EV efficiency isn’t fixed at the factory. The same car on the same road can swing from 14 to 22 kWh/100km depending on how it’s driven and prepared. These eight habits are ordered roughly by impact — adopt the first few and you’ll see the difference on your very next trip.
1. Slow down — especially on the motorway
Aerodynamic drag grows with the square of speed, which makes motorway pace the single biggest efficiency lever. Cruising at 110 km/h instead of 130 km/h typically cuts consumption by 10–15% — often the difference between one charging stop and two.
2. Precondition while plugged in
Warming (or cooling) the cabin and battery while still connected to the charger uses grid energy instead of battery energy. In winter, preconditioning can save 5–10% of a typical trip’s consumption, and the battery charges faster on arrival too.
3. Heat the person, not the cabin
Heated seats and steering wheels use a fraction of the energy of the cabin heater — watts versus kilowatts. Drop the cabin setpoint a couple of degrees and let the contact heaters do the work. Cars with heat pumps lose less here, but the habit still pays.
4. Check your tyres monthly
Under-inflated tyres increase rolling resistance and can quietly add 3–5% to consumption — before the safety cost. Follow the door-card pressures, and if you’re replacing tyres, look for low rolling-resistance EV-rated options.
5. Use regenerative braking properly
Every brake pedal press turns momentum into heat; every regen deceleration puts most of it back in the battery. Anticipate traffic, lift off early, and use one-pedal driving in town. Smooth anticipation is worth several percent in stop-start driving.
6. Remove the roof box and the roof bars
A roof box at motorway speed can add 10–20% to consumption; even empty bars cost a few percent. Take them off between trips — your future self at the charger will thank you.
7. Travel lighter on the daily grind
Weight matters most in stop-start driving, where you repeatedly spend energy accelerating mass. Clearing the boot of clutter you never use won’t transform your range, but it’s free efficiency.
8. Measure, then adjust
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Pick one habit, then measure a week of driving with the EV efficiency calculator and compare against your baseline. Once you have a number you trust, feed it into the range calculator to see exactly how many extra kilometres your new habits bought. If you’re new to efficiency units, this explainer decodes kWh/100km, Wh/km and mi/kWh, and our range guide shows the full planning method.