1400km (870 mile) EV v Diesel challenge! There was just $5 between them…the results surprised!

I wanted to put that theory to the test and today were going to drive an EV, a diesel Audi and also a hybrid support car from Adelaide to Sydney which is a long distance, and we want to see exactly how inconvenient it is come into this shot. Elbows elbows uh, co, founder of car expert is going to be joining me. Um elbows has a collection of supercars and knows absolutely nothing about driving gently. This is correct. This is correct, which is why theyve given me, the diesel long range, which Ive turned off the aircon for and Ive, put the pressure up as high as they possibly go, because I cannot lose to this man. Yes, so uh part of our aim today is to figure out exactly how much longer its going to take me to do the trip in an EV. The EV that we have is the Kia ev6 long range its the base model, and this is the Audi Q5. 35, TDI Diesel there it is um, it is basically the entry level to the Q5 range, but it also has a 70 liter tank at averages less than five liters per 100K. So its going to be really interesting to see how it goes and exactly how much time I have to waste as part of this so um yeah. The whole thing uh were going to film as much as we can along the way, but we will sit down later on to go through the results and give you a better idea of exactly how long everything has taken and how inconvenient the charging infrastructure has been.

So, as elbows mentioned with checked High pressures, what did you go up to uh? Look? They started on 31 theyre Now 46. 31., my God that is bad. It was very comfortable now its not so much okay. Well, the theory behind that is high. Tire pressure, less rolling resistance, more range with the ev6 Ive left it at 36, which is the recommended tire pressure simply because I want to see how it goes. Youve brimmed that thats at 100 lets Ive got my M, Ms and Red Bull lets get out of here. Yes, quite a lot of that stuff, actually weve packed enough for about three weeks away, so well see how we go Music. So one thing I just realized is, you may not actually know Adelaide all that well and if you dont, Adelaide is like at sea level, but to get onto the freeway out of Adelaide. You go up these like super steep hills for a long time, and obviously that is killing my consumption here. I was at sort of around 17 kilowatt hours per 100 Ks in and around Adelaide, but now Im sort of sitting around that 22 marker and its drop. My range slightly as well, but I am trying to use – oh God, heres the 100 side, which is gradually creeping up from 60 to 100. Here. One of the tools I used during the trip is an awesome website called a better route, planner, its a free site that takes weather, topology and realistic EV driving range into account.

To give you an idea of where and how often youre going to need a charge. Ill be using it as a guide for the this trip to figure out where and when I need to stop so one thing I didnt realize about this Audi is that it doesnt active cruise control thats, because the absolute base model, however, that kind of ruins my Plans so a real test of my right foot now elbows, I deliberately picked the Inland route because it gets us as close as possible to his realistic driving range for him to make the 1400 kilometer trip. He needs to consume less than five liters of fuel per 100 kilometers. Yes, he can obviously stop anywhere to fill up his car pretty quickly, unlike me, in the EV, but he is taking the challenge seriously and to make sure he doesnt run out of fuel. He has decided to drive a little slower to make sure he actually makes it to Sydney okay, so we are charging. This is a 350 kilowatt charger. This is capable of charging 800 volts and up to about 250 kilowatt Peak now. These are interesting because these actually have liquid cooled cables. Thats. Why, when you put your hand on that, you can actually feel it vibrating a bit, because it is putting fluid through this cable to keep it nice and cool. So we plugged in at 80 and its even pulling like 80 or 90 kilowatts there at 80, which is pretty impressive.

So the suggestion here is to take us to about 95, and this should be enough to get us to our next stop, which is a little while away Music, Music, foreign Music. Just say how much I love this country. It is um yeah! I love doing road trips like this, because you get to see you get to see Australia and you get to see exactly what its all about. How are we traveling? So I have jacked the speed up a little bit when we were leaving um Adelaide. Obviously, it was quite hilly and a lot of speed, cameras and stuff like that. So what Ive done now is put the speed up to uh real speed and when I say that Im not using the indicated speed on the speedometer Im using a GPS speed here, and that is not only increasing the energy consumption its decreasing our range. So were now currently averaging 22 kilowatt hours per 100K since we charged that figure is 20.1, since we left Adelaide. So you can see that things are picking up a little bit now, but yeah its all going well so far, really quite comfortable in this. The local rod and handling tune they did on av6 compared to ionic 5 that missed out and all that stuff. I think its pretty evident, and here in in country, Australia, where youre getting much a greater variety of road conditions. This feels far more at home than something like an ionic 5 does so yeah pretty impressed with it.

