Just thought I would answer some of my own questions! And no electric cars don’t idle in the same sense that petrol cars idle. The motor is on or off and will use very little energy.
So why when I sit with the motor on does the car use energy and I can watch the range reduce very quickly. A couple of days ago it went down 20 miles in less than a minute when I was sat there with the motor turned on. My best guess is that, the motor uses very little power when it is on but it is affected by certain elements:
- How cold is it? Below 10 degrees celcius I have found that the range on the electric car will be reduced. The colder it gets the lower the range. However, sometimes the temperature doesn’t have effect because maybe the batteries are already warm. I have noticed this is particularly true when you take the car of charge and drive off immediately.
- What have you got running in the car? Lights, windscreen wipers don’t seem to draw a huge amount of power but using heaters will suck power. I ran a quick test using the fan on one bar and the temperature at 18, compared to using it on 4 bars and the temperature at 24 and it sucks energy. Obvious I know but it is useful to have this information available to me.
But bear in mind that whilst lights don’t use a lot of energy, if you turn the wipers on and then charge your electric phone and have the radio running and the heater running at say 20 degrees, it will all add up and affect your range. Quite simply, the more you turn on the more energy you will use!
No electric cars don’t idle but if you are stuck in a traffic jam and need to conserve energy then switch off as much as you can. The biggest use of energy is when you are moving!
Now how hard was that to answer Vauxhall? Maybe you would care to add a comment!
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