I should have said in the video that this is specifically a short journey test, based on the actual journeys that we do 95% of the time. I formulated these tests based on our own real world experiences, which at their worst were even worse than the findings in these tests. You will of course get a better range if you do longer journeys as the car has had a chance to warm up, but this is rarely the case for us personally and for a majority of road users as the average journey length is 8.4 miles in the UK. You will of course get better range (but not better power consumption) if you pre-heat the car when plugged in at home, but as these cars get more mainstream, people without a driveway or garage (us included) are not able to pre-heat their cars as they need to be plugged in. Many people in the comments (who I suspect are high-mileage early-adopters) disagree with the tests we've performed here, but these tests are a genuine reflection of our use and experiences with the Volkswagen ID.3. Other people may have different experiences, but this video is correct and accurate for our short journeys.

It's been -2C to -6C for the past week and I've made 7 journeys from a cold start in my ID3 Family edition with an average of just over 3 miles per journey. Each time I've had the heaters running on full blast as well as heated seats and steering wheel. My average range over these 7 journeys has been 2.5 miles per kwh which equates to a range of 145 miles. So something is seriously wrong with your ID3 if you are only getting 58 miles. Suggest you take it to the dealership to get it looked at.

What 50 miles are you joking! I have an ID.3 and constantly get a 160miles @ 80% charge even during last week’s below zero temps. That includes 22deg heat temperature with one bar on heated seated and steering wheel.

so around 100miles if you only do 3 mile journeys. If you do two of those per day thats a couple of weeks between charges - not bad. If you keep it between 20-80% you still have at least a week of 3 miles trips which is also fine. If you want to drive more often you can just choose to charge to 100% now and then which is fine (people fuss about this too much). I do think EV to ICE comparisons often ignore lack of efficiency on ICEs. They’ll say ‘oh WLTP is 250miles but realistically 200 and a bit less in winter’. But then fail to mention an ICE car with stated 40mpg will be exactly the same. More like 30-35mpg in real world and perhaps 20-25mpg in cold weather/short trips. People just know this is the case so it shoudln’t be that surprising to be the same on EVs. (VW should fix the forced battery heater though - ID3 should be an efficient city commuter)

Thank you for an interesting post. I can see that the specific circumstances covered by your test can create very low potential ranges for the ID.3 but it does also look like longer journeys and ore-heating whilst connected to a wall box will make a significant difference to the range, even in Winter. The video helped me to think some of those things through so was helpful. Thanks

Would be interesting if you popped around the corner to Hyundai Torbay and did this same test in a Kona or Ioniq, Incidentally they do have a page with the energy consumption broken down so you can see exactly what is consuming the power.

Many problems with this video. The title is misleading as these tests were only on very short runs. No real test tools used e.g.. OBD to properly measure battery temperature. VW's console data stats are rounded and indicative.

I get 180 miles doing 50miles a day motorway trips at 0c or lower. Managed to get 3.7miles/kWh the past couple of days at 5-10degrees which equals around 215mile range. Seems alright to me

Anticipating this issue, I paid a few hundred pounds extra and ordered an id.3 with a heat pump. And while the range does reduce slightly in the winter, it only falls to around 200-220 miles. I could get up to a maximum of 270 miles on a warm summer’s day. So my question is, why do VW not just fit the heat pump to all id.3s rather than offering it as an extra?

On longer city trips (30 minutes or more), my 58 kWh ID3 has a range of about 180 miles...3.10 miles per kWh Before the ID3, I had a petrol car with 15 mpg consumption on short cold trips and it was not even close to the level of comfort of the ID3. It took soooooo long to warm up...probably barely starting to warm up at the end of a 3 mi. journey and no way to program pre-heating or start heating remotely. Money-wise, it was 3 times more expensive to run than the ID3 on electricity.

Would the optional heat pump make any difference?

You MUST change the title of this video. It is unbelievably misleading. To even state that the range is AWFUL in winter you must do full runs over various distances. All you have done is proven want any real car enthusiast already knows.... cars have a poor mpg or mi/kWh during cold and short journeys.

It uses less battery to use the heated seat rather than the heater

Just shows how important preheating preconditioning is, whilst plugged in preferably, if you can remember to do it. Or better still, set a timed one for a regular journey.

This is really odd. I've had my ID3 Family Edition through two winters with sub-zero temperatures, the battery is used for a series of short journeys and i've never had less than 120 miles to a full charge. In the summer I typically get 230 miles making a series of short journeys. I'm not sure how you are only getting 58??