So far and ovig alvors has been cheating and there is a fast approach. Electric Kia is that you ahead of me: thats right, Im saving fuel. Well, I am going to not save fuel and go around you bye, because, because um Im going to go to the charger, and hopefully by the time I get there, I can have some juice before you turn up and for us to have some lunch. No Im. Considering increasing my average speed to 91 just to get that extra one kilometer Im, not even speeding that much either uh good idea. Well, I will see you at odion and uh well, see how we go enjoy. Looking at the back of the ev6 own is the next stop on our charging Journey. The only issue here is that the charger is a pretty slow charger for a DC charger and its going to take a little while for the ev6 to actually get to its full charge and the recommended charge capacity to reach our overnight. Stop in Hay, which is in New South Wales, Music, I might just keep going um, because youre just gon na have to wait all that extra time you made up after discovering. There was nothing open for food and onion elbows ditched us and I decided to pull the plug a little early to catch up to him. Ah, this is totally unexpected, but the road to Sydney from where we were is actually closed.

Theyve now told me to go back, like 38 kilometers to another town to go on this insane detour, which I cannot work out where it is and Im wasting incredibly precious milliliters of my premium diesel fuel. So as elbows started explaining the bridge crossing the Murray River. In piangel was closed that closed at about 10 minutes before we arrived so our detour added about 70 kilometers to the trip after having to drive south to Naya to cross the river and then back again to connect to the original road that were on after getting Around the road closure I finally called out with elbows again he was pretty hungry again, so I threw him a banana laughs. I think be right in the head, as we got close to the range kept creeping down thanks to the cold weather. I have two percent battery left, um and five kilometers range, and I have four kilometers left to drive. My nav is basically taking me direct to the charger and I will arrive with virtually nothing left in the tank, so um yeah, hey was our overnight stay and there was a slow ish DC charger in town. Thankfully, there was nobody there at that time of night and were able to plug the ev6 up to charge at 50 kilowatts. While we went to the truck stop to eat dinner, literally two kilometers range, one percent battery left um yeah that um that detour really screwed us, so average ended up being 20.

8 kilowatt hours per 100ks. The decision to take the car off the charger a little earlier, probably wasnt the best idea because uh, if it, if we, I guess Id, have kept it in a little bit longer. We wouldnt be in this situation and in addition to that, if the road Works werent happening and the road wasnt closed, we also wouldnt be in this situation either but um. Yes, it is one of the benefits of having many fuel stations. You could just fill up a car, whereas with an EV you literally have to make it to the destination. Otherwise, youve got to find a power plug in a random spot to fill the car so its the last day um. I just thought Id just mentioned something here so Im: bringing the car now to get it up to 100, just to make sure were all good for the rest of the trip. The rest of the trip is actually all uh very fast charges, so it means Ill. Be stopping for short periods of time and theres less range anxiety because were getting closer to Sydney and theres more and more infrastructure, but I think this is just a good example. Last night we got here with one percent and there is one charger in this town. So had I have basically arrived here needing the charge and there was other EVS waiting here. I probably would be out of luck to be honest, so um yeah.

This is part of the problem with EV infrastructure in Australia. There are just limited fast charging stations around, and it does mean that on busy weekends and stuff like that, you may actually be waiting instead of just being able to turn up and plug up like weve, been over to my strategy yesterday was to stick to about 90 kilometers an hour to keep the fuel usage down Ive managed to do about 4.7 liters per 100. So far we had a bit of a detour which added about 60 case to the journey, which is really frustrating, because that was my buffer zone and Im going to have to find a truck today to basically just Coast behind as close as legally possible. All the way to Sydney to really reduce my aerodynamic, drag and hopefully thatll, give me another one or two liters of fuel, which is what this is going to come down to, but no matter what happens, I cant let Paul win. Thats thats the primary goal, with a little over 700 kilometers to go things get better here for me, because all of the charges from here on in are 350 kilowatt, fast charges and according to a better route plan, and we dont actually need to stop for very Long with each of these charging stops, we are just rolling into tar cutter. So a funny Point well interesting point: this is the Midway point between Melbourne and Sydney. So there you go Irrelevant for Adelaide to Sydney Journey but uh, just a fun fact.

So part of the problem is because these cables are so short and theres, so much tension on them. Theres, a locking mechanism in the car that locks the cable in position and then, if there is tension on it, it basically doesnt allow it to lock, and it means it wont start. So I can see now its actually locked in properly and it should actually kick off so this um. This should actually really pick up a bit of pace because were at 20 state of charge. The ramp profile here is quite strong and also because uh. This is like the proper 350 kilowatt charging setup. The batterys already warm, because weve been driving a sort of all day should really start to pick up some steam. Yet again, elbows decided to leave the second. He finished his Chico roll instead of waiting for us, but it didnt take long for me to reel him in again and pass him as we got closer to Sydney next. Stop for us is Sutton forest for a quick top up. This will be our last stop before arriving in Sydney and brimming both the Q5 and the ev6. So lets quickly. Talk about inconvenience weve been here now for a little while waiting for this to charge um, but it hasnt actually been all that inconvenient, especially on the 350 kilowatt charges, theyre, actually quite fast in terms of how quickly theyre Plumbing energy back into the battery. To give you enough range for that next stretch, it really is only when youre on the 50 kilowatt charges or or the 75s that it takes a little bit more time.

