WHAT DOES TOWING REALLY DO TO AN EV'S RANGE? WE FOUND OUT THE HARD WAY

Towing a caravan from Bristol to Land's End with a Kia EV9: how hard can it be? Eight hours later, I was at my wits' end...

- Dean Gibsom

YOU might think 60mph on the motorway is a recipe for EV efficiency.

And when I charged Kia's EV9 GT-Line AWD to 100 per cent in the early morning gloom, the trip computer displayed a reassuring 287 miles. More than enough for a 198-mile cruise from Bristol to Land's End, a well travelled holidaymaker path. How wrong could I be?

The big SUV has only covered 60-odd miles at this steady pace, but the display is already predicting it'll be touch and go to reach Land's End. That's what happens when you're a 12-metre-long wagon train, with the seven-seat Kia hitched to a Bailey Unicorn Deluxe Cabrera caravan.

I'm overcome with flashbacks to the early 2010s, when a modest road trip in the pioneering Nissan Leaf electric car was more nerve-wracking than A Nightmare on Elm Street. A nightmare on every street, truth be told, with its 24kWh battery and about 100 miles of range.

Technologically, we've come a long way since then: the EV9 has a 99.8kWH battery and an official 316-mile range. And the charging network has made even greater strides: with tens of thousands of chargers firing out up to 350kW of Direct Current, long-distance motorway runs are typically uneventful in an EV.

But not, as it turns out, this one. I have the dreaded feeling we're going to be mired in pit stops and shudder at the thought of trying to repeatedly hook up to chargers with a caravan behind. If only they had 12-metre bays with cables made of bungee ropes...

I glance in my extended side mirror - which surprisingly doesn't crank up the wind noise and puncture the cushy EV9’s cruising civility, although its handy blind-spot detection system is sadly deactivated when a trailer is attached - and beyond the heft of my glacier-white caravan, I spy the similarly blocky form of the EV9’s sister SUV, the Hyundai Ioniq 9.