Car Guy Magazine Car Guy Magazine Issue 914 | Page 61

something right. The Adaptive Cruise
Control was easy to set up and it was
very smooth during speed changes. If
you haven’t had a chance you should
go drive with it sometime I am a big
fan of these systems. There is a lot to
learn in the car before you start driving.
The efficiency of our test vehicle
was disappointing. I picked up the car
from Tim and he failed to remember
to plug it in overnight. As a result I
had 0 EV (Electric Vehicle) range. This
situation caused the gas generator; I
call it that because that’s all it does, to
run constantly as I drove around. This
resulted in a lack luster 27 MPG for the
day. Over the 1000 miles our team put
on the car we had a combined fuel
economy of 28.1 MPG, again disappointing. As a counter point, I let it
charge at home for the night, roughly
10 hours and when I went to drive to
the office it had 15 miles of EV range.

During my entire commute
the gas generator never
once started up. In theory
if you were diligent about
plugging it in at night and
your commute was less
than lets say 20 miles round
trip, you would rarely see a
gas station.
In summary I think
that the Cadillac ELR may
have it’s place in the market as a luxury electric
vehicle. The combination
of good looks, technology
and short-range efficiency
make it a great affluent
commuter car. I am encouraged to see the progress
that is being made in these
types of vehicles and look
forward to future generations of electric drive cars.
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