Just how far is far enough for your car to travel on one tank?
This may seem like a loaded question, hinting at a result that is based upon specific uses and urban requirements, but in reality, Australia already knows the answer.
For years, the primary east-coast connecting route between Australia’s two largest cities has been something of a travel benchmark. So much so that driving from Melbourne to Sydney, or vice versa, is considered a rite of passage for every Australian motorist.
The M31 Hume Freeway is an 840km multi-lane artery that sees use by some 12,000 cars per day, with 40 per cent of this being heavy vehicles. Originally constructed as ‘The Great South Road’, what became the ‘Hume’ in 1928 used to link dozens of regional towns as people and freight travelled between Sydney and Melbourne.
Over the years, the ‘Hume’ has been upgraded and towns bypassed, to the point where it now connects the two capital cities with uninterrupted, traffic-light-free travel. And in terms of travelling range, it offers a properly Australian benchmark as to how efficient or capable a car may be in a touring scenario.
Sydney to Melbourne on one tank. Make no mistake, cars have been able to manage the 840km length of the Hume, plus reasonable connecting roads between the two cities, for years now.
It’s not uncommon to find European diesels that will regularly chew through 1200km between fills on a highway cycle, but what about the new generation of powertrains that are designed to be primarily efficient around town, making the most amount of positive impact on emissions and economy?
Hybrids tend to be skewed to deliver stronger results around town, and will largely perform the same as petrol counterparts on the open road.
Plug-in hybrids, too, with larger batteries to afford proper full-electric driving range, have historically done so with the use and benefit of urban speeds and energy regeneration achieved through regular braking.
The challenge for buyers, though, are the numbers.
Petrol, diesel and even closed-loop hybrid figures are straightforward, but the issue is that many PHEV (Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles) will claim a very low fuel consumption figure that is hard to extrapolate over a long distance.
For example, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV (Australia’s best-selling plug-in hybrid) claims a combined cycle consumption of 1.5L/100km. If that is used on a full 56-litre tank, the Outlander has a calculated range of over 3700 km, which we know is not correct.
These figures are generally calculated in laboratory testing, where the car will prioritise the use of the electric battery. So yes, you may use 1.5L of fuel for the first 100km… but once the battery is completed, things will change.
To be fair, the Outlander is still very efficient in the real world, with our recent long-distance test returning about 5.5L/100km, hinting at around 1000km range.
These figures, particularly for PHEV buyers, can be confusing. The only way to be sure, then, is to find out.
The Jaecoo J7 SHS, like the Outlander, is documented as having a low fuel consumption of just 1.0L/100km, but unlike the Mitsubishi, Jaecoo make a total range claim of 1200km.
The Jaecoo J7 has an 18.3 kWh battery with a 90km electric-only range, paired with a 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine, which work together on a longer touring drive to return around 5L/100km combined efficiency, or so say the figures.
Given the battery in the J7 SUV will maintain around 30 per cent charge when in touring mode, and no one should ever run their fuel tank to dry, we’d be happy to see anything north of 1100km on a longer drive.
The interstate Hume Freeway benchmark beckons.
Forget highly managed lap times on the Nurburgring, this touring drive, with tyre pressures set to placard, cruise control active and a moderate load on board, is as real world as ‘performance’ testing gets, and frankly, something we should do more often.
I began the drive with a nearly full charge, a full tank, plus a full packet of jelly snakes and headed north from Melbourne CBD. For electric convenience, the Jaecoo J7 SHS allows DC fast charging up to 40 kW, meaning the battery can be replenished from 30-80 per cent in around 20 minutes.
Resetting the trip meter hinted at our overall result – a 90 per cent charge (81km range est) and tank of unleaded – to a 1098km range outcome. Drive’s Sydney office is a mere 866km and supposed 8.5 hours away.
The Hume is heavily trafficked, especially in the middle of the day, which makes keeping to a time-eating pace sometimes tricky. Or more accurately, ‘trucky’.
While this drive wasn’t specifically to be an assessment of the cruise control system in the Jaecoo, I found it easy enough to operate and adjust each time I needed to drop back due to traffic (or roadworks), then pick up speed again to 110km/h.
It’s worth noting too, that I would have achieved better economy sitting at 100km/h or even lower, but where’s the reality in that! I wont lie either, I may have had it set on 115km/h to keep within the tolerances of Johnny Law’s Kodak, but also allow for any discrepancy in the speedometer.
To help with the data, I made a note at each approximate 100km interval of both the trip distance covered and the noted range remaining. This gave me a dynamic theoretical range under real-world conditions. No lab needed.
Fun fact, heading north from Melbourne to Sydney has a net elevation change of just 25 meters, but the route of the Hume has a steady uphill gradient from Albury on the border to Goulburn, south west of Sydney. There’s a handy website that maps this out for you too.
This played out over time as the car used more fuel going uphill (obviously) but didn’t recoup energy in equal amounts on the final descent into Sydney.
The Jaecoo J7's theoretical range peaked at 1177km, just 200km into the drive, and averaged 1133km to the 500km mark. Things changed on the steeper climb across the northern tip of the Australian Alps, with the range settling under the 1100km mark on the run into Sydney.
I stopped for a few photos and the requisite toilet break, but otherwise kept wheels turning on the Jaecoo throughout the drive.
It’s a pity that the route bypasses so many of the once iconic towns, so do make sure you allow a bit of extra time to spot the HMAS Otway submarine in Holbrook, swing past the Hume’s once halfway point in Tarcutta, or simply pop in at the ‘Dog on the Tuckerbox’, just five miles from Gundagai.
The Jaecoo J7 proved itself comfortable and quiet enough for the long trip, and a mixture of phone calls, podcasts and Britpop playlists all worked (via Apple CarPlay) just fine.
As the sun set, the miles seemed to pass a lot faster. By the time I stopped for a coffee at the ‘Golden Arches’ in Goulburn, Sydney felt like it was just around the corner.
The final result, an 883km journey with 127km of range still to go. That’s a range of 1010km, not quite the 1200km as claimed, but with a significant amount of uphill distance travelled, plus running between 110 and 115km/h, its still a solidly impressive outcome for a car that can (after recharge) switch back to urban duties while using no fuel at all.
I left at 1.00 pm and arrived at 10.30 pm – nine and a half hours, with a few stops (including a 30-minute radio segment), was better than I honestly expected.
Back of the napkin maths suggests the Jaecoo J7 SHS achieved a 5.9L/100km average consumption run under our real world conditions, which betters many of the closed-loop hybrid and pure-petrol competitors claimed figures.
A lower average speed would see this improve, making that 1100km goal something relatively easy to achieve.
The drive itself remains a relaxing and enjoyable way to see the country. Yes, it’s a nine-hour trip, but with the cost of flying a family of four interstate far higher than a single tank of fuel, perhaps the time spent isn’t so bad after all!
With over 20 years of experience in digital publishing, James Ward has worked within the automotive landscape since 2007 and brings experience from the publishing, manufacturer and lifestyle side of the industry together to spearhead Drive's multi-media content direction.