But even now, Ive just arrived here plugged up uh gone inside to do a quick week and then back into the car, so yeah pretty impressed with that. So far, next stop is going to be Sydney where Im going to brim this and then well figure out exactly how much this has cost compared to the diesel Music. Thank you, Music. Hey, hey! We made it. I cant believe we made it actually uh 80 kilometers left still in the tank and were in Sydney finally made it. So I found a charger here in this Shopping Center. Im Gon na Fill this thing up now that last leg was fantastic because it was basically downhill from Southern Forest. It used like 14 kilowatt hours per 100 case, which is pretty remarkable, so we use barely any battery at all so Im gon na brim. It now well have a look at how much this costs compared to these winter race. So weve arrived back at the car expert office people working hard in the background there and its time to go over our results, and before I do, I just want to reiterate. Yes, obviously, if you were driving an internal combustion car, you could have easily stopped countless times, but I really did want to set a challenge here to elbows to get to Sydney um in the in the hope that he did break down somewhere. But I think he wanted to set a challenge where I would definitely lose, and I didnt that was the main thing.

Yes, its very disappointing now in terms of how much everything cost tell me how much it costs you to fuel your car because we brimmed it at the start, brimmed it at the Finish as well, and this will give us an indication of exactly how much fuel You use for that trip. Yes, so I used 62.33 liters and it cost 130.83. Now I just want to point out that diesel is super expensive at the moment. Yes, and under normal circumstances, it might not have been that bad okay. That means you averaged 4.38 liters per 100 KS, now heres, something surprising my trip. I added up all of the charging stops that I had to make keep in mind one of the major charging stops, which was our stop at hay, where the car almost ran out of electricity. That was free of charge so with without that one sort of charged included our 125.56. So – and I should point out also that I did 1420.6 kilometers yeah right – you were a little bit less than that, because I was the guinea pig finding all the routes that were close. Yes, yes, where that detour popped up, you had to go. Do some hunting uh, so you ended up doing 20ks less than me more than you yeah or more than me, sorry yeah and it was uh only five dollars cheaper for me, um and I had a look at the numbers here. If we had to have charged it hey on a fast charger and paid for it, I would have actually used.

It would have cost me more to do that same trip, which really surprised me, because the whole thing about EVS is lots of things, keep surprising you and theyre, so obvious, youre paid more for the car and you paid more to charge it and you got to Spend heaps of time waiting around well, I could have kept going well. You know I dont really wait around that long. So just to recap, um. It took probably the final time when we stopped the stopwatch. It was 15 minutes between you filling and charging. I think there was a bit of pity stopping there for your along the way I had to stop and eat because he wouldnt want him to go hungry, so that is very interesting uh. I was, as I said, surprised by that it shows you that you can still drive an internal combustion car, whether its an efficient diesel or a hybrid and itd still be cheaper than an EV. But it also does show you that you can do this type of trip in an AV as well. It is expensive, but you can actually go Regional like we did and do a long distance trip had. We have gone the more popular way which is closer to Melbourne. Theyre all fast charges and I wouldnt have had to stop anywhere near as long as I did at ogin and hay with always excuses. It is true, and I did like the ev6.

It was quite nice. Well, to be honest, my car was the base model of that Audi and it didnt even have active cruise. I was surprised it had power windows, so if I had to pick which car I was in, I would have definitely pick the Kia yeah, because I think you had a much more comfortable Drive yeah, something being overtaken about 30 times during that trip was very frustrating. Yes and why love boys was doing 90ks an hour to make sure he actually made it to Sydney? I would blast past him regularly at um nearish the speed limit to make sure he didnt beat me so yeah in a real world circumstance. I would do 110, which was the speed limit yeah and I would have just stopped and refilled and I would have got there way faster near still fun challenge anyway. So let us know in the comments section below: did you enjoy the video? What do you want to see us doing next because I quite enjoyed our road trip? I liked assaulting you with a banana. I thought that was good fun. I think it still hurts. Let us know down there if you did enjoy this video, please make sure you like it and you share it with your mates and if you havent done so already subscribe to the channel and press the Bell icon. But until next time see you later see you later, I did.