Allow me to make you a promise: I’m going to fill this running report with observations about the Alpine’s real-world driving range and what that means for custodians like me, then stop wittering on about such tedious things for good (or at least until the weather has warmed up and there’s something new and interesting to say on the matter).
While all of that stuff is pretty tedious to read and even duller to write about, in the case of this car it is absolutely fundamental to your ownership experience. I have to address it. Ignoring it would be like writing a Siberia travelogue and not mentioning the weather. So bear with me.
As I write, the car has been here for two months. In that time temperatures have been anchored in the low single digits, occasionally creeping up to 8 or 9 deg C. Conditions EVs don’t particularly like, in other words. And it’s not just a battery chemistry thing – electric cars are less efficient in winter for numerous reasons, including the need to run the cabin heating system (the A290 has a heat pump as standard which helps, but warming the interior is still a significant drain on battery life), regenerative braking being less effective because the battery can’t receive a charge at the same rate, and also obscure factors such as the density of cold air creating more aerodynamic drag and the tyres being colder, which means lower pressures and more rolling resistance.
