Iveco recently took its electric eDaily van and set a world record, towing 153 tonnes behind the battery-powered LCV. That’s a headline grabber, certainly, but how does it cope with real-world towing?
We’ve driven the Iveco eDaily before, taking an early model through the streets of Turin and along some Italian motorways, but while the van had a 500kg load in the back, we didn’t get the opportunity to test its claimed 3.5-tonne towing capacity. In the somewhat less glamorous surroundings of Bedfordshire, we got closer to putting that to the test, hooking up a trailer carrying a digger to the back of the vehicle.
It shouldn’t present too much of a problem. Under the bonnet of the eDaily is an electric motor delivering 190hp and 400Nm of torque, all of which is available from a standstill. Or it would be if you slammed your foot down to the floor — computers step in and limit you to 120hp and 220Nm under normal circumstances, only unleashing all of the power available for a couple of minutes when demanded.
Even with that restriction, the eDaily is perfectly sprightly off the line, especially when running empty, and is as happy buzzing around the city as it is cruising along the motorway.
Power comes from 37kWh battery packs slotted between the chassis rails at the back of the vehicle. Buyers can choose just one battery, limiting the range to just 75 miles on the 3.5-tonne model but lowering the cost and weight of the van. Most will opt for two battery packs, which extend the available range to 146 miles. Bolt in three packs (something you can only do in vans over 4.25 tonnes), and the range extends as far as 186 miles.
That’s all measured when running with little load, so how does it compare when you put some cargo in the back and attach a trailer?
I took the keys to a tipper-bodied eDaily loaded with 400kg of gravel. Behind that was an Ifor Williams twin axle trailer carrying a JCB 19C-1E Cab electric mini excavator
. All told, there were 2.5 tonnes attached to the back of the Iveco.
Not that you could tell. Honestly, there was little appreciable difference in the van’s performance, and that’s without using the boost mode to unleash all 400Nm of torque. Pulling away was uneventful, as with no clutch getting in the way, it was just a case of ensuring the path was clear and putting my foot down.
Heading into an urban area full of tight turns, speed bumps and traffic lights, the eDaily made light work of it all. This is where an electric vehicle works best, feeling effortless to drive and keeping emissions well away from populated areas. The instant torque output and light controls ensured the vehicle was as quick off the line as any other vehicle we saw.
Country roads were equally uneventful. The Iveco isn’t a vehicle that will leave you smiling after a journey, but it’s an easy, precise and comfortable van to drive. Braking from speed took slightly more effort than when unloaded, but you would expect that.
High-speed motorway runs were, again, entirely unnoteworthy. It gets to speed and stays there without skipping a beat.
It was all very impressive but not entirely unexpected. The eDaily range might start with a 3.5-tonne model, but it goes all the way to 7.2 tonnes — and that version has a payload limit of 4.6 tonnes. If it’s designed to cope with that, then the 2.9 tonnes my eDaily was pulling around should be a piece of cake.
We didn’t get any definitive economy readings (full disclosure: I accidentally reset the energy use figures on the Fiat-sourced infotainment system), but towing will affect the range of an electric van in the same way it affects fuel economy in a regular diesel model. The eDaily is so over-engineered at the 3.5-tonne end of the market that I assume it won’t make quite as big a difference as it might on something like a Ford E-Transit, though, and that’s limited to towing just 2,000kg.
An Iveco eDaily might be a bit much for an owner-operator looking to reduce their environmental impact, but the world is moving on, and we’ll have to say goodbye to diesel at some point. The good news is that anybody needing to tow a heavy trailer and carry a lot of cargo will still be able to find a solution. And if you want to go all the way to towing the driving licence category B limit of 3.5 tonnes, then the Iveco eDaily is the only option.
