Not tried it in snow yet, normally you have to watch the little sticks at the edge on the hills around here (no pavements), as you speed past the grit lorry in the ditch (yes seen that).

With regard to EV range, my rule of thumb is start with manufacturers range, reduce by 1/3 for real world most of the year, reduce by half once temperature gets to around freezing. Heaters really hammer the battery plus the cold reduces capacity, strange they don't seem to broadcast that.......

I had my first experience of a 'modern' car with lane keeping assist (along with a ton of other gadgets) in France a couple of weeks ago whilst on holiday. My own car is a 22 year old Audi that doesn't even have a rear windscreen wiper let alone all the bells and whistles that comes with more modern cars. 

Lane keeping assist was really weird, if we waivered onto the central line it would pull us back over to our side of the carriage way. I'm not sure that I liked it at all to be honest! 

The automatic headlights drove me mad and all the buttons and beepy noises and other fancy bits were just a distraction from the job of actually driving the vehicle. 

It was a brand new Citroen DS 3 Crossback 

In my very limited experience, that's a bit pessimistic.  I've only had my EV a few weeks, and done one long journey in it, in temperatures about 2°C.

The car's advertised range is 235 miles.  My journey was about 120 to 125 miles, and I got back with 40% charge left.

But it will depend a lot on how you drive.  Not knowing the car, I stuck to A roads and avoided the dual carriageway and motorway route.

Was that 40% usable charge or total charge? As I understand it you are not supposed to run the battery below a certain level (10%, 20% ???)

Not heard of that before - most batteries like to be fully cycled.  There is a recommendation for "battery life" not to routinely charge it to 100% unless you need that for a trip.  So mine goes to 90%.  Obviously no idea what long term difference this makes. I have run mine down to zero to get home without any ill effects (so far)

Yes its all in how you drive and how vicious the regen is set.  Speed above 70mph seems to hit the range (wind drag), heaters and other ancillaries do too. How many stop/starts and accelerations - and how gently you do them makes a difference to power consumption.  40% left seems a reasonable result for winter driving based on my experience too.  Clearly it is a "best guess" based on history as the car has no idea how you will drive/need to drive over future. 

Honestly if you were wavering onto the central line and I was coming the other way I would have been glad you had the DS3 rather than the Audi...what's not to like about being kept safe on your side of the road? 

Yes auto headlights aren't very good - witness the number of newish cars you see driving around these days with their headlights on full beam and the driver in complete ignorance of that blue light on their dash.  My car has the opposite issue and wont give full beam when you actually need it. 

Don't get me started on auto windscreen wipers which really are rubbish. They go when its not raining.  They refuse to go when it clearly is.  Something is very wrong with their sensors of algorithm. 

Paul Ch said:

Honestly if you were wavering onto the central line and I was coming the other way I would have been glad you had the DS3 rather than the Audi...what's not to like about being kept safe on your side of the road? 

Where we are in France is a really rural area where you're lucky to see more than half a dozen cars on a 20 km journey  Also the roads are very 'bendy' so you can't help but cut across into the other lane at some points, especially if you want to avoid getting too close to the sheer rockface up against your side of the carriageway 

Yes the auto windscreen wipers were rubbish, coming on full pelt for a really light drizzle but staying off for a rain shower!!! 

Roger B said:

Was that 40% usable charge or total charge? As I understand it you are not supposed to run the battery below a certain level (10%, 20% ???)

That depends how cautious you want to be.  The manufacturers already allow a good safety margin at the top and bottom end of the charge range.  So when it says you have 0% left, it isn't really flat.

Not sure about other posters but I was taught to drive down the middle on narrow unlined lanes whenever  there is nothing visible coming towards me, to maximise the range of visibility ahead and round corners - you can get tighter into the side in a distance that is very short compared to the improvement in coming into vision forward range...

It also avoids the worst of potholes and the effect of deer leaping out of te hedges at point blank range, both of which are a problem at the road edges. I was also taught how to engine brake (which I still do) and double declutching (which I have not needed to use in anger for years.)

Mike.