How do you switch battery heater on/ off

The one point that I would say that seems to have been missed is the battery heater won’t be on all the time. Yes it will consume energy to heat up the pack but then it will switch on and off to keep the battery at its optimum temperature. Therefore the figures you show in here are if the heaters are on all the time which is not how they would work in the real world. With possibly the exception of the cabin heater.

Did you try the unlimited ERS mod?

Can you do a test with the heat pump?

Winter range is a joke for short journeys, indeed. I still like my ID3 despite this. I would not want the battery heater to be permanently switched off, though. Hope they can optimize power consumption with software updates.

WLTP is precisely defined so comparing that to short journey efficiency is daft. You don’t mention long term battery health also daft. Turning heater off in winter lolz.

This video is very misleading. The range is not AWFUL. The range is poor for short journeys as the battery hasn't warmed up. Please change the title you are misleading lots of people

Have you tried this again with ID software 3.1? I think they reduced the battery heating in winter somewhat. I drive an Nissan Leaf 40kwh EV in Winter. Preheating the car for 15 minutes take away about 2% state of charge, but I get in a nice and warm car and no ice on the windscreen. In Norway with super soft nordic winter tyres and -5 to -10 degrees below cero, I would say short trip range with preheating every time gives you about 30% of WLTP range. Still worth it as long as I’m charging at home. My gasoline Toyota Avensis will do 0,62l per 10km in summer on long trips, and about 1,05l per 10km in winter short trips, but you will be wasting time scraping ice from the windows and be cold in the cabin for the first 5 mins.

Heat pump available?

Just think about how long it takes an ice car to even start heating the cabin. With an ev you can preheat the cabin / battery. Or you could just switch off the heater on a short journey and use the seat heating. Why bother heating up the who cabin if you’re only travelling for a few mins?

Thanks for a great video. I saw a few videos about comparing the heat pump id3 to a non heat pump id3 and was a good difference. Maybe try see how much preheating the car then the heating uses on your same journey. We preheating the Zoe when we can but use heating on 20-22 c on auto all winter and not seen a huge difference when tried same trip with it off . Getting 3 s around town about 2 miles each was about same temperature as u on the flat and upto mid 4s over 12 miles each way out the other day driving not eco with wet roads. Seen down to 2s in - 3 with heating on 24 c and shirt town runs but mostly 3 s with preheating

Interesting #ID3 comparisons. Certainly agree heated Steering Wheel & Seat is the way to go, and/or keep “cabin heating” on low setting. Heated front & rear screens. Never had less than 2.6m/kWh on similar short journey 4.6 mile round trip to buy a paper in -2°C outside temp #Hondae advance

Just did a 3 mile run from cold with heating on in my egolf (cold battery), water on the road and 7 degrees Celsius, it returned 4.0mi/kWh, same driving speeds too 🤔

You DIDNT do your homework did you. 58 miles on a charge….almost laughing out loud.

An informative video. However, I think your diesel comparison is very optimistic. My super-efficient Passat which happily does an average of 45mpg and over 50 on a long run will only do return 20mpg over a very short journey from cold - it might get near to 40 over the return journey of 6 miles, but there's an awful lot of metal and water to heat up.

Shame you didn’t include a comparison with the heat pump version which should have an improvement on these short trips

58 miles?? Surely that’s not right. I read elsewhere that minimum on the 77kwh would be around 220 and max realistically is 300

Actually this video raises a very important issue. Id.3 does heat the cabin, and battery allegedly, like crazy in winter. This makes sense for longer journeys and probably improves fast charging speed(?). But for shorter trips??? Id.3 is just is not economical for shorter trips in winter even with a heat pump. Will this improve battery longevity??? Whats the point otherwise? I dont get it. Our Mazda MX-30 with a lot smaller battery pack seems considerably more thrifty in winter. But on the other hand is hopeless to fast charge at lower temperatures. The point is the tech works so differently in the two cars. Could anyone shed any light on this issue? Its a mystery.

I don’t understand the kWh/h in the display. It should be just kW Am I missing something?

