I set my alarm for stupid o’clock, checked into a Stevenage Travel Lodge the night before, and told myself it would all be worth it. It was.
BYD had invited me to take part in the London to Brighton Electric Vehicle Rally in the Atto 2 I have been testing over the past couple of months. After over 2,000 miles of efficiency testing and recording 0.91p per mile, I was curious to see what a 60-mile real-world rally through London and down to the coast would produce. Just me, one pilot, and car number 93.
What Is the London to Brighton Electric Vehicle Rally?
The London to Brighton Electric Vehicle Rally is the UK’s biggest EV rally, bringing together electric vehicle owners, manufacturers and enthusiasts for a 60-mile drive from the capital to the coast. It is part showcase, part energy efficiency trial, and entirely good fun. Think of it as the modern equivalent of those early motoring rallies, but with considerably less noise and considerably lower running costs (unless you’re charging at 89p a kWh!)
Sponsors this year included BYD, Hankook, Geely, RAC, Pod Point and EDF, which gives you a sense of how seriously the EV industry takes it as an event. It is not a race. The point is to celebrate electric driving, demonstrate real-world capability and, for the efficiency-minded among us, see exactly what the numbers look like over a proper mixed-road route. For us, it was to showcase just what a seasoned Hypermiler can do at the wheel of one of the most efficient EVs we’ve driven to date.
Check out the website – https://londontobrightonelectricvehiclerally.com
The Morning: Car Park, Cuppa and Number 93
I had stayed overnight in Stevenage (£65 Premier Inn special) specifically so I could get down to the start line early. Arriving just before 6:30am, I was one of the first there. In truth, I could have had an extra hour in bed but that might have put me up against even more of the London congestion.
I got the numbers stuck on the Atto 2. Car 93.
Over the next hour the car park filled up and it became one of the most interesting collections of electric vehicles I have seen outside of a motor show. BYD had a fleet of cars there across the range (they had the offical pace car). There was a Fisker Ocean, a rare sight on UK roads. Geely had cars on show. Kia, Tesla, Lotus, various other EVs representing the full breadth of what the market now looks like.
The Drive: London Traffic, Roadworks and the Wrong Bridge
I set off with the first group, which I was pleased about. Less waiting around, more driving and hopefully less traffic.
I will admit we crossed the wrong bridge. Vauxhall Bridge rather than the intended Westminster crossing. That’ll teach me to follow the convoy blindly!
The route was a proper real-world mix. Saturday morning London traffic, roadworks, A roads, stretches of motorway heading south. Nothing was controlled or optimised. This was genuinely what 60 miles of mixed UK driving looks like, which is exactly the kind of test that tells you something useful about a car.
I used the sat nav’s direct route throughout. No scenic detours to find the most efficient roads. No gaming the result. Just the car doing its job from London to Brighton.
Throughout the drive I applied the same techniques covered in our EV Hypermiling guide: keeping speed in check, anticipating the road ahead and making full use of regenerative braking through the stop-start London sections and on the approach to every junction and roundabout on the way south. In London traffic the regen was almost constant. Every time we slowed for lights or queues, energy was going back into the battery rather than disappearing through the friction brakes.
The Result: 16.9kWh Per 100 Miles
Two hours after leaving London I crossed the finish line in Brighton.
The efficiency display read 16.9kWh per 100 miles. That works out to 5.9 miles per kWh across 60 miles of real London and south coast roads. Not a controlled test. Not a flat motorway cruise at 56mph. Actual mixed driving through one of the busiest cities in the country on a Saturday morning, on my own.
For an SUV class car, that is a genuinely impressive number. It sits comfortably alongside the figures I have been recording throughout our extended Atto 2 test and confirms what I have been saying since the first week with the car: this is one of the most efficient SUVs on the market, full stop. Again, less than 1p a mile, making the journey cost less than a packet of crisps.
It also makes a point about range anxiety worth stating clearly. If you can do 60 miles through central London, roadworks included, on those kinds of numbers, range anxiety starts to look like a petrol mindset applied to a car that simply does not need it. The Atto 2 barely noticed the journey.
Brighton: Atmosphere, Geely and Hankook
The finish line in Brighton was already buzzing when I arrived. Great atmosphere, plenty of cars, people genuinely interested in talking about EVs rather than just looking at them.
BYD and Geely both had cars available for test drives. I got behind the wheel of the Geely EX5 and came away genuinely impressed. More on that in a future article.
I also got some time with the Hankook team to talk through their iON tyre range, which tied in nicely with our recent EV tyres guide. There is more to come on that conversation too.
Lunch, a lot of good chat with some great people, and then the long haul back up north. Four hours home after a very long day. Absolutely worth it.
The Takeaway
Events like the London to Brighton EV Rally matter because they put real cars in real conditions and let the numbers speak for themselves. Nobody could accuse a 60-mile route through Saturday morning London traffic of being kind to efficiency figures. The Atto 2 produced 5.9 miles per kWh anyway.
If you have been thinking about going along to a future rally, I would genuinely encourage it.
Thanks to BYD UK for the invite. Car 93 had a good day. And yes, I’ll be leaving the numbers on until the car goes back to BYD.
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