Real Range

The distance that you can travel between charges in an electric car depends on several variables, including your average speed, how heavily the car is loaded and how hot (or not) the weather is. But in our tests we've seen as little as 113 miles and as much as 329 miles.

Of all the cars we've put through our Real Range test, it's the Mercedes EQE 300 AMG Line Premium that went farthest on a charge: 329 miles in summer conditions.

Higher speeds require more energy, reducing your electric car's range. It's also best to avoid rapid acceleration if you want to maximise how far you can go between charges.

Over time, repeated charging will reduce the amount of energy that your electric car's battery can hold. However, you can slow down this degradation by only charging to 80% capacity most of the time and charging your car slowly over night, rather than quickly via a public rapid charger.

With most electric cars, the drive battery is covered by an eight-year/100,000-mile warranty. However, it's now thought that electric car batteries will generally last for between 10 and 20 years before they need to be replaced.

Electric cars will typically lose only about 2-3% of their charge a month while sitting stationary.