Tesla will tell you the range. I'll tell you the truth.
I've done the Cornwall to London run more times than I care to count. It's not a short trip — depending on where you're coming from in Cornwall, you're looking at 250 to 280 miles to North London. In a petrol car it's a long day. In an EV it's an exercise in planning, patience, and occasionally mild anxiety.
I did it twice in my Tesla. Once in summer. Once in winter. Same car, same route, mostly motorway all the way up the A30, M5 and M4. What happened on each trip tells you almost everything you need to know about real-world EV range.
THE SUMMER RUN
Conditions were about as good as they get for an EV. Warm temperatures, dry roads, light traffic for most of the journey. The kind of day where everything works in your favour.
The Tesla's quoted range sat comfortably above 300 miles. In summer conditions on a mostly motorway run, sitting with smart cruise at 70mph I was seeing real-world figures in the region of 240 to 260 miles of usable range — roughly 80 to 85 percent of the official figure. That's actually pretty respectable.
I stopped once each way at Gordano. A single charging stop of around 25 to 30 minutes at a Supercharger, enough to top up comfortably and complete the journey with range to spare. Tesla's Supercharger network genuinely earns its reputation here — fast, reliable, and the navigation system routes you to them automatically and pre-conditions the battery on the way so you're not sitting waiting for it to warm up to charging temperature. When I arrived at the supercharger, I was at 39% battery - No sweat!
The summer trip was, honestly, close to the brochure experience. Not quite — but close.
THE WINTER RUN
This is where reality arrives.
Same car. Same route. Cold, wet January day — the kind that's completely normal in Cornwall and doesn't feel dramatic until you watch your projected range start dropping faster than expected.
Cold weather is an EV's least favourite thing. The battery chemistry performs less efficiently at low temperatures. The heating system — which in a petrol car is essentially free, running off waste engine heat — in an EV draws directly from the battery. Motorway speeds compound everything. You're pulling maximum power at sustained high speed in cold air with the heating running.
My real-world range that day dropped to somewhere around 180 to 200 miles. From a car that claims 300 plus. That's a reduction of 35 to 40 percent from the official figure and around 25 percent less than the same journey in summer.
I still only needed one supercharging stop but this time, instead of arriving at Gordano with 39%, I arrived with 18%. Charging time was longer but not significantly so. This time, I just spent longer sitting in the car with a coffee and sending a few more emails.
It wasn't a disaster. It wasn't even particularly stressful once I had arrived at the supercharger but seeing the range dropping far more quickly wasn’t pleasant. If you suffer from range anxiety, the battery amber warning coming on, albeit for only a few miles would get the adrenaline pumping.
WHAT THIS ACTUALLY MEANS FOR YOU
Here's the honest framework I now use for every long journey:
In summer, on motorways, expect 80 to 85 percent of the quoted range figure. Plan your charging stops around that number and you'll be fine.
In winter, on motorways, expect 60 to 70 percent of the quoted range figure. Sometimes less if it's particularly cold. Plan conservatively, stop a little more often, and don't treat a low charge warning as a failure — it's just the reality of physics in January.
The middle ground — mild weather, mixed roads, sensible speeds — sits somewhere between the two. Spring and autumn are genuinely the best seasons for EV range, which nobody ever puts in the brochure.
One more thing nobody mentions: speed matters enormously. Dropping from 70mph to 60mph on a long motorway run can recover 15 to 20 percent of your range. If you're watching the battery and you have time, slow down slightly. It works.
For people coming from cars powered by dinosaurs, we are used to motorways being the most efficient types of journey without all the stop and starts. In EV’s, the opposite applies. No regenerative breaking and wind resistance with electrical motors spinning fast sucks power quickly.
THE TESLA SUPERCHARGER FOOTNOTE
I want to be fair to Tesla here because the charging network genuinely softened the winter experience. The stops were fast, the navigation told me exactly where to stop and for how long, and I never once had a broken or occupied charger on either trip. The supercharger network was in fact my reason for choosing Tesla’s as my entry into the world of EV’s.
That seamless experience is something I've thought about a lot since switching to Kia. The public charging network the rest of us rely on is a different conversation — one I'll come back to in a future issue.
Matt
Charging Up
chargingup.uk
P.S. Have you done a long motorway run in an EV? Hit reply and tell me your experience — summer, winter, or both. I read everything.