Super insight. About 56 mile effective range makes sense if allowing for to keep a relatively healthy minimum of 20% battery and to avoid charging over 80% compared to 93 miles for using 100% of battery. And I think if you get battery degradation to 71% then there is no warranty for that which would mean in future an older car might be 40 miles instead of the 56 miles. And if the 3 mile journey consisted of a very fast motorway leg then motorway could be up to a 30% reduction too so 28 miles. So for 28 mile range and not forgetting the return trip if visiting someone then returning the next day that would be 6 miles which allows for only 4 overnight atays to someone living 3 miles away on the motorway and hoping wind and rain not bad and not using cabin pre-heat

Lithium ion batteries are less efficient when they are cold anyway on top of the heating and other systems

If you get that in normal winter conditions ( first you don’t have a heat pump and second you should go straight to the dealer because is something wrong with that battery) no way you get that loss.

You re doing something wrong. I can't work out what, but just for reference I have driven a Tesla model S in Winter and it was pissing it down and I still got 300wh/m (above 3.3m/kwh).... I have also drive an i3 in -5 degrees C at 1am on the motorway and still got 3.5 m/kwh... Really don't know what you doing to wreck the consumption, but NO ONE ELSE on KZfaq is reporting such low consumption

Does this id3 have the heat pump ?

It sounds that if you pre-conditioned the car you might not have to use the heaters?

My journey to work is 15 miles and I always have a minimum expected range when I arrive of around 160 miles in the winter. This is partially on an A road as well. Short journeys are never accurate. For example in petrol cars the mpg would probably be half of its expected as well, on top of taking a long time to heat up. Your title is misleading and will put off buyers of this car.

Yes most engineers know this. Like battery drills with Lithium Ion batteries which don't last as long on a charge in cold weather. I understand EV drivers not wanting to use AC or HVAC systems but be aware that this will cause seals in the system to fail and leak. Re-gas can cost £180 plus seals and parts as gas if more environmentally friendly (so twice the cost of older R134). What is the car warranty, 3 or 4 years? Expect a bill if AC not used frequently after warranty runs out. In my ICE car its on all the time as advised by mechanics to reduce leaks etc.

Preheat the battery, problem solved. People who live in arctic climates have to do this with petrol cars.

your car has heat pump?

The very worst I’ve ever had in my E Niro with outside temp at -3 c is 2.6 miles per kWh that’s on very short journeys up to the local supermarket. I find it very hard to believe you have got just 1 mile per kWh on your VW. that terrible.

I’ve had the same experience with my ID.3, it has now been rejected

It still baffles me that EVs don't use infrared heaters for the cabin cheaper than heat pumps and quick

