Going on a road trip with an EV in Malaysia can be challenging, given the fact that our EV infrastructure is still actively being developed. So let’s say you decided to embark on a road trip from KL to Penang – What is your best strategy? Drive economically on one single charge or stop to charge but drive faster to make up for the lost time? Well, we decided to do just that with two Volvo C40 EVs to find out.
In the name of science, we chose two identical electric cars to compare the effectiveness of the two different driving styles. We picked the Volvo C40 which has 451 km of range on the WLTP test cycle, which should be enough to reach Penang from KL on a single charge. GC decided to drive economically on a single charge, while Eu Jin decided to drive fast and stop to charge. Which driving style is more effective (and can actually reach the destination)? Here’s how it went…
To give you a better idea of the car that we use for this road trip experiment, the Volvo C40 was launched in Malaysia in late 2022 with only one variant offered – the dual-motor all-wheel drive version. The two motors make a combined output of 408 hp and 660 Nm, which translates to a century sprint time of 4.7 seconds.
As for its battery, the C40 houses a 78-kWh battery pack which gives the earlier-mentioned 451 km of range. It is the same battery pack in the Volvo XC40 but the coupe roofline of the C40 gives better aerodynamics, resulting in 13 km more range.
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Charging can be done at a maximum rate of 11 kW with AC charging and 150 kW with DC fast charging. The former takes 8 hours to fully charge the car while the latter takes 28 minutes to charge the car from 10% to 80%.
How did the Volvo C40 fair in this experiment with two different driving styles? Watch the video to find out.
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