How it works
The exact energy
your EV will use.
Not a guess. Not "your range may vary." A real number — for your car, your luggage, today's weather, and the road you're actually going to drive.
Terrain
How does elevation affect EV energy consumption?
Steep climbs (grade > 6%) burn about 45% more energy than flat road. Long downhills (grade < −6%) give back about 28% through regenerative braking. We compute the multiplier per kilometre of the actual route, not as a single average.
Weather
How much does cold weather reduce EV range?
At −10 °C an EV uses about 32% more energy than at 20 °C; at −20 °C it's 40%. We blend temperature across origin, midpoint, and destination weighted by distance — a 600-km route is rarely one climate.
The car
What's the gap between WLTP and real-world EV consumption?
About 18% higher in real-world driving across our 1,200-EV catalog, calibrated against EV-Database community averages. We multiply each manufacturer figure by the per-vehicle correction factor, then layer passengers, luggage, roof box, and battery degradation.
Confidence band
How accurate is the EVStrada estimate?
Within ±12% of measured real-world consumption on the same inputs. The realistic figure is the median estimate; the optimistic and conservative bookends cover that confidence band — driving-style variance, tire pressure, headwinds, and other unmodeled factors.
We translate the things that actually affect your drive — the hill, the wind chill, the four people in the back, the bike rack on the roof — into kilowatt-hours. Not a "range estimate." A real consumption forecast for the trip you're about to take.
Worked example
Rome → Milan, a Tesla Model Y, two adults, a weekend's worth of luggage, early November.
Optimistic
78
kWh
Realistic
86
kWh
Conservative
93
kWh
A 75 kWh pack, 100% charged, with 10% reserve: arrive safely on the realistic path. Pick a top-up if winter wind picks up.
What question does the EVStrada calculator answer?
"Can I make this specific trip on one charge, in this specific car, today?" Not a generic range estimate, not a navigation map — a kilowatt-hour forecast for the route you're about to drive.
Pre-trip, not navigation
We don't reroute you mid-drive. We answer one question before you leave the driveway — accurately enough that you don't have to second-guess.
No account, no app
Open the site, pick origin and destination, choose your EV. Done. Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for, no email harvest.
Confidence bands, not single numbers
Realistic estimate plus optimistic and conservative bookends, so a tailwind day and a headwind day both fit on the screen.
Weather that matches the route
For long trips we average temperature across origin, mid-point and destination, weighted by distance. A 600-km drive isn't all one climate.
Cached, fast, free
Identical trips return instantly from cache. We pay the routing API once and you wait 200 ms instead of 4 seconds.
Open data in, open math out
OpenStreetMap, OpenRouteService, Open-Meteo, OpenEV. The methodology is on this page. The vehicle catalog is on the Vehicles page.
How we pick charging stops.
When your battery isn't enough for the whole route, EVStrada suggests where to stop. The algorithm is deterministic — same inputs always produce the same picks. No AI in the loop, no surprise rerolls.
Real chargers, near your route
Charger locations come from Open Charge Map, a community-maintained MIT-licensed database. We query in 50 km tiles along your polyline and keep only chargers within ~5 km of the road.
Deterministic stop picker
We walk the route kilometer by kilometer, draining the battery against the same per-segment math we use for total energy. When battery hits your reserve (default 10%), we snap to the closest compatible charger ≤ that kilometer and resume.
Conservative 80% target
Each stop charges to 80% by default — DC fast taper slows dramatically above that. Stop time is estimated as kWh ÷ min(charger kW, car kW) × 1.4 to account for the taper. Labelled "≈ 18 min" so you read it as an estimate.
What we don't promise
Charger availability isn't real-time. We don't know if a stall is occupied or out of service. We default to CCS connectors — if your car only does CHAdeMO, treat the picks as a starting point. The cost and time are estimates, not guarantees.
Charging data attribution: © Open Charge Map contributors, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Common questions about EV trip energy
Plain-language answers to the questions we hear most — each one backed by the exact multiplier from the formulas table.
How much extra energy does each passenger add?
About 2.5% per 100 kg of extra weight (passengers + luggage). Four adults plus a weekend's worth of luggage is roughly 8% more than driving alone.
Does driving at 130 km/h really use more energy than 100 km/h?
Yes — about 25% more. Aerodynamic drag rises with the square of speed: our model multiplies by 1.08 at 100 km/h and 1.35 at 130 km/h relative to the 90-km/h baseline.
How much range do EVs lose with a roof box?
10–15% on motorway speeds. The added frontal area roughly doubles drag at 100+ km/h. We model roof boxes, trailers, and bike racks as separate drag categories.
What does 'available kWh' actually mean?
Your usable battery × starting battery percentage × (1 − degradation). A 75 kWh Tesla Model 3 at 80% start with 8% battery degradation has 75 × 0.80 × 0.92 = 55.2 kWh available for the trip.
Why three numbers instead of one?
Real consumption varies ±12% with driving style, wind, tire pressure, and other factors we can't measure in advance. The realistic figure is the median; the optimistic and conservative bookends mark that confidence band.
How fresh is the weather data?
We average historical temperatures from Open-Meteo over the last three years by season — not today's forecast. The model assumes a typical day for that month, not a specific cold snap or heat wave.
How accurate are charging stop suggestions?
Deterministic — same inputs always pick the same chargers. We walk the route kilometre-by-kilometre, draining the battery using the same per-segment math, and snap to the nearest compatible Open Charge Map charger when battery hits your reserve threshold (default 10%).
What data sources does EVStrada use?
OpenRouteService for routing and SRTM 90-m elevation; Open-Meteo for seasonal temperatures; OpenStreetMap for map tiles; the OpenEV catalog (1,200+ EVs) calibrated against EV-Database community averages. Methodology + multiplier tables are public at /formulas.
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