Impact of cruising speed on range

[dbsb3233]

Altitude differences does have quite an impact (daily school run up and down the hill). More so, driving style. On a 10 miles city drive home from dealer I managed significantly less than 3 (excited, new car) whereas technician collecting car (red circle of death) managed 4.0 on way back.

Oh yeah, local driving is totally different than road trip cruising for 1000's of miles. Locally we hit 4 or even 5 MPK on occasion. But that's short little legs (like <10 miles). Can't really tell anything by that since it's heavily skewed by little things (fast/slow starts, lots of stopping/slowing regen, etc). Long road trips are dominated by cruise control at steady speeds. Jackrabbit starts and lots of regen stopping get mostly removed from that equation. It's average speed and temperature that determine most of the outcome there. And net elevation gain/loss, but over 1000+ miles that tends to mostly flatten out from start to end (depending on the route). There's ups/downs in between, but those mostly even out (although not 100% since regen isn't 100% efficient). Still though, it mostly evens out. Our drives through the Colorado mountains, for instance, actually get better MPK than our drives through flatter Utah, because the mountain drives avg ~70 MPH while the Utah drives avg ~80 MPH. Speed is a much bigger factor than going up+down a mountain (with little net elevation difference).

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[dbsb3233]

In the comments on the State of Charge YouTube video, I posted:

”It’s physics. The drag force is the square of velocity, all else being equal. So take the ratio of the increase in speed, 80/70 =1.1429. And square it, 1.1429 x 1.1429 =1.306. So 345 miles (@70) theoretically should give 345/1.306=264 miles range at 80. The fact it did better than 264 likely is due to other, real world factors of the design or driving conditions that might have reduced drag a bit vs theory (% of time vehicle was in a draft and effect of any draft, position of rear spoiler, consistency of holding speed, differences in winds, etc.).”

After a year with the Macan, I ignore driving slower to save enery and just plan my stops accordingly.

Yes, although air drag is only part of what determines vehicle mileage at various speeds. It's a big factor but only one factor. Rolling resistance of the tires is another factor, for example, that varies with speed.

 

[CHP]

Porsche DNA doesn’t mix well with EV on long distance drives. There is a reason why some EV manufacturers limit top speed. Not really a problem in UK and USA as the government nannies your driving. Back in Germany I probably wouldn’t buy an electric Porsche but here in UK advantages outweigh shortcomings. Looking at other car manufacturers (EQS, 7 series), Panamera would have been possibly the best platform to start electrification but it’s made for high speed long distance drives. We are discussing 200-250 miles highway range which translates to around 3h drive stints (which is absolutely fine with me when travelling with family) but look at first gen Taycan users, they are in the range of 2h or less. Battery technology is assumed to evolve fast in the next decade (solid state for example) with negative correlation between range increase and resell value of current cars. Government incentives are just softening the blow.

 

[Fly4ever]

Battery technology is assumed to evolve fast in the next decade (solid state for example) with negative correlation between range increase and resell value of current cars.

Will come way sooner than most of the people think.Next decade?? Everything points before the next decade starts instead.A look at what happened at CES 2026 in Vegas may give us a clue and it's nothing more than a glimpse of the near (probably very near) feature and the things to come.Most likely next gen Macan EV - as well as all other electric Porsche models - will be equipped with this or similar technology batteries and the debate EV vs ICE will come to an end once and for all.

 

[CHP]

Will come way sooner than most of the people think.Next decade?? Everything points before the next decade starts instead.A look at what happened at CES 2026 in Vegas may give us a clue and it's nothing more than a glimpse of the near (probably very near) feature and the things to come.Most likely next gen Macan EV - as well as all other electric Porsche models - will be equipped with this or similar technology batteries and the debate EV vs ICE will come to an end once and for all.

There is an EQS prototype running since a couple of months but it’s a new technology with some challenges. I expect first to come out in 28/29. It‘s a little like PC‘s in early years, not doubling range every 2 years but 1/3 range increase every 2-4 years seems realistic. Eventually they will start reducing battery size to save costs and weight with current exponential range increase going more flat. Everybody has different needs, but 300 miles on 80% battery would be good enough for me.

 

[CHP]

In UK the debate will start again when majority is driving EVs. Current Uk government is slowing down new builds of charging stations and I don’t think current grid would be able to handle charging load over night. On top of that, some countries will have increased their renewable energy dependence and outsourced gas heating in favour of heat pumps. What can go possibly wrong

 

[USMA81]

Pedantic response here. Yes, I was simplifying the whole discussion of energy expenditure by focusing only on aerodynamic drag. I knew about rolling resistance, but thought it was trivial in relationship to aerodynamic drag (turns out, not so). I believed that rolling resistance changes little with speed (and, yes, some simple models assume it to be constant), but it changes proportionally with speed. It also is a greater percentage of energy expenditure than I thought, accounting for about 20% of the total. The percentage of energy expended overcoming rolling resistance, while the actual quantity goes up a small amount with speed, it becomes less of the total percentage because aerodynamic drag increases exponentially.

Bottom line, just slow down if you are worried about making the next charging station. As som above stated, speed is the major controllable factor in EV driving efficiency.

