AA Ireland duo drive EV full length of Ireland on one charge

Drive took place on Wednesday January 11

Car completed 615km with 2% battery remaining

Blake Boland and Paddy Comyn of AA Ireland have driven an electric vehicle from Mizen Head in Cork to Malin Head in Donegal, the two extremities of Ireland, without stopping to charge.

The AA Ireland crew thought that driving the route in an electric vehicle without stopping to charge had never been achieved, or was achievable – until now. They believed that advances in battery technology made it possible and they used Mercedes-Benz EQS 450+, the German brand’s flagship electric vehicle.

The Mercedes-Benz EQS has a 120kWh battery, 107.8kWh of which is usable. It is also aerodynamically efficient (drag coefficient of 0.20), which makes it the most aerodynamic production car ever made, apart from the hastily scrapped General Motors EV1 a few decades ago.

The WLTP rated range of the EQS goes up to 784km, though the real world range is about 600km.

“Mizen Head to Malin Head is a drive of 602km as indicated by Google Maps, and without stops takes about eight hours and 20 minutes,” said Blake Boland.

“The idea of driving it in a fully electric car without charging en route seemed like an unachievable task as little as a couple of years ago. The task was made even more difficult by the conditions in mid-January. With temperatures ranging from 5 to 10 degrees Celsius and heavy rain all day, the car would be stretched to its limit.

“Winds were strong, predicted to be approximately 30-40kmh for most of the day. Being mostly a crosswind, it would not help efficiency.”

Using its 107.8 kWh usable battery, the car would need to achieve an efficiency figure of 17.6 kWh per 100km to give enough range for the Mizen, Malin journey as well as a buffer of another 20km to get to and from the accommodation at either end of the journey.

“A journey of this length would cost as little as €13.50 for somebody charging at home on a night rate of 12.6c per kWh*, though it could also cost as much as €73.50 using ESB High Power public chargers,” said Blake .

After some nine hours of driving (swapping over every two hours), the car managed the journey with just 2% battery remaining, and the drivers managed a combined average of 16.8 kWh per 100km.

The car would have had around 15km left in the battery before coming to a stop.

Paddy Comyn, who is head of communications at AA Ireland, said: “Electric vehicle technology is getting better, battery technology is improving too, so we decided to see if we could complete this particularly Irish challenge on one full battery.

“Unfortunately, the charging network at both ends of the country are poor, so we has to take some extreme measures to give ourselves the best chance, using three-pin plug chargers to trickle charge out of B&B windows.

“We are really missing a trick by not adding more chargers to tourist areas such as Mizen and Malin.”