Driving
2025/02/04
 

If there’s one thing the last five years of testing battery-powered vehicles has taught me, it’s that, contrary to much of the marketing that surrounds electric vehicles, there’s really not much difference in efficiency between different brands of electric motors. Oh, to be sure, electric motors, in general, are more efficient than the internal-combustion engines they seek to supplant. Phenomenally so, in fact. And, the range of EVs does indeed vary greatly according to battery size.
But, unlike the bad old days of pistons and spark plugs, there’s really not much difference in efficiency between the types — or brands — of electric motors driving the wheels.

Before Range Finder — Driving’s attempt to compare manufacturers’ range claims with our own real-world-verified measure of the miles eked out of their batteries — I nerded out doing fuel-economy tests. The modus operandi was much the same — driving at a set speed along Ontario’s Highway 407 — but the results were far more varied.

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I won’t reminisce about the good old days of internal-combustion — mainly because the boredom of driving a cruise-controlled speed down the same boring piece of highway over and over again is not at all relieved by what’s under the hood. But the one thing that really stands out is how much more of a difference there was in the fuel efficiency of different types of ICE. Turbocharged fours could be at times a little more fuel-efficient than V6s. Atkinson- or Miller- cycled fours and small sixes were more efficient still, and, no surprise — especially to a Volkswagen TDI owner — a diesel would wipe the floor with anything fuelled with gasoline.

 
David Booth
 
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