the energy you put in going up a hill when you went down the other side? Dream on. It is not that efficient. You still burn energy pushing the car through the air and in friction on the tyres, and you are not going to get that back.

I feel an experiment coming on…

I just came back from driving the car from the bottom of Bulli Pass to the top and back down again. On the way up, the battery charge level dropped -5% and on the way down, it went back up by +2.4%. In other words, it regained almost half of what it lost on the way up the hill! By the way, you can set the level of regeneration to mild or strong.

I go for full-tilt strong, so I hardly have to use the brakes at all! This is “one pedal driving” in EV talk.

This explains why EVs are so efficient at stop-start driving around town compared to petrol cars. Petrol cars burn up their kinetic energy in their brakes when stopping, whereas EVs pump a good proportion back into the battery, to re-use when they set off again.

Unfortunately, with highway driving, you are not getting much regeneration, because you are not slowing down much. The drag from pushing ANY car through the air increases exponentially with speed. At 110km/h it is like pushing the car through treacle.  Even with good streamlining you only get slightly warm treacle.

In short, if you want efficiency, don’t drive too fast.