The Environmental Protection Agency has been the non-partisan adjudicator of vehicle emissions and fuel mileage in the United States for over 50 years. With the rise in electric vehicle sales, range has become a crucial selling point for customers. The EPA goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure that its figures are a realistic reflection of performance for EV owners, not automaker-polished numbers. These efforts start before the tests even begin.
Ars Technica thoroughly broke down how the EPA’s testing procedure for electric vehicle testing. However, any car or truck that undergoes the rigorous process has to be properly aged beforehand. Unlike fine wine, vehicles aren’t kept in a dark and cool cellar. They have to cover 1,000 miles in a repetitive mileage accumulator called the Standard Road Cycle. The cycle involves starting, cruising and stopping at speeds ranging from 30 to 70 miles per hour around a 3.7 mile course.
After the vehicle and battery are properly aged, officials still ensure that the battery’s amp-hour capacity still meets the specifications provided by the automaker. And yes, a car can be considered to be used for testing if it exceeds 6,200 miles. The preparations don’t end there. Ars Technica explains:
Vehicles are tested at loaded vehicle weight. LVW is the curb weight plus 300 lbs (136 kg), and the curb weight is defined as the total weight of the vehicle, including “optional equipment that is expected to be installed on more than 33 percent of the vehicle line,” but not a driver or other payloads.
The EPA’s range number is an aggregate of city and highway ranges, with highway driving accounting for 45 percent and city driving making 55 percent of the total. All of this is to ensure that the official range number that comes out the other end is as accurate as possible, again, to reflect realistic usage.