The fantastic Robert Llewellyn returns to duty following a sojourn to film some TV show or other with tales of driving his pure-electric Nissan LEAF during the recent UK cold snap

The recent cold snap coincided with my return from deep space (Red Dwarf filming, that is). We had proper snow for a few days, and before I mention the range limitations in sub zero conditions, let me just make a quick observation about solar panels.

Even when they were covered in a three-inch blanket of snow, our 14 solar panels were still generating a tiny bit of power – about enough to run a dozen low voltage lights. I was impressed enough with that, but then one sunny morning (very low winter sun) I got out a kitchen chair, lifted a broom as high as I could and swept away a tiny corner of snow on the nearest panel. Probably no more than three square inches.

About 30 minutes later I heard the most unusual slidey thundery noise as one by one each row of panels shed their load of snow leaving a silky smooth row of panels basking in winter sunlight. Thankfully there is nothing beneath the panels except garden… if you had been standing there it might have been cold and unpleasant but not dangerous; we didn’t have that much snow.

I then checked my little Sunny Beam monitor (which gives very accurate readings of energy coming from the panels) and in a couple of seconds it went from 435 watts to 2.6 kilowatts. Boom. Just like that.

One of the British Gas engineers who fitted the panels told me that as soon as one part of the panel is exposed to sunlight, it heats the rest a teeny tiny bit, which melts the very bottom layer of snow crystals resulting in a massive avalanche. It made me happy.

Anyway, driving an electric car in sub zero conditions. First, the drawbacks…

Well, the range on my Nissan LEAF’s dashboard was pretty stark. With a full battery in the warmer months it will normally read between 105 and 110 miles. At 8 in the morning last week when the temperature gauge read -15c, the range said 68 miles. That’s a pretty chunky drop.

The range indicator should really read, range ‘indicator’ as the range can vary wildly depending on how you’re driving and what you’re using when you drive. But seeing that reduction did make my heart sink a little, I’m not going to lie.

I’d set up the simple pre-heater timer – you put in your departure time the night before and plug the car in. The batteries charge and then 20 minutes before you leave, the heater comes on and warms the cabin to 22 degrees C.

That means you go outside in -15 but get in a nice warm car, no scraping windscreens and 20 minutes de-frosting with the engine chugging away.

When I turned the car on, the dash had a sign reading, ‘Alert, Low Temperature!’ I actually said “No shit, Sherlock” out loud. Yes, I talked to a car. It’s probably a hangover from spending the last nine weeks being a mechanoid who has long and complex relationships with various machines.

I then drove on a 25-mile round trip, shops and farm shop for chicken feed, I used a lot of back roads in the Cotswolds which hadn’t been snow ploughed. The car coped admirably.

The other thing to mention was when I started out the journey and engaged the economy setting on the gearshift wobbly thing, the range indicator jumped to 82 miles. For the first leg of the journey I didn’t use the heater, the car was toasty warm.

When I got back in with the shopping I did put the heater on, and the radio, and the lights. The range drops by about 8 miles when you do that. However, when I got back home, the indicator said 54 miles. So after a 25 mile trip, staring out at 68 miles indicated, it seemed like I’d only done 14. I’d used four bars of the battery stack graphic (from experience, a far more reliable measurement than the range meter), which is without question more than you’d use in the summer.

However I didn’t have range anxiety and I didn’t get stranded in the middle of a blizzard, and as the car had been charged at night on 4p per kilowatt-hour off peak electricity, the journey cost me something around 25 pence.

So yes, I didn’t try to drive to Scotland, as so many diesel owners constantly inform me they need to. I did what 90% of people who use cars do – I took a short local trip.

One last point. An economy ultra modern 60mpg particle filtered, catalytic converter laden diesel car starts up early in the morning at -15. The driver runs the engine and puts on the heater and scrapes the windows and gets in. The heater still isn’t warm, he sits there racing the engine to try and warm up the interior a little faster…

How well are those particle filters working? How efficient is the catalytic converter when it’s very cold? What’s the MPG like for the first 10-20 miles? The answer to those three of those questions is rubbish, lousy and don’t think about fuel consumption or you’ll cry.

But we’re used to these smoke chundering, rattling old things so it’s all normal. For now, at least.

About Robert Llewellyn

Columnist Robert Llewellyn is a comedian, actor, presenter and writer. He’s perhaps best known for his role as Kryten in hit BBC comedy Red Dwarf and as co-presenter of Channel 4’s Scrapheap Challenge, but since creating the Carpool series he has been invited to test drive all kinds of cars, from the pure electric Tesla Roadster sports car to the Honda FCX Clarity hydrogen fuel cell car. As a result Robert has become an expert on green cars, in particular electric cars, launching EV web series Fully Charged in 2010.

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