An adventurous tale of electric motoring
The eGolf is the all-electric version of the multi-award winning Volkswagen which has, for decades, been all things to all men and women and which has been the foundation upon which the German manufacturer has conquered all before it for such a long time.
Like all electric cars — so many of which are now appearing before our eyes — the eGolf is the same as any other Golf in terms of practicality, space, fit and finish and all the other traits which has made the car such a winner. But, and this is a very big ‘but’, it has a very limited range.
That single fact renders the car — for me anyway — as being completely useless for perhaps 90% of potential car owners in the known world.
In the normal course of events, , test cars are delivered to me by the various distributors, but in the case of the eGolf, it had to be transported from Dublin on a truck because it is incapable of making the entire journey under its own steam. I thus collected it from my local VW dealer.
Interestingly, when I did collect it, one of the salesmen ushered me to the car and commented he had not yet himself actually driven one.
As is the case with all electric cars, there is absolutely no sound when you turn it on and that pervasive silence — eerily — continues when you set it in motion.
The salesman asked me to demonstrate the car’s absolute lack of noise, but after just 5m shouted: “Whoa. My God that’s weird,” and proceeded to exit the car like a man whose trousers were on fire.
Volkswagen maintain the eGolf has a range when fully charged of 190km, but the reading when I collected it told me I had 176km of useable motoring. By the time I got it from Turner’s Cross to Douglas, it was at 156km.
So, having to undertake a journey of roughly 135km the following day from Cork to West Cork, I plugged it in to my home charging point until it told me it was fully loaded. Stubbornly, it refused to give a reading of more than 176km of range, although once on the move, the reading did briefly indicate a range of 187km, before rapidly scrolling down to 172km.
Now this is where the adventure bit starts. Heading west, the reading did not appear to be diminishing at too great a rate, until I got as far as Dunmanway, after which it appeared to plummet like an untethered skyscraper lift.
By the time I got to Bantry Cross, with 36km left to my destination, the car was indicating an available range of just 50km, well shy of that claimed for the car by the manufacturer and despite the fact I’d been freewheeling where I could to save juice.
Much further freewheeling and terribly judicious use of the right foot — most uncharacteristic for yours truly, it has to be said — and I arrived at my destination with a range of just 5km left and the car in a self-imposed mode which will not allow it above 30kph. I was in a bog of sweat and my nerves were frayed nearly beyond repair. That’s where you get the heroism and derring-do part of the story.
The tragic bit comes next. The eGolf can be charged via the aforementioned fast-charging wall unit, or simply by plugging it in to a normal plug socket. Not having access to one of the former, or even a public charging point (try to find one of them in West Cork), the latter option was the only one left.
Duly plugged in, the eGolf took, by my reckoning, some 12 hours and 15 minutes to get it back to a fully charged state. Now that’s pretty tragic in my view.
Facing a return trip to Cork, I was not so sure I could cope with the sheer naked excitement of another nerve shredding trip, but it was going to have to be done if VW wanted their car back.
Having learned a bit about how to drive this thing — and to drive it properly you really have to forget about everything you know about how to drive a conventional car — I managed to get it back to Cork with a staggering 27km of range left. I was elated with the achievement. What an adventure.
However, there are a couple of salient points worth mentioning here. Motor manufacturers might coo and crow about how green they are, and VW are certainly not alone here, when in fact they know as well as anyone else battery technology is still primitive and electric cars are thus only useful to people with a specific set of motoring requirements, ie only really operating in an urban environment.
Also, car makers are required by the powers-that-be to limit themselves to a set amount of CO2 emissions from their entire range of cars. Building a large number of electric cars with zero emissions therefore allows them scope to balance things up in other areas of production.
Clearly then there is an element of smoke and mirrors going on here. Call me a cynic if you will — I’m not, by the way, I’m a realist — but if you believe the current generation of battery powered cars are a sustainable answer to slashing CO2 emissions worldwide, then you’re living in fantasy land.
The eGolf is actually a nice thing to drive and is as well appointed as you’d expect any Golf to be, but I do not believe it to be the solution to our global environmental problems. And none of its’ rivals are either.
The Cost: €33,770 as tested - a ‘normal’ petrol Golf 1.2 costs just €19,995.
The Engine: Not the best.
The Specification: As beautifully built and kitted out as you’d expect a €33k Golf to be.
The Overall Verdict: Not the answer to global warming.
Star Rating: *
