What's all this about?
Electric vehicles (EVs) are all the rage at the moment, in one form or another, but the obvious problem with them is range anxiety - the fear of running out of electrical juice without a charging point to be seen. Many manufacturers will tell you that their EV can do x number of miles on a charge to try and alleviate this stress, but in reality the cars can never quite go as far as claimed. However, Kia has dared to be different.
How so?
Its Soul EV, launched in October 2014, is said to do 132 miles on a full battery, so to prove the point the Korean carmaker has had some independent testers drive a Soul EV around Somerset and Wiltshire's cities, towns, villages and open roads to prove it can properly go the distance.
Ah yes, but I bet they didn't have anything electrical working on the car, did they?
Incorrect - not only did the team drive through Bristol (and trust us on this one, from personal experience that city has terrible traffic flow issues) and along the M4, they were also using a lot of the typical drains on the battery, such as heating, wipers, headlights, satellite navigation, heated seats and the radio. It was an average of eight degrees Centigrade throughout the drive, with changing weather conditions, neither of which are conducive to EV 'hypermiling'.
Did the Soul EV actually wheeze to a halt after 132 miles, then?
No, it covered 125.3 miles in these conditions, with an estimate of a little more than nine miles in the 'tank' (for want of a much better word). Its total range was therefore around 134.9 miles, but diagnostics afterwards proved the battery had 13 per cent life in it, equating to more like 15 miles calculated from the homologated 132-mile range - meaning more than 140 miles would've been possible, driving the car in a 'normal' manner. That's impressive.
Matt Robinson - 7 Jan 2015