Where can I find a charging station? Will it be compatible with my car model? And especially: How long will it take me to charge the car? Precisely this last question is the one that is holding back the electric vehicle market the most (and rightly so). This is why all car manufacturers are looking for a way to reduce the times in which they are forced to stay stop at the column before starting the journey again. In this technological race, however, there are those who shuffle the cards in an unclear way by declaring performances which however do not correspond to the reality of the facts. A bit like what happens for autonomy: the manufacturers declare that with a full tank the car travels, for example, 500 kilometres, when in reality the average distance is much lower.
Effective charging speed
This gap between what was stated in the booklet and reality was highlighted by the English weekly Autocar who tested the effective charging speed of electric cars, trying to maintain the same conditions as much as possible for each test. Thus it emerges that charging never occurs with the declared values and especially – it is not constant in the various phases of charging: the peaks are usually obtained during the first phases, when the battery is around 30%, while approaching full charge the charging power decreases. Considering this, the data becomes even more important average power that the car is able to receive (and the infrastructure can deliver) throughout the charging period, from 10 to 90%, a percentage recommended by the manufacturers to preserve the battery as much as possible.
Some examples
The Let’s EV6 records an average power of 169 kW. The Korean electric on paper can charge up to 350 kW, but remains far behind in the test, reaching a maximum of 224 kW. There Polestar 2 in the Long Range version it can charge on average with 124 kW compared to a declared maximum power of 205 kW. During the test, the maximum power achieved was 192 kW. The Porsche Taycan claims a maximum charging power of 270 kW, but during the test it reached a maximum of 263 kW.
The average charging power was 198 kW. It claims a maximum power of 170 kW and reaches a maximum of 165 kW when testing the sedan Mercedes EQE 350. The average power of the detected charge is 131 kW. The Kia EV9, which manages to replicate the maximum power declared with the peak one during the test: 210 kW. However, the average charging power drops to 170 kW. And again the Jeep Avenger has around a 40 KW gap between declared and reality. The 500 Abarth 29 kW waste. For the Smart we are at 70 kW. But for the Tesla Model Y it reaches almost 50%. The performance of BMW and Volkswagen.