Six EVs Were Pushed Past Empty. The Winner Was A Surprise

• Carwow drove six long-range electric crossovers pushing their batteries past empty to see how far they could go.
• The winner was the Kia EV3, which was the smallest car in the test, but had one of the largest battery capacities of the group.
• The Tesla Model Y Long Range had the best efficiency, but it didn’t have the battery capacity to win this test.

Driving an EV until you bleed its battery completely dry is exciting and nerve-wracking. But it’s an important test that reveals how much further an EV can travel even after its range prediction goes to zero, and what exactly happens when it completely runs out of juice.

Carwow has been driving-until-dead tests for a while now. In the one published today, the contenders are long-range variants of six electric crossovers available in the UK: Tesla Model Y, Skoda Enyaq Coupe, Kia EV3, Xpeng G6, BYD Sealion 7 and Leapmotor C10.

All are more or less direct midsize crossover rivals, except the smaller Kia, so most of them will be cross-shopped based on their range numbers. The Tesla had the longest claimed WLTP range, 387 miles, with the Leapmotor at the other end of the scales with 263 miles. Before they set off, the car predicting the longest range was the Kia, which said it could do 397 miles, or 22 more miles than its WLTP claim.

The cars were driven at the same time, on the same road and in the same typical British weather, meaning that it rained a lot during the test. Most of the driving was done on motorways at the 70 mph speed limit, although late in the test, they did get on some country roads to avoid a blockage caused by an accident.

That makes this similar to the 70 mph highway range tests that we do in the United States, but Carwow’s test pushes the cars to their absolute limit. They did have to pull off the highway when the state of charge hits zero because by that point, EVs begin to severely limit power and you may not even be able to do the speed limit anymore.

The overall winner of this range test was the Kia EV3, which is a small EV strapped to a big 81.4 kWh battery. It traveled 329.1 miles before grinding to a halt, or 88% of its claimed range. Next came the Xpeng G6, which managed to squeeze 328.3 miles out of its 87.5 kWh battery, or just 7% off its WLTP claim. Given that claimed ranges include highway and urban driving, getting that close purely on the highway is impressive. 

The Tesla came third with 327.5 miles, which was only 15% off its WLTP number. However, it was the most efficient car of the group, with a very impressive average of 4.4 miles/kWh,. That made its Chinese rival, the BYD Sealion 7, look like an electron guzzler with its 3 miles/kWh average. The Leapmotor could also only manage 85% of its claimed range—covering 224 miles—although it did also have the smallest battery in the test at just 69.9 kWh.