With the proliferation of electric vehicles, we’ve seen our fair share of range tests involving a variety of zero-emissions vehicles. While most of them take place in the city while others are done at constant speeds on the highway, Jack from the Number 27 channel on YouTube decided to think outside the box. It was actually his colleague with the camera who thought about pitting the recently discontinued BMW i3 against Jack’s own 308 GTS.
The two cars have practically nothing in common, which makes this unusual comparison all the more interesting. The idea behind the test is to determine which car goes farther on £10 of gasoline in the case of the Prancing Horse and £10 worth of electricity for the pint-sized EV. Granted, the idea is not entirely original as Jeremy Clarkson set up a similar comparison between an M3 and a Prius back in the golden days of Top Gear.
It was easier said than done as they ran into a bit of an issue while charging the BMW i3 since they couldn’t find an empty charging point. When they did, the car was then plugged in, only to discover it wasn’t a fast-charging point and it had no screen to show how much electricity was being fed into the EV. Eventually, they went back to the first Shell charging station which had a screen. £10 worth of electric juice rejuvenated the battery’s state of charge from 41% to 95%.
The next step was to drain the Ferrari’s fuel tank and fill it with £10 worth of gasoline from a jerrycan.
Both cars were then ready to go and you can easily see Jack wasn’t being too easy on his 1979 308 GTS. That surely must’ve hampered its fuel economy, and the car eventually ran out of gas after 28 kilometers (17.4 miles). Jack then jumped behind the wheel of the i3 and kept on going until the battery’s SOC decreased to the original 41%.
The little electric BMW covered 106 km (66 miles) with £10 worth of battery juice, so nearly four times more than the Ferrari.
Source: Number 27 / YouTube