Sorry mate - have to downvote this post. It is way to inaccurate as information. (But also, please check out the ending - it is nice and potentially pedagogic from a friend) Doing a 3-mile journey with battery management at full throttle - can ANYONE explain to me why anyone would do that? Trying to melt the ice under your car for later traffic or something? I assume your home charger is not delivering 50 kW of DC? So then what is the purpose of actively heating up several hundred kilos of metal for a journey down to the shop? Oh - by the way - good luck getting 40 MPG out of a diesel car from a cold-start in city driving. The engine is not even nearing operating temperatures on oil/engine and optimal combustion in 3 miles - while the generator is spinning like crazy to deliver around a kW for the electrical systems in your car being busy pulling electricity to recharge the cold 12 V starter battery, your AC, your seat-heaters, defrosters, fans, seat-heat, lights and computers. While also waiting to scavenge heat to the catalysts and particle filters and all that jazz. I mean - if I was a diesel car owner and operated it this wrong I would heat my garage. I would then run my diesel car at full RPM inside my garage for around 5 minutes to get the engine up to a nice operating temperature and - opps - I would be dead by COx poisoning before I even managed to measure the energy efficiency of a Diesel car in the cold for a 3 mile run. I would then get there in about an hour without breaking a sweat - instead of "never". I do not even understand why anyone would run their climate system at peak for a 3-mile run in actual cold weather. To put it like this - In Norway - owning a good old Saab (excellent winter car) back in the 1990s - one never did run the cabin heater hard for short journeys. Because after a week or so, the good old lead-acid battery would be dead. Using all it's life to crank the frozen engine, keeping lights alive and running all the fans while you drive around in town in a state where the actual generator is not providing enough amps because the car is at idle for a lot of the time. (This is in actual winter conditions). No fossil car even start to puff some heat via the AC system in 3 miles of town-driving. So nobody abused the fans - as it simply will blast you with the air of ambient outdoor temperatures. But you can trust the electronics of the engine to speed up the dirty burning thing to speed up the electrical generator and to provide heat that can be scavenged ASAP for all the heat needed. You would be lucky to get a mileage much above 10 MPG in the scenario you discuss - a car driven in cold weather for 3 miles per trip. While using your EV kind of crazy by trying to heat up half a ton of battery on a 3-mile journey. Here comes the nice POV I have of why you may be confused - and a reason why it is easier to explain EV cars to us Norwegians Unlike you, friends in the UK, we basically do everything with kW. While I lived among you for a couple of years, heating and cooking and hot showers and washing up dishes - that could end up on the gas-bill. Lights and clothes washing and maybe an electric heating fan - that went on the electric bill. Right? In Scandinavia, heat and light always was on the same bill. My ceramic cook-top is rated at 2 kW. It was also rated for around 2 kW when I grew up (with resistive cook-tops). All our heating of water was electric. My heat pump is rated in kW. My (newer) electric lawn-moner is rated in kW - not horsepower. So we grew up with understanding that heat and mobility and light and useful kitchen appliances - they all can be and are measured on the same unit. And they all always came on the same bill. In the UK - when I mostly spent my time with you in the 1990s - you separated heat (fossil fuel) and light (electric) - to over-simplify it. You separated between the two very different bills to pay (I lived in a student collective in Wales in 1993 - dudes washed up dishes (maybe once, oh dear what a place) in cold water - to protect the gas-bill. And I am not kidding). I wonder if this history leak into the British consciousness. Because it is fair to say that electricity (that you/them) used very little off (because the big draw of heat came from fossils) was/is also quite expensive (compared to here). So you treat electricity/kW as a luxury item still. When you come to a Norwegian house (or an EV) - the energy to turn over a washing machine with clothes is electric. The heat is electric. The light is electric. The hot water for the shower is heated electric. Thus we instantly understand that if you keep trying to heat half a ton of batteries and your seats while you mobilize your butt 3 miles to some friend - you will end up with an amazing electricity bill. We Norwegians instantly understand this. We do not leave an inefficient gas oven on wide open to "save" on the bill of "light". We crank up an electric oven when it is cold. All our energy (minus our wood-fired ovens) have all came on the same bill since before WW2. So we instantly understand that when we plug an EV demanding electricity overnight to do your badly designed test-run (wheels must turn, we try to heat up hundreds of kilos of metal, we are also trying to heat up a frozen couple of cubic meters of the interior in the time of - say 10 minutes by city-paced traffic - we are spending a lot of energy for nothing. And that stupidity will end up on our bill. Every Scandinavian knows this. This may explain why every UK car magazine EV-test has always looked so stupid to me. The UK has grown up on 2 bills at home. Scandinavians have grown up on one bill. Thus we do not do stupid things (like putting a 10 kW heater in our toilet rooms to instantly heat it up from -30 to a comfortable +20 degrees in the time we use sitting on the throne). We sure know that to avoid cold-gating of batteries we can apply heat to them - if we need to rapid charge. We do that trick for cell-phones (we keep them in our pocket) - and some do it in cars that have that trick built-in to get ready for very fast charging. But we do not stress an EV going to the store 1.5 miles away with it - since the EV will soon be safe back home in that very lovely 11 kW outlet at home. A cold battery will happily receive enough of that during the night without being actively heated. We are, after all, talking about the car needings 3 kW during the night even being abused by you for your trip.

0.2kWh/h is not current consuption. It is an averag consuption in an hour.

Have you seen the videos of Bjorn Nyland from Norway, on the ID.3 ? He gets the best results in it's class from the ID range. You seem to draw a conclusion from an extrapolation of a 3 mile journey when everything is cold. Also, please talk about energy KWh and Power KW, you are mixing them up. PS. All Teslas use resistive cabin heating. If I was a VW Engineer, I would be quite annoyed about your claim.

A pity you see fit to indulge in a click-baiting headline and introduction that are plain misleading.

As the man says.... Put on heated seats and steering wheels first.

You don't need to heat the battery for short trips, its just wasted energy. If the car is plugged in & you are preconditioning the car for a long trip then preheating the battery makes sense Using the heated seats is much more efficient than heating the whole cabin

I'm glad you made this video, because I have experienced exactly the same issues. The big points to take from this is to utilise the heated seats and heated steering wheel where possible. I also found that range increased by 4-8 miles just by turning the in cabin heating down from 20C to 19C. Also, don't allow it to heat the cabin on the auto function, lower the fan speeds manually and it makes such a difference again to range. Another point I found is that hills drain the battery a lot quicker. I live in a hilly town and going up hill (at least in winter) really chews through the range. It seems in winter, around town on short journeys, it's learning what helps keep the efficiency up and KW/H down.

