A review of my second year with the EV Big Cat
It’s January 1st, 2022. Like many, I am not so much seeing the New Year in, as making sure the Old Year leaves. It’s difficult to draw firm conclusions in such abnormal times but, whilst normality seems unattainable, I will press on regardless.
Do I still like the I-PACE?
Yes, I do, very much so. Newer, shinier models have come along and the reviewers seem to have forgotten the I-PACE. I have seen most of the new contenders and followed all the new model reviews. However, I think the four year old Jag design still offers a competitive blend of performance, luxury, looks and practicality compared to the class of ’21.
That is not to say my I-PACE has been faultless. In early Feb 2021, on the coldest day of that year, the HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) decided to just be VAC. Through a perfect storm of the pandemic, Brexit and general supply chain chaos, it took nearly 2 months to find its way home. In fairness to Jaguar Land Rover, they lent me a top-spec Land Rover Discovery to keep me going (albeit in a considerably less planet-friendly manner).
Land Rover Discovery courtesy car from JLR
A few months later, the ABS and the powertrain had a serious falling out over an unresolved error code leaving it in limp mode. Fortunately, I only had to limp a few hundred metres. That fault was sorted by one of Jaguar’s excellent mobile engineers. I suspect this may be true of other legacy manufacturers, but the dealerships still seem afraid of EV’s. We are going to need a lot more people with the skillset, equipment and confidence of the Jaguar Assistance Team if we are going to make a successful transition to EVs.
Crunching the Data
The Jaguar lets you download statistics on journeys, and I combine that with my own log of charging information. I can tell you that I did 6,348 miles in 2021 and consumed 2,282kW. That is 2.8KW/mile - the I-PACE is a bit of a “Watt Guzzler”. I actually used 2,657kW from the chargers. This gives you an idea of the conversion losses of getting power into the batteries - about 14%. That energy cost me £339 for the year (5.3p per mile).
Insights into life with an EV
I-PACE Journey Length against Energy Consumption Graph
The chart above looks at my journeys in the I-PACE in 2021. A journey to the I-PACE log is between turning the “ignition” on and off. I may have traveled further in a day, but 150 miles is the most I did in any one driving stint. This compares with the 240 mile maximum real-world range. On the Y-axis is consumption in kW/100 miles and the journey distance in miles is on the X-axis. As you can see, shorter journeys are far more common and with a much wider range of energy consumption. This shows the greater impact of pre-heating, driving style and hills on short-distance journeys. My parents live 35 miles away, so there is a cluster of points at this distance. Most journeys are short enough to mean recharging away from home is unnecessary. I only used public chargers 15 times last year, and most of those were on multi-day vacations. What the chart shows is, most of the time, I drive somewhere, I drive home again and plugin. The day-to-day ownership experience is far better for me than with a fossil car. As the cliché goes “Your mileage may vary” but I suspect it doesn’t that much.