2 minute read
Running Report
Plugging back in to the real world
If you attended our Professional Driver Car if the Year judging event at Epsom Racecourse, you’d have spotted these two elegant machines outside the main entrance to the event hall.
We’ll be putting this pair of BMW 745Le saloons through their paces over the next six months – with lockdown over, my co-director Paul Webb and I can get back to doing our business the way we like it – face to face, not via Zoom on a overworked PC and a shonky broadband line.
So expect some motorway miles to be covered. And we’ll bring you regular reports of what it’s like living with a petrol-electric hybrid luxury saloon rather than a diesel. Because there are issues that we all need to get to grips with as we transition from a fossil fuel environment to an electric one.
For the time being, it’s not possible to buy a fullelectric chauffeur car of this standard. And with Mercedes-Benz only just announcing a new S-Class PHEV for delivery early in the new year, right now the BMW 745Le is a car you can buy and licence in London – since last year, it’s not been possible to register a pure diesel or petrol car of any type for private hire (except for some wheelchair-accessible vehicles).
There are compromises that we have to live with. A diesel 7-Series had sufficient fuel tankage to get you from London to Glasgow without a pit stop. But the PHEV has to trade some fuel tank space (and a little of its boot capacity) to make room for the battery pack.
So longer-distance travel involves more stops to refuel, though this can be minimised through the act of plugging in the battery and taking advantage of the allelectric range. With careful driving and judicious use of regenerative braking, we suspect the performance in operating terms will be at the very least comparable to diesel.
That’s one of the things we intend to find out. And it will give us further opportunities to test out the electric recharging infrastructure – a cause for concern at the moment, but in the process of some major upgrades. Our previous experiences have been a mixed bag, so we’ll be reporting on how the networks are improving too. So far the cars haven’t done much work – though they have proved to be efficient workhorses transporting some of our equipment away from Epsom at the end of our event. Who says you can’t use a chauffeur car for goods deliveries?
