ready for winter? — Driving magazine

Evolute i‑Joy passed the test of frost and roads of the Murmansk region.

An electric car in Russia is still an exotic phenomenon. Concerns are mainly related to the range and charging infrastructure.

Questions are aggravated in winter, when electric trains spend almost more energy on interior heating than on movement.

When adapting the Evolute models for our operating conditions, this was taken into account and brought the machines to a new level.

Warming up

An autonomous diesel heater was added to the equipment of all Evolutes. It is he, and not the regular electric one, that now heats the antifreeze, which circulates through the interior heating circuit. To test its effectiveness in real conditions on the i-Joy crossover, we went to the Murmansk region, where at the end of March there were still frosts down to -15 ºС.

The stove works perfectly. As in a car with a good old gasoline aspirated, after a few minutes after the start of the trip, you can take off your jacket. You need to get used to adjusting the temperature, but in general – no inconvenience.

You’re not imagining: the i-Joy has three expansion tanks, one for each heating circuit. The left one is for the motor and inverter, the middle one is for the battery, the right one is for the passenger compartment. The last two systems are communicating. When it is required to warm up the battery, the antifreeze heated by the “autonomous” is sent there from the cabin circuit.A five-liter tank for diesel fuel “autonomous” Binar – in the most prominent place. The full volume is enough for three days of constant work. So, if you drive two or three hours a day, one gas station is enough for a month. With this consumption, you don’t have to worry about the fact that the electric car is no longer 100% “green”: emissions are minimal.

Edem

The energy savings are impressive. Having wound several tens of kilometers in the urban cycle, we received almost the same consumption as in the still warm autumn on the i‑Pro sedan: 1 km of run is minus 1 km from the predicted power reserve. With a fully charged battery, i-Joy promises more than 400 km of run. With an electric heater, consumption would be two to three times higher.

The salon is modern, the equipment is at the level: six airbags, climate and cruise control, a media system with a large display, all-round cameras, parking sensors “in a circle”. There are even frills like a built-in DVR and power front seats.When the “light comes on” when the balance is less than 15%, the electronics limits the engine power. You can go, but you get additional savings.

A feature of electric vehicles: unlike cars with internal combustion engines, they have higher consumption outside the city. The thing is that, standing still, they consume practically nothing and spend a little on gaining speed. Therefore, we checked i‑Joy and on the highway.

We left Teriberka with a predicted range of 300 km. Snow on the road was added to the frost: the higher the resistance to movement, the higher the energy consumption. Due to bad weather, we were driving slowly, about 70 km/h, using an autonomous stove. After 130 km of run we finished near the hotel in Murmansk with a power reserve of 145 km. The consumption turned out to be a little more than the electric car’s computer promised, but for frost and snow with ice under the wheels, it is more than acceptable.

Charging

From the slow charging station i-Joy receives up to 7 kW per hour with a single-phase connection and up to 10 kW with a three-phase connection. The 53 kWh battery will last overnight to fully charge. If you decide to be with the “electric train” seriously and for a long time, you can put one personally for yourself. Coordination, laying of separate wiring will be required. For a country house, perhaps also the allocation of additional power. The turnkey budget is 100-200 thousand rubles.

Charging in the cold requires additional steps. A cold battery will not accept a charge. In order for the process to start, it must first be warmed up. For slow “pumping” with alternating current, it is enough to raise the temperature just above 0 ºС. But for fast direct current, you need 20-25 ºС. All this on-board electronics understands and regulates itself. The owner is only required to take into account that in winter charging will take longer.

Infrastructure is developing. Evolute i‑Joy is charged through Type 2 and CCS2 ports (slow and fast, respectively), which are available at the vast majority of stations in Russia. The Murmansk region turned out to be not completely alien to “green” cars. You can get energized from specialized columns in Murmansk itself, in Teriberka and before the exit from the highway to the Sredny Peninsula.

Just one device – an autonomous heater – and the “gentle” electric car turned out to be well adapted to Russian frosts. Evolute i‑Joy (and with it the i‑Pro sedan) should not disappoint in this performance in winter. Other brand new items are on the way. The next will be a mid-size i‑Sky crossover with a 204‑horsepower engine and greater autonomy.

EVERYTHING WILL APPLY

Evolute has a proprietary mobile app. The functionality is standard: you can see the status of the car, its location, control the locks and headlights. Of the specific indicators, there is the temperature of the traction battery and antifreeze. In the process of charging or without it, you can remotely control the microclimate. Moreover, in this version of the program, you can choose which heating you want to turn on – electric or diesel.

There is a useful function to search for a charging station. What’s interesting: Evolute is building a network of its own gas stations, some of which are already in operation. For example, near the company’s office in the capital, through the ports CCS2 and GB / T (Chinese standard, used, in particular, on Voyah hybrids), you can get up to 150 kW per hour. Fast chargers of other operators in Moscow give out a maximum of 50–60 kW.

How soon will we switch to electric cars? Read about it here. “Behind the wheel” can be read in Telegram.