Can't you mod the car to be more efficient?

I see your point about the short trips in cold weather having lower efficiency. But why does it matter? If you only make a 6 mile round trip once a day, 58 miles range should be plenty and you can easily charge up at any time if the car is parked the rest of the day. It's not efficient, but you get your travels done. For longer trips it's only inefficient in the beginning and after all is warmed up it should be better.

Design flaw, I think so, why don’t vw follow the Koreans by putting a aux heat function on the touch screen for below 4 c , heating the pack to 13c is way way to much on short journeys of less than 10 miles especially in Northern Europe countries , the pack is significantly big enough to cope with +/=4c without heating /cooling the pack, part of the issue is the resistive heater yes as we had the same issue in the mk1 leaf often taking between 11kw a hour heating but the pack thermal management is far to aggressive and should be updated in the firmware as a priority so it runs automatically only when plugged in or if asked in the menu. , as it stands with most winter days and nights it will always be running which is crazy, sure winter range always takes a hit but to loose 20- miles is typical not over a 1/3 of the battery

Having worked in EV industry for over 7 years I feel it's important to note that when companies disclose vehicle 'range'. They mean in 1 journey, i.e non stop. This is because it's impossible to take into account the millions of different types and length journeys. So using 3 or 6 mile journeys is not an accurate way of giving the single journey range of the car. Your better off trying some long journeys and seeing what the real world range is, probably can't until lockdown over though!

I don't understand why the dislike ratio, this seems to be a video with good info and sure hard to make .. are people just hating because they are hearing that the battery doesn't last as much as they wished for? hmm

If electric cars are to succeed then a lot of people will not have access to home charging and pre heating so this video is realistic in how much more expensive it could be.

My ID3 is nearly a year old with over 15km covered. We have an holiday house almost 300km away with its own charger so hardly ever need to use public chargers. This video is very misleading. My son ID4 & my daughter Skoda both use the holiday charger. We are now a 4 EV family. My wife & I are on our 4th.

Seriously you are spouting rubbish about the loss in winter yes significant but not like you say 58 mile on a charge is ridiculous.

This video is just wrong. These short journeys are just a stupid test. Also comparing to a 40mpg car? In the winter that car would have half that mpg as well. Please investigate using longer journeys. Good work on your other 3 videos though.

That was interesting - thanks

I have never seen a figure below 3.9 miles/kwh on my ioniq 28kwh no matter what the weather! Legacy makers in general Don't seem to have grasped this!

Yeah if you don't have the heat pump, not surprising....

VW has a nasty habit in pushing products onto the market, which have not been fully tested/developed yet. Just wait a couple of years and then the EV's from VW will hopefully give less trouble... (and have a lower salesprice!).

I can understand why you received thumbs down for this video, but for me it's a definite thumbs-up. You've highlighted a real issue with the high battery heat-up rate. An efficient car turned into an inefficient commuter.

With 35p/ kWh as is now (26 Oct 2022) in Edinburgh at public chargers- still less that my home tariff ( my fantastic power provider has offered me 40 pence for kWh...Not a joke!) stats will be totally different... Having EV doesn't make any sense for me. First thing I'm going to do in New Year is selling my OVERPRICED , USELESS and HOPELESS VWiD3...And I'm going to buy HYBRID!!!

On a 3 Mile trip you won’t get 40mpg on diesel

The slower you drive, the more your winter consumption converges to infinity ;-) Check out this attempt/graph to make it visible: goingelectric.de/forum/download/file.php?id=104809

Wow. Order cancelled. Thank you.

Wish I knew this before as I have a 200 mile trip in a few days and wondered why it suddenly dipped. Back to combustion engines for winter lol. Electric in Spring and Summer. Thanks for the video.

Nice iPhone moment. Welcome to the future.

LOL way to go SPREADING MORE MISINFORMATION AND MYTHS about EVs. 58 miles ON A FULL CHARGE?? YEAH NICE LIE

The title is misleading, And this seems like penny-pinching. I would never buy a £35000 car and not let me enjoy a heated journey. If you don't have the possibility for a home or street charger, an EV is not for you.

Total crap the ID3 does not heat heat the battery!

This is VW first and latest attempt at an electric car and this is the best they could come up with!

Time you purchased a Tesla.

Absolute misleading tosh.