I can't help with your specific question, however.

WLTP range figures are very misleading, you're very unlikely to drive in the specific manner that the WLTP test does.

The 176/185 miles you saw on the dash will be the cars beat guess based on temperature and how it was previously driven. You could drive it and get drastically different results.

 

Ask for a battery health check. It tells you the battery degradation and after 2-3 years might be about 95% and considered fairly normal.

You should also knock about 20% off WLTP range for for realistic numbers.

EVDB gives real range of 185 miles in milder weather and about 130 in winter. So those numbers seem about right.

 

Your actual ‘comfortable’, day-to-day range will be more around the 80%->20% figure. If you’re doing public charging you’ll not tend to charge over 80% because in most cases, charging takes much longer past that. And if you’re trying to preserve battery life, the recommendation is also not to charge over 80% at home overnight, unless you’re using the vehicle immediately the next morning. As well as being recommended by the manufacturer not to let the charge drop below 20% too often, most people will want to start looking for a public charge point at 20%, if they’re en route or out-and-about.

So as a working figure, multiply your nominal range by about 0.6 to get what your ‘comfortable’ range is. So for the EVDB figures, that’s 111 / 78 miles if you start at 80% and recharge at 20%

Obviously, having a home charge point makes a huge difference to the viability of an EV for many people. So make sure before you buy that there are no issues with that, such as lack of smart meter, poor SIM signal, being on a looped supply, difficulties routing cables from the consumer unit etc. People also often take the opportunity to update an old CU if an EVSE is being added. Best way to do this is to get a local electrician in to survey your place and come up with options and prices to fit something. Don’t just go online, pay a deposit, and assume your house will be ‘standard’ - Octopus say about 1 in 5 of their customers have some sort of complication to installation (and that’s the people they don’t reject as too complicated to bother with, like me).

 

176/185 sounds about right for indicated range, how many miles had it done? My van(75kwh) shows about 171 miles when full and has for the last year or so.

 

The range indicated is calculated on how and conditions it was recently driven in.

The WLTP fig is probably attainable in summer due to warmer battery which helps and no heating required. In the worst of winter conditions with heater on you will get 1/2 the WLTP range.

The fig you quote is quite acceptable for the conditions. You could also check that the reading you are seeing is with the heater switched off.

In actual fact batteries do not really degrade like everybody thought they would in the early days and this portrayed by the media.

 

WLTP stands for Way Lower Than Promised (NEDC - Not Even Damn Close)

 

Calling RBRIAN, RBRIAN? Someone here needs to talk vans...you da expert...

 

I asked for the seller to charge the vehicle over night so I could check the range when full. Which I read was an easy way of checking the health of the battery.

The real range varies too much with temperature for that to be useful, and the dashboard estimated range (as described above) is influenced by how the vehicle was driven recently, and is notoriously inaccurate on some vehicles anyway. The Nissan LEAF (and relatives like E-NV200 van) was the only EV I know of with a real separate battery health indicator, though that was quite crude and not terribly reliable either.

An onboard diagnostics tool (attached dongle and associated app) can give you a chart of every battery cell voltage and the spread of cell voltages from lowest to highest, which is a more useful indicator of battery health but requires expert knowledge to interpret usefully.

 

If I worked in EV sales, and was of a dishonest disposition, then I would try and make sure that any EV on the forecourt had been reset and then driven very, very gently for a long test drive to get the GOM reading up to the highest possible range indication. It'd obviously be completely false, but it does seem that many people assume the displayed range guess is accurate, so place far too much trust in it.

 

If I worked in EV sales, and was of a dishonest disposition, then I would try and make sure that any EV on the forecourt had been reset and then driven very, very gently for a long test drive to get the GOM reading up to the highest possible range indication.

In the winter you could do it by putting a heater under it too.
And if the car is in an indoor showroom, it will have an unfair advantage.
Some potential buyers would worry about how long it had been left at 100%, of course...

 

176 normal sounds reasonable. I think mine has been about 170 on a full charges over the winter. It's 3 years old and 38000miles. It will go up maybe 10 miles when it's warmer and the real range the way I drive it will probably go up 20-30 miles summer compared to winter. The original vans were more like a WLTP of 195-200 depending upon the exact spec. The new ones e.g. just 2025 have improvments and it's up to 210-220 miles.

In real life it all depends how you drive it. I have done a max of 220 miles drafting lorries with a slight tail wind in warm weather. I have been as low as a range of 115 miles doing 70 mph into a head wind with heavy rain and about 5 degrees. Weight in the van is not a big effect. Ladders on the roof are not at all good and high speed is not good.

With an OBD dongle and something like the car scanner app you can get a reading on the battery state of health (SOH) which I curently have at 91.31%

 

Weight in the van is not a big effect. Ladders on the roof are not at all good and high speed is not good.

Based on my experience in a different small-van-with-seats, I can endorse that.

With one minor exception: in proper hilly countryside, the weight does make a bit of difference, and of course whether going uphill or down can have a huge effect. One of my occasional trips in in the Peak District, seven or eight miles each way to the nearest railway station. Repeatably this gives nearly 8 miles/kWh in one direction and 2 miles/kWh in the other.

For the rest, exactly right. Take off the roof bars for any weeks you aren't using them, and ease off on the cruising speed for longer journeys.

 

@Rbrian are you able to provide some insight here, too?

 

I have a 50kWh (45kWh usable, but as far as i know the recall reduced that to 43kWh) Vivaro, fully laden at all times with ladders on the roof, weighing 3 tonnes. I do mostly short journeys with long gaps in between, so the heater is almost always on, which reduces the efficiency further. I average 1.8 miles per kWh, but there is a bit difference between winter and summer - as low as 60 miles on a full charge in winter (guessometer says 123), as high as 110 in summer (guessometer says 134). At an indicated 63mph (actually 59mph) on the motorway, after the first leg, which always uses more energy due to the heater, it managed about 80 miles for each subsequent leg. Far short of the the 134 miles the guessometer claims.

There haven’t been any reports of poor battery health on Stellantis EVs, but the guessometer is well known to be hilariously inaccurate, worse than just about any other manufacturer.

 

Reading this thread and I only just realised that changing the drive mode from Power to Normal to Eco visually changes the range shown in the display. Sometimes...well, more frequently as I get older, its the obvious stuff that passes me by!

 

I have the Vivaro-E Life (8 seater version) and as others have said the GoM is wildly inaccurate. Mine is the 50kWh battery so I just go with 1% = 1 mile and anything extra (in summer) is a bonus. I don't carry anything on the roof but usually have at least 2-3 kids in the car. The worst I've had is 1.9mi/kWh in winter (below 5degC outside) with the heater blasting. On a recent 31 mile round trip (14deg outside, cabin set to 16 and not heating, A/C on) got 3.1mi/Kwh so drive it sensibly and it can cover a decent range. The only way to get actual battery health is as others have said getting a Bluetooth dongle for the OBD port, I've never bothered personally as I got the car 6 months old about a year ago. Honestly, so far it's been great!