Jaguar’s I-Pace charges up the time-sheets

A few months ago, our Motoring Editor, Jaco van der Merwe, had a Jaguar I-Pace on test for some civilised family commuting. But this week I got my hands on the car with one mission in mind, and that was to performance road test it.

I am going to start by chasing the loadshedding elephant out the room. Stop saying electric cars will never work here because of loadshedding. And don’t make your second mistake when you think that electric cars offer no real-world performance.

Think of Jaguar’s 90 kW/h battery as your car’s normal fuel tank. You need 90 kW/h of electricity to fill your I-Pace up, just like you would 90 litres of fuel in the case of a 90-litre fuel tank. Just like your normal car, it doesn’t have to be full for you to drive around. When you need “fuel” you must top up, and as you drive, you use “fuel”, and the harder you drive, the more “fuel” you use.

Now, you can use the “occasional use” cable supplied and plug it into a normal wall socket to charge your I-Pace, but I would like to think that if you buy a car like this, you would take advantage of Jaguar’s offer to install a 7.4kW AC wall box charger at your home at no cost to yourself. And this means that you can achieve a 0 to 80% charge in 12 hours, assuming your battery was empty – which it rarely will be if used correctly.

Or you can make use of one of the commercial 60 kW DC rapid charging stations going up around the country as part of Jaguar’s investment in its Powerway network and found on a simple app. And then you can achieve 0 to 80% battery charge in just 72 minutes, or have a coffee and 20 minutes later you are ready to for another 100km.

Just like conventional fuel that currently costs me R14.82 per litre, electricity costs me R2.20 per kWh at my house. The price of electricity does vary from area to area, and from charge station to charge station. In the case of the I-Pace I had on test, my “fuel” consumption was 25.7 kW/h per 100 km, and this means I got 350 km from my “tank” at a cost of R198.

To work out my saving over conventional fuel, my R198 of electricity would only buy me 13 litres of fuel, and this at best, and I am being very generous, would get me 130 km of travel in a car that offers similar performance. To do the same electric distance of 350 km on fuel, I would need to spend at least R518.

Yes, loadshedding is real, but you don’t see people running around all day with flat cell phones, nor do you wait till your phone is about to die and then scramble for a charger. We have become conditioned to simply plug our phones into chargers whenever it is convenient. Now use this same sort of logic when it comes to electric cars and your motoring life will be just as uncomplicated.

That out the way, let’s talk performance numbers. The Jaguar I-Pace comes with two synchronous permanent magnet electric motors that produce 294 kW of power and 696 Nm of instant torque. These electric motors are coupled to the front and rear axles and run through a single speed epicyclic transmission to all four wheels.

The I-Pace has only three modes for defining how you would like your power delivered: Eco, Comfort and Dynamic. There is no complicated sequence of events you must follow to extract the best performance out of the I-Pace. Choose the mode that suits your situation the best and plant the accelerator and you will instantly head towards the horizon.

I nailed a 4.77-second 0 to 100 km/h run, which is better than claimed and makes this tree hugging Jaguar as quick as BMW’s monster 375 kW X3 M Competition to the same point, and quicker than many other SUVs. And if you happen to try your luck while on the move, it’s only going to get worse. The I-Pace has only been beaten, and just, through the 60 to 100 km/h and 80 to 120 km/h sprints by BMW’s record breaking 460kW/750Nm M8 Competition this year.

Despite the 2.1-tonne weight of the vehicle, the straight-line prowess of the I-Pace is comprehensively backed up by more than decent handling thanks to the battery being placed as low as possible between the axles. Thus offering that perfect 50:50 weight distribution and a low centre of gravity that enthusiasts always seek in a performance car.

If there is a downside to this electric performance party, it must be that Jaguar limited the car’s top speed to 200 km/h, and this the I-Pace gets to in just over 800 m of tar. But do you really need more than this for everyday commuting? I think not.

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