The car industry is famous for its love of acronyms and baffling jargon. We’re here to cut through the nonsense.
1. Range Anxiety
This is the fear that you will run out of battery power before reaching your destination or a charger. It’s an often unfounded state of mind and while understandable, there’s no need to panic. In most electric cars, the range is pretty accurate and achievable and most electric cars have built-in sat nav or an app, which will direct you to the nearest charge point before you get in trouble. You’ll soon get to know your electric car’s capabilities, stop staring at the range meter and start to relax into ownership.
2. CCS and CHAdeMO
The terms CCS and CHAdeMO refer to the two different charging connectors you’ll find on a rapid charger. All Nissan LEAF models (plus a very small number of other cars) come with a CHAdeMO connector while almost everything else are fitted with a CCS connector. CCS is now the adopted industry standard in Europe for electric cars, including electric Hyundais, and offers the widest choice of charging locations. Some charging stations such as IONITY and Tesla only have CCS connectors, so if you’re considering a model with CHAdeMO, it’s worth bearing this in mind.
3. BEV
Otherwise known as a Battery Electric Vehicle, a BEV is a car that gets its power solely from a battery, which is charged by plugging it in.
4. Tethered or untethered
When you choose a home charger, the unit you opt for is likely to come in two forms: tethered and untethered. This refers to the cable and how it connects to the charger unit. A tethered connection means that the cable is hard-wired to the charger. An untethered connection means that your charger is fitted with a socket into which you can connect your own cable. There’s no right or wrong solution – a tethered connection will be pricier and means that you have a cable to store by the charger. An untethered connection will be neater but you’ll need to get your cable out of the car and pack it away every time you charge your car.
5. Range meter
Driving range is important in an electric car because they may not be able to cover the same distances as a petrol or diesel car on a full ‘tank’ of charge. All electric cars have a display that shows you how many kilometres you can expect to get before the battery is empty. These are officially called range meter, but owners often refer to them as a ‘guess-o-meter’. That’s because the mileage displayed is only an estimate based on your current driving style. In the early days of electric cars, range displays were fairly basic, but more modern versions are far more sophisticated. Today, your electric car will take into account a host of variables that may affect your driving range - from outside temperature to your driving style. Many electric models also take into account historical data, so the longer you keep the car, the more accurate the range meter estimate will be.
6. Preconditioning
Preconditioning covers two different aspects of electric car ownership. Cabin preconditioning allows you remotely heat or cool the interior of your car before you get in. Most cars allow you to do this via an app, such as Hyundai’s Bluelink. You can either trigger cabin preconditioning manually on the app, or set a departure time. Battery preconditioning ensures that the battery pack is at the perfect temperature to accept a rapid DC charge. If your destination is set in the navigation system as a DC rapid charger, it will gently warm the battery pack as you approach the charger.
7. Kilometres per kWh
Efficiency and consumption in petrol and diesel cars are measured in miles per gallon or mpg. Which is a little strange given that we’ve been buying petrol and diesel in litres for around 20 years. The electric equivalent of mpg is miles per kWh and is actually quite easy to understand (for once). Most electric cars will show the current miles per kWh figure on the dashboard. In simple terms, it means that your car will use 1 kWh travel this distance. A standard family hatchback will return between 3.0 and 5.0 miles per kWh. So, if your car has a full 50kWh battery at the start of you journey and you are seeing 4.0 miles per kWh on the display, you can expect to have a driving range of 200 miles.
8. Regen
In a petrol car, you’re burning fuel to move forward. When you want to stop moving you press the brakes and pads squeeze against discs to slow the car down. It creates heat and wears away the brake parts. In an electric car, as soon as you lift off the accelerator pedal the motor automatically reverses itself to become a generator and starts harnessing the energy to top up the battery. This is called regenerative braking. In many modern electric cars you can tailor the amount of regen braking to suit your driving style and preference. In many electric cars, you can drive in what is referred to as ‘one pedal mode’, which means that the level of regen is as strong as a brake. This means that you’ll be using the brake pedal far less.
9. WLTP Range
This is the official figure which should give you an indication of how far an electric car will travel between charges. In theory it should be an accurate indicator of the sort of mileage you’ll be able to get, but in reality there are so many different factors which influence the range that you won’t really know until you try it yourself. The more you drive your electric car, the more you will get used to what range you can expect from your own driving style. The WLTP part stands for ‘Worldwide harmonized Light vehicles Test Procedure’ and was introduced after a few car makers were found to be ‘creatively’ finding ways of getting better fuel consumption and emissions figures in official tests. The law makers decided to introduce a tougher assessment which is closer to real world conditions. As a rule of thumb, we’d knock about 20% off these figures to give you a good idea of the distance you can comfortably cover.
10. kW and kWh
This is something that causes a lot of confusion – even among existing electric car owners. In simple terms, a kilowatt (kW) is a measurement of power. The rate at which a device uses electricity is always measured in kW, whether it’s a toaster, a heater, an electric car motor or a charger. An electric oven, for example, requires 6kW of electricity to work. If you were to run that oven for 1 hour, it will consume 6kWh of energy. If you have it on for 30 minutes, consumption will be 3kWh, and so on. A kilowatt hour (kWh) is a measurement of the amount the energy an electrical device uses. You pay your home energy bills in kWh because it’s a measurement of how much you have used – a quantity. An electric car battery is measured in kWh because it can store a fixed quantity of energy. Confusingly, both terms come into play when we talk about charging an electric car. A charger will always be rated in terms of kW (for example, a home charger will output 7kW) while a battery is measured in kWh. If you have a 7kW charger connected for seven hours, your battery will receive 49kWh of energy (7kW x 7 hours).