What remains of the range promise when the temperature drops below zero? Two traffic clubs wanted to know for sure and ran the batteries of 29 e-cars completely empty. There were two winners.

Cold affects the range of electric cars negatively. The Austrian automobile club ÖAMTC and the Norwegian automobile club NAF wanted to know more about it and carried out a practical winter range test with 29 electric cars in Norway. At temperatures from 0 to minus 19 degrees, the batteries were run empty on a set route to determine how far you actually get. A Tesla won in terms of maximum range, and the lowest relative losses were measured in a Chinese model.

The range king is therefore Tesla’s Model S Standard. The testers were able to tease out an actual range of 530 kilometers from its batteries under wintry conditions. The WLTP range is 634 kilometers, which corresponds to a practical minus of 16.4 percent. With this value, the Tesla flagship came in second.

Only the SUV Maxus Euniq6 from China was better, which practically managed 317 instead of 354 WLTP kilometers. At 10.45 percent, this corresponded to the lowest percentage deviation in the test environment. In this discipline, the MG models Marvel R (minus 16.8 percent) and 5 (minus 17.6 percent) came in third and fourth. The Kia EV6 GT took fifth place with minus 17.7 percent.

At the lower end of the ranking with the highest relative losses drove BMW i7 xDrive60 (minus 28.7 percent), Mercedes EQE 300 (minus 33.4 percent), Skoda Enyaq Coupé RS (minus 33.7 percent), Honqi E-HS9 ( minus 34.8 percent) and Toyota BZ4X 2WD (35.8 percent).

The tests were carried out on a route that led from Oslo over 300 kilometers in a northerly and then southerly direction. Since a general speed limit of 80 km/h applies in Norway, the vehicles were driven at fuel-efficient speeds during their test drives. Accordingly, all cars covered more than 300 kilometers. The shortest ranges were measured for Hongqi E-HS9 (303 kilometers), MG Marvel R (308 kilometers), VW ID.Buzz (310 kilometers) and BYD Atto 3 (311 kilometers).

The range giants included the Tesla Model X Plaid (444 kilometers), Nio ET7 and BMW i4 eDrive40 (each 434 kilometers) and BMW i7 xDrive60 (424 kilometers).