Well, I’ve been driving the AVID CUE-V now for almost 3 weeks and what better weather could you ask for to push an electric car to its limits! The CUE-V (stands for Compact Urban Electric Vehicle) is a great little city car; perfectly sized for shorter urban trips or commuting to and from work.
My normal home to work journey is about 18 miles from South Shields to Blyth, which currently takes about an hour with the usual horrendous queues for the Tyne Tunnel. So how has the car performed?
Acceleration in this small car from 0-30mph is perfectly adequate. It is a little slow to pull away from rest, but you soon get used to this and once you are doing a few miles per hour it pulls away smoothly and progressively, right up to 30 or 40mph – at these speeds it feels just as lively as most other small city petrol cars. The acceleration is accompanied by a steadily increasing whine from the motors (it sounds a bit like a milk float), which is quite loud at lower speeds, but not annoyingly so – pedestrians sometimes take a look over their shoulder to see what the strange noise is!
After 40mph the acceleration is rather sluggish - it certainly won’t win any drag races – but given this car is designed as an urban vehicle, most of the time you will only be driving at 30-40mph anyway. I understand AVID are developing a more “pokey” drive system and I hope to get to drive this version before the end of my trial. Once the car reaches 55 – 65 mph it cruises along quite happily, and the motor noise reduces to a quiet whine which you quickly get used to and really don’t notice – it sounds quieter than most comparable petrol cars at this speed and road noise predominates the motor noise.
Compared to other electric cars I have driven I find the regenerative braking is quite mild; not really feeling any different from a normal Internal Combustion (ICE) car. Some EV’s have a much harsher braking effect when you lift your foot off the accelerator and personally I would prefer a little more regenerative braking to save on brake pad wear – and it is strangely gratifying to “feel” the batteries sucking power back out of the motors – you think you are getting something for nothing when it is regenerating! AVID say the car has been deliberately set up to behave like this and that the amount of regenerative breaking can be changed by a software update. I’d like to see this as a user adjustable setting – like an “standard” or “super economy” mode switch.
So how has it performed in the “arctic weather” we have had in the last few weeks? Pretty good overall! Traction in the snow is surprisingly good and I couldn’t resist the temptation to throw the car around a bit in an empty car park to see how it handled in the icy conditions. The grip in the snow was better than most small cars I have driven, with very little wheel spin – and even when the wheels do spin you can easily bring it back under control by backing off the throttle a little. One day last week on my way into work I met a neighbour in my street coming the other way in his Volvo. We stopped for a quick chat and he advised me not to go to work as the A19 was blocked by an accident. So I reversed the little CUE-V all the way back up the street and parked it up on my drive. Then I had to get a shovel to help dig his Volvo out as it had got itself completely stuck where we had been chatting!
The interior of the car is comfortable but fairly basic. There is a decent radio and single slot CD player, electric windows all round and the driving position is good with clear visibility. My only gripe is that the heater system does not cope well with the severe cold weather conditions we have been having this last 3 weeks. AVID have just up-rated the heater system for my trial, and whilst it is a definite improvement, it still falls far short of the heat output from an ICE car. This is one area AVID need to address – because although the weather we have had has been exceptionally cold, the heater should still be able to keep its occupants comfortable. I’m sure that AVID will be able to address this problem by increasing the output of the heater element (albeit at the expense of range!).
As for the car’s range – Well I haven’t come anywhere near running out of power yet. In fact it is great that I haven’t had to visit a petrol station for 3 weeks – you simply plug the car in when you get to work or back home (takes 30 seconds) and it’s fully re-charged for your next journey. I measured how much energy I put in to recharge from about 50% to almost full and it cost about 90p! That’s incredible value for money. I think I have done about 60 miles on a single charge with the battery indicator still showing plenty of power left, so I reckon it should easily do 80+ miles on a single charge. I haven’t attempted to let the batteries run very low yet – I think I will wait for the weather to improve before pushing it that far!
The car I am driving is one of the early production models and the AVID team were quick to respond when I encountered a couple of minor problems caused by a software glitch in the first week of the trial. After a quick software update the car has been reliable and trouble free for the last 2 weeks (apart from the under-performing heater). These weather conditions have been a great test for the battery technology and I am very impressed with how well it performed in sub zero temperatures. I am sure AVID will iron out the few minor issues I experienced on later production models.
Overall I have to say that driving an electric vehicle is fun, easy, convenient and best of all (notwithstanding the initial cost) incredibly cheap. The “fuel” cost of an electric vehicle is so much cheaper than a petrol or diesel car. This has got to be future motoring!
Ian Finch
Business Development Manager - Distributed Energy
Narec
Phone: +44 01670 357727
Fax: +44 01670 359666
Mobile: +44 07525 236046
Ian.Finch@narec.co.uk
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