Norway really is the gold standard for electric vehicle adoption - lots of tax breaks, enormous numbers of charging points, all paid for by oil cash, but who's counting? - so little wonder that Norwegian real-world tests for EVs are taken so seriously.
OK, tell us more…
We're used to the Norwegian Automobile Federation (NAF), working with Norway's Motor magazine, testing EVs in winter to see how much range they lose to cold weather, but there's also a summer test, and that's just been dramatically won by Kia's smallest electric car, the EV2.
How did the EV2 win?
The NAF's Summer El Prix EV Test was held on 3 June in Oslo, put a bunch of new electric models through their range paces, in ambient temperatures of 12-18 degrees Celsius (Anders Celsius was Swedish, but never mind…) and the EV2 was ranked first out of all the compact and mid-size electric vehicles tested.
What results did the EV2 return?
NAF and Motor tested two versions of the EV2 - the standard-range model with a claimed range of 308km, and the long-range GT-Line model with a claimed range of 418km.
The standard range model exceeded expectations, to say the least. In fact, it actually went for 325km, beating its official range by 17km, which is 105 per cent of the claimed average.
And the GT-Line?
That did fractionally less well, but still massively impressively. The GT line drove for 428km on a full charge, beating its official figure by 10km, which is 102 per cent of the claimed range. The EV2 GT-Line daintily sipped its lithium ions at a rate of 12kWh/100km.
How do they do in winter?
Pretty well, actually. The long-range EV2 managed 310km in deep freeze temperatures in the NAF winter test, so it's no cold-weather slouch. "Achieving the best real world performance among compact and mid-size in the NAF Summer El Prix EV Test is a strong validation of EV2's customer focused engineering,” said Pablo Martinez Masip, Kia Europe's head of marketing and customer experience. "By exceeding 105 per cent of its WLTP range, EV2 clearly demonstrates outstanding efficiency and reliability. These independent results confirm that EV2 is designed around real customer needs - delivering dependable everyday usability while giving drivers the confidence to travel further, whether on daily commutes or longer holiday journeys.”