Bridgestone, the tire manufacturer, and its company dedicated to fleet management, Webfleet, have decided to attack the record for the longest distance traveled by a production electric vehicle on a single charge, which was until now 907.62km.
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A Nio ET7 equipped with a semi-solid-state battery was driven 1,044 km last year, but without a Guinness World Record official present, as here. However, although this record was made in real conditions, it is only a record.
Long distance travel
The record was set by a team consisting of drivers Kevin Booker and Sam Clarke and co-driver Richard Parker. Bridgestone said the whole trip was “meticulously documented with independently verified video footage, odometer readings, GPS and battery level data from Webfleet“. In any case, there is little chance that Guinness would recognize a record if there were doubts.
For the occasion, the team took possession of a range-extended premium rear-wheel-drive Ford Mustang Mach-E. The pilots were then able to rely on a 91 kWh battery with a maximum power of 294 hp that they never used in full.
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If the model is given to 600 km of WLTP autonomy with an average consumption of 17.3 kWh/100 km, the record goes much further than 916.74 km and a very limited consumption of 9.95 kWh/100 km .
“The team managed to achieve 6.25 miles per kilometer [NDLR : 9,95kWh/100km] on public roads in Norfolk, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Cambridgeshire.
Bridgestone
The record was set over 24 hours and is said to have been “a mix of urban and rural roads to mimic real-world driving conditions“.
This is the question that many drivers of electric vehicles ask themselves, and it is clear that it is the one that the record team asked themselves. In their case, they cheated a little since they fitted their Mustang Mach-E with 18-inch rims, and the electric SUV starts with 19 inches. They then covered everything with special low resistance tires, which are also the best for consumption.
The first lesson to be learned is, therefore, when buying the vehicle, you must choose between style or independence, between bigger rims or more distance per charge.
The second point of this study is the roads chosen, which are very favorable for electricity with small towns without traffic jams and secondary roads where the speed is never high and where regenerative braking plays a full role.
This is one of the problems that this team also has; we do not have the average speed during the driving time, we only know that everything was done over a period of close to 24 hours and that the team took great care to observe the most economical driving as possible, with smooth acceleration and a lot of anticipation to allow the car to color and play on regenerative braking.
Finally, the weather in central England was perfect for an electric vehicle: not too hot, not too cold. Unfortunately, this is a setup you can’t play around with when you have to ride. The record above all reminds us that, in the end, the consumption of an electric vehicle varies greatly depending on the conditions and driving style, for better and for worse.
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