The Challenge

   Overconfidence can be its owner’s undoing, but with only three days of EV driving under my belt, I’m sitting in first position on one of Ford’s six driving efficiency competitions.

​   The Challenge: some are good at braking, others at using the accelerator. Those that have mastered all of the EV driving tricks sit atop the leaderboard.

     How did this happen?  I don’t really know how the scoring works.  The screen indicator shows that feathering the brake when pulling up at a stop captures kinetic energy, regenerating the batteries.  Flooring the accelerator, as much fun as it is with this car (pushing you back into the seat, like a roller coaster, although one that’s on the kiddie side of the fun park) seems to have the opposite effect.  The drawdown in the indicated range estimate shows up right away when doing that.

     And it’s likely that pre-warming the car also boosts the score, if you can then shut down the heater at the same time as you disconnect from the grid.  The cost for this came on a 40 mile ride to Worcester yesterday, in the form of chilly feet, although the heated seats felt great, even if doing a haircut on my range miles.  Also maximizing range is running the defroster only when the windows start to fog (needing to do that more so when other passengers are riding along in the car).
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     Up next, let’s look under the hatch.  The trunk does seem pretty small....

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