Why does fuel economy get better on the highway, but EV range gets worse?
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ICEs are designed to work best within particular speed range. It’s a fairly small range. The transmission is a multi-gear/speed unit, that will allow a car to go slow within that range, or fast within that range. Plus most include ‘overdrive’, which really gets you going within that range.
In town traffic, your engine is working in that range at low speeds, and also we stopped. Economy sucks. At highways speeds, you’re covering a greater distance while the engine is still in that range.
Basically, the motor is using the amount of power at 20mph as it is at 70mph, but covering more distance.
Electric motors are much simpler. The faster the run, the more juice they use. Now, in town you are often sitting still. Your electric motor is not using ANY power, very economical. But, as most EVs do not have multi-gear transmissions, the faster you go, the more juice you use.
An EV is using much less power at 20mph and much more at 70mph.
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