KILO-WTF?

With the expected growth of EV cars in the marketplace in the next few years, Wheels needs to publish their power consumption in kwh/100km for comparison. Currently listing their fuel consumption as 0.0L/100km is meaningless. Current test procedure PHEV is highly misleading resulting with unrealistic low L/100km as the electrical kw consumption is not included. Ideally Wheels needs to publish total power consumption of petrol, PHEV and EV cars for comparison purposes.

The new WLTP protocol measures EVS in terms of kwh per 100km. For plug-ins, the tests are repeated several times until the battery is fully depleted. It also introduces a utility factor (UF) – the amount of time the vehicle is likely to be driven on electrical power alone. For an EV the UF is 100 percent, for an ICE 0 percent. In the case of plug-in hybrid vehicles, the UF increases with their electrical range. – Ed