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How Efficient Is Your Electric Van?

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When you recharge an electric van, how far can it travel until the next recharge?

Now, the range of your electric van may not be an issue if you mainly travel short distances and can regularly top up the charge at home.

But what if you are travelling higher mileages, especially in a company van?

When you typically travel higher mileages, the efficiency of your van becomes more important.

So what do we mean by 'efficiency'? It's very simple. How far can you travel compared to the size of your van's battery?

Think of it like the miles per gallon (mpg) of a petrol or diesel van. The higher the mpg, the more efficient the van is.

Except that, with electric vans, the way efficiency is measured applies in reverse.

How Is Efficiency Measured?

The more miles you can travel in an electric van compared to the size of its battery, the more efficient the van.

Efficiency is measured by how far an electric van can travel compared to the size of the battery. The unit of measure is per 100 miles.

So, for example, if you have a van with a 50kWh battery and it can travel 200 miles on a full charge, the efficiency is 50kWh/200 miles = 0.25kWh per mile.

A van with a 100kWh battery that can still only travel 200 miles on a full charge would be less efficient at 100kWh/200 miles = 0.50kWh per mile.

This can be confusing, as the measure of efficiency is reversed.

With mpg you want more miles per gallon, but with electric vans you want less kilowatt hours used per mile.

Why Is Electric Van Efficiency Important?

Electric van efficiency is important because it effects both the cost of recharging and the time it takes to recharge.

If you typically travel relatively short distances and can recharge at home then efficiency perhaps doesn't matter as much as the cost of your van or its features.

But if you are travelling longer daily journeys and you have to recharge away from home, the battery efficiency of your van becomes much more important.

Why? Well, if you are charging away from home the cost typically doubles.

Home charging typically costs around 25p per kilowatt hour or less (depending on your electricity tarrif, especially if you have one of the electric van tarrifs where you recharge during 'off-peak' hours).

Public chargers are typically about double the cost of home charging, and faster chargers (which can get you back on the road quicker) are even more expensive, some times up to 3-4 times the cost of home charging (or more).

So how do you know the efficiency of your electric van?

Well, don't worry, we've built a calculator to do this for you.

About Our Electric Van Efficiency Calculator

Our electric van efficiency calculator will provides the published battery capacity of your new van and its range.

To work out the efficiency of your van we take the battery capcity (in kilowatt hours) and divide this by the range.

The resulting number is the efficiency of your electric van - how far it will travel on one recharge.

Keep in mind one important point though - the efficiency of your electric van will depend on how you drive it and whether you have enabled recharging when braking.

Keep in mind too that chargers may often only top-up your battery to around 80% of the battery capacity and therefore 80% of the range.

Why is this important?

Well, once you reach 80% capacity, sometimes the battery's lifetime is affected.

Recharging often to 100% capacity may shorten the life of your battery and this may, in turn, be visible to the van manufacturer if you make a claim on the battery's warranty.

Let's Get Started

Begin by selecting your electric company van. We'll then show you the efficiency of the battery compared to the range it can travel.

Remember that electric van efficiency can vary depending on the equipment you are using (such as the air conditioning or heater) and features such as heated windscreens and heated rear windows for de-frosting, plus how you drive it and whether you have enabled recharging when braking.

Please make sure you press the 'Enter' key on your keyboard/device when you type a value into a box.