 

[jwatte]

Energy consumption increases exponentially​

90% of readers don't care, but: it increases quadratically, not exponentially.
Rolling resistance and air drag both have a quadratic component.
Also, surprisingly, the motor is actually less efficient when spinning faster, because it generates more back EMF.
Air drag and rolling resistance is about 30% higher at 80 than at 70.

 

[dbsb3233]

Just completed a 2 week road trip thru CO/UT/NV/ID/WY. First one that dipped down into the teens on a few legs, and 20-30 degrees for about half of it. MPK always falls in the cold, of course, but it fell even more in the Macan than it did in our Mach-E. We were only getting 1.9-2.2 on the coldest legs.

I couldn't get a full trip average because I had to do a PCM reboot halfway thru.

I used the native nav more this time to project arrival SOC. It was consistently 3-4% pessimistic. We usually arrived with 3-4% more that it projected.

 

[skshimer]

Just completed a 2 week road trip thru CO/UT/NV/ID/WY. First one that dipped down into the teens on a few legs, and 20-30 degrees for about half of it. MPK always falls in the cold, of course, but it fell even more in the Macan than it did in our Mach-E. We were only getting 1.9-2.2 on the coldest legs.

I couldn't get a full trip average because I had to do a PCM reboot halfway thru.

I used the native nav more this time to project arrival SOC. It was consistently 3-4% pessimistic. We usually arrived with 3-4% more that it projected.

That is definitely the side to err on. My Model S was 1-2% optimistic. Thanks for sharing.

 

[racerjim]

I've had the same experience with the PCM in cold weather, it tends to be conservative by a few percent

 

[AlanH]

From my experience this is not the right way to look at this problem.

Key to driving fast is charging fast. It's much more important to have good infrastructure of fast chargers and car that can handle fast charging well.

Macan and it's Route Planner handles this job very well so you just forget about it and enjoy driving. TBH I rarely go below 30kw/100kms on highways which does not give you much range.

I agree completely with what you say here. In the a year of driving my Macon, I’ve discovered that charging speed is as or more important than range. I’ve been driving throughout Europe and rarely will want to be at the wheel for more than three hours at a time, so we always stop and take a break, charge the car and change drivers. It’s no hassle at all: I drive at the speeds I prefer (130-140 on the autoroutes), and there’s always plenty of range in doing it this way.

 

[dbsb3233]

I agree completely with what you say here. In the a year of driving my Macon, I’ve discovered that charging speed is as or more important than range. I’ve been driving throughout Europe and rarely will want to be at the wheel for more than three hours at a time, so we always stop and take a break, charge the car and change drivers. It’s no hassle at all: I drive at the speeds I prefer (130-140 on the autoroutes), and there’s always plenty of range in doing it this way.

Both are important, of course, but I find range to be more important than charging speed. The best charging session is the one you can completely skip because you have the range to do so.

Charging infrastructure is probably better in Europe than it is the US (although that varies by region just like it does in the US). DCFC is still a hit&miss experience though. Sometimes it's flawless and you get great speed on the first attempt. Other times it takes 2 or 3 attempts, and you still don't get full power, either because the station is limited or the car is. Sometimes stations are right off the highway, other times it's a 10 minute round trip to get off/on. Sometimes a station is full and you have to wait. Sometimes stations are spaced poorly where you can't make it as far as you'd like, requiring sooner stops and more of them. Sometimes it's simply cold out.

That's why we just bought a Lucid Gravity to be our other car. The 315 mile range in the Macan is better than the 270 mile range in our Mach-E was, but the 450 miles of range in the Gravity is much better than both. We do road trips every month, and doing a 700 mile day in just 2 DCFCs will be great. We can always stop anywhere to pee if needed, but the extra range means we'll only have to DCFC twice, and we have the extra flexibility to pick the best stations rather than just the one we *have* to stop at.

 

[en1gma]

I agree completely with what you say here. In the a year of driving my Macon, I’ve discovered that charging speed is as or more important than range. I’ve been driving throughout Europe and rarely will want to be at the wheel for more than three hours at a time, so we always stop and take a break, charge the car and change drivers. It’s no hassle at all: I drive at the speeds I prefer (130-140 on the autoroutes), and there’s always plenty of range in doing it this way.

Makes sense. If the charging network ain’t up to it (either by number of locations or the technical capability) then it completely impacts your approach for the trip, I would guess.

 

[Fly4ever]

I also think the charging infrastructure plays a big role,most likely the biggest,when a road trip with an EV is considered.If there's plenty of charging stations, especially a good fast charging infrastructure both in terms of reliability and abundance as well,the so called "range anxiety" is considerably reduced if not eliminated completely. Especially with a car like ours with such fast charging capabilities even the longest journeys wouldn't be an issue whatsoever.
However,when the charging network is poor with scarce chargers - especially fast ones,no need to mention super fast... - and unreliable apps which essentially makes any type of charger completely useless, the road trip might turn into a complete nightmare.
We can only hope that at least in Europe the remaining intermediate countries with their charging infrastructures still under development will soon also get plenty of reliable fast chargers accros their roads network so we can rely on for our long journeys. Until then as more range as possible is highly essential and then again longer journeys with our Macans should be considered as somewhat risky at least during the coldest time of